Absolutely fuming! (Climate Change))

[Richard]

Some said the two World Wars were 'a natural way' of keeping the population down - balderdash !!!

I think we have to accept the Planet is going to end one day, the question is are we speeding that day up and how will it affect our lifestyle short, medium and long term.

From a purely personal point of view, if it goes on like it is, I wouldn't want to be around in a 100 years time - but my Great and Great Great Grandchildren will be, which in turn means there's a little bit of me still here. For that sake, I think mankind has to act in a responsible manner, cut out the theories and conspiracies and just get on and do something.

[Sunny B]

If for no other reason we need to clean up our act in the western world because innocent people and their children are suffering elsewhere for our greed.

I do believe most certainly Earth warms and cools all by itself, but this seems to be being accellerated by our actions.

And wouldn't it be a nicer world, regardless of carbon footprints, if we had plenty of cheap, well integrated and reliable public transport and the roads were clear of cars so we could all walk and cycle in safety, maybe even ride horses or have ponies and traps?

[kate egg]

It would be ideal, except for people who do not work anywhere near a bus route, or have kids at school or colleges that would mean leaving home 2 hours early to catch 3 buses. Whole families trying to get places with luggage and pets and having to change trains 4 times to get to their holiday destination, and if they were staying in a little village not being able to go anywhere else.

I think that it is totally impractical to stop using a car, what should be happening has already started, running cars on greener fuels etc.

While ever China and other less developed countries are churning out smoke, fumes and gases from their industries whatever we do in this tiny little country is a drop in the ocean.

I'm not saying I don't agree with recylcing etc to save the worlds resources, I try not to waste food, energy, fuel etc. Its just that we produce such a miniscule percentage of the world's total greenhouse gasses in the UK that if we banned all cars, lorries and so on tomorrow it wouldn't make a scrap of difference to what is happening to the planet.

[Bollybarb]

My Little girl is now playing so i can expand.

I fully understand the need to reuse and to be green, (i've been recycling for longer than i can remember). The world is only finite and we have to use what has been given to us wisely.

However the world does warm up /cool down by it's self and is we were really seroius about greenhouse gases intergratded public transport would be readily avalible and there would be less cows!

We are being made to feel guilty about small actions ie not recycling when the government is guilty of much wider and greater greenhouse 'sins' and in this, is the method of social control.

Hope that makes my postion clearer and i did intend to create a heated debate

[RoomandKitchen]

Possibly a bit of a rant comming up just to warn you all.

To set the scene I used to be a geologist for the Canadian Government specialising in glacial deposits ( basically assesing the potential of the deposits for aggregate gravel and sand for commercial exploitation etc) As part of that I had to study Climate change in depth and Dr Bellamys scientific papers were part of that and he has long denied global warming.

As other people on this post have mentioned our climate goes through NATURAL cycles of change, and based on past records we should be in a warming period leading up to the next ice age (far far in the future) but.....

we have meddled so much with the natural landscape and atmosphere that even 'natural' fluctuations would be(are?) catastrophic.

We still don't understand how the whole climate mechanism on the planet should work and we have gone a stuck a big huge spanner in the works by our polluting behavior.


Anyway my tuppence worth hope it wasn't too deranged away to lie down with a cup of tea ( make that a large G'N'T instead )

Don't get me started on the politics of it all I might need the whole bottle !!!

[bluebell]

Although I am finding this thread really interesting, there is something I don't understand. If say, mans actions over the last century is causing global warming and the ice caps are melting, how will this in turn create a new ice age in the future?

I do not mean to sound thick, it's just I cannot get my head round how anything warming and creating more liquid and therefore less land masses as we currently know them, will ultimately lead to a new ice age.

[Mo]

Is it something to do with the ocean currents? The Gulf Stream has a big effect on British climate.
A few years back there was a series of Christmas Lectures on TV. I understood it then......

