I not really fussed about climate change sceptics/deniers.
They're quite clearly wrong, but they aren't really causing much harm (unless you count feelings). There's far too much time and energy spent on trying to prove them wrong. You might win a few hearts and minds, but at the end of the day, you're not going to reason somebody out of something they reason themselves into.
If anything, the last couple of months should be a pretty stark reminder of how fucking self-centred we are as a species. We're perfectly happy to follow the rules as long as there's an immediate and fairly probably threat of death of we don't. But as soon as the danger isn't so imminent, we're flocking out in our thousands to beaches and shopping centres because it's nicer than staying indoors.
No matter how hard some folk might campaign for us to live a greener, more planet-friendly lifestyle, most of us won't, because it's more expensive, more difficult and less fun. The threat of death from our unsustainable lifestyles isn't imminent. Most of the people alive right now will be dead before global oil reserves run critically low and we nuke ourselves back into the dark ages fighting over the last few thousand barrels.
By the time that threat is imminent, it'll be far too late to change. It already is, really. The massive reduction in Carbon Dioxide/Nitrogen levels over China in the early weeks of the lockdown shows that potentially we do have time to make a change. It's just not in society's perceived interests to do what's best for the greater population when it means a higher level of personal discomfort.
It's a bit of a shame that the recent Coronavirus didn't take a bigger chunk out of the global population. That would have bought us a few years and perhaps drilled it into society's head that there are simply too many of us greedy cunts to be sustainable long-term. Because, realistically, the only way we're going to stop or reverse the damage we're doing is by dropping the Planets population back to nearer where we were in the 50's or 60's. And even those numbers would be optimistic.
(, Fri 3 Jul 2020, 18:58, Reply)
Re: your last sentence
Recently came across this overpopulation-project.com/overshoot-day-the-other-side-of-the-coin/
Unfortunately pointing out that human overpopulation is a real threat to biodiversity is now considered racist by some environmentalists.
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Mudface The web isn't callipygian, Fri 3 Jul 2020, 19:14,
Reply)
Those particular Environmentalists are significantly more damaging than any number of climate change deniers could be.
They're usually the same Environmentalists that join Extinction Rebellion protests and sit outside government buildings breastfeeding their third child and absolutely refuse to accept that the ecological cost of having one child is greater than they could ever hope to scrape back through a lifetime of environmentally friendly living.
I completely understand that for the majority, the instinctual drive to reproduce is overwhelming. You'd be far more likely to convince most people to go entirely vegan, ditch their cars and wipe their arses with a reusable cloth than you would be to convince them to never have children. But these cunts who stand on their soapboxes and lecture the public about climate change before driving home in their Range Rover with their three kids in tow are hypocritical cunts of the highest order. And those cunts make up an awful lot of these Environmentalist groups.
(, Fri 3 Jul 2020, 19:35, Reply)
I'm with you on the Range Rover environmentalists.
I'm a great believer in fixing your own shit first before lecturing others.
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FeralCatMan Unusual disease collector., Fri 3 Jul 2020, 19:49,
Reply)
I live next door to one
They drive a 4x4 in a city, have three kids, and last year put a massive extension on their house.
But it's OK, they also put an extinction rebellion postcard in their front window which negates all of that.
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My Name was saying these words inside your head on, Fri 3 Jul 2020, 21:16,
Reply)
Extinction Rebellion are the absolute fucking worst for that kind of shit.
(, Fri 3 Jul 2020, 21:19, Reply)
Unfortunately the norm
Just hope they buy a
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FeralCatMan Unusual disease collector., Sat 4 Jul 2020, 1:02,
Reply)
Surely it is dependent on whether they only refer to other races.
Saying there are too many people everywhere, cannot be.
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FeralCatMan Unusual disease collector., Fri 3 Jul 2020, 19:46,
Reply)
It doesn't need to be rational.
"There's loads of people in China and India, what you're basically saying is there are too many Asians. RACIST".
Never mind that ten years ago there were some perfectly good green fields and a lovely woodland walk down the road which has now been flattened, tarmacked, and turned into a development of affordable homes because we're all living too long and making children too soon to reuse the homes that have already been built.
(, Fri 3 Jul 2020, 19:59, Reply)
Ordnance Survey data suggests
that all the buildings in the UK - houses, shops, offices, factories, greenhouses - cover 1.4% of the total land surface. Looking at England alone, the figure still rises to only 2%.
Buildings cover less of Britain than the land revealed when the tide goes out.
The complaint that vast swathes of our landscape have been "concreted over" doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
But don't let me stop you. You were complaining about the people who let emotion, not rationality, guide their thoughts.
