Changing Attitudes: Climate Change

[WYorksWeather]

 cheeky_monkey You've literally just proven my point for me. I never advocated banning SUVs - I said that it is something some people are in favour of. I did suggest taxing them more highly though. And that is exactly what we do for cigarettes and alcohol. We also heavily restrict advertising, especially for cigarettes.

And also the point with a tax isn't necessarily even to stop people doing it - you're right as e.g. with ULEZ, some people will pay it anyway to drive their car into London. But the point is that those who are price-sensitive might change their decision, and those who are not are still paying towards solutions - e.g. you could redirect money from those charges to fund better public transport, or improvements in energy efficiency, or whatever.

I think you're also confusing two types of argument. There are two strands to what I'm saying - the first is the 'can' argument, i.e. 'can we reduce e.g. SUV use with financial penalties, taxes and restrictions?'. I think the answer to that is pretty unambiguously yes. If you add an additional tax on vehicles over a certain size, weight or emissions threshold, it will disincentivise manufacturers to produce them and consumers to buy them.

There is then the 'ought' or 'should' argument - i.e. 'should we reduce SUV usage in this way?'. I also think the answer to that is yes, but this is where you venture into the political sphere, those who have views generally associated with economic freedom / libertarianism will naturally disagree and say no, regardless of the potential benefits. I think they're wrong, but ultimately that's a matter of opinion, not a factual argument.

In short, the question of whether we 'can' do something I think is pretty factual - there is a very long history of using the tax system to effect social changes successfully in terms of the original aim (though of course not always politically popular). But the question of whether we should is more a matter of opinion, and on that aspect it is just an 'agree to disagree' type question about which reasonable people just take opposite views depending on politics, which is a bit out of scope for this thread.

 

[sundog]

 richie3846 it's the rate of change that is also a  big problem.  The earth may have been warmer before but species evolved to cope with that warmer world . Dinosaurs being a perfect example, reptiles flourished for many millions of yrs in that warmer climate.  The trend of the earth since has generally been a cooler trend. Modern nature has evolved in this cooler world. The sun was less bright millions of yrs ago so the planet was able to cope with much more co2 in the atmosphere then now. There seems to a trend between an ever brighter and warming sun over many millions of yrs and the general trend of co2 in the atmosphere decreasing over  many millions of yrs. A delicate balance between the two. We are now altering that balance. 

[Wold Topper]

Just my tuppence worth, but batteries are not the answer, never have been... horribly inefficient method of propulsion for numerous reasons, technology will and has moved beyond them thankfully.

[raz.org.rain]

 sundog reminds me of a quote from Poirot, he says something along the lines of "the earth is cooling at a rate of 0.2°c every 1,000 years". I wonder if that was Agatha Christie's attempt at irony or if that was what people thought back then. Considering this would have been the interwar period.

Theoretically we were probably due one last glacial maximum before exiting the interglacial cycle and entering the next "hothouse" state. Generally speaking, ice ages such as the one we're in right now are relatively brief and uncommon occurrences in earth's history. It has been and should be significantly warmer than it is right now. Inevitably we'll see the ice age cycle end and see a return to a much more hot and humid planet.

However, those transitions should take millennia to occur. It's simply not sustainable for such a rapid and artificially induced change to occur within centuries, it doesn't give our biomes any time to evolve and adapt. I always see it as a stroke of luck that the current ice age cycle has provided us with a sort of Goldilocks zone that has been perfect for our evolution as a society. I guess it's ironic in a way that we can so easily destroy it.

Edited March 25 by raz.org.rain

[Sky Full]

 WYorksWeather.    I strongly agree with you on the various points you raised there, as underlined…..

”There are potential cost savings as well - e.g. reductions in heating costs from better insulation, …”   …”there are costs as well - due to poor government management - e.g. …. not providing adequate public transport,”

“ Can we solve the problem on our own though - no of course not. “  but  “…… we're not doing anywhere near enough adaptation, either.”

There are so many more positive, but less economically damaging, things we could be doing with respect to adaptation but in my own opinion recent British governments of both persuasions have not concentrated enough on them, possibly because they are not seen as vote winners.  For example, the obsession with the private motorist and the headlong rush towards electric cars seems to me to be addressing only one transport issue while the air travel industry, road haulage and shipping seem to be immune from action as far as their contribution to global emissions is concerned.  Shipping emissions alone far exceed ICE emissions from cars, reportedly….(although this might be out of date by now..):

Infographic: How Maritime Emissions Compare To Cars In Europe

WWW.STATISTA.COM

---

This chart shows CO2 from ships vs emissions from national car fleets in 2019 (million tons).

