CLIMATE CHANGE AND GLOBAL WARMING

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Re: CLIMATE CHANGE AND GLOBAL WARMING

Post by Stanley »

See THIS BBC report on the PM chairing the UN Security Council and concentrating of climate change. Note also that David Attenborough told the world leaders it was too late to halt the process, all that can be done is ameliorate the consequences.
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Re: CLIMATE CHANGE AND GLOBAL WARMING

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Every now and then I gently warn about the danger of upsetting the Gulf Stream. I don't like to frighten people but we're getting to the stage where we need to do some frightening. This is front page news in today's Guardian...

`Atlantic Ocean circulation at weakest in a millennium, say scientists: Decline in system underpinning Gulf Stream could lead to more extreme weather in Europe and higher sea levels on US east coast' Guardian
`The Atlantic Ocean circulation that underpins the Gulf Stream, the weather system that brings warm and mild weather to Europe, is at its weakest in more than a millennium, and climate breakdown is the probable cause, according to new data. Further weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) could result in more storms battering the UK, more intense winters and an increase in damaging heatwaves and droughts across Europe. Scientists predict that the AMOC will weaken further if global heating continues, and could reduce by about 34% to 45% by the end of this century, which could bring us close to a “tipping point” at which the system could become irrevocably unstable. A weakened Gulf Stream would also raise sea levels on the Atlantic coast of the US, with potentially disastrous consequences..'.

Also in The Guardian this week...
`Climate crisis hits 'worst case scenario' levels – Environment Agency head: Sir James Bevan says extreme flooding in UK indicates urgent need for change if humanity is to survive' LINK

`To stop climate disaster, make ecocide an international crime. It's the only way: Outlawing ecocide would hold governments and corporations accountable for environmental negligence. We can’t wait' LINK
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Re: CLIMATE CHANGE AND GLOBAL WARMING

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Quite right Peter. They talk about tipping points by the end of the century. It may be time to take notice once more of James Lovelock, it's a while since he said that he thought that in terms of overall climate change we had passed the tipping point. Have a read of THIS. It all makes sense.
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Re: CLIMATE CHANGE AND GLOBAL WARMING

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The elephant in the room is oil. America, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Iran will want to keep it flowing as long as possible. The future trend of road transport converting to electric and possibly hydrogen will make a big dent in the amount of oil being pumped. As we have seen Saudi are spending £millions researching converting oil to hydrogen. If this comes off then the climate and world economics may settle back to somewhere near normality. If not we have big problems.
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Re: CLIMATE CHANGE AND GLOBAL WARMING

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No matter what action we take now it's likely that climate change will proceed to a level at which many of the oil-producing areas will become uninhabitable due to the high temperatures.
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Re: CLIMATE CHANGE AND GLOBAL WARMING

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This illustrates well the paradox of climate change - an increase in both droughts and floods...
`Then and now: A 'megadrought' in California' LINK
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Re: CLIMATE CHANGE AND GLOBAL WARMING

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Fascinating story Peter. That pic with the button is particularly good!
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Re: CLIMATE CHANGE AND GLOBAL WARMING

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`Government has no climate change plan - MPs' LINK
`The government has been hit by a double whammy of reports from MPs criticising its performance on climate change. The influential Public Accounts Committee (PAC) says ministers have "no plan" to meet climate change targets, two years after setting them in law. And the business committee says the vital UN climate conference scheduled for Glasgow in November will fail unless its goals are made clear. The government says both reports are inaccurate and unfair...'.

I'm glad these committees are raising their concerns but they don't go far enough.The government must fund much more research into how we will cope with the necessary changes demanded by climate change. For example, the current ideas for heating our homes won't be feasible without making the present housing stock much better insulated. The government still thinks this means a top up of mineral wool in the loft and filling empty wall cavities, but even after this has been done the houses won't be warm enough in winter when we have to rely on air source and ground source heating. That applies to many houses being built now, not just to older stock, so 99% of houses will need much better wall insulation, for example - insulated on either the internally facing or externally facing walls. This isn't easy - I know from personal experience. You can't just slap foam boards on the walls, even the internal walls need extra work around all the windows, doors, sockets etc. Externally you have to deal with windows and doors, roofs need extending and so on.