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My Name was saying these words inside your head on, Fri 3 Jul 2020, 21:21,
Reply)
It's actually closer to 7.5%
When you include things like Roads, Industrial and Leisure developments. Granted, that still doesn't seem like much on paper, but most people live in an area where the immediate availability of green space is significantly lower than that, and is only shrinking as occupancy expands. It'd be interesting to see a comparison against numbers in the 70's or 80's.
(, Fri 3 Jul 2020, 21:47, Reply)
Well 2% of that 'developed land' in England is just golf courses
That would be a 'leasure development' which is over a quarter of that 7.5%.
Just golf courses.
Want to complain about something?
Complain about that, not houses.
We could double the housing in England and all we would have to do is use the golf courses and nothing else.
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My Name was saying these words inside your head on, Sat 4 Jul 2020, 15:52,
Reply)
You need to take into account land used for food production
The percentage is much higher
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Mudface The web isn't callipygian, Sat 4 Jul 2020, 9:56,
Reply)
I disagree with your comment about climate change deniers.
They help to reinforce a mindset that experts are not worth listening to and give some creedence to doubters who support political attempts to continue as normal.
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FeralCatMan Unusual disease collector., Fri 3 Jul 2020, 19:41,
Reply)
Even if people listen to the experts.
We'll continue as normal anyway, though. Because as a species we're inherently selfish. Not enough of us are prepared to do what's needed to make a difference, because we're all expecting the folk next door to do it.
If we want to see a change, it means the vast majority of folk making significant alterations to how they live. We just aren't prepared to make those changes when we aren't going to see a direct or immediate benefit. Look at all the single occupant cars you see on the road during rush hour. Carpooling would benefit the environment and the driver's bank balance. But it rarely happens because it's not as convenient as hopping in the car and going.
I'm not saying that the advice from the experts is redundant. Of course it's not. But for the most part, people only voluntarily make changes when those changes benefit them. We're not particularly fond of sacrifice.
(, Fri 3 Jul 2020, 19:55, Reply)
"reinforce a mindset that experts are not worth listening to"
Isn't that Micheal Gove?
Although in fairness he did use it as reasoning to not continue as normal and instead take a massive leap backwards.
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My Name was saying these words inside your head on, Fri 3 Jul 2020, 21:26,
Reply)
I disagree with most of what you say.
Climate deniers are causing harm, especially the ones who own/operate newspapers, TV networks, political parties, government agencies, etc.
You CAN reason someone out of something they reasoned themselves into. The saying goes that you can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into. /pedantry
The idea that number of humans is the biggest driver of climate change is a red herring. Your calculation only works if we assume technology halted in 1950, and that the world can only maintain a certain number being as naturally wasteful and inefficient as our ancestors.
But there isn't really a single industry that has not improved in efficiency over the last century. Clearly, as time progresses we learn to do more work with less energy. With increasing efficiency for all, each persons environmental footprint gets smaller. We can therefore afford an increasingly large population for the same environmental cost.
The idea that the present human population is unsustainable is dangerously wrong. Countries that demanded living space in the great wars of the 20th century now have smaller countries supporting larger populations enjoying a significantly higher quality of life. That is the real trend the world over - there are more of us, living longer, better lives than ever before.
Technology will save us. Mining will start to move off-world, probably within the first half of this century. Nuclear fusion (probably arriving around the same time) will be a massive change for the better. Plastic recycling will continue to improve in efficiency and profitability. Dinosaur juice will be taxed to the extreme and CO2 will be extracted from the air to make rocket fuel, much of which will leave the planet entirely.
The future is a happy place.
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brb natural fistic, Fri 3 Jul 2020, 19:43,
Reply)
This may be a set of believable trends, assuming everyone plays ball.
On the other hand it smacks of littering because 'someone else will pick it up eventually'.
We are also going to struggle to recreate complex ecosystems.
Predicting the far future has a terrible track record, I'm still waiting for the free electricity promised in the sixties.
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FeralCatMan Unusual disease collector., Fri 3 Jul 2020, 20:01,
Reply)
Speaking of littering.
We've already fucked space in that regard. And only a few of us bloody live there, so far!
(, Fri 3 Jul 2020, 20:03, Reply)
We have not fucked space.
99.999999% of everything we've chucked up there is in LEO and will drag back down within tens to hundreds of years. There are a few things up there that could last a few millennia before turning to dust, but I don't count that as rubbish or littering. I'm quite proud that there are bags of human shit and piss on the moon, and I'm quite entertained by the idea that those bags will be holy relics one day.
If you think we've fucked space by launching RTGs or nuclear reactors, cosmic rays and solar radiation are the hurricane to our gnat fart in that respect.
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brb natural fistic, Fri 3 Jul 2020, 20:54,
Reply)
By that logic, we shouldn't really worry too much about our current ecological impact on Earth because of earthquakes and volcanoes...
And on the subject of space debris: Is that an issue that's going to become significantly worse or significantly better once the Moon becomes a commercially viable source of consumables?
