I question ‘the mainstream’ all the time, but there’s a difference between mainstream opinion and a consensus among experts who have spent years collecting and carefully considering lots of evidence. The truth is almost all qualified climate scientists agree about human driven climate breakdown:
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Serious question:
Often the phrase ‘since records began’ is used when data is published. So scientists have spent years collecting information and base thier findings on that. I dont know how many years this info is based on but if there is no info before the start date then who is to say that the deemed threat of global warming has been around long before the industrial revolution.
If planet earth does stop getting warmer how will it be possible to prove that it has done by the efforts of cutting greenhouse gases rather than it happening naturally.
Actually on all sorts of records you might not suspect, eg one of my Persian history lecturers is also the contemporary top Central Asia earthquake expert, and has been since I was an undergraduate because everything pertaining to seismic activity was meticulously written down by fonctionnaires all over Iran from the start of the Il-Khanid dynasty (so mid-13th century onwards). And they wrote a lot about climate as well because of irrigation systems etc.
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There is accurate weather information for certain parts of the world going back into the late 18th century and less accurate but nevertheless useful information for wider parts of the world going back further.
That’s not really all we have though. Other sources of information that we have that can look back, sometimes thousands of years or much more with accuracy is readily available. Think tree ring data coupled with ice core data (that @vero’s friend works on) measuring not only gas concentrations but thickness of each years accumulation. There are many others as well. Climactic changes and events that have an effect on the climate leave many fingerprints that we can investigate.
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The highest water mark recorded at our Chateau was in 1500 and something. The area at shirley hills I was told was under water millions of years ago and the earth is believed to have been tilted on its axis by a large meteor. The earth’s orbit is a wobbly one snd the world isnt round its a sort of egg shape. Where does that leave us, with a polluted ocean and rising CO2 and people getting more angry.
Thankyou for the replies from @vero,@hairbear and @Corona.
It seems that the changing climate has as much to do with natural evolution over 1000’s of years rather than :
I do my bit but very much doubt that the human race as a whole will ever unify to halt climate breakdown or indeed make any noticeable affect as our planet is a law unto itself and will do what it wants.
Like the efforts of King Canute we can think we can.
That seems an odd way of putting it JohnBoy. The way I would summarise the replies here is that there have always been changes to the Earth’s climate with quite natural causes, but over the last couple of centuries, and especially more recent decades, human activity has added a disastrous new dimension, which, unless we mitigate it urgently, might well destroy human civilisation.
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Ah, but that’s exactly the point. Natural climate change happens over tens of thousands to millions of years or longer. CO2 levels have also changed naturally in the past, but again over very long periods of time. Current climate change has occured mainly over the last 150 years. It’s the rapid speed of change that’s the real issue. In the past, living organisms have been able to survive long period change by adapting. Doing that over such a short space of time is in many cases not possible. That’s why we’re currently undergoing a mass extinction event, where species extinction rates are several hundred times the natural background rate that would be expected.
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We also have to beware of talking only about climate change. This thread is titlesd climate/ecological breakdown for a very good reason. Climate change is only one aspect of humanity’s current disruption of natural systems. There are many kinds of pollution that do not directly affect the climate, but do endanger ecosystems, that in turn affect us in all sorts of ways - health, food supplies, etc. More pandemics are one predictable result of our disruption of ecosystems.
It’s perfectly possible that this disruption of ecosystems constitutes an even greater danger than climate change, though is not nearly so well understood.
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Its understood but seldom listened to as its difficult to derive profit from, cynical me.
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Interesting graphic supporting the point that too narrow a focus on climate change can be a way of not seeing the whole picture.
The narrow focus can be a distraction, because it might be possible in theory to mitigate the worst effects of climate change it by ending fossil fuel use, which in turn might theoretically be addressed without too radical change to our lifestyles and economies.
But really our reckless burning of fossil fuels is only one aspect of our general over-exploitation and over-consumption of all the Earth’s resources. Changing to electric cars won’t end the particulate pollution from tyres, etc, noted bu @John_Scully earlier in this thread; it won’t end the chemical and plastic pollution of the oceans that @Corona refers to above; it won’t end the soil destruction perpetrated by chemical agribusiness, or deforestation, etc, etc…
What we really have to do is end the over-exploitation and over-consumption itself - to recognise that an economic system based fundamentally on incentivising businesses to sell more and more stuff, however useless or damaging to the environment, as long as you can convince enough people to buy it, is terminally flawed.
Pandemics are an interesting example. They are likely to become much more frequent both because of over-exploitation like deforestation, mixing new wild species with domestic and farm animals, and because of climate change…
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Might be the answer but that ship has already sailed.
No - it’s not a once and once only opportunity that we can miss.
It’s all about mitigation. The less we do, and the longer we delay, the worse the consequences get - the more we do, the more quickly, the less we will suffer.
The European parliament has voted to end the sale of petrol and diesel cars by 2035.
Now that would cause a riot.
Statement needs amending with the word ‘NEW’ inserted.
Diesel and petrol in its various forms will be around for many years after 2035 as cars are only a small part of fossil fuel powered transport.
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Interesting…
“My electric aircraft costs £3 per hour. The sister [fossil-fuel-powered] aircraft is £30 an hour.”