Then you've got the planners to deal with and they don't like you changing the appearance of your house but they'll have to be told by government that climate defence demands changes. Our houses will have to look different. Another barrier is the Energy Performance Certificate (EPC). We put internal insulation on the solid walls and concrete floors of our old village house at great expense but it cut down our energy costs dramatically and made the house much more comfortable. However when we came to sell the house it was given a poor EPC energy rating. Why? Because the assessors don't have any way of accounting for it, even though we had all builders invoices and a photo record as evidence of the work done. The assessor apologised profusely but it's all `tick boxes' and there's nothing that allows for what we did.

Also the government needs to sort out the terrible state of it's `green energy' domestic funding. People aren't going to rush to spend many thousands of pounds that will be the costs of this sort of insulation. A lot has got to change!
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Re: CLIMATE CHANGE AND GLOBAL WARMING

Post by Stanley »

"The assessor apologised profusely but it's all `tick boxes' and there's nothing that allows for what we did."
How can something as basic as that be part of an official survey? If they can't fix the process they'll never fix the problem.
I detect the influence of McKinsey here. Their core mantra is measure to manage and they are great fans of simple tick box forms as they give consistent results over a large sample. However, to make them manageable they have to be clean cut and simple. This leads to the problem you had Peter. Just think, how often do you hear complaints about 'tick box processes'?
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Re: CLIMATE CHANGE AND GLOBAL WARMING

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I'd much rather see the funding used to research ways of preventing wastage of food than in making jet fuel from food waste!
`Climate change: Jet fuel from waste 'dramatically lowers' emissions' LINK
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Re: CLIMATE CHANGE AND GLOBAL WARMING

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On insulation, Countryfile last Sunday did a piece on sheep fleeces. It is no longer economically viable to shear sheep. This apparently has been brought about by the bottom dropping out of the market for wool carpets. This was the main use for the wool but it has now almost disappeared. So much so that some farmers are now taking on breeds of sheep that do not need shearing as they are self shedding and regulate their own fleeces throughout the seasons.
The current price for a full sheep fleece is 62p at best, it costs £1.20 to shear the beast! Not sustainable unless other uses can be found. My immediate thought was insulation and it does exist although not widely used. You can get pure wool insulation rolls to replace the fibreglass mineral stuff that is in general use. We need to push this as it would help both the farmers in holding up the price of the commodity and be better for the environment. A totally natural and sustainable replacement for the synthetic equivalent. You can also turn it into insulation board and it is semi water resistant due to the wax content of the wool. No brainier in my view but what do I know.
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Re: CLIMATE CHANGE AND GLOBAL WARMING

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Ten or more years ago sheep wool insulation was around when we were considering building a house. It has to be protected from biological attack - insects etc - and the treatments used chemicals that we wouldn't want to live with. I hope they've found something safer now. I think insulation materials will be developed soon that will be far more effective for a given thickness than wool and it's insulation thickness which is one of the biggest problems facing us when we need to upgrade the present housing stock.
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Re: CLIMATE CHANGE AND GLOBAL WARMING

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I agree with you Peter about waste food. It's a disgrace and should be tackled head on instead of leaving it to supermarket buyers to decide what is saleable or not.
As for wool. Perhaps we should look at it from the other direction. Make the artificial fibres (which are leaching micro plastics out to the oceans every time we wash them) so expensive the demand for wool rises and revives the industry. Wool is so much better in so many ways but we have allowed it to become the poor relative when it comes to choice of textile fibre.It is the natural partner of cotton and should be promoted as such.
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Re: CLIMATE CHANGE AND GLOBAL WARMING

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Have a look at THIS Guardian report on current weather in NSW. We are used to hearing reports of drought from Eastern Australia but not warnings of a metre of rain in a month and words like 'rain bomb'.
I hope it isn't as bad as they are expecting.
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Re: CLIMATE CHANGE AND GLOBAL WARMING

