Food for thought - Climate Change

[Linas.P]

1 minute ago, dutchie01 said:

Haha, how come i am not surprised??

We are talking about the person who is on ~£250,000-300,000/year himself and who religiously cycles into work every morning and looks like damn homeless in the office with creased shirt and suit... and sneakers.  

And I wasn't in his face or anything, but there were few occasions where I said something about cyclists in the pub and few times during townhall there was like anonymous question board... and I put something along the lines "can the parking places be made bookable in the basements for those who drive"... and he was like "what the hell, nobody drives where, who would want to park anyway?!".

Isn't it funny thought - there are 10 parking spaces not used at all, but they would not make them available to be booked on the system... what they are afraid off? that somebody bursts their bubble?!

So when it came to the end of the year - it was like "exceeded the expectations as always, great job, here is you bonus, but no promotion and no pay rise"... "thank you very much for bonus and feedback, I will send you my notice tomorrow".

 

[Malc1]

Lucky me then ….. I see TWO Ls400s every day and live outside ULEZ land ……

. BUT Linas, all us older guys that had some sort of conventional job in times past ….. me a country and then a City banker from the late 60’s to early 90’s have probably experienced much of what you’re going thru right now with Employment and Housing and Cost of Living Family crises and challenges ……. and not being able to use that sodding empty parking space ……. it’s life and growing up and an “ age old” issue ……. It possibly won’t ever change and frankly, Climate Change won’t affect your general well-being one jot in this regard ……. Go for that empty parking space ….. it’s obscene it’s not being used ….. upset some of those ridiculous minded climate do-gooders ….. flood the place with car fumes …… especially if you get a sensible car, a Ls400 

best wishes with it all ……. You’ll reach 50 / 60 / 70 / and lots more notwithstanding all these on-going Climate Change Challenges that often bring Gloom and Doom  to otherwise sensible and good thinking people 

keep cheerful  it’s important 

Malc 

[Linas.P]

28 minutes ago, Malc1 said:

Go for that empty parking space ….. it’s obscene it’s not being used ….. upset some of those ridiculous minded climate do-gooders ….. flood the place with car fumes ……

I would have done if that would have been possible, but that was absolutelly not an option... it was gated with security and if you don't have permit then you don't get it. 

That said I have seen security guard parking his Aston Martin there... yeah security guy in Aston Martin!

As for housing... which is to be honest not climate related, just another failed government policy... it is simply factually not true that such issues existed in the past. Median house used to cost 5 times median annual salary, now it is 14 times... and trust me I am not on median salary. Likewise "median" house price is kind of meaningless in London... so obviously that is more of London issue, but still even after adjusting for inflation housing is like 3 times more expensive now than it was in 90s and 8 times more expensive than it was in 60s and 70s. That is not 8%, not 80%, that is 800% more expensive after already adjusting for inflation. I am pretty sure the same would apply to parking, to road taxes, to car insurance... and obviously there are brand new taxes that didn't exist at all, like congestion charge and ULEZ. The public transport is as well much more expensive. 

And again we just talking about the costs here, but soon it is going to be NOT about the cost, it is actually becoming outright impossible. It is coming to the point where is does not matter that you can afford £20 a day parking, there simply not going to be parking space at all, it does not matter than you don't mind £12.50 a day ULEZ, soon there is simply not going to be the road which you can use to get to your destination because of stupid LTN. I don't think paying £100 fine could be brushed off as "just a costs of living". We getting to the point where just earning more and paying is not enough, because we will be prohibited from having the car at all. And this is particularly true about BEVs and charging... all is good if you can afford BEV, but if you don't have where to park it and where to charge it, then there is no utility in it. And I guess unlimited amount of money could resolve it, but we getting to the point where it is not just "little bit more expensive", we talking that you have to move to another area altogether get £800,000 house which has off-street parking, and we are not living in magical world where money does not matter, in reality it does matter and it is getting to the point past "charge it until it hurts" and to the point where the charges are simply impossible to afford. 

[Malc1]

Affording Climate Change is certainly becoming a major issue for many ……. hearing that Cambridge has just decided to revoke its plans to introduce ULEZ style charging ….. enabling us poor folk with aged wrecks to not worry too much about having to change our cars …….. I did see a while back that a re-fit company is repurposing older Rolls Royces and Bentleys to be simply EV propelled …… from an affordable £400k of course …… worth every penny I’m sure 😅

Doubtless my road of terraced houses ( in Kent ) will feature one or two with their charging cables straddling the pavement and causing challenges for pedestrians, mums with prams whatever …… I shan’t be getting an EV Bentley tho …… someone might imagine I’ve got some money 😆

Malc 

 

[Bluemarlin]

On 9/14/2023 at 1:20 PM, Linas.P said:

That is correct and at no point I have denied human pollution is not contributing, but what I am saying is that we hold ourselves to unrealistic goal and standard. Current target is to limit temperature change to 1.5C... but that is clearly impossible considering that temperature will naturally raise by 6C. What it seems to be the case is that 1.5C limit was deliberately created to be impossible to achieve so that people could be forever punished for not reaching it. I am not suggesting to damage the environment deliberately, but if the definition of damage is anything about 350ppm of Co2, when even natural level could reach 2000ppm, then this is just punishing ourselves unnecessary. I don't think comparison with smoking or murder is relevant here... because climate change this is false premise. Both smoking and murder kills, I don't think there is evidence to suggest that climate change kills, or that human contribution to it does anything that is in itself unnatural.

 "No-one believes that we can stop naturally occurring climate change" - here you just got me confused... naturally occurring climate change is likely to raise the temperature by 6C and naturally occurring Co2 will get to 2000ppm level, anything below these number is is UNNATURAL, so to achieve them we need not to reduce our pollution, but to completely reverse naturally occurring Co2. Basically a carbon capture of some sort at massive scale. Now to be fair natural increase in Co2 is just about 0.1%, whereas humans are responsible for ~1.5-2% of Co2, so 90% of excess Co2 are created by humans. But then the problem comes to policies - ICEVs are responsible for only ~2.4% of global Co2, BEVs are 30% cleaner. So 30% of 2.4% of~1.5% excess means that removing cars from the roads will have total impact of the policy is 0.011%, whereas what we need is to actually reduce the carbon by 101% until it gets to 350ppm and then reduce by 100% thereafter. That is why I am saying - the goals they have are incompatible with human life on earth. It is not about just driving or eating meat, we can exist because we need not to reduce carbon emissions, but to completely eliminate them and more. 

"control the climate in such a way that we have a climate that is most suitable for us <...> that's precisely what we're trying to do" No... again, the argument is that pre-industrial period is most suitable for our life. This is debatable, but that is what ecomentalists are seeking and what the policies are trying to get, but again this is impossible, we need -101% to get there, not -0.011%.