Why have we not seen the introduction of 21st century technology wind power on large ocean going ships, if only as a supplement to the existing marine diesels, or diesel-electric engines, and I imagine that at least some commercial shipping could be converted to electric or part-electric propulsion  (Submarines proved this technology works decades ago).  In general the willingness to cooperate and tackle climate change globally by all the countries of the world seems so disjointed and haphazard that I am afraid the human race might have already missed the chance to put the brakes on.

[Sky Full]

 sundog  “it’s the rate of change that is also a  big problem”.   Definitely.  The human race is supremely adaptable to different environments and would probably survive almost any amount of climate change even if this occurred over a short period, but most other species are far less able to cope with rapid environmental changes and would find it hard to evolve fast enough.  There would likely be a catastrophic extinction event as a result.  However, even the human race would face enormous challenges if the major ice caps melted and global sea levels rose accordingly.  There is no way we could relocate all the worlds major coastal cities and ports even within the space of a couple of centuries and eventually, without modern forms of transport or power generation, the human race would probably have to revert to subsistence farming, and a medieval existence at best.

[WYorksWeather]

 Sky Full Yep, I think anybody who thinks human extinction is a realistic near-term outcome from even worst-case scenario climate change is totally wrong.

Probably the worst case scenario in my view if you assume very high climate sensitivity and emissions, you're probably looking at enough warming to make anywhere within 20-30 degrees of the equator effectively uninhabitable, and massive coastal inundation affecting the vast majority of major cities around the world.

But even in that scenario, it's hard to see how we couldn't have, say, tens to hundreds of millions of humans still able to eke out an existence in Northern Europe, what is now Canada, maybe parts of the Siberian Arctic, probably a few other places as well. But of course it wouldn't necessarily be recognisable as modern civilisation.

One thing scientists are pretty much definitely agreed upon is that until the Sun's luminosity increases significantly in a few hundred million years, there simply isn't enough fossil fuel available to reach the moist greenhouse limit of an average surface temperature of 47C. Above that limit, the Earth's oceans would rapidly boil away and the planet would resemble Venus. But that won't happen in our lifetimes, even in the worst case.

[WYorksWeather]

 Sky Full It is an interesting point as to whether some large cargo hauling ships could be for example nuclear powered. I suppose there's always the concerns about release of nuclear material, theft by hostile states, etc., but I do know that in theory thorium reactors are not useful for military purposes. Again though, I plead ignorance to the engineering side - it may be someone will come along and explain to me why putting nuclear reactors on cargo ships is impossible.

I'm definitely not anti-nuclear, especially in the right applications. The question like anything is cost. The comparison is e.g. solar/wind with storage vs. nuclear, and I guess the cost comparisons very much depend on the assumptions you make, etc.

On adaptation, the biggest expectation for the UK that is not talked about enough is flooding and coastal inundation. In winter especially we expect more extreme rainfall events. Adapting to the likely consequences of this will no doubt cost many billions, but of course the costs of not doing so are very considerable as well. One projection which justified the construction of the Thames Barrier was that a reasonable worst-case flood could have caused over £50bn worth of damage in today's money without the barrier. In today's money, the barrier cost about £2bn. It's worth paying almost any reasonable amount in adaptation, and regardless of the ultimate warming level by 2100, that spending is unlikely to be wasted.

[cheeky_monkey]

 Sky Full two things that will happen in the next two centuries (assuming no nuclear conflict) is the world population will collapse to more sustainable levels... by 2200 i expect the population to be half what it is today if not even lower...secondly technology will have advanced at such a pace that we cant even imagine today where it will be or what it will look like...climate change will be a thing of the past by that point..everything we use and see in our everyday lives today will be gone...we will be as far removed from todays world as we are removed from the dark ages.

[ANYWEATHER]

 cheeky_monkey with respect, that’s your hypothesis. It’s just as likely that aliens have invaded our planet by then Who knows? Answer :-No one.

Edited March 27 by ANYWEATHER

[Methuselah]

Or you can choose to be genuinely curious? 

 

[Downburst]

As a person who supports all efforts to understand and take necessary action on identifiable targets I am beginning to get a little irritated by some journalists using terms such as "Climate Crisis" etc. Or sometimes now just "climate", e.g. the minister has to fight housing and with respect to climate etc. There is a very strong looking down the nose element to some journalists when writing about the plebs that are causing them lack of sleep as they worry in London about farmers or the great unwashed. I hope this stops as it's coutner productive and a political response will arise. 

