Age of Stupid free online now

[DaveBrigg]

Heard a good news story on the radio this morning. An anniversary of the discovery of the hole in the ozone layer. The world acted decisively, with full agreement to phase out CFC's. The ozone hole has stopped growing, and will have gone before the end of this century, or slightly earlier. Shows what can be done if people sit up and act when they can.

 

[Gareth Hughes]

Heard a good news story on the radio this morning. An anniversary of the discovery of the hole in the ozone layer. The world acted decisively, with full agreement to phase out CFC's. The ozone hole has stopped growing, and will have gone before the end of this century, or slightly earlier. Shows what can be done if people sit up and act when they can.

I would never normally pay tribute to Her, but it also shows what happens if you have a Prime Minister with a chemistry degree who understands the science and persuades other world leaders that it's right. That may be at the root of the problem we now have with other environmental matters - not enough scientists in government...

 

[biffvernon]

It was an easy step - nobody noticed the change in their new fridge.
Ozone depleting gases are still being emitted.
End of the century is a long time off and it's not a certain date.
It is hard to count the number of excess human deaths owing to skin cancer.
More damage has been and still will be done to other parts of the biosphere.
The ozone hole is masking the warming effects of greenhouse gasses over Antarctica.

And that counts as good news? Oh, in the sense of I'm not beating my wife quite so hard.

 

[Flyfisher]

I agree with Biff, it was rather easy to replace CFCs in most applications. A PM with a chemistry background may have helped but, essentially, people were pushing against an open door. Even then, it seems to be taking a long time to reverse the effects.

If there was a similarly simple replacement for fossil fuels then we'd undoubtedly make more progress weaning ourselves off them.

 

[Joiner]

It was only officially online for 48 hours in the lead-up to the election until the polls closed at 10pm.

However, it is available in full on...

http://en.sevenload.com/videos/pO7SM7M-The-Age-Of-Stupid-Full#zoomed

No sign of James Lovelock, or Gaia Theory, though. Wonder why?

 

[Flyfisher]

And talking of CFCs, here's an interesting piece about the views of Dr Joe Farman who led the team that first reported the the ozone hole.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8664000/8664313.stm

He makes a lot sense to me - no issue with climate change as such but quite critical of the science establishment not being more effective in their research focus and not getting their message across. This is the sort of thing that lets politicians off the hook on the issue, which, as we have just seen in the last four weeks, really is a political non-issue.

 

[Flyfisher]

No sign of James Lovelock, or Gaia Theory, though. Wonder why?

Probably because he believes it's too late to do anything to avert climate change and that we'd better learn to acclimatise. Rather an inconvenient truth for the Stupid campaigners.

 

[biffvernon]

Acclimatise? Is that a new euphemism for die?

 

[Flyfisher]

Perhaps. Who knows? Lovelock's point, though, is that it's already too late to reverse CO2 levels and, probably, too late to stop them increasing even more, so figuring out how to adapt might be a better strategy for future survival than the futility of relying on turning back the clock and putting the oil genie back in the bottle - something that would be difficult enough if the powers that be were actually engaged in solving the issue, but nigh on impossible given the current level of apparent indifference.