[Misc] Global Warming

[beorhthelm]

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Again not true - your science is a bit off here if you don’t mind me saying so - forested regions and ‘green’ habitat is actually decreasing - When trees are destroyed and vegetation disturbed, it actually releases stored carbon dioxide into the atmosphere along with other greenhouse gases - that is the issue - not the possibility of Triffids taking over and polluting the atmosphere with O2. And an increase in C02 doesn’t ‘cause’ more ‘green leaf coverage’ - if only it did.

let's check some science:

CO2 is making Earth greener—for now - NASA Science

A quarter to half of Earth’s vegetated lands has shown significant greening over the last 35 years largely due to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

climate.nasa.gov

Studies have shown that increased concentrations of carbon dioxide increase photosynthesis, spurring plant growth

habitat loss is another subject. and that's the main problem with global warming, it's abused as a backdrop to all sorts of other environmental issues and causes, that distorts claims, questions motivations.

some years ago it looked like a pragmatic approach was taking over with "net zero". this accepted you cant stop all emissions, there are other things that can be done, if you target a net zero emission by country, by region, you get a positive overall outcome without some of the horrendous economic and social consequences of actually attempting zero emissions. now we are well on track for net zero, that's not enough for some, because of those other causes.

 

[Curious Orange]

It maybe the case on social media/forum chats that discourse is polarised but in the real world, pragmatism and compromise are producing results in a way polarised opinions will not.

I probably wasn't quite as clear in my phrasing as I intended, anybody who only paid attention to the news and didn't pay attention beyond that would certainly think nothing practical was happening. Whether what is actually being done is of any benefit it is a separate discussion.

Again not true - your science is a bit off here if you don’t mind me saying so - forested regions and ‘green’ habitat is actually decreasing - When trees are destroyed and vegetation disturbed, it actually releases stored carbon dioxide into the atmosphere along with other greenhouse gases - that is the issue - not the possibility of Triffids taking over and polluting the atmosphere with O2. And an increase in C02 doesn’t ‘cause’ more ‘green leaf coverage’ - if only it did.

The green leaf cover has increased by 5% over the last twenty years, as per NASA satellite observations, so I'm not quite sure why you think what I have said is wrong. I quite agree that correlation between it and CO2 might not be a causal one as we as a species have been getting very good at increasing yield from crops which could also be a contributing factor - however extra CO2 definitely makes growing plants easier.

Reducing how much fossil fuels we use or how much water we use, won’t impoverish us, it will help save money.

That could be eventually true, I agree. But that would only be the case if it is implemented in a way which doesn't drastically increase the cost to the customer of production or impact on the reliability of supply. If we don't get the transition right then we will be impoverished in the short term (well, apart from the ultra-wealthy, they'll just get richer off the back of it), which will be a difficult situation to rectify.

I think that our government is starting to recognise this and this is why they're backing off of EVs for instance, as the grid isn't currently up to a significant portion of the population having one, and we don't have the new nuclear power stations in place to ensure that continuity of supply we will need.

I think we have a pretty good idea already by looking at trends in current (ie 100 year trends) weather patterns, threats to wildlife already being realised and threats to low lying countries from rising sea levels. Longterm climatic changes and short term anthropogenic contributions to the rate of change are discussed above - the former we can’t do anything about, the latter we may be able to.

Yes, we can do something now and there isn't really any reason not to other than cost. The models need further refinement though, and peddling of the worst case predictions in the media is not helpful.

our contribution to emissions and our footprint globally is not negligible:

I think we'll probably have to disagree about 1% being negligible - suffice to say unless the likes of China and India start making inroads into their emissions then anything we do is largely pointless. I appreciate that you are probably trying to say that the UK carbon footprint should also include stuff imported from abroad, and therefore we contribute more... I just think that is an awful argument.

Yes of course - I agree absolutely- and the green economy has been thriving for years. It already is more viable for many energy companies to switch to sustainable energy production and renewable energy sources than to buy fossil fuels/coal to burn. I also agree that we need nuclear energy to supplement our renewable fuel supplies until renewables can provide the demand required. But we also need to reduce our own energy use too as part of the overall action on climate change if it is to make a real impact. Recent financial discount insentives offered by fuel companies to customers to cut their peak times energy use, won’t do that, as customers will just use energy outside peak times. Discounts for overall energy reduction is a far more effective way forward imo.

I mostly agree with what you say there, I'd only add that the amount of energy consumed becomes less of an issue once production is mainly from renewables, as I'm finding with the solar panels.