Climate change questions

[JohnD]

Ask this to the climate change protesters:

Do you wish for the climate to remain stable so it won't change anymore?

Ask this to the climate change ignorers:

Do you wish for the climate to continue getting unstable so it destroys our environment?

 

[Notch7]

My concern with UK etc having targets is this:

over the last say 50 years Western economies have shrunk manufacturing sectors...because they buy from China, India etc

so if we achieve targets by importing goods from China we are just off shoring our carbon use.

 

[JP_]

Are these pollutants dissolved to any extent as they pass through clouds on the way to the atmosphere?

CO2 isn't really a pollutant as such. The problem is, the more CO2 in the atmosphere, the hotter the world gets. We have ancient ice cores and the geologic record that shows CO2 levels during warmer periods. Once the carbon is destroyed the CO2 is released.

how will trees capture CO2 in winter when they have no leaves ( or the majority of them at least )?

Most of the carbon is in the tree itself, and the root system etc. rather than the leaves. Many trees in the world also don't lose their leaves - thing evergreen forests and tropical rain forests.

While one small country acting is not going to change the world, if every country acts, then we might be able to.

But, as I've said before, the biggest issue we face is human displacement. We live in a world where we really don't like foreigners moving in large numbers to other countries, but global warming is going to cause major problems around the world. We have already seen huge numbers forced to leave Central America because of drought, which is why Trump wanted to build his wall - a classic case of ignoring the cause of a problem and thinking you build your way out of it.

Most of the world's population live by the coast or along large rivers. When sea levels raise these people will have to move. Some small nations are already being forced to move. The Maldives is predicted to be gone by 2050.

For some countries, like the UK, global warming is probably not going to be a big problem in the medium term, as it means it will be warmer and windier, which means we'll need to use less energy for heating, and get more energy from wind turbines. But long term, sea level rise will eventually catch up with us too. If you are planning on moving house, always check a sea level rise map to make sure your home will still be above water in 20-50 years! But many places are going to have much bigger problems as a result. Nations have always fought over resources, and land, food and fresh water are the most important resources in the world - everything else comes second.

 

[Brigade77]

I've said it before & I'll say it again, we have NEVER enjoyed a stable climate.

Along comes a resident expert 'climatologist' with facts & figures from the last 10,000yrs . . . . .

I find it strange & many folk I know also find it strange, that thus far most of the ways we are led to believe will help solve climate change involve the paying of large amounts of tax !

If you can fully appreciate just how awesomely powerful Mother really is, then you'll probably also understand that a little less CO2 out of your exhaust pipe really isn't going to make her change her mind.

 

[johnny2007]

I've said it before & I'll say it again, we have NEVER enjoyed a stable climate.

Along comes a resident expert 'climatologist' with facts & figures from the last 10,000yrs . . . . .

I find it strange & many folk I know also find it strange, that thus far most of the ways we are led to believe will help solve climate change involve the paying of large amounts of tax !

If you can fully appreciate just how awesomely powerful Mother really is, then you'll probably also understand that a little less CO2 out of your exhaust pipe really isn't going to make her change her mind.

YOU CAN'T SAY THAT!
YOU'RE A DENIER!
TO THE HANGING SQUARE!

Seriously, to all the "climatologists" who have a degree in f#ckall and read Facebook to understand science, you should be extremely concerned if the climate didn't change, if it became stable.
That would mean that the earth is dying.
As rightly pointed out, climate have always changed, at times a lot faster than now.
With higher levels of co2 the earth thrives.
See the jurassic era.
Plants feed on co2 and more plants mean more oxygen, more life, more abundance for all living creatures.
I too would like to ask: "What the hell do you do with environmental taxes? Do you pay mother nature to stop rotating the planet???"
No, you put it in your pocket, no 2 ways around it.
What these protesters should be more concerned is pollution, especially plastic pollution which is suffocating the environment.
That's where we can make a difference.
You know, my dear environmentalist, you could do without a plastic cup for your soya latte.
Start from there and then when you've cleaned your own act, try to get the politicians on board to pass legislation to clean our habits.
Not scams like the Prius imposition which is enslaving entire population in Africa and South America and causing more pollution than keeping our existing vehicles, but real effective changes, first of all the ban on single use plastic and wrapping.