The impression I got is that the climate is a bit like a ball on a small flat bit on top of the hill. If it moves a bit, OK. But if it moves a tiny bit too much then it's gone. 'Unstable equilibrium'

[Sunny B]

Yes, Mo, it is to do with the currents. We get our "warmth" from the Gulf Stream which flows up and heads on to the north pole it's calle the thermohaline conveyor belt, but (and I'm trying to remember this bit too) if the ice sheets melt, they release fresh wate into the sea which I think either goes over or under the sea water and somehow this pushes the Gulf Stream further south. And so without the waming effect of the Gulf stream, then the North gets colder.
And in the orld of Holywood, in the film "The Day After Tomorrow" the thermohaline conveyor actually stopped dead altogether, which I believe is a possibility in real life.

I'm no expert, just done a lot of reading from various sources, hope I go it technically right!

[bluebell]

Wow, thank you for explaining that.

I did see that film as well but didn't quite understand how the weather had changed so rapidly and then everywhere was under feet of snow!!

[Stig]

Maybe I'm being dim, but what has recycling got to do with climate change and global warming?

Global warming is the product of man's over-use of fossil fuels (according to scientific consensus).

Recycling is tackling entirely different issues, mainly the harm caused by man-made materials like plastic in the environment, and the fact that we're drowning in our own rubbish because we produce too much of it.

[saint-spoon]

Has anyone considered the possibility that the recent spate of serious volcanic eruptions that have occurred over the past twenty years or so (Montserrat, Mt St Helens etc) have churned far more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than we could ever have on our island? I did read that during periods of enhance volcanic activity the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increase measurably (folk measuring mud samples and ice cores found this out). CO2 is a natural fertilizer and the more of it that there is the more plant life can flourish (in rough terms), if not rain forests then in the form of planktonic blooms which serve to act as a natural buffer. These in turn get consumed by jellyfish and the like which presumably means that the earth is capable of a lot more than we give it credit for. Maybe Dr Bellamy has got a bit of a point after all. I still think that the news paper article was totally irresponsible.

[Stig]

Lots of things have an effect on climate, and humans can't influence all of them. No argument there - volcanic events will happen & the gases produced are in addition to our own.

The point about plant life using CO2 as a fertiliser is deliberate smokescreen. When we burn fossil fuels we release thousands of years of stored carbon into the atmosphere - way more than can be used by existing vegetation. That's why we are looking into planting carbon sinks (forests!) and multiplying the level of plankton in our seas.

Global warming aside - there are still a million reasons why we need to drastically reduce fossil fuel use. I recommend E F Schumacher's "Small is Beautiful" as a good read for anyone wanting a common sense (rather than baffling pseudo-science) viewpoint. Written in the early 1970s before Global Warming had been invented (in fact at the time scientific wisdom was that we were overdue an ice age!) the issues are surprisingly the same!

Current energy and transport systems (including and especially nuclear) are unsustainable, dirty, polluting, cause wars and poverty etc etc.

David Bellamy is entitled to his opinions, and he's a much cleverer bloke than me. His opinion is in a very small minority in scientific circles though, and I think he's mainly given airtime because what he's saying is convenient. He lets us carry on consuming the world's finite resources as if there is nothing to worry about. For me, his opinions carry little weight in light of his stance on wind power, a subject on which I think is completely misguided.

[lancashire lass]

When we burn fossil fuels we release thousands of years of stored carbon into the atmosphere - way more than can be used by existing vegetation.

How about MILLIONS of years! And don't forget that before human activity, there were far more wooded areas than they are now, and the destruction of the rainforests is insane. Take everything into account, not surprisingly the planet can only buffer so much then it will reach saturation point. So far there is only one planet that we know of that can sustain life, so everyone should be more responsible of looking after it.

Too simple?

[saint-spoon]

There’s an interesting looking documentary on the box next Sunday afternoon (BBC2) which is looking into animals that feed on plankton. Apparently the particular genus of animals are having a bit of a population explosion due to the increased availability of food; more CO2 and run off fertilizers causing increased levels of microscopic vegetation. Should be interesting if nothing else.