Air quality benefits can be achieved by better roads as I have demonstrated previously, not necessarily by removal of the cars. In my view - if government charges the people to use roads, then they are responsible for providing infrastructure. If they don't want to provide infrastructure, including free parking etc., or if they outright want to ban people from using them, then they should not charge people for access. We know for a fact that driving is not worse and less accessible than before, yet road tax keeps increasing. So it is less of conspiracy and more of purely bad deal. I am not sure about comparison with horses and I may be just missing something, but I just can't see how BEV car can give me more freedom than ICEV. Let's not forget as well that large amount of pollution is coming from brakes, tyres and road surface wear, so again reduction is minimal. Air quality improvements are as well questionable, because again better improvements could be achieved by simply improving the roads and secondly methodology of how they are calculated is very much flawed, to the point where I consider it misleading.

There is no risk of us running out of space for the roads... currently only 3% of land in UK are used, which roughly translates into 1% residential, 1% commercial and 1% of roads and parking. So we can literally double all 3 and still have 94% of land left to use. So the argument of running out of space for roads is simply unfounded. Not to mention that road capacity could be increased vertically, thus not requiring any extra land. For example we can increase throughput of of crossroad by maybe 80%, by making it it into multi-level crossing and this requires no extra land. I agree with your argument that sometimes in the cities there is no space left for road widening. Sure that is bad city planning fault, but you can still increase capacity vertically. And by the way demolishing houses is not out of question, not sure what that would be the problem. Sure perhaps some historically important buildings in old town, but at the same time old town isn't an issue.

I think we have different perspective on quality of life, I have clearly not lived as long, but my quality of life has become worse every day since the day I was born, in pretty much all aspects - taxation has increased, real estate became less affordable, quality food became less affordable, driving became less affordable, penalties for minor offenses became much more severe, restriction of all types became much more intrusive, the place overall got much more crowded. The explanation to that could be - we considering different things in our life to add quality. I can't think of a single thing that improved. Okey maybe internet became faster, but that is kind of new thing altogether and it would be hard to argue it actually improved my quality of life. Generally, I don't think it is right to confuse digitalisation and computerisation with quality of live improvement. Sure it is convenient, but arguably it made everything more competitive - somebody with my current IT knowledge in 90s would have been best paid specialist in UK, now I am just about average. So yes we became more efficient, but at the same time expectation became that we should deliver more work, so there is no net positive here.

Again I would like to hear - what particularly has improved in say last 30 years?  

It's hard for me to comment on your climate and CO2 thoughts, as I don't know where you get your data that says temperatures will rise naturally by 6 degrees. My understanding is that a 6 degree rise will see rain forests turn to deserts and entire ecosystems wiped out, with mass migrations of people to habitable areas.

I'm also confused by your acknowledgement that 90% of excess CO2 is caused by human activity, but then object to finding ways to reduce it. So, all I'll say is that I don't believe that a transition from fossil fuels will see us losing cars, heated pools, or anything else that uses energy, and simply that we'll find other ways to power them.

I'll also briefly touch on roads and say that whilst it may be true that there's plenty of space to build more roads, that space tends to be in places that people don't want or need to drive. Of course you could redistribute the population, but then you'd be back to what you're opposed to, which is forcing people to do what they don't want to, via either mandate or financial penalties.

Unlike you, I don't feel punished, and so don't believe we're punishing ourselves. Instead I believe we're taking the opportunity to try and do things better. As with any such course of action though, there's a price to pay in the short term, with the goal being long term gain.

I will however try and answer your question about quality of life, by giving you some idea of how my quality of life has changed. Here's some things I've lived through, and don't experience now:

Power cuts, where you had to spend the evening sitting around a candle 🙂 A far smalller choice of food, especially fruit and veg, indeed in some restaurants orange juice was considered a luxury starter. As for the economy, whilst it may be described as poor, it's swings and roundabouts. Some things may have been cheaper before, but when I was your age mortgage rates were around 15%, and so I might have had to spend less on things, but had less money left to do so. Today's inflation may lead to higher prices, but also leads to higher returns on my savings and, when the times come that I'm old enough to draw my pension, it will have increased far more substantially over the last year or so than it has in previous years. So it's not all doom and gloom, and for the most part, despite higher prices on some things, my bottom line has improved. Even quality food is cheaper, as cheap food before wasn't great quality. If you want fresh fruit and veg, go to a greengrocer stall on the high street and you'll be amazed at how much cheaper it is than the supermarket, and better tasting. Go to Aldi or Lidl and you'll find plenty of good quality food at very affordable prices. In fact I find most supermarkets now are far more competetive than they were 20 or 30 years ago.

The technological advances are too numerous to list, but a small number of everyday improvements include the ability to work from home, or anywhere, to manage most of one's life online instead of having to visit establishments, and to have ones goods and groceries delivered next day if one so chooses.

I disagree with the lack of freedom too. You might be pulled up for saying things that were let go years ago, but that's because you now have the freedom to say those things to far more people. Swings and roundabouts again, as the ability to reach millions of people, from the comforts of one's desk, has as many benefits as it does downsides. One could also argue that the people on the receiving end of such things have seen their quality of life improve.

So, individually you might feel worse off, but on the whole people's quality of life has improved.

I do find it funny though that an older person is promoting the benefits of change, to a younger person who seems resistant to it. Surely it should be the other way round 🙂

[Bluemarlin]

3 hours ago, Linas.P said:

Seeing LS400 would brighten my day to be honest!

Don't get me wrong - I don't have depression or something, but knowing economic realities is kind of my job, or at least those that I manage nowadays, so I greeted with large dose of reality everyday. I guess it could be as well related to worldwide squeeze of what was known as "middle-class", poor people were always poor and had horrible quality of life, rich people likewise were always rich and got all the spoils, but it is middle class that was aspirational for many working class people and that is what is disappearing nowadays. It is no longer an option of getting good education, getting into desirable field, working hard, better than all your colleagues and getting yourself from just hard worker into middle-class and getting little bit more relaxed. I am fully subscribed to the model - "work hard and play hard", so I am not afraid of hard work, for all of my years in employment my appraisal was "exceeded expectations", the problem is that nowadays if you work hard, you just going to pay excessive amount of taxes and when it comes to "playing" you are told that 99% of things you can't do anymore. So it ends up just being work hard for sake of working hard and never play. I myself came basically from poor family in poor country, but I am nowadays firmly in what would have been classed "middle class" in 90s and the quality of life is much worse than it was. Important to say - arbitrarily restricted, so it is not like middle-class has less money, simply said that money provides lesser quality of life (and I don't mean it is just inflation), you are simply not allowed to enjoy your wealth anymore. So in 90s poor struggled because they were poor, today poor still struggle because they are poor, but middle-class are not struggling because they are poor, but because they are arbitrarily restricted from enjoying their life with all sorts of excess taxes and rules etc. I guess I would summarise it as middle-class nowadays having quality of life of what used to be working class, and working class is even worse off - we have terms like "working poor" nowadays.

