350

[biffvernon]

It would be a bit like starving yourself to death even though the cupboard is full of food.

But we now know that the cupboard is full of poison. By locking it we are forced to find alternative healthy food.

 

[Flyfisher]

A better analogy would be that the poison is very slow acting but you're starving right now and someone might find a cure for the poison before it affects you . . .

 

[biffvernon]

Yeah, that's what the business as usual folk would have you believe.

 

[Flyfisher]

I suspect it's also what most people want to believe.

 

[Flyfisher]

Contraception is "greenest" technology.
Interesting article: http://www.optimumpopulation.org/blog/?p=1130

 

[FamilyWiggs]

Seems that this Board's debate is not unrepresentative of the wider UK public's perceptions of climate change:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8249668.stm

 

[Flyfisher]

And not surprising, really, when the papers print stories like this:
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/prescott-cutting-emissions-by-80-will-not-be-enough-1780899.html

The headline may or may not be true but I've never read anything that explains how it would be possible to achieve such a reduction and what the effect would be to the average person's lifestyle. No wonder the man on the Clapham omnibus remains sceptical.

Of course, it may be that power cuts are forced upon us:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8249540.stm

"Professor MacKay blamed the public for opposing wind farms, nuclear power, and energy imports, whilst demanding an unchanged lifestyle."

 

[biffvernon]

Prescott is quite right to say that 80% is not enough. (Being impossible to achieve does not make it untrue - just rather unfortunate).
MacKay getting the government job is excellent news. He's been saying the right things on some of the energy matters for a long time (though he's a bit of a techno-optimist, I think).
We've been discussing the up-looming energy gap for several years on The Oil Drum and PowerSwitch and it's good that the message is, at last, getting through. Ed Milliband is a lot more aware of the problem than is predecessors seemed to be.

 

[Flyfisher]

"World Will Cool For The Next Decade"

FORECASTS of climate change are about to go seriously out of kilter. We could be about to enter one or even two decades of cooler temperatures, according to one of the world's top climate modellers.

Full story here: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327254.000-world-will-cool-for-the-next-decade.html

 

[biffvernon]

Yes but: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/09/climate-services/

 

[Flyfisher]

But isn't the real issue that such apparently conflicting projections only add to the general public's confusion about the whole climate change issue? We had been discussing how to get people on board for the dramatic lifestyle changes that are supposed to be necessary to help hold off the worst effects of climate change (even though an 80% reduction in carbon emissions within 40 years may not be sufficient). This sort of news will only prolong the general public's confusion over the issue and, worse perhaps, give the sceptics more ammunition.

 

[Horace]

What annoys me about this whole issue is that the debate is a re run of all sorts of historic debates that have occured through out the ages. Most of the participants tend to seize on the "science" that supports their view and ingnore those parts which undermine it. Like all the great debates of history, the adherents to one view or another begin to sound like religious fanatics.

At this point, 99% of the population shrug their shoulders and wait to be surpressed/ coerced into some change in their way of life imposed upon them by the faction that is in the ascendency. Then life moves on and stuff happens. One hundred years later we look back and wonder what all the fuss was about.

However, this time it is different. Of course it is. The World will end sooner rather than later. Not with a bang or even a wimper but a hiss. We are of course much cleverer now than we ever were. Our scientists are, as near as damn it, infallible. Just like the Pope was all those years ago.

I am one of the 99% and I can't help but think from reading his responses, Biff is one of the fanatics (albeit a very well meaning, decent and intelligent one - but aren't they always?).

'Tis the old wind in the old anger,
But then it threshed another wood.

I fear the debate will rumble on.

 

[Flyfisher]

Such a good summary that it seems to have stopped this thread in its tracks. Presumably the "99% of the population" (of PPUK) have "shugged their shoulders", while "life has moved on" and "stuff has happened". A microcosm of the world at large, perhaps, that reinforces the basic premise?

Anyway, here's an interesting article (I thought) on how our economic system and our fixation on ever increasing GDP is a hindrance to achieving anything significant on the climate change front: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8242410.stm. The 'readers comments' are also interesting, if rather depressing.

 

[Penners]

This is something of a non sequitur, but did anyone watch last night's "Last Chance To See"?

Mark Carwardine and Stephen Fry were in Madagascar, hunting for a very rare type of lemur, called an aye-aye. Their journey through the country showed vast tracts of land that have been (and are still being) deforested, in order to plant sisal.

Why sisal? Well - and here's an archetypal example of The Law of Unintended Consequences in action - the world is demanding ever-increasing quatities of sisal for the packaging industry... because sisal is used in the manufacture of recyclable packaging.

**SIGH**

http://www.bbc.co.uk/lastchancetosee/sites/animals/ayeaye

 

[FamilyWiggs]

I saw it too - and was struck by the irony of the situation. I understand it is somewhat similar with biofuels - vast tracts of indonesia are being deforested to plant biofuel crops so that LA and London can have a little less smog...

I do keep tellin' ya - stockpile guns, food and sandbags (not sisal bags)!

 

[biffvernon]

And RTZ are digging a large hole in Madagascar so that we can have white paint, toothpaste and a zillion and one other things that contaim titanium.

Douglas Adams's book Last Chance to See is one of the best things I've ever read (second only to the Hitch Hiker's Guide of course).

 

[Flyfisher]

But species have been going (becoming?) extinct long before mankind came along and it didn't seem to hold back the successful evolution of new ones. OK, mankind might be causing the rate of extinction to become far higher than ever before, but the planet has never seen a species so successful as mankind before.

I don't think any other species has a 'conscience' when it comes to out-competing another species to extinction, which is ironic really because, assuming we manage to save ourselves, all the 'higher' species on the planet will be largely dependent on our collective conscience for their survival.

 

[biffvernon]

I don't think I've ever heard anyone seriously suggest that all life on Earth will cease to exist, at least untill the Sun goes red giant. Life has a couple of billion years to go. It's just a great number of species, including humans, that are at risk. From the geological perspective, the Anthropocene marks the period of most rapid extinction in the fossil record.

 

[Penners]

Douglas Adams's book Last Chance to See is one of the best things I've ever read (second only to the Hitch Hiker's Guide of course).

Plus all the others in the trilogy of six.

If you haven't read it, do get his little book (written jointly with John Lloyd) called 'The Meaning of Liff'. You'll laugh your hand-knitted socks off.

 

[Flyfisher]

I don't think I've ever heard anyone seriously suggest that all life on Earth will cease to exist, at least untill the Sun goes red giant.

Agreed. I was just observing, in the context of the "last chance to see" discussion, that we seem to have a tendency to be very sentimental about the extinction of Tigers, Rhinos, Polar Bears etc when, in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't really matter that much as far as 'life on Earth' is concerned and could even be regarded as a natural process.