Overhype on global warming

[VillagePlank]

It's not fencing of, it's backing of, in a managed (not controlling, helping) way.

... and how in hell would you achieve that?

If you are managing something then you must have a target goal. Something you are managing towards. Every environmental management scheme I've ever looked has always ended up a surprise. Not necessarily a bad one, but not the target that was presumed at the outset. In my opinion, the only possible way forward is to fence it off.

And, please, don't fix on the fixed date I gave

I didn't. That's why the word 'say' was inserted. It was put there for a very good reason.

People like me get more and more pilloried.

But that's not what is happening here, is it? I agree with your assessment that change needs to happen, we just don't agree on the correct way forward.

[AtlanticFlamethrower]

"Egads, Igor! What have we done!?" - Baron Frankenstein

[Devonian]

... and how in hell would you achieve that?

Well, as I've said, I don't have much hope it can be achieved.

[SnowAngel]

Well, as I've said, I don't have much hope it can be achieved.

Whether it affects climate change or not, being less wasteful and more respectful to the enviroment cant be bad thing, but it is so hard not to be cynical when you have a government preparing to concrete over vast swathes of the already overcrowded South East including on flood plains, the Americans ignoring the rest of the world and the Chinese building coal-fired power stations belching out vast quanities of CO2 at the rate of one a week! Forgetting to recycle a tin can is going to do exactly what to the planet?

[eddie]

Of course you're right.

But...

When it come to putting these ideas into practice? Well, you can just do it as an individual - in which case everyone else carries on as before and the problem is addressed in 2300 AD. Or you start to urge people - and they resist and the problem is addressed in ...2300 AD. Or you make them do it, all hell breaks out and, after a god allmight struggle, the world is a better place.

Shrug. People try to make this a better world and all they get is (at best) flak.

I do agree with this to a certain extent but unfortunately there are some fundamental problems with trying to 'make' people do things especially if those things impact people lives financially in the short term.

The first problem is that humans are proven to be short termist. Generally they will take a smaller reward now rather than wait for a larger reward in the future. In a similar way, they will resist giving up something they percieve of good now (that new car, tv, whatever) just because somewhere down the line, perhaps even after their own death, something bad might happen as a result of them having that thing.

The second problem is that the only body that can make people do something is the government. When the government want to make people do something they also have to take into consideration that fact that those same people also decide how long they will remain in government. Push people too hard or too fast and you won't be the government for very long.

It's a fine balancing act between getting something done about C02 (but perhaps too slowly) and trying to change things quickly but then getting kicked out, and therefore achieving nothing, because people are generally selfish and don't like giving up any of the perks of modern life.

The third problem is that the world doesn't have just one government. You can only ever make a small part of the worlds population do something,

I think what I am trying to say here is that you have to work with the people. Before anything radical can happen the majority of the population have to accept that AGW is real and also agree what needs to be done. Until this happens you can't 'make' them do anything. In fact you may even force the opposite of what you are trying to achieve.

[Devonian]

Whether it affects climate change or not, being less wasteful and more respectful to the enviroment cant be bad thing, but it is so hard not to be cynical when you have a government preparing to concrete over vast swathes of the already overcrowded South East including on flood plains, the Americans ignoring the rest of the world and the Chinese building coal-fired power stations belching out vast quanities of CO2 at the rate of one a week! Forgetting to recycle a tin can is going to do exactly what to the planet?

Not set an example?

[Admiral_Bobski]

I often wonder how much all this "Green" advertising, initiatives and education costs the government (and every other organisation and company that indulges in it), and I wonder how quickly we could develop new, clean and environmentally-friendly technology if all that money was channelled into R&D instead...

CB

Edited July 25, 2007 by Captain_Bobski

[BrickFielder]

I think the answer to the global warming problem should be that we live in harmony with the environment whilst still maintaining our technological sophistication. This seems a sensible thing to do regardless of whether we are causing global warming and regardless of whether CO2 is the main cause. The problem is that the concept of global warming is so large that democratic governments for both political and economic reasons find it difficult to tackle the problem.

Governments probably need to introduce some unpopular ideas like limiting wastefullness, but may not because they know that they would lose votes. What they tend to do is tax things which in effect limits the access by those less well off to whatever they are taxing.In effect this limits technological sophistication to those who can afford it.

Governments are motivated by sustaining votes and achieving results across a broad range of short term needs. To achieve this they will tend to prioritise on shorter term projects. Tackling the root problems of wastefullness, laziness and selfishness on which our economy is now driven will not be a vote winning target for any government.

