Climate change - National Geographic

I don’t have the numbers but I suspect that the energy consumption and the pollution production per head of population is a lot lower in China and India than for a country like the UK. Both have about a billion people but so many are very poor, living in rural areas with little mechanisation. As yet.
The US on the other hand…
Now as for the UK and other European countries starting to move towards being less polluting - surely that is a good thing? Even if the impact is less than if say the US made significant moves in that direction. What is the alternative? We wait until every singe country acts?

It’s really awesome thanks. :kissing_heart:

As humans, we might not like to admit it but we have killed off 83% of the worlds animal species.
Nothing high & mighty about that and there’s nothing wrong with my moral compass. :v:

There’s nothing wrong with mine either because I agree with you Chelsea, but what does animal extinction have to do with Climate Change?

Everything! Animals that depend on very cold climates, caribou (reindeer), arctic foxes, toads, polar bears, penguins, gray wolves, tree swallows, painted turtles, and salmon don’t have that same environment they were nice had due to global warming.

The giant panda, the tiger, monarch butterfly, green sea turtle, African elephant, mountain gorilla,Asia elephant, cheetah, moose, snowshoe hares, puffins, piping plovers,

Many of these animals need hundreds of litres of water per day, some of them listed as endangered species. Many species become endangered before they become extinct.

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We should build an Ark Chelsea…We could do with one here in South Yorkshire, it hasn’t stopped raining for three weeks and I’m beginning to feel like an endangered species…
:ship:

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Thought for the Day

On the plus side we are not in Rome

I note that one reason being put forward for Labour’s failure to win the Uxbridge by-election is the unpopularity of the new ULEZ footprint. This puts most of greater London, and thus Uxbridge, in the low emissions zone. It means everyone must stump up £12.50 a day to drive in the zone or buy a new low emission car. And the ULEZ expansion is being pushed by Khan, the Labour mayor. So that seems the people of Uxbridge, and perhaps all of greater London, are giving this policy a resounded no.

If wishes were Horses, beggars would ride.

The poorer folks of GL had better start wishing.

Just thinking about something Meg posted, How many of you can explain how you notice that climate change is happening around you? Ignore anything you see on MSM, the news or weather. Just what you can see out of your window or when you go out walking, driving or visiting the countryside? Second hand explanations are not acceptable ie. A friend of a friend who is holidaying abroad…How many holiday makers actually take a thermometer with them and measure the temperature correctly… :face_with_raised_eyebrow:
I’m not getting at anyone, just interested, because I’ve never noticed any difference, and I spend lots of time out in nature. If anything, it seems more cooler and wetter, but you only remember the good old days…

Well one thing I have noticed up here OGF ir that the winters are a lot milder nowadays.

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If there is one sure fire way to gain a detailed understanding of what is taking place globally then the 100% best way to go about it is to only use immediate, personal experience. This approach should not be limited to the weather, although the “only belief what you personally experience” approach is foolproof for all aspects of the weather - long term trends, longitude & latitude variations, low & high altitude changes, coastal and inland effects, etc. The one person, single location view is obviously best for this.
And non-weather global issues can also be validated by the one person, one location assessment. The rise of populism globally (“well, our one local councillor seemed quite militant when we chatted down the pub, so no, no such thing as populism”); the increasing gulf between the rich and poor (“the posh bloke in the big house in the village had to sell his Jag but at the same time young Derek got a new job, so no, this is not a true trend”); the reduction in meat consumption (“I just bought a bumper mega pack of bacon in Asda so I’ll be eating loads of bacon sarnies, so, no I don’t agree that meat eating is reducing”); an aging population in first world countries (“young Debbie next door just had twins and across the road a young couple just moved in, so no, I think the average is getting younger”).
I could go on.

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I’m now wondering how many of the older Just Stop Oil protesters have undergone cataract replacement surgery. I have and I know that the lenses are made from a mixture of materials including mineral oil based products.

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I doubt if you’ve read up on the objectives of the Just Stop Oil movement. Their web site makes it clear that they have two objectives - one to prevent new oil or gas fields opening up, and two to stop reliance on oil & gas as fuel. There is no mention of stopping the use of oil for other purposes. I think about 75% plus of crude oil is used for fuel and the rest for other products. My guess would be that Just Stop Oil would be quite keen to also reduce polluting plastics. So crude oil that is being used for other products would go even further in making useful stuff. It seems likely that existing reserves in already productive fields would last for many years if it was not being used for fuel and polluting plastics.
The conclusion is that older Just Stop Oil protestors are comfortable with their cataract replacements. And they’d probably point out that your argument does not work. Perhaps you might prefer to argue against their stated objectives instead.

Here are the figures:

https://ourworldindata.org/per-capita-energy

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Us Brits need more Brazilians!!! :icon_wink:

Yes I’ve noticed that too Scot. However, in the past we seem to have a decent run of mild winters and then a couple of bad ones. I recall that after a few years of relatively mild winters (because as a runner and postman, I can run in shorts right through the mild winters so I notice it more ) we had a couple of really bad ones, 2009 and 2010 spring to mind, and also there were several years of sub zero temperatures where the temp rarely rose above minus 5 degrees C even though we had no snow. The canal froze over here for quite a few weeks, which is rare even when I was a lad back in the sixties.

Is it just that we notice the weather more because of the extra publicity that it gets now. Unless the weather was really bad (Heatwave or subzero) I can’t remember taking that much of an interest in the weather until the last few years…Do you think they are trying to make a special effort to emphasise climate change to justify the green crusade?

Here’s one for you Scot…The weather for the last 300 years has been quite stable, but now we find heatwaves, floods, extra big tornados, and melting ice caps…Do you think that is a result of messing about with the composition of the environment. Perhaps burning fossil fuels and producing CO2 has stabilized the weather for the last 300 years, and now we are trying cut CO2 and it’s producing extreme weather?

And before anyone suggests that it builds up in the atmosphere, that’s nonsense, otherwise the debris from millions of volcanoes over the years would still be circulating in the air and blocking out the light. The atmosphere is self cleaning, or else we would still be getting pea soupers in London since burning coal stopped. CO2 and other pollutants and debris are heavier than air, and what goes up…Will come down!

Gawd, all that chat about CO2 and no mention of photosynthesis. But you needs lots of plants to make photosynthesis absorb all the additional CO2 from fossil fuels. And guess what has been happening in the last 100 years, but especially the last 50 years? Yes, massive deforestation. Its estimated that 70,000 acres of rainforest are torn down each day. Millions of trees a year.
And dust settles. That is blindingly obvious. CO2 is not dust.

It might be better that we take deforestation into account when making predictions. The answer is no, cutting CO2 is not causing extreme weather. Pollution and climate warming is causing extreme weather.

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Absolutely! :+1: