As if we all knew about climate change

[StraitTalk]

In case you didn't know, as ocean and air currents change globally some regions of the world may become cooler.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=85246

I believe Antarctica is a fantastic example of this.

[Silverstarqueen]

If this is Global warming, I don't think I want a Global cooling.
Italy:
http://www.thelocal.it/20170109/weekend ... nuary-cold

Greece:
http://www.weatherclub.co.uk/news/artic ... udden-snow

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hz6CzGJZkE

[StraitTalk]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/pos ... 08712e09b9

[Glacier]

[StraitTalk]

Why?

[rustled]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/07/05/im-a-climate-scientist-and-im-not-letting-trickle-down-ignorance-win/?utm_term=.8408712e09b9

Interesting opinion piece.

I'm mulling this over, in the context of confirmation bias:

You go back to the drawing board. You address the criticism that if there really is a human-caused signal, we should see it in many attributes of the climate system — not just in surface thermometer records. You look at temperature from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the oceans. You examine water vapor and the height of the lowest layer of the atmosphere. Your colleagues search for human fingerprints in rainfall, clouds, sea level, river runoff, snow and ice extent, atmospheric circulation patterns, and the behavior of extreme events. They find human-caused climate fingerprints everywhere they look.

One would expect to see the effects of human activities in all of these places, going back a century or more. He's used "fingerprints". As we all know, the fingerprints at the scene of the crime cannot generally be used as proof of who dun it, or of the extent (if any) of the fingerprints' owner's involvement. I'd have appreciated it if the author had provided more context for us.

This piece, to me, seems more an expression of disappointment in how his work is being received than a legitimate indictment of those who feel we're allocating vast resources to fight a battle we don't yet properly understand, and doing considerable harm (to the environment, the poor, and people in general) in the process.

[Osoyoos_Familyof4]

I love this thread (thanks).

I think I am a fairly "typical" middle-class woman, with a typical family structure. I am not really as informed about the state of the planet as I could be, and I think I am at "small/medium" level of commitment in regards to what I do for climate change.

I do recycle what I can, but my small town only recycles the basics, we don't recycle a lot of things here that folks in larger centres can. But I will recycle what my blue bags/box will allow me to. I drive our compact instead of our truck when I can, but to be honest, it's more about the price of gas.

But the one thing that really irritates me as the person who is the primary grocery shopper is excess packaging that doesn't even make sense. Why is anything frozen packaged in a plastic bag INSIDE a cardboard box? Just send me the bag, and write the nutrition information and heating directions on the bag!

It's very common in Europe to have stores with bulk everything and you bring your containers too. This has been their reality for 20+ years and yet we're nowhere close to that. Why not big vats of yogurt with a spigot and you fill your own container? Same with milk, sour cream, ice cream, juices, butter, cleaning products and liquid soaps etc.

So anyway, my VERY SMALL act of disobedience is to discard unnecessary packaging and leave it at the store for them to throw away. If more people did this, I suspect the grocers would put pressure on the manufacturers to reduce the packaging. And of course, legislating the manufacturers to reduce it would be appreciated too. Plus it's cheaper for the manufacturers to ship as this type of packaging takes up way less cargo space.

And another super easy thing is to take toxic things out of person care products and cleaners. Foaming agents are for the most part a completely unnecessary chemical additive. It does nothing for the quality and efficacy of a product, it is entirely an additive based on our expectations. We have been taught the soaps and cleaners foam, so we add ca-ca into soaps to make it so. Same with fragrance that makes a lot of people sick anyway. If you want to add scent, buy scents to add in (hopefully essential oils) but the expectation of scent is unnecessary. Same with added colourings, do you really care if your bar of soap is green, or your shampoo is blue? Remember in the 1970's when our toilet paper was made with pink dye and scented TO WIPE YOUR *bleep* WITH? I mean, we just don't do that anymore! Take it further - and I will buy it. I want to be able to get this for the same price I pay now at the big box stores for regular products. It should cost the manufacturers LESS to implement these simple changes of packaging, dyes, scents, etc. There is no reason that more healthful products should cost us a premium.

Schools that teach trades and design should step it up. Campuses are amazing right now with buildings using reclaimed untreated water in the toilets, leavings gaps in the floors where lower floors can heat upper floors because machines that generate heat are vented and designed to recirculate their energy to heat a room on an upper floor etc. And our housing and commercial buildings ought to be designed that way. All our windows should have automatic sliding weather proof awnings against cold and heat. If a commercial building is closed for 16 hours out of 24 and nobody is there it should look like a fortress (but an attractive one). Make more rooftop gardens, incorporate growing spaces inside for fruit and vegetables. At night we should be able to flick a switch and our house gets shut-down completely with little to no energy going out or needing to come in.

I do think that the real meat and potato here is going to be industrial polluters. But the above things I mentioned are easy practical things we could all be doing now which is as you state "starting somewhere"...doing something...anything.

I am frightened, and we ought to be.

[rustled]

Don't be frightened. Some of us have been helping people walk more softly on this earth for decades, and we've made some good strides forward in my lifetime. (I remember the pretty toilet paper! And people dumping used oil on their dirt driveways...)

Packaging reduction has been two-steps-forward, one-step-back. For example, there was a time you couldn't recycle corrugated cardboard, because there were too many different manufacturing processes.

Unfortunately, recycling has gotten in the way of reduction. People are generally pretty blase about anything that can by recycled. Styro trays (I'm weighing the pros and cons of getting a chest freezer so I can go back to butcher wrap). Today there's more plastic and more weight (laundry detergent) to haul around, which is a bad step backward. We see more round containers (like coffee, which used to come in foil bricks) which puts more cargo trailers on our highways.

It's frustrating, but there are ways around most of it. For example, you can make your own yogurt, grind your own beans, etc.

Small things can add up. Thinking about what you drive, as you do. Fewer trips, walk when possible, etc.

Bigger things: a smaller home, fewer gadgets, quality stuff versus replacement (even if the new technology's "greener", it still comes at an environmental cost), where and how we vacation, etc.

[StraitTalk]

Don't be frightened. Some of us have been helping people walk more softly on this earth for decades, and we've made some good strides forward in my lifetime. (I remember the pretty toilet paper! And people dumping used oil on their dirt driveways...)

Packaging reduction has been two-steps-forward, one-step-back. For example, there was a time you couldn't recycle corrugated cardboard, because there were too many different manufacturing processes.

Unfortunately, recycling has gotten in the way of reduction. People are generally pretty blase about anything that can by recycled. Styro trays (I'm weighing the pros and cons of getting a chest freezer so I can go back to butcher wrap). Today there's more plastic and more weight (laundry detergent) to haul around, which is a bad step backward. We see more round containers (like coffee, which used to come in foil bricks) which puts more cargo trailers on our highways.

It's frustrating, but there are ways around most of it. For example, you can make your own yogurt, grind your own beans, etc.

Small things can add up. Thinking about what you drive, as you do. Fewer trips, walk when possible, etc.

Bigger things: a smaller home, fewer gadgets, quality stuff versus replacement (even if the new technology's "greener", it still comes at an environmental cost), where and how we vacation, etc.

I appreciate that you touch on consumption. I am still pretty young and it blows my mind how much people "need". That said, living in Kelowna probably means I see the extreme side of that spectrum especially considering Canadians are some of the biggest consumers in the world.

I won't for a second pretend I am innocent here but I think you get the idea. Some things sound good, look good or feel good. But it's important we actually think about what's effectively good for our environment and I think that is one of the fundamental differences between our youngest generations and our oldest.

[rustled]

In all fairness, our younger generations have been targeted.

Where we had to save for what we wanted (and therefore considered more seriously whether or not we needed the item), and tried to purchase one the best quality we could afford (so it would last a long time), easy credit has created a very different value system in the past few decades. Societal expectations have changed to reflect this.

Our economy is now predicated on dual-income families, and dual-income families rely more heavily on having more mod-cons and more "rewards" like international vacations.

Marketing tells us we need and deserve more, more, more. The government encourages more, more, more because it drives the economy.

For the most part, we're willfully blind to the unintended consequences of having developed the suburbs (instead of focusing resources on improving existing neighbourhoods at the core), convincing us we all need to work full-time to "improve" our standard of living, and providing us with bigger and bigger recycling bins.

Even when we sense something is wrong with this picture, we're just too busy on our hamster wheels, driving the engines of economy, to really think about what matters to us, and how we really want to live our lives, and what we want to leave as our legacy. Instead we focus on how much more income we all need to earn to keep up, which is really all about keeping the system running.

When we're too busy to focus on what's truly best for us, or our families, it's not surprising we're also too busy to seriously consider what's best for the environment. It seems to me this is why today we collectively support recycling programs and carbon taxes. It's simply easier than changing our ways.

But these policy initiatives don't solve the environmental problems related to consumption, excess and lifestyle. And it seems to me that because they allow us to pretend we're doing something positive, they actually help make the problem worse.

[Mark5]

If CO2 really is the cause then all we have to do is harvest CO2. Vegetation already does it. CO2 is the giver of all life on planet earth so we must not reduce it by too much.

[spooker]

If CO2 really is the cause then all we have to do is harvest CO2. Vegetation already does it. CO2 is the giver of all life on planet earth so we must not reduce it by too much.

Yes, CO2 is one of the most prevalent greenhouse gases ... and that's why there has been a huge push to try and stop producing so much of it ... plants are natural harvesters of CO2 but we keep cutting down trees to make room for more people ...

We can look to technology to save us as you suggest ... but we also have to realize that technology has allowed us to get to this point in the first place ... sort of "stop being the problem" instead of "find a workaround for a problem that we have identified"

[averagejoe]

No Bill the older generations you want to die know the this climate change is a hoax!

Then the hoaxers will have a clear reign! Especially as younger generations are feed this b.s. in schools and colleges.


Bill Nye: Climate science needs older generations to ‘die’ off

Bill Nye “the Science Guy” said Wednesday that significant action on climate change will be possible once the climate skeptics and deniers of older generations die off.

Speaking to the Los Angeles Times, the 61-year-old TV host was asked to comment on a recent Pew survey that revealed 58 percent of Republicans and right-leaning Independents believe higher education has a negative effect on the country, a number that spiked significantly during President Trump’s rise to power.

Mr. Nye said people are just scared of the truth.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201 ... rations-t/