 

[Munroast]

It is the rapid rate of change and the way we have divided our planet up into strict geographical boundaries along with an unsustainable population that will create the chaos.

The changes we will see within our climate over the next 50 years would have once taken 10,000 years. Populations would have had time to move an adapt. But there is so many of us now and we're all so hemmed in that if areas of agricultural land goes out of production or areas flood due to climate change, then they will need to migrate, and no one wants migrants.

Same for our wildlife, we'e hemmed them into small oasis's of designated wildlife areas, once they would have had the ability to move a bit north or a bit south, but now there will be no where for them to go.

 

[Munroast]

As rightly pointed out, climate have always changed, at times a lot faster than now.

When ?

 

[Munroast]

We have one hell of a task to turn this around, Here is the rolling average of CO2 in th atmosphere over the last 50 years - We have not even begun to slow the rate of increase down.

CO2 PPM versus time

 

[IT Minion]

As rightly pointed out, climate have always changed, at times a lot faster than now.

Such a load of ****. The only time it has ever changed faster than it is now was when a meteor wiped out the dinosaurs.

 

[denso13]

Seriously, to all the "climatologists" who have a degree in f#ckall

And what about those that are specialists in the field, https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac2966?

"Greater than 99% consensus on human caused climate change in the peer-reviewed scientific literature". Could all be lying I suppose, just like all of the medical profession and researchers.

 

[jj4091]

the uk and ireland would fit into the amazon jungle 17 times if that puts it into prespective

That is interesting but I was just asking questions that I could not find the answers to. Obviously once you have answers you can think more about the problem.

 

[jj4091]

Basically trees don't capture carbon during the winter months whilst they are dormant, in fact the opposite is true, as all the fallen leaves rot away they release a lot of CO2 back into the atmosphere. The thing is they capture a lot more CO2 during the summer than they release during the winter, so on balance during the year they soak up alot more than they release. Of course we overwhelm this natural balance by relesing co2 from fossil fuels.

CO2 levels do vary throughout the year take a look at the Keeling curve, it is our release of fossil CO2 during the winter months that is causing the overall gradual rise.

https://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/

Surely there is a lot less CO2 around in the summer than the winter which your graph seems to confirm. So I am puzzled how it can balance when the trees are less able to absorb the CO2 because they have no leaves. It would be good to see a similar graph for the UK as I have never heard of Mauna Loa nor know where it is. I'll try Google again

 

[wobs]

I've said it before & I'll say it again, we have NEVER enjoyed a stable climate.

Along comes a resident expert 'climatologist' with facts & figures from the last 10,000yrs . . . . .

Its called evidence.

 

[Brigade77]

We have only a few days left to save the Earth before the armageddon of a sunrise that will burn us all up into an overdone Sunday roast.

I can only thank God that our glorious leaders Bojo, Emmanuele, "Let's Go Brandon" & the savant Greta (with her script) are on the job & at this very moment are rendezvousing at the chosen place to prepare for the battle . . . .

 

[Munroast]

Surely there is a lot less CO2 around in the summer than the winter which your graph seems to confirm. So I am puzzled how it can balance when the trees are less able to absorb the CO2 because they have no leaves. It would be good to see a similar graph for the UK as I have never heard of Mauna Loa nor know where it is. I'll try Google again

Mauna Loa is in Hawaii in the middle of the Pacific, being so far away from all the major land masses makes it an ideal place to measure global CO2. You would not get consistent results measuring in a busy industrialised country

It isn't just trees though, everything that grows uses up CO2, most of that growth occurs in the Northern hemisphere during our spring and summer, that is why CO2 levels reduce during this period.

Take our food (a small part of a bigger picture) the crops we grow absorb vast amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere, we then eat this food and breathe the CO2 back out into the atmosphere. So without burning fossil fuels we would still get the annual peaks and troughs on the graph but from year to year these peaks would be constant. It is the burning of fossil fuels releasing CO2 absorbed 400 million years ago that causes the overall increases.