And I am not even joking - 30 years ago, person in my position would have had corner office, dedicated parking space and would drive 911 into work (this is quite particular position we are talking about and I am not exaggerating, I know exactly the people who did this work in 90s and their life-style)... however nowadays it is all virtue-signalling, specifically related to climate scam. Nowadays people in same position are either cycling or using public transport, not because we can't afford 911, but because we are not allowed to show-off. For example our new office building came without parking spaces at all, they had like 10 in the basement and all of them were empty all the time, because it is simply embarrassing or not fashionable to drive anymore. I have tried all possible ways to get parking there, but it is simply impossible, because once I get parking space then climate facade falls down, because everyone pretends they don't want to drive, or that others don't want to drive, but when suddenly one person drives then everyone are like "why is he driving and I am cycling in the rain like idiot"... basically it is wide spread psychosis where everyone pretends they like punishing themselves so much, talking how they had another puncture and how they £4000 carbon bike got stolen again and walking with brown line of shame on their back... but it only works as long as everyone are doing it. When somebody come and says - "fff it I drive"... suddenly everyone pulls the knives out. Again, not even a joke, part of the reason I had to change the job was that I didn't get pay rise and promotion, just because I was vocal about parking and new manager didn't like it so much. Now that is good for me and tough luck for him, because with single e-mail I got job doing less and with 30% higher salary, but the whole move was predicated on him hating me because I drive to work and he cycles... 

Office politics has always existed Linas, it's only the battlegrounds that have changed. In your case that happens to be around the environment.

You could of course adapt to that environment and fight the battle on their terms, by buying an electric car, booking a parking space, and insisting that they install a charging point 🙂

[Malc1]

Office politics well, I experienced that whilst i was a teen ( 1967/8 )  at school .....  owned my own car and drove to school and the Head Master would NOT allow me to park in the school car park ( leafy Orpington then ) which was more or less empty ....  masters couldn't it sems afford to buy cars and cycled etc to work / the school ....... OR indeed had learnt the virtues of not emptying car fumes into the atmosphere ....  I think the affordability was the issue really, not worrying about the then unbeknowing issues of Climate Change

Malc

[Linas.P]

1 hour ago, Bluemarlin said:

It's hard for me to comment on your climate and CO2 thoughts, as I don't know where you get your data that says temperatures will rise naturally by 6 degrees. My understanding is that a 6 degree rise will see rain forests turn to deserts and entire ecosystems wiped out, with mass migrations of people to habitable areas.

I'm also confused by your acknowledgement that 90% of excess CO2 is caused by human activity, but then object to finding ways to reduce it. So, all I'll say is that I don't believe that a transition from fossil fuels will see us losing cars, heated pools, or anything else that uses energy, and simply that we'll find other ways to power them.

I'll also briefly touch on roads and say that whilst it may be true that there's plenty of space to build more roads, that space tends to be in places that people don't want or need to drive. Of course you could redistribute the population, but then you'd be back to what you're opposed to, which is forcing people to do what they don't want to, via either mandate or financial penalties.

Unlike you, I don't feel punished, and so don't believe we're punishing ourselves. Instead I believe we're taking the opportunity to try and do things better. As with any such course of action though, there's a price to pay in the short term, with the goal being long term gain.

I will however try and answer your question about quality of life, by giving you some idea of how my quality of life has changed. Here's some things I've lived through, and don't experience now:

Power cuts, where you had to spend the evening sitting around a candle 🙂 A far smalller choice of food, especially fruit and veg, indeed in some restaurants orange juice was considered a luxury starter. As for the economy, whilst it may be described as poor, it's swings and roundabouts. Some things may have been cheaper before, but when I was your age mortgage rates were around 15%, and so I might have had to spend less on things, but had less money left to do so. Today's inflation may lead to higher prices, but also leads to higher returns on my savings and, when the times come that I'm old enough to draw my pension, it will have increased far more substantially over the last year or so than it has in previous years. So it's not all doom and gloom, and for the most part, despite higher prices on some things, my bottom line has improved. Even quality food is cheaper, as cheap food before wasn't great quality. If you want fresh fruit and veg, go to a greengrocer stall on the high street and you'll be amazed at how much cheaper it is than the supermarket, and better tasting. Go to Aldi or Lidl and you'll find plenty of good quality food at very affordable prices. In fact I find most supermarkets now are far more competetive than they were 20 or 30 years ago.

The technological advances are too numerous to list, but a small number of everyday improvements include the ability to work from home, or anywhere, to manage most of one's life online instead of having to visit establishments, and to have ones goods and groceries delivered next day if one so chooses.

I disagree with the lack of freedom too. You might be pulled up for saying things that were let go years ago, but that's because you now have the freedom to say those things to far more people. Swings and roundabouts again, as the ability to reach millions of people, from the comforts of one's desk, has as many benefits as it does downsides. One could also argue that the people on the receiving end of such things have seen their quality of life improve.

So, individually you might feel worse off, but on the whole people's quality of life has improved.

I do find it funny though that an older person is promoting the benefits of change, to a younger person who seems resistant to it. Surely it should be the other way round 🙂

That is the data I have already linked... 

I do apologise that data is in "freedom units", but as you can clearly see the temperature in last interglacial period 120,000 years ago was 41F and currently is at ~34-35F. The graph is made by Utah Geology institute, but same data can be found provided by NASA, NOAA... it is pretty factual and to be honest nobody really disputes it.

What the climate looked like back then is harder to say, but fossil records indicates that whole planet looked more like jungle, humidity was higher because temperature was higher, not sure if current rain forests will turn into desert, but deserts are likely to turn into rain forests, for example Sahara desert in many places will be below sea level.

Yes - I did calculations and it turns out humans are responsible for 90% of excess carbon, despite being responsible for only 1.5% of total. To be honest I was little bit surprised and kind of realised why ecomentalists are so obsessed with human emissions, however it still doesn't make any difference. This is rather simple to work out, because past carbon records shows that in glacial period carbon concentration was just 220ppm and as mentioned predicted level of Co2 in interglacial period is as high as 2000-4000ppm. So if consider that it takes 20,000 for Co2 level to increase by ~20 times, then we can quickly deduct that naturally occurring excess is ~0.09% (I rounded it to 0.1%). As such if human emissions totals 1.5%, then we are responsible for over 90% of excess and we speeding-up climate change. BUT that is the point - it is all irrelevant. You see - we are burning the carbon which was once in atmosphere, but due to various processes turned into fuel we using today. So in principle there is finite amount of carbon on this planet, we just extracting and returning it to atmosphere where it once was. We not making any NEW carbon, it is just never ending cycle - carbon gets absorbed and some of it ends-up under the earth crust, then it get's released in some way. If not for us burning it in vehicles, then there are thousands of other ways, for example one very common are volcano eruptions.