When large companies can in effect take their jobs elsewhere then to some extent governments are held to ransom about what punative measures they can introduce. The end result of course is that governments have very little choice but to target low to middle income families with tax.

It seems to me that we need to establish projects to target specific areas of our ecological impact with these projects being largely independant of government. Instead of targeting traveling less and slower we should be trying to develop transportation which has less of an ecological impact and is faster and lets us travel more. There is very little reason why houses can not built to use very little electricity.This all comes down to investing in future technology something which we are notoriously bad at in the UK prefering to pile money into supporting things which are clearly inefficent.

The question is not what is the answer but how can you achieve it without a significant tax burden and significant adjustments in attitude. The single biggest problem I perceive is the general populaces resistance to change, life is a little easier being ecologically unfriendly.

[The PIT]

You know, I'd REALLY admire a company who admitted that their new "green" thinking came purely from a realisation that there may be a profit in it.

Nothing wrong with that. Wish our University would realise the heating durign summer costs them money.

[HighPressure]

OK, what should we and what should govt do?

This is the problem, what's the solution?

I honestly don't. You seem to be saying there is a problem, attacking those who want to address the problem but not offering anything else as an alternative?

Well, in that spirit please answer my questions

We as individuals can choose to live in a cleaner less polluting way, we can change our light bulbs, sort our rubbish recycle as much as possible even walk and cycle when possible. I do not suggest in anyway that this is wrong, but I think where it goes wrong is with the idea that if we as individuals take these actions we are somehow going to have a meaningful impact on CO2 emissions and thus start putting everything right. This is the front end of our governments delivery of AGW policy, its misleading, its inaccurate and smacks of a government wanting to be seen to be doing something rather then actually getting to grips with the nitty gritty. This as other posters have suggested would mean real measures that would inevitable make them very unpopular and would almost definitely lead to them being booted from office unless cross party and more importantly international agreement on action was reached. Simply the basics of a tough environmental policy would not change merely by voting for another party or by a company simply upping sticks and moving to somewhere more favourable to them.

The problem is that all governments are different all have their own political agendas and no 2 races are or react the same to imposed measures. You only have to take the French and English to see that and we are next door to each other. You have got to take into account that the manufacturing base continues to move eastwards across the globe like a tidal wave which started in the UK 200+ years ago. We as many western nationals have prospered from our manufacturing roots so much so that we can afford to get someone else to make our goods for us. That manufacturing base is currently in China and Asia and of course they are going to resist change, they watched us get wealthy from mass production. Why should they be the ones to miss out or have restrictions imposed when we in the west have polluted the earth for 300 years without so much as a second thought? What about 3rd world countries where most of the population merely exists to feed themselves on a day by day basis are these too expected to shun manufacturing opportunities if it to bring them wealth. We in the nice cosy west may have the luxury of worrying about our children's children or even their children but these are people that cannot fee today's children tomorrow.

Yes I have highlighted yet more problems but this is the true extent of the issue, its massive it requires honesty from all governments not only our own before we can even contemplate how we can tackle our polluting ways.

I was asked what should we do about it then? Well I do not believe that our current global social or political setup allows us to reverse back down the route which we have travelled. In being honest we have to accept that we will continue to be a consuming society and that is only going to grow, we will travel more not less, we will use more light not less. We first need to accept this, then we need to look at how we can best accommodate it. We are going to lose some low lying areas of the world to the sea we need to move these populations and build sea defences where practical. We need to educate all out Children in Earth sciences the world over and above all we need to look at new better cleaner technology as money rules and if cheaper better ways can be found then they will be self introducing.

I have rambled on a bit but I felt it necessary to answer DEV's points properly, as a spices we need to be able to adapt to climate change as it does sometimes happen without any human involvement and even if we are causing this one we have no idea if we can put it right?

All a very long way from £10 on a flight or £30 on road tax I am afraid but the reality as I see it.

[Gray-Wolf]

.......and as Noah was loading his Ark ,with the water lapping around their calves the debate still raged between the "snot appening" brigade and the "look at the signs" people.........

[Bobby]

I just had an e-mail from hotmail saying "Go green with MSN". And earlier there was an advert from the bank HSBC, saying how green you can be by signing up to online paper free banking. Argh!

[Optimus Prime]

Pretty much agree with all what's being said. Global Warming isn't an invention but some of the theories surrounding it are and the goverment use them to make more money out of us.

[J10]

Another problem is also the way the environmental argument is presented.