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Imagine watching your house floating away! :surprised: I suppose they'll tell us it's another` 1 in 100 years' event.
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Re: CLIMATE CHANGE AND GLOBAL WARMING

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I don't think my house would float.... :biggrin2:
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Re: CLIMATE CHANGE AND GLOBAL WARMING

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Having written yesterday `they'll tell us it's another` 1 in 100 years' event', I was amused to hear the BBC's report on the flood this morning saying it was described as a`once in a century event'. :smile:

Talking of Australia, did you see the video on the BBC web site yesterday showing the Aussie farm invaded with thousands of mice? It was like a horror movie, they looked more like a flock of locusts. I don't know if the video was speeded up but the mice looked like they were on cocaine! I've found the video, it's here: BBC I didn't link it in the usual threads in case I got flamed for showing something bad in Australia! :smile:
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Re: CLIMATE CHANGE AND GLOBAL WARMING

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Floods in Sydney variously described as 'once in fifty years' and 'once in a hundred years' events.
Mice in Oz. I remember the dead one in the potable water tank that gave me the worst episode of upset stomach since Botulism in the 50s in Berlin.....
(Wise move hiding it Peter.... :biggrin2: )
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Re: CLIMATE CHANGE AND GLOBAL WARMING

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I can understand why scientists are worried about increasing numbers of forests fires. Geologists and palaeontologists are well aware of how in the past when the climate warmed it reached a point where forest fires contributed to a runaway rise in temperature - forests burn away in days but take hundreds of years to be replaced, so it reaches a stage where the natural carbon capture by trees is being reduced quickly. The smoke from the fires also gets carried in the winds circulating Earth and when it falls on snow it increases absorption of the sun's heat.
`Why India and Nepal's forest fires are worrying scientists' LINK
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Re: CLIMATE CHANGE AND GLOBAL WARMING

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The video in your post about the mice in Aussie has been removed, apparently due to rights issues. :sad:
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Re: CLIMATE CHANGE AND GLOBAL WARMING

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Well I never! Perhaps the Aussie tourist board didn't want potential visitors to see it!
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Re: CLIMATE CHANGE AND GLOBAL WARMING

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Tizer wrote: 12 Apr 2021, 15:18 Well I never! Perhaps the Aussie tourist board didn't want potential visitors to see it!
Censorship? In a democratic country? Really? :biggrin2: :biggrin2:
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Re: CLIMATE CHANGE AND GLOBAL WARMING

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Tizer wrote: 12 Apr 2021, 09:18 I can understand why scientists are worried about increasing numbers of forests fires. Geologists and palaeontologists are well aware of how in the past when the climate warmed it reached a point where forest fires contributed to a runaway rise in temperature - forests burn away in days but take hundreds of years to be replaced, so it reaches a stage where the natural carbon capture by trees is being reduced quickly. The smoke from the fires also gets carried in the winds circulating Earth and when it falls on snow it increases absorption of the sun's heat.
`Why India and Nepal's forest fires are worrying scientists' LINK
I thought much of carbon capture was done by sea algae ?

With care though humanity could assist in the replanting of forests and therefore the natural (?) cycle can be modified.
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Re: CLIMATE CHANGE AND GLOBAL WARMING

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See THIS. You can't keep a good story down... (My dad was born near Dubbo and live there in his childhood.)
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Re: CLIMATE CHANGE AND GLOBAL WARMING

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Whyperion wrote: 12 Apr 2021, 17:06 I thought much of carbon capture was done by sea algae?
Yes, marine algae are claimed to account for about half of natural carbon capture but they're in danger from ocean pollution and acidifi
Stanley wrote: 13 Apr 2021, 03:10
Stanley wrote: 13 Apr 2021, 03:10 See THIS. You can't keep a good story down... (My dad was born near Dubbo and live there in his childhood.)
That's the story behind the video I posted which has now been withdrawn. :smile:
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