So... I am basically saying two things:

1. it is not a problem to release the carbon back into atmosphere, there is finite amount of carbon and dependant on how much there is in the atmosphere we can have either tropical climate or iceage. I much rather prefer tropical climate, but that is as well irrelevant because these processes are natural and contently fluctuates. 

2. current climate action just punishes us and wastes opportunity cost to spend our time and resources on more meaningful things. Banning ICEVs just get's us nowhere, because our goals indicates that we want to remove ~1.6-2.1% of Co2 per year to stay where we are (or ~101% of all excess), but we only targeting the 0.011% (which is 0.05% of all excess).

The point being - we are majorly inconvenienced for miniscule reduction in Co2 emissions which has absolutelly no impact to climate change. As well we have a goal of no more than 1.5C increase in temperature which is simply unachievable and incompatible with human life on this planet. We are not talking about transition to BEVs, we talking about no electricity, no heating, nothing... but the problem is that modern human is already very efficient with energy. Yes combined 8.1 billion of us contributes that 200 million in pre-industrial times, but individually we are contributing maybe 5% of what pre-industrial humans contributed. If we going to abandon the industrialisation and all go back to being medieval, then we will increase the pollution not reduce it. So the only remaining option is - we need LESS HUMANS. And even then we still have not found the way to reverse the climate change, just slow it down a little bit. Remember - our goal is over 100%, so even by reducing it by 90% we still going to contribute extra excess Co2. This is battle that cannot be won, unless we find the way to capture and store the carbon. It is not about whenever you drive ICEV or BEV, not about heated pools, it is about removing more carbon from atmosphere than we together with natural processes produce.

I could expand into explaining how houses were much cheaper despite 15% interest, it is rather complicated topic for another time. As for why older person needs to explain benefits of change to young person, that is again very complicated topic, I would over-simplify by stating that basically previous generations had an opportunity to benefit from the changes, whereas later generations did not - hard to explain, so it is time for another analogy. Imagine we are all invited to dinner with buffet - you are invited at 6PM, somebody at 7PM, I am invited at 8PM and generation after me at 9PM. So you arrive at 6, fill-up your stomach and are happy, somebody arrives at 7, not all the food is left, but it is still plenty, so they fill-up their stomach and sit happy, I arrive at 8 and there is only crumbs left... it try to find something to earth from those crumbs, but I am told to be mindful of people that will arrive at 9. The problem he is that I will be hungry either way, because crumbs were never enough to fill me-up and people arriving at 9 likewise still be hungry. You may sit by the table and say - well it is good there is little bit of change and people are being told off not to take too much, but that is because you have already eaten... And this is paradox of false scarcity. The solution here is not to prevent from eating crumbs, the solution here is to make more food for everyone. To say that we need to stay below 1.5C is arbitrary and false target. To say that we should not drive, or better not own cars because of excess Co2 is false goal.

The true problem is that we living on the planet that has natural changes in climate, not all of them convenient for our existence and therefore we have desire to control it, but WE CAN'T. At least not yet. Because to control it, does not mean just reducing our emissions, it does not mean completely eliminating any emissions, it means we need to artificially remove more emissions that we produce and some more. The total global emissions are ~2.45Tt (terra-tons), human emissions are 0.036Tt (36 giga-tons), if we want to keep current environment as it is (assuming it is ONLY Co2 that contributes to climate change, which is NOT the case), then we need to find the way to capture say 40Gt of Co2 per year. No eating of grass, not amount of cycling, no amount of staycation will get us there, we not only need to stop emitting, we need to to start actively taking carbon out of atmosphere. OR alternatively we can accept that our cities will need to move 10miles away from current shoreline in 5000 years time and that we will live in tropical climate around the world. Sadly, I will need to find different past time activity rather than snowboarding if I plan to live 5000 years from now. 

[Juicedrinker]

On 9/6/2023 at 11:55 PM, Linas.P said:

My PC drives me mad, I have little weather widget at the bottom and it used to say just temperature, then they improved it to give warnings like "rain is coming", "high wind" etc. sometimes quite useful... Now it is outright propaganda, every bloody day is record high! Not joking - was sitting at home on rainy Saturday day in July, 22 degrees, windy, had to close window in the room as it was outright cold in the morning, what the widget says "RECORD HIGH TEMPERATURE!" 22C in bright red with red exclamation mark (or maybe it is rea thermometer)... I am sorry, but even in my short little lifetime I have seen hotter Julys! And fair enough if it would be some generic location, I know it was hot in Spain that day, but no it is my location, my temperature and it is record high! What?!

As well now BBC shows temperatures between 10-12C as yellow, 13-14C already is kind of amber and it is nearly red by the time it gets to 21-24C. No! I am sorry, but 24C is just comfortable normal temperature in spring and autumn and it is outright disappointing in summer. I guess nice if you sitting in the office, but not a day to go to the beach for sure! I would say ~28C is what normal summer is like, but I don't want to see any amber until it hits at least 30C, and any red before it is 40C. And I have no issue calling hot day a hot day and showing it as red, last summer for example was very hot when we had all the fires near London, even houses burned. As it happens I was in the Egypt at the time and it gain was kind of disappointing, because when we left the Heathrow it was 38C, when we landed in Sharm it was 42C, I even joked that there is no point going in Egypt anymore when we have such temps in UK. Cool - show such days as red! And indeed it was hottest day since record began in 1884 or something like that. But 21C as redish-amber in the summer?! What is that?

An

I lived in the North of Gran Canaria for a couple of years and whilst nowhere near as hot as where the tourists go to (in the South of the Island) for at least 8 months of the year average daily temps were in mid 20's to low 30's. 

Its incredible that we survived, ran businesses, people went to schools (not air conditioned most), socialised and in my case did lots of sport and fitness training.  We didn't have warnings every day about making sure we drink fluid, protect ourselves, warnings of business and school closures etc etc.  Heck they didn't even have the Spanish siesta over there but we all got on with our daily lives and most people there moaned when rain in the winter and temps below 22c.  Oh and we never had water rationing either because they bhad good reservoir systems and desalienaited water from the sea in the city of Las Palmas!!!

My friends who still live there thinks its laughable, no actually ridiculous how our National news spreads fear and panic at every opportunity and talks about slightly warm days over here as the end of the World whereas over in Gran Can in the evening once it is below 23c most Spanish put on jackets or scarfs around their necks to keep warm.

Surely if things are really this bad here in the UK then why don't we have places like Brighton, Southampton and Bournemouth have desalienation plants and the locals can use as much of the sea water as they like and if there is global warming and the coastal towns did this that would help lower the rising sea levels which is a win win situation.