Assuming anyone survives the massive fucking war that will take place establishing ownership of the single most profitable resource in the solar system...
(, Fri 3 Jul 2020, 21:18, Reply)
No, because we have a measurable effect on our closed(ish) system. Space is effectively infinite, and we have not added to the sum of lethal radiation by sending an RTG powered probe to a gas giant where natural radiation levels are exponentially higher.
There shouldn't be much litter resulting from space launches from the Moon for a few reasons
1: Single Stage To Orbit is the standard launch model from the surface of the moon. This means you don't need to throw away stages, fuel tanks, decouplers, o-rings and whatever.
2: Assuming we are going there to stay, we shan't be throwing bags of piss and shit away any more. That's all getting recycled.
3: Assuming reusability and environmentalism are here to stay, rockets will continue to be less wasteful - e.g. SpaceX's Falcon fairings are becoming increasingly reusable, and SpaceX's ITS/BFR/Starship system could even do away with a lot of the 'littering' that you see in falcon launches because they have cargo bays integrated with the 2nd stage, which will generally speaking return to Earth or stay put on the moon or Mars.
I'm with Zubrin - humans are the most profitable resource in the solar system.
But even if you're purely talking about precious metals, the moon is a barren desert compared to the asteroid belt. And if you only want fuel, the methane lakes of Titan are somewhat more appealing than the wisps of hydrogen found in lunar regolith.
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brb natural fistic, Fri 3 Jul 2020, 21:48,
Reply)
On point 2.
You assume that we won't be throwing bags of piss and shit away. But what about materials that aren't so readily recyclable? If launching rubbish into space was commercially viable, we'd already be doing it and reassuring the people of Earth that it'll all burn up when it hits the Sun. On the Moon, launching our detritus into space might end up being a realistic prospect.
(, Fri 3 Jul 2020, 21:56, Reply)
The moon has no atmosphere for anything to burn up in.
To reach the sun, you'd need to cancel out all of Earth's orbital speed (averaging at 29.78 km/s that's a lot of delta-v), or utilise some clever cosmic billiards to reverse slingshot your velocity down low enough to spend the last of your fuel on the last few hundred m/s needed to deorbit into the sun. Not worth it, even if you could make fusion powered ships.
You could just launch your rubbish into a nice long suborbital ballistic trajectory and let it burn up like that. An incinerator would always be safer, and I expect a lot more efficient than using a Starship as a garbage scow.
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brb natural fistic, Fri 3 Jul 2020, 22:19,
Reply)
You could just send Sockcookers mum up to eat it all
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Fadgebadger Sweaty sumo wanks for everyone!, Sat 4 Jul 2020, 9:27,
Reply)
If we're not in such dire need of living space, why all the new homes?
And who’s permission do we seek to mine the moon once we develop the technology to do it efficiently? Have we decided who owns it, yet?
(, Fri 3 Jul 2020, 20:02, Reply)
You joke.
But in the 1970's the Clangers had already built a self sustaining moon colony, developed optics advanced enough to clearly observe human behaviour on earth on a person by person basis and constructed a fully self-aware robot chicken.
Understandably, they kept their defensive and military capabilities under wraps, but considering the advancements in technology they were openly demonstrating 50 years ago, it's safe to say that they'd be a considerable adversary in the 21st century. At the very least, I'd imagine they'd have a fully developed arsenal of Neutron Bombs and Gauss cannons.
(, Fri 3 Jul 2020, 20:32, Reply)
Luckily the chicken relocated to the US and had a comedy career.
m.youtube.com/watch?v=mb23xZI3AWc
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FeralCatMan Unusual disease collector., Fri 3 Jul 2020, 20:51,
Reply)
'Living space' was a concept used to justify invading other countries and ethnic cleansing.
You're confusing it with the housing market, which is a much duller subject.
Trump has been doing his executive order shit wrt off-world mining rights, but I don't think they count for much internationally. There are lobbyists trying to get things codified in international law to establish prospecting rights but it's all quite vague and nebulous right now.
As China's interest in space grows I think we'll see the international community react faster with treaties and legislation. It will probably take China, Russia or the USA to just start mining the moon to force the issue.
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brb natural fistic, Fri 3 Jul 2020, 21:10,
Reply)
I'm not confusing anything. The housing market exists because there is demand.
These houses aren't staying empty. The excuses people historically used for invading other countries is completely irrelevant in this context.
We need more houses because our parents' houses are still inhabited by our parents at the time we generally decide to start our own family. These new builds don't lie empty. Christ, I live in one of the most sparsely populated areas of the UK, and there are people camping in the streets of new builds just to get a chance of a place on the waiting list.
We're having too many children at too young an age and then living too long. You can make any argument you like about other contributing factors to climate change, but that's what it all boils down to.