If I was in charge of that branch of the media, I'd be spreading a general message along these lines: "The balance of scientific evidence suggests that human activity is probably contributing to climate change. Although there is a lot of uncertainty over this, doing nothing is too risky an option, given the likely repercussions if our emissions are significantly contributing. In addition, it makes sense to reduce fossil fuel consumption because of various other pollution issues, and the fact that our oil resources are finite."

What I generally hear from the media is "Humans are causing global warming by releasing lots of CO2 into the atmosphere and we're all going to die and every weather extreme, including snowstorms and sub-zero temperatures, is caused by global warming".

Totally agree with all of the above.

[BLAST FROM THE PAST]

I have completely edited the post because it was too contro. But just to say recycling....don't believe too much in it.

BFTP

Edited July 26, 2007 by BLAST FROM THE PAST

[Bobby]

This is exactly the type of ridiculous thing that gets to me. Can't resist this one:

http://www.blackle.com/

http://www.blackle.com/about/

Madness.

[HighPressure]

Well advertised on my AOL here home page today is how you can now get a green credit card from Barclays. He we go with the massive commercial spin offs from associated your product with going green.

OH DEAR!

[rc28]

This is exactly the type of ridiculous thing that gets to me. Can't resist this one:

http://www.blackle.com/

http://www.blackle.com/about/

Madness.

I dont really see a problem with that, our electricity comes from finite resources which are running out so what's wrong with saving some? They dont even mention gw, just the energy crisis so what exactly do you hate about it, they're not making any profit either?

A black screen does use less power than a white screen and many people prefer a darker screen if they're in front of a bright monitor for hours on end.

Edited July 27, 2007 by rc28

[Admiral_Bobski]

Well advertised on my AOL here home page today is how you can now get a green credit card from Barclays. He we go with the massive commercial spin offs from associated your product with going green.

OH DEAR!

Rats - you beat me to it! (By several hours!)

I saw this ad on this very website just now - Barclaycard Breathe: Amazing discounts and low interest on selected Greener spends - 50% of profits donated to projects that tackle climate change.

Give me strength!

CB

[jethro]

And the one which always make me smirk, the new Ford Zetec CLIMATE. In these days of global warming hype, can anyone please explain why they chose such a name for a car and advertise it with heaps of snow????

[HighPressure]

So if I go buy a Ford 'Climate' fill it up with petrol with my Barclaycard Breathe and set my PC with its 26" monitor to 'Blackie' as my home page then the world is saved?

My we are in a mess ain't we

[HighPressure]

I am disappointed that this thread seems to have died and even more so that 'Devonian' has not responded to my ramblings. To me 'hype' 'message delivery' and 'real action' are more important issues than whether we have full agreement on AGW/GW or not. I get the impression that many actively involved as AGW supporters appear more interested in scoring a few point then real action and would be quite happy if we all fried to death as long as they win the argument.

[Gray-Wolf]

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/...70730141145.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/...70730092544.htm

It's taken me less than two minutes to find, cut/paste these links of 'new evidence' for our part in the climate change our planet is undergoing and yet still, I guess, folk will scramble around to find contrary evidence (and as recent?) to attempt to refute/question the validity.

Day after day, week upon week, year upon year folk, who commit their whole lives to the issue, put out their findings. I do not suspect many of them to be vainglorious in their efforts but, i believe, are driven by their passion for the subject (the easiest way to become good at anything is to 'be into it'). Still we hear it's only to keep the grants 'rolling in' and no more.

Do you really wonder why ,after we've 'put up' we decide to 'shut up' when all we meet is pedantry, mis-information and falsified evidence?

There are none so blind as those who will not see.......

[Devonian]

I am disappointed that this thread seems to have died and even more so that 'Devonian' has not responded to my ramblings. To me 'hype' 'message delivery' and 'real action' are more important issues than whether we have full agreement on AGW/GW or not. I get the impression that many actively involved as AGW supporters appear more interested in scoring a few point then real action and would be quite happy if we all fried to death as long as they win the argument.

Will do tomorrow. Btw, that's an unnecessarily barbed last sentence. For me it's (all this debate)about finding out what's right, countering what's wrong and trying to do my bit for the old planet that matters.

[Gray-Wolf]

Will do tomorrow. Btw, that's an unnecessarily barbed last sentence. For me it's (all this debate)about finding out what's right, countering what's wrong and trying to do my bit for the old planet that matters.

My mum told me (before she died) " the only person you can guarantee sleeping with for the rest of your life is yourself, if you can't sleep easy with yourself then what?"........what we do for the planet involves what we feel we can do for ourselves in it all, some more some less but to do nowt when we suspect we should do something will lead to nothing but anguish.