[Phil xxkr]

1 hour ago, Juicedrinker said:

I lived in the North of Gran Canaria for a couple of years and whilst nowhere near as hot as where the tourists go to (in the South of the Island) for at least 8 months of the year average daily temps were in mid 20's to low 30's. 

Its incredible that we survived, ran businesses, people went to schools (not air conditioned most), socialised and in my case did lots of sport and fitness training.  We didn't have warnings every day about making sure we drink fluid, protect ourselves, warnings of business and school closures etc etc.  Heck they didn't even have the Spanish siesta over there but we all got on with our daily lives and most people there moaned when rain in the winter and temps below 22c.  Oh and we never had water rationing either because they bhad good reservoir systems and desalienaited water from the sea in the city of Las Palmas!!!

My friends who still live there thinks its laughable, no actually ridiculous how our National news spreads fear and panic at every opportunity and talks about slightly warm days over here as the end of the World whereas over in Gran Can in the evening once it is below 23c most Spanish put on jackets or scarfs around their necks to keep warm.

Surely if things are really this bad here in the UK then why don't we have places like Brighton, Southampton and Bournemouth have desalienation plants and the locals can use as much of the sea water as they like and if there is global warming and the coastal towns did this that would help lower the rising sea levels which is a win win situation.

Good Heavens! A sensible, articulate comment, what ever is this world coming too? 😅

[Malc1]

Does desalination require significant fossil fuel burning to achieve ? 
 

Malc 

[Bluemarlin]

22 hours ago, Linas.P said:

That is the data I have already linked... 

I do apologise that data is in "freedom units", but as you can clearly see the temperature in last interglacial period 120,000 years ago was 41F and currently is at ~34-35F. The graph is made by Utah Geology institute, but same data can be found provided by NASA, NOAA... it is pretty factual and to be honest nobody really disputes it.

What the climate looked like back then is harder to say, but fossil records indicates that whole planet looked more like jungle, humidity was higher because temperature was higher, not sure if current rain forests will turn into desert, but deserts are likely to turn into rain forests, for example Sahara desert in many places will be below sea level.

Yes - I did calculations and it turns out humans are responsible for 90% of excess carbon, despite being responsible for only 1.5% of total. To be honest I was little bit surprised and kind of realised why ecomentalists are so obsessed with human emissions, however it still doesn't make any difference. This is rather simple to work out, because past carbon records shows that in glacial period carbon concentration was just 220ppm and as mentioned predicted level of Co2 in interglacial period is as high as 2000-4000ppm. So if consider that it takes 20,000 for Co2 level to increase by ~20 times, then we can quickly deduct that naturally occurring excess is ~0.09% (I rounded it to 0.1%). As such if human emissions totals 1.5%, then we are responsible for over 90% of excess and we speeding-up climate change. BUT that is the point - it is all irrelevant. You see - we are burning the carbon which was once in atmosphere, but due to various processes turned into fuel we using today. So in principle there is finite amount of carbon on this planet, we just extracting and returning it to atmosphere where it once was. We not making any NEW carbon, it is just never ending cycle - carbon gets absorbed and some of it ends-up under the earth crust, then it get's released in some way. If not for us burning it in vehicles, then there are thousands of other ways, for example one very common are volcano eruptions.

So... I am basically saying two things:

1. it is not a problem to release the carbon back into atmosphere, there is finite amount of carbon and dependant on how much there is in the atmosphere we can have either tropical climate or iceage. I much rather prefer tropical climate, but that is as well irrelevant because these processes are natural and contently fluctuates. 

2. current climate action just punishes us and wastes opportunity cost to spend our time and resources on more meaningful things. Banning ICEVs just get's us nowhere, because our goals indicates that we want to remove ~1.6-2.1% of Co2 per year to stay where we are (or ~101% of all excess), but we only targeting the 0.011% (which is 0.05% of all excess).

The point being - we are majorly inconvenienced for miniscule reduction in Co2 emissions which has absolutelly no impact to climate change. As well we have a goal of no more than 1.5C increase in temperature which is simply unachievable and incompatible with human life on this planet. We are not talking about transition to BEVs, we talking about no electricity, no heating, nothing... but the problem is that modern human is already very efficient with energy. Yes combined 8.1 billion of us contributes that 200 million in pre-industrial times, but individually we are contributing maybe 5% of what pre-industrial humans contributed. If we going to abandon the industrialisation and all go back to being medieval, then we will increase the pollution not reduce it. So the only remaining option is - we need LESS HUMANS. And even then we still have not found the way to reverse the climate change, just slow it down a little bit. Remember - our goal is over 100%, so even by reducing it by 90% we still going to contribute extra excess Co2. This is battle that cannot be won, unless we find the way to capture and store the carbon. It is not about whenever you drive ICEV or BEV, not about heated pools, it is about removing more carbon from atmosphere than we together with natural processes produce.

I could expand into explaining how houses were much cheaper despite 15% interest, it is rather complicated topic for another time. As for why older person needs to explain benefits of change to young person, that is again very complicated topic, I would over-simplify by stating that basically previous generations had an opportunity to benefit from the changes, whereas later generations did not - hard to explain, so it is time for another analogy. Imagine we are all invited to dinner with buffet - you are invited at 6PM, somebody at 7PM, I am invited at 8PM and generation after me at 9PM. So you arrive at 6, fill-up your stomach and are happy, somebody arrives at 7, not all the food is left, but it is still plenty, so they fill-up their stomach and sit happy, I arrive at 8 and there is only crumbs left... it try to find something to earth from those crumbs, but I am told to be mindful of people that will arrive at 9. The problem he is that I will be hungry either way, because crumbs were never enough to fill me-up and people arriving at 9 likewise still be hungry. You may sit by the table and say - well it is good there is little bit of change and people are being told off not to take too much, but that is because you have already eaten... And this is paradox of false scarcity. The solution here is not to prevent from eating crumbs, the solution here is to make more food for everyone. To say that we need to stay below 1.5C is arbitrary and false target. To say that we should not drive, or better not own cars because of excess Co2 is false goal.

The true problem is that we living on the planet that has natural changes in climate, not all of them convenient for our existence and therefore we have desire to control it, but WE CAN'T. At least not yet. Because to control it, does not mean just reducing our emissions, it does not mean completely eliminating any emissions, it means we need to artificially remove more emissions that we produce and some more. The total global emissions are ~2.45Tt (terra-tons), human emissions are 0.036Tt (36 giga-tons), if we want to keep current environment as it is (assuming it is ONLY Co2 that contributes to climate change, which is NOT the case), then we need to find the way to capture say 40Gt of Co2 per year. No eating of grass, not amount of cycling, no amount of staycation will get us there, we not only need to stop emitting, we need to to start actively taking carbon out of atmosphere. OR alternatively we can accept that our cities will need to move 10miles away from current shoreline in 5000 years time and that we will live in tropical climate around the world. Sadly, I will need to find different past time activity rather than snowboarding if I plan to live 5000 years from now. 