(, Fri 3 Jul 2020, 21:27, Reply)
You are continuing to confuse the concept of 'living space' (a rationale for invading other countries and ethnic cleansing) with public housing.
I for one am not impressed.
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brb natural fistic, Fri 3 Jul 2020, 21:53,
Reply)
Improvement in technology has so far failed to cancel out the catastrophic effect of human population size on biodiversity. Two billion people on the planet will do less damage, with speedy boarding for everyone.
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Mudface The web isn't callipygian, Fri 3 Jul 2020, 21:37,
Reply)
I hope technology will ultimately reverse downward trends in biodiversity. Through genetic engineering, nanotechnology, robotics and AI, and ultimatelly by seeding the galaxy with new life.
We are the only mass extinction event in history that is aware that it's a mass extinction event. The comet that did for the dinosaurs didn't even know what a planet is. We've got this.
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brb natural fistic, Fri 3 Jul 2020, 22:01,
Reply)
We have no time
I'm sure that, without time constraints, we would ultimately find the technological solutions to the problem (whether we transition to a socially just world at the same time is another matter entirely)
BUT - and it's a big but, I cannot lie - you seem to be totally unaware of the time constraints. The UNEP Emissions Gap Report 2019 demonstrates that we have until 2030 to be on the right trajectory to have a good chance of limiting global temperature increase to 1.5degC. Nuclear fusion by 2050 is too late. What your statement about plastic recycling has to do with it, I don't know. The idea of governments taxing oil to the hilt seems wildly optimistic as we see the world tilting ever closer to neoliberalism and global capitalism. Carbon capture and storage seems to be the 'get out of jail free' card that people play because they realise we can't live our current lifestyles whilst simply reducing the associated emissions - however, it's an unproven technology and 'one hell of a gamble' - to quote Kevin Anderson, a leading climate scientist. He also said,
“Many say that such rapid and deep change is unrealistic – but it’s much more realistic than believing a fair and progressive society can survive with 3, 4 or even 5C of warming,”
(, Sat 4 Jul 2020, 11:11, Reply)
Not everyone was stupid with Covid 19
When you say We, you mean the spoilt and entitled, like Britain. The UK was never going to do what was necessary for Covid19. We don't trust the government, have lerned to believe we are always right by right. Other nations were worse, like the US. But Denmark, Norway, Germany and Finland listened to their informed leaders and stayed put. Now they can emerge without the issues the US is getting.
I live in China, and everyone immediately locked down. Not because they were afraid of the authorities, but because they trusted it was the right think to do, and remembering SARS.
The irony is I am homesick for the UK now, and it's the last place I should want to be(pubs still closed). You muppets screwed it up. We stayed locked down, and I mean locked down, stay in the house, do not leave except to pick up deliveries at the gate, for 6 weeks. When I told my sister she said "I'd rather die". Careful what you wish for, silly tart.
China is open again. Pubs are open again. Everythong is open, except the boarders, because you are a bunch of muppets.
(
jagwap, Sat 4 Jul 2020, 9:52,
Reply)
Have you considered...
'No matter how hard some folk might campaign for us to live a greener, more planet-friendly lifestyle, most of us won't, because it's more expensive, more difficult and less fun. '
Imagine how much more expensive, difficult and less fun it'll be once global temperatures have risen 2/3/4/5degC!
'Most of the people alive right now will be dead before global oil reserves run critically low'
Global oil reserves aren't the limiting factor - the deterioration of global climate is, which will come far sooner.
'The massive reduction in Carbon Dioxide/Nitrogen levels over China in the early weeks of the lockdown shows that potentially we do have time to make a change.'
We do still have time to make changes - but let's be clear about the scale of the challenge at hand. Reductions in daily global CO2 emissions during lockdown were around 17%, but we need to have reduced projected 2030 global carbon emissions by over 50% to have a decent chance of limiting global temperature increase to 1.5degC. The consequences of missing that and hitting 2degC is pretty catastrophic, let alone 3/4/5degC.
'It's just not in society's perceived interests to do what's best for the greater population when it means a higher level of personal discomfort.'
Again, society needs to realise that the consequences of not taking action are far, far, far, far, far worse than the compromises required to limit global temperature increase to 1.5degC.
'Because, realistically, the only way we're going to stop or reverse the damage we're doing is by dropping the Planets population back to nearer where we were in the 50's or 60's.'
Global population is a really important topic; the way to manage it is via the empowerment of women. However, consider that the top 10% of wealthiest people in the world generate almost half of all global emissions. If you limited the emissions of the top 10% to that of an average EU28 citizen, we'd reduce global emissions by a third. Saying its someone else's problem is ignorant - wilful or otherwise.
(, Sat 4 Jul 2020, 10:56, Reply)