[Aeddan (OP)]

It's dawned on me that I have an idea on a global scale what will happen with cliamte change but little idea what will happen to the uk.
It would be really good to know decade by decade the path we are on compared to the path we are promising to be on.


I mean so far in my lifetime  . . . I have noticed we no longer get snow every year. I have spoken to fishermen who have said what they catch has been changing.
Last years wheat failure seemed unusual but not being a farmer im not sure how often crop failures happen anyway.

I know we have heavily dependant on importing food (I believe its about 85%) but surely if we all went vegan we could come close to being self sufficient when it comes to food.

What im getting at is im not sure living here we need to be all that worried . . . unless the gulf stream stops working

[Just thinking]

What im getting at is im not sure living here we need to be all that worried

The problem with getting an answer to your question is there are too many answers and they can't all be correct. Some say the earth is warming others say it is cooling? The hole problem is as messy to solve as the dirty coal that plays a large part in the problem. Sorry for not having a real answer.

[alancalverd]

Whatever the end point, the UK climate in the short term will either revert to Dickensian winters or Roman summers, the consequences of which are recorded history. Thereafter it may suffer another ice age or become a tropical swamp, both of which are well evidenced in the geological record. So no great mystery one way or the other.

The interesting question is  how is the human population going to respond to it? Clearly the present population level is unsustainable at an acceptable standard of living, so do we reduce our standards or reduce our population?

[Just thinking]

so do we reduce our standards or reduce our population?

I think we will be forced to reduce our standards and that in its self will reduce the population. If we lose television that will increase the population.

[Bored chemist]

Some say the earth is warming others say it is cooling?

Who is saying it's cooling?

The interesting question is  how is the human population going to respond to it?

Slowly- because that's essentially all we can manage.
And that's what causes the problem. The temperature is rising rather fast at the moment.
Much faster than any time in the last 20,000 years
https://xkcd.com/1732/

[Aeddan (OP)]

What im getting at is im not sure living here we need to be all that worried

there are too many answers and they can't all be correct.

Make it sound like we are clueless

[Aeddan (OP)]

so do we reduce our standards or reduce our population?

I think we will be forced to reduce our standards and that in its self will reduce the population. If we lose television that will increase the population.

Guess that depends on how you view reducing our standards.
We are VERY wasteful. I mean just imagine if amazon had reusable boxes.
Cars are enormous these days.  I think there is alot of things we could do to keep the same standard of living if we just made different choices.

As for the population. We cant even agree euthanasia is a good thing.
War is the only way the population will be reduced :/

[alancalverd]

Nature reduces the population by about 1.5% per year - four times the rate of World War I . All we have to do is not replace dead old people with as many live babies. Achieving everything we need by doing nothing is a very attractive strategy for everyone except economists and religious perverts.

[Aeddan (OP)]

Nature reduces the population by about 1.5% per year - four times the rate of World War I . All we have to do is not replace dead old people with as many live babies. Achieving everything we need by doing nothing is a very attractive strategy for everyone except economists and religious perverts.

At that speed we needed to do that a few decades ago to keep climate change under 1.5C warming.
Also who looks after the older generation? without the young the population will reduce by more than 1.5%.

[alancalverd]

You have fallen into a common trap. In the UK the elderly are looked after by those of working age, paid for by the accrued  taxes and investments of said elderly when they were working.

The population under 20 years old are a burden, not an asset. Half of them acquire a student loan, half of which is never repaid but subsidised by the taxpayer. All of them consume energy, food, and health, education, legal and social services, but very few of them pay any tax.

Climate change is inevitable. We have to stop pretending it is controllable and start seriously mitigating its effect.

Population control costs nothing and benefits everyone. Reducing the population by encouraging every woman to have no more than one child will reduce our net consumption of all resources to an indefinitely sustainable level within 30 years and to a fully robust level that can withstand any conceivable climate change in 50 years. In the interim the ratio of taxpayers to benefit receivers will increase from 50% to around 60% and the per capita availability of fixed assets (land) will increase fivefold.

[Bored chemist]

Climate change is inevitable. We have to stop pretending it is controllable

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_if_it%27s_a_big_hoax_and_we_create_a_better_world_for_nothing%3F

[alancalverd]

It's not a big hoax. It's inevitable and potentially devastating. We have to act effectively if we care about our descendants.

[Bored chemist]

Effective action should include accepting that the extra third of the CO2 in the air is down to us, and seeking to reduce the extent to which we make it worse.

[alancalverd]

At the present rate of population growth there is no way that can be done in the next 20 years without sacrificing our standard of living. Why make life less pleasant when it costs nothing to make it better - and reduce CO2 emissions,  if that makes you happy?

[Aeddan (OP)]

At the present rate of population growth there is no way that can be done in the next 20 years without sacrificing our standard of living. Why make life less pleasant when it costs nothing to make it better - and reduce CO2 emissions,  if that makes you happy?

There are things we can do that can have a massive effect & keep our standard of living.
Like eating less meat. It is possible to enjoy a meat free diet.
I decided a long time ago that I would live in the middle of town so there would be no need for me to ever own a car.
THEN I realised with me being close to the shops there is no need for me to own a fridge freezer. I can buy things as I need them. Doing these kind of things makes life cheaper. Doing things for environmental reasons increases the standard of life.

[Just thinking]

Who is saying it's cooling?

The last solar minimum has indicated a trend and it looks like the sun will continue to decrease its output this could lead to a mini ice age.

[Zer0]

Hello Aeddan & Welcome to TNS!!!
🙂
🙏

Sorry before hand to put forth a personal pessimistic viewpoint...

But, China & India won't Stop!
👎
& When they go down, UK goes down too.
🚢
(Gaia Sinks)

Ps - S.O.S.
⚓

[Aeddan (OP)]

 China & India won't Stop!
👎
& When they go down, UK goes down too.

We can still effect our own water & air quality. We still have our own pollution to worry about before thinking about what others are doing...even more so when you compare how polluting our lifestyles are when compared to the majority of the planet . Almost 200 countries on the planet & atleast 150 of them are looking up & wondering why they should bother if the uk isnt bothering.

[alancalverd]

Quite right. We do our thing, in the name of God and the Queen, and send a gunboat if Johnny Foreigner doesn't comply. Look what happened when the Yanks ignored us and elected their own president.

Soft power? The Empire was built on Bronco, not Cushelle.

[Bored chemist]

We do our thing, in the name of God and the Queen, and send a gunboat if Johnny Foreigner doesn't comply.

It turns out we didn't send a gunboat; we just sent all the lorry drivers  and fruit pickers away.
We did this by getting a government that lied to the Queen and prorogued parliament illegally.