Linas, looking at a 120,000 year spread in this context isn't very helpful today. Even a few thousand years ago we could possibly have easily adapted to substantial climate changes, or been too ignorant to have cared about any loss of habitat or life. Today though we've created permanently placed societies that are based on things remaining broadly the same. Sure, we could say "tough" and just have to adapt to any changes, but I suspect the cost of uprooting cities and their populations would far outweigh the cost, and inconvenience, of shifting away from fossil fuels.  50 years ago it might have been unthinkable,  but today EVs are churning off production lines at a rate of knots, with an ever expanding infrastucture being built to support them.

As for your two points.

1. Yes, there's a finite amount of carbon, but historocally much of it has been buried away in fossil fuel deposits. So, it's not a case of releasing it back into the atmosphere, but introducing it and adding it to the atmosphere.

2. I'd agree with you, if the goal was only to replace ICE vehicles with EVs, but it's not. It's to ultimately eliminate, or at least reduce, all carbon emisssions. No one is being punished by the move to EVs, any more than people were punished by moving from horses to cars. It's simply a transition. A transition that will not only produce cleaner, but possible better ones. It would seem that cars are the easiest starting point though. Manufacturers seem to be producing them without too much diffculty and EV sales are now topping over a 1 million a year in the US, with EVs outselling Toyota in California for the first time. This will continue to drive innovation and technology towards the production of non fossil fuel energy production, which in turn will spread to other areas and industries.

Nor is anyone talking about no electricity, heating, or anything else, as you seem to believe, and simply different ways of generating that electricity and providing those things. As I said, the climate argument might well turn out to be a red herring, and that the real benefits will come from new technologies, cheaper energy, and energy independence.

You keep saying that we're majorly inconvenienced, but I've yet to see it. I read about in various scare stories, but to date I haven't been inconvenienced in the slightest. Everything has the power to inconvenience, and right now we're seeing how war in another part of the world has inconvenienced us due to our reliance on fossil fuels.

I do understand your buffet argument, but that's simply a matter of swings and roundabouts and timing, which one can cherry pick. One could equally say that everything you enjoy in life today was delivered to you by that generation of 6pm arrivers, who sacrificed their lives to protect the freedom of future generations.  If you stop for a minute and think Linas, I think you'll be able to find more things to be grateful and happy about, than you will to feel hard done by.

But no, we can't control the climate, but we can control the amount to which we contribute to and accelerate any changes in it. As such, the more can do in that regard, gives us more time to address and adapt to any natural processes that we have no control over.

[Bluemarlin]

22 hours ago, Juicedrinker said:

I lived in the North of Gran Canaria for a couple of years and whilst nowhere near as hot as where the tourists go to (in the South of the Island) for at least 8 months of the year average daily temps were in mid 20's to low 30's. 

Its incredible that we survived, ran businesses, people went to schools (not air conditioned most), socialised and in my case did lots of sport and fitness training.  We didn't have warnings every day about making sure we drink fluid, protect ourselves, warnings of business and school closures etc etc.  Heck they didn't even have the Spanish siesta over there but we all got on with our daily lives and most people there moaned when rain in the winter and temps below 22c.  Oh and we never had water rationing either because they bhad good reservoir systems and desalienaited water from the sea in the city of Las Palmas!!!

My friends who still live there thinks its laughable, no actually ridiculous how our National news spreads fear and panic at every opportunity and talks about slightly warm days over here as the end of the World whereas over in Gran Can in the evening once it is below 23c most Spanish put on jackets or scarfs around their necks to keep warm.

Surely if things are really this bad here in the UK then why don't we have places like Brighton, Southampton and Bournemouth have desalienation plants and the locals can use as much of the sea water as they like and if there is global warming and the coastal towns did this that would help lower the rising sea levels which is a win win situation.

It's not really a fair analogy though, as people who live in hot climates adapt to them. It would be a bit like saying that eskimos get on with their daily lives and manage ok living in ice huts, so it would be no big deal if we were suddenly plunged into sub zero temperatures.

It's not the heat, or the cold, in itself that causes the problem, but the sudden shifts. It's why we always struggle with snow compared to colder countries, as we don't get it often enough to have permanent resources in place. Sure, we could keep rebuilding our societies to adapt to changing climates but, as I said to Linas, that's likely to be more even more expensive and disruptive than what we're currently doing.

As for desalination plants, to answer Malc's question, I believe they are largely powered by fossil fuels. I also assume that they're not very cost effective, as even fuel rich places like the UAE have explored towing icebergs as an alternative means of supplying fresh water.

I do agree though that the news media spreads scare stories. They do it about the climate, crime, immigration, or whatever else they think will get people riled up and sell papers. It's just how they are, and for the most part are best ignored.

[Malc1]

News media ……. does it really worry about selling newspapers anymore ? ……. can’t remember the last time I bought one, nor even read one …… with all my news on-line reading ….. and free ! 
 

perhaps it’s the advertisers that pay ! 
 

And of course non- newspapers helps save the planet with consequences for possibly improving the negatives of Climate Change by not chopping down trees 

And I asked about desalination coz of the apparent need for greater levels of drinking water globally and often burning lots of fossil fuels to produce it for the world 

However reading today UK Fire Brigades using non-drinking water for their fire tenders …… that should help where it’s available ! Seems pretty obvious really and I’m sure where on-call by rivers, the sea etc then they would always draw on that in priority to mains water ….. surely !

Climate Change potential sure has immense ramifications and absolutely everyone responsible finds apparent solutions where possible …… …… but I’m always going to be driving my petrol Ls400s …… saving my part of the planet by NOT scrapping them and buying a new EV of dubious parentage ….. China. Mexico,   some godforsaken mining somewhere slaughtering the poor sods and their families mining the raw materials 

Malc

[Linas.P]

2 hours ago, Bluemarlin said:

Linas, looking at a 120,000 year spread in this context isn't very helpful today. Even a few thousand years ago we could possibly have easily adapted to substantial climate changes, or been too ignorant to have cared about any loss of habitat or life. Today though we've created permanently placed societies that are based on things remaining broadly the same. Sure, we could say "tough" and just have to adapt to any changes, but I suspect the cost of uprooting cities and their populations would far outweigh the cost, and inconvenience, of shifting away from fossil fuels.  50 years ago it might have been unthinkable,  but today EVs are churning off production lines at a rate of knots, with an ever expanding infrastucture being built to support them.

As for your two points.

1. Yes, there's a finite amount of carbon, but historocally much of it has been buried away in fossil fuel deposits. So, it's not a case of releasing it back into the atmosphere, but introducing it and adding it to the atmosphere.