[raz.org.rain]

 cheeky_monkey an interesting attribute of humanity is that it pretty rapidly adapts to an external crisis. The population could collapse in response to catastrophic climate change but it's very likely we'd see a huge tech evolution too. 

[jonboy]

Population will collapse because we all become better off. If it wasn't for immigration the UK population would already be in decline.

[cheeky_monkey]

 ANYWEATHER not really..in terms of technology history tells us the furture..it will happen..that's the problem with any future predictions we look at it through todays eyes and todays knowledge..im saying people alive 200 years ago would have no concept of todays world ..not a single person/scientist/politician could envisage the world we take for granted today...therefore we cant envisage the world in the future where our knowledge will be outdated and obsolete and the world we know today will be long dead and buried.

[ANYWEATHER]

 cheeky_monkey okay thanks for response but we will have to agree to disagree. Perhaps a meteorite will wipe mankind out , we shall see. All of which we have no control

[jonboy]

 raz.org.rain We are seeing population decline which has absolutely nothing to do with climate change. World population levels are predicted to peak in the next 50 years tops then decline part of the natural cycle especially as women become more independent and not at the behest of men. 

[TonyH]

 jonboy Needs a 90% reduction to save the planet that's the trouble!

 jonboy Wish it was what with them building all over the countryside!

[TonyH]

 WYorksWeather Not just climate change all the other tipping points about to tip over such as pollution, plasticification, biodiversity collapse, etc.

[WYorksWeather]

 cheeky_monkey Yeah but constant progress is a fairly recent thing to be fair - we can't just assume it will continue unhindered necessarily. The fall of the Roman Empire led to a significant regional decline in civilisation, levels of education etc. in Europe for quite a while (though not across the whole world). In terms of culture as well - people associated witch burnings with the medieval period, but in that sense the medieval people were actually more civilised than early Renaissance people, as it was those who started inquisitions and so on.

History doesn't necessarily have to evolve towards progress.

[jonboy]

 TonyH Why 90%? I can tell you now if you had a 90% reduction man would not exist. Utter baloney.

[Methuselah]

 Jonboy: with a combination of nuclear fission and renewables. Maybe they'll resuscitate tidal power. The problem is not insoluble; what's needed is political will and sensible, targeted investment. 

[Sky Full]

I’ve nothing new to add to this thread this morning but I am posting to say how very enjoyable and interesting I have found this discussion to be.   Every member has a slightly different, but equally valid and arguably correct view of the present challenges facing the human race and the various proposed solutions and forecasts are all fascinating to read.    My thoughts this morning are that if only we had some people in positions of power around the world who showed even half the intelligence and commitment to a better future for the planet that the people on this website do, we might hope for some really positive action.  Unfortunately, it’s not going to happen, is it.

[richie3846]

We've got a power flush on our gas combi boiler today. Our boiler is prone to scaling up with metal corrosion more often than a typical boiler, annoyingly. I suggested to the gas man that we could look at an air source heat pump next time, and replace the system. He said categorically, that it simply won't be suitable with our current technology, even though our house is only 25 years old. So despite my intentions, i can't realistically get off gas. 

My work firm is trialling electric vans in a few areas which are ultra urban, but the idea seems to be completely at odds with the reality of rural parts of the firm, such as ours, where we need 3.5 tonne (4.25 with batteries) vehicles to travel at least 300 miles, in cold winter weather, per day. The vehicles being trialled only do 130 miles on a 7 hour charge. Despite the good intentions of my firm, they can't realistically get off diesel. 

This is the reality I see in my daily life, and I can't see a way forward, despite a genuine interest in humans cleaning up our act, unless some workable solutions are presented on a massive scale. 

In terms of attitude, this reality definitely affects my attitude towards climate change, because there's nothing I can do with the 'big hitters' of heating and transport. I can't even use an electric car because our parking area is very far from the house. 

[Methuselah]

 richie384: A heat pump would be ideal for the flat I live in, as it was built in 2012 and has fantastic insulation. But, alas, I have a next-to-useless combi boiler which, even when it works, heats the rooms far too quickly. Conversely, heat pumps are unsuitable for older houses that were built prior to the changes in building regs. . .

I'm sure the day will come when all homes are heated by electricity -- oil & gas will inevitably run out at some point. They say, quite rightly, that the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow. . . But the tides never stop!