2. I'd agree with you, if the goal was only to replace ICE vehicles with EVs, but it's not. It's to ultimately eliminate, or at least reduce, all carbon emisssions. No one is being punished by the move to EVs, any more than people were punished by moving from horses to cars. It's simply a transition. A transition that will not only produce cleaner, but possible better ones. It would seem that cars are the easiest starting point though. Manufacturers seem to be producing them without too much diffculty and EV sales are now topping over a 1 million a year in the US, with EVs outselling Toyota in California for the first time. This will continue to drive innovation and technology towards the production of non fossil fuel energy production, which in turn will spread to other areas and industries.

Nor is anyone talking about no electricity, heating, or anything else, as you seem to believe, and simply different ways of generating that electricity and providing those things. As I said, the climate argument might well turn out to be a red herring, and that the real benefits will come from new technologies, cheaper energy, and energy independence.

You keep saying that we're majorly inconvenienced, but I've yet to see it. I read about in various scare stories, but to date I haven't been inconvenienced in the slightest. Everything has the power to inconvenience, and right now we're seeing how war in another part of the world has inconvenienced us due to our reliance on fossil fuels.

I do understand your buffet argument, but that's simply a matter of swings and roundabouts and timing, which one can cherry pick. One could equally say that everything you enjoy in life today was delivered to you by that generation of 6pm arrivers, who sacrificed their lives to protect the freedom of future generations.  If you stop for a minute and think Linas, I think you'll be able to find more things to be grateful and happy about, than you will to feel hard done by.

But no, we can't control the climate, but we can control the amount to which we contribute to and accelerate any changes in it. As such, the more can do in that regard, gives us more time to address and adapt to any natural processes that we have no control over.

So what period is relevant then? I think quite opposite, the period we should be looking at is somewhere between 300,000 and 3,000,000. It is IRRELEVANT to look at less than 300,000 years and that is kind of key of this whole thread - LACK OF PERSPECTIVE. If we look at any shorter period then we simply can't say we understand the boundaries of what is NORMAL.

Why this particular range? Why 300,000 years as the start? Because humans existed for at least 300,000 years, so we can discover what conditions are suitable for our existence, I am not sure it is controversial to say that the reason for climate protection is MAINLY our own survival. 

Why 3,000,000 years as end ... that is because that is the start of current ICE AGE. So this period of last 3,000,000 years defines the natural boundaries of current climate. 

All the societies created in last 12,000 years, or the ones that exist in known history of ~2,000 years are IRRELEVANT from perspective of climate, because we know climate processes takes at minimum 10s of thousands, but even 100s of thousands of years. I am not sure where my argument is getting lost, but regardless of our existences we are working with natural fluctuations of climate, if we create more Co2 or less Co2 is irrelevant, we still going to have +6C. It is not about acting or not acting, it is certainly not about reduction. Again even if we not going to stop with BEVs and we targeting ALL fossil fuel, it still makes no difference. How far you want to go before we have "1 child policy", maybe "0 child policy", maybe we should start outright executing every 3rd person alive? Where do we stop this action? And most importantly - even if we kill every human alive today we still going to have +6C, but maybe in 10,000 years instead of 5,000 years. This argument is idiotic in itself, because we saying we should stop living to protect the livelihood we have created, to protect our society, our cities, but with the goals as they are currently defined even total elimination of all humans does not get us there.

As well it is simply NOT TRUE that majority of carbon was always stored underground. For last 20,000 years that may be true, but it is not true for majority of current ice age. In fact exactly the reason why ice age started (or so they speculate) was huge and sudden emission of Co2, the theories goes it is was either caused by meteorite impact of by super volcano. 

Either way - what we know from period of humans existence that the hotter climate is actually better, the glaciation is what we want to avoid. And now to kind of destroy my own argument a little bit - run away greenhouse effect can cause glaciation as well, so there may be reason not to do it, but not because of risk of global warming, but because of risk of global cooling. However, what we know far a fact - we will survive either way, mush less technologically advanced ancestors of our survived just fine... and if it turns into glaciation, then perhaps my snowboarding gear will not be wasted.

You say that you not being inconvenienced, we that is alright, happy for you... but do you agree that I am being inconvenienced? And at the same time - why somebody can say it is fine to inconvenience me and people like me to achieve their stupid vision about climate which isn't even realistic. 

No - I am not grateful for ANYTHING at all for previous generations, BUT nor I blame them for what they did. I am happy to know they lived their lives happily and without stupid restrictions and the only thing I want to do is the same - live my life without arbitrary stupid restrictions and enjoy it, rather than being shackled by climate nonsense. If we circle back to previous analogy - I don't want to spit out what you have eaten, that is not the point, but at the same time it is a little bit hypocritical to tell me I should not eat as much, shouldn't even eat crumbs, because no food is left. 

In summary - I believe that human comfort, not survival... COMFORT is the most important thing, environment is secondary... environment will adapt to our comfortable living, and we will adapt to environment and that is fine. I cannot care less about animals going extinct when we still have cases of humans dying, just a matter of priorities. And all the rest is hygiene factors - sure we don't want to live around our own turds, we don't want to irradiate our food, we don't want to eat plastic waste, but that weather is few degrees hotter - so be it, it is actually nicer that way.

P.S. I know all that sounds very dismissive about the environment etc. But I actually do care about environment, I do work on reducing my own waste, but I do it in the way that matters, not in the way that generates headlines and fake buzz. I am quite confident my personal emissions are much lower than average person living in developed world. I don't buy cheap plastic things, I don't by disposable things, I don't even waste food, I drive 18 years old car which by this point is pretty much carbon neutral, I know that my car is 0.3% of human Co2 emissions, so I take an action on things that are 40% emissions, 30% emissions, not 0.3% emissions. And the reason I am angry is that I am being punished for not doing 0.3% despite already saving maybe more than 50% elsewhere. Yet retards that contribute more than me (not you and not anyone on this discussion) comes and lectures me about how virtuous they are in their 3 tons Tesla Model X disaster on the wheels. If anything I find "climate action" as distraction from real problems, I would probably even say it is conspiracy to control and to extract wealth from people.

[Boomer54]

"Median house used to cost 5 times median annual salary, now it is 14 times... and trust me I am not on median salary." Now you trust me when I tell you that data is absolutely meaningless. I'll explain, the ratio of affordability needs to capture three things . One, the aggregate capital value of property, the aggregate income level AND then the one thing that is crucial ,but hardly ever gets mentioned, which is the cost of financing. That is why the best expression of affordability that asses that criteria over time is to look at the at aggregate percentage of income that is devoted to meeting the cost of housing. That ratio encapsulates all of the three criteria that we should be interested in.

Look this really ain't rocket science, you want to explain over 80% of the rise in house prices you don't need to look further than the base rate set by the BOE. That is what sets your cost of financing and that is what is very correlated to the rise in house prices. All other matters are relatively unimportant.

[Linas.P]

4 hours ago, Boomer54 said:

"Median house used to cost 5 times median annual salary, now it is 14 times... and trust me I am not on median salary." Now you trust me when I tell you that data is absolutely meaningless. I'll explain, the ratio of affordability needs to capture three things . One, the aggregate capital value of property, the aggregate income level AND then the one thing that is crucial ,but hardly ever gets mentioned, which is the cost of financing. That is why the best expression of affordability that asses that criteria over time is to look at the at aggregate percentage of income that is devoted to meeting the cost of housing. That ratio encapsulates all of the three criteria that we should be interested in.

Look this really ain't rocket science, you want to explain over 80% of the rise in house prices you don't need to look further than the base rate set by the BOE. That is what sets your cost of financing and that is what is very correlated to the rise in house prices. All other matters are relatively unimportant.

I kind of specifically said that is discussion for another time, because there are many things that are important here... sure 3 times or 15 times of median income that is oversimplification. Other metric is house ownership, it continuously declining - and that tells us us that housing is generally becoming unadorable. Then we can look at the average house size and homes are becoming smaller. I happen to work with some of this stuff, but again I think that is not strictly related to the topic, shortage and affordability of housing isn't really climate change related. I can summarise by saying that housing in UK is broken and it is broken both because of incompetence of the government, but as well some malice, some corruption etc. I don't think we need to go into the details to agree that is doesn't work for younger generation, or several of younger generations. 

Housing supply is important, if there would be excess housing then they will be worthless regardless of BOE rate. But Let's just say developers are not idiots, so they always build just short to make sure there is captive market. Look at what is happening today - housing prices have dropped just slightly, number of sales dropped slightly and what do we have? All large developers are putting project on hold. I have large development near me, they bulldozed 1200 old council flats and planned to build new estate with ~1800, so they knocked down the plot in like 2022, did the ground works and it meant to be finished in 2024. Now when they suspect the prices will go down they put the project on hold until 2025 with planned completion in 2027. So they took 1200 homes out of the market, but they only going to put them back in when they think they can get maximum profit.

Now sure that is small aspect of housing which is related to climate change and that is amount of council tax that needs to be paid, as well some of the convenience and comfort related things, like piping and taps... in my modern flat the water barely runs at all, because apparently that is more environmentally friendly. Every time I want to boil some water I need to wait a minute to fill the kettle for 2 cups worth. Not a big tragedy, but slightly annoying. 

[GMB]

On 9/15/2023 at 2:18 PM, Bluemarlin said:

I'm old enough to draw my pension, it will have increased far more substantially over the last year or so than it has in previous years. So it's not all doom and gloom

I remember getting my statements from L&G basically / approximately saying - great news -your pension pot has increased by £10K this year! Bad news - the annuity that it will buy is £200 per year less. What a disappointment.

Lots of companies nowadays just trying to extract more money from us mugs. All you can do is not to do business with them in the first place.  Nurse get me heminevrin and vallium asap please!🐑

[Linas.P]

After spending quite a bit of time researching the topic further over weekend... I reached the conclusion this is all about taxation. Basically, just excuse to raise taxes... There is even agreed price £40/ton Co2. 

I remember we used to joke generally about overreaching taxation "one day they will start charging for air/breathing". Well... we literally reached that day!

The funniest thing - they managed to twist it around and brain wash people so much, that some idiots are literally protesting and gluing themselves to roads to basically increase the tax to themselves and everyone else. I can imagine government ministers are clapping their hands and can't believe this is working and people are actually that stupid.

Because either way you look at it... it is always about the money, we know that reduction of carbon won't get us to the target, we know that complete elimination of carbon emissions which would mean complete elimination of humans won't get us there, so we just end-up with taxing inevitable, sure it disincentives high carbon emissions, but in principle it becomes just a tax, it does not help environment, it just collects the money. And because Co2 emissions are essential by-product of being alive, this basically just taxes us on... living. 

[Malc1]

and isn’t there some “facts” somewhere that cows breathing and farting generate sooooo much noxious air that we should all consider limiting drinking milk and eating cow/beef products that damage the air we breathe …… I’ll happily go beef and milk free if the running costs of my Lexii  can be ameliorated somewhat 👍

Malc 

[Linas.P]

33 minutes ago, Malc1 said:

and isn’t there some “facts” somewhere that cows breathing and farting generate sooooo much noxious air that we should all consider limiting drinking milk and eating cow/beef products that damage the air we breathe …… I’ll happily go beef and milk free if the running costs of my Lexii  can be ameliorated somewhat 👍

Malc 

I like my meat and eat it too... whilst guzzling the petrol nonetheless... 

As well I don't mind people gluing themselves or chaining themselves - I suggest we leave them too it. I am sure they get bored after the day... and as well if they causing major disruption, then we just need to calculate the cost of it and charge them with repaying it. If we do that we may not even need to charge £40/ton Co2... climate terrorist will generate millions in fines everyday. 

[dutchie01]

4 hours ago, Malc1 said:

and isn’t there some “facts” somewhere that cows breathing and farting generate sooooo much noxious air that we should all consider limiting drinking milk and eating cow/beef products that damage the air we breathe …… I’ll happily go beef and milk free if the running costs of my Lexii  can be ameliorated somewhat 👍

Malc 

Hang on Malc, surely that cant be true? We have to turn it around and instead of eating less cows we have to eat ALL of them! That solves the problem i tell you! Now, whats on the menu tomorrow?

[dutchie01]

3 hours ago, Linas.P said:

 

As well I don't mind people gluing themselves or chaining themselves - I suggest we leave them too it. I am sure they get bored after the day... and as well if they causing major disruption, then we just need to calculate the cost of it and charge them with repaying it. If we do that we may not even need to charge £40/ton Co2... climate terrorist will generate millions in fines everyday. 

I am afraid the useful idiots gluing themselves or throwing things at things are only the soft side of extinction rebellion. These radical left anarchists could become the second baader meinhof group. I am convinced the security services as MI6 ar all over them.

[Linas.P]

2 minutes ago, dutchie01 said:

I am afraid the useful idiots gluing themselves or throwing things at things are only the soft side of extinction rebellion. These radical left anarchists could become the second baader meinhof group. I am convinced the security services as MI6 ar all over them.

You are most likely right... the question is what those security services are doing. Are they really there to interrupt their grand plan, or are they there to get those useful idiots to go further... because there are some common goal they share.

[Phil xxkr]

14 hours ago, Linas.P said:

You are most likely right... the question is what those security services are doing. Are they really there to interrupt their grand plan, or are they there to get those useful idiots to go further... because there are some common goal they share.

Well if you and others knew what the security services were doing it wouldn't be very  secure would it? 🤔