Weather and Climate Change

1
Milliemoo99 said:
This thread is incredibly important..... but the issue itself is so overwhelmingly depressing I find it incredibly difficult to cope with!

Its obvious that weather patterns have changed and that catastrophic climate change is a reality. But its too big and world wide a topic for small changes to make enough difference. And the world as it is, (with wars, anger and frustration) isnt in a space to work together at all.

I wish there was something somewhere to help....but....... one of the biggest issues is that any meaningful change to reduce our climate emissions will reduce things like our standard of living. There just isnt enough honesty out there.

Its so stupid to build all these 'green' solutions designed to maintain the same power usage in our domestic homes and businesses, as we are using at the moment. If we want to save the planet, we need to use less power and be a bit more discerning about how the precious power is used. But which political party is going to get away with that as a slogan?

in the UK we have all the issues around windfarms, and how once you have generated the green energy out at sea, there is no 'green' solution to transport this lovely green energy to the cities and homes that need them. The solution is to cut down trees, destroy unspoilt countryside or farmland to build pylon trails or 30 metre wide trenches to hide the cables underground. Not to mention the new concrete substations that will need to be built to convert the electricity into a useable form. Walberswick on the Suffolk coast has a new sign, Welcome to the concrete coast. A concrete coastline is not 'Green'.

Who needs trees, when we have a new housing estate to build? The lovely money generated for the building firms is just so much more important than people breathing, obviously! I just wish there was some way to change how we value trees and the natural world and the things they actually do for us. Changing carbon dioxide into breathable oxygen, as trees and countryside does, is priceless, but maybe we should put a realistic price on it, that takes into account say 300 years of oxygen production, for a mature tree, compared to how much it would cost to produce the same amount of oxygen in a lab?

We should stop producing virtually all plastic products.( I'll make an exception for maybe plastics used for medical purposes and sterile packaging for some foodstuffs. )

Food eaten should be locally produced and seasonal, as much as is possible, and grants and support must be given to farmers to make this affordable.

Transport is a massive issue, in the UK in 2024, we need a car or similar to access basic services, to buy food, to attend hospital appointments, to go to work and to see our friends. So how do we change the way we have lived for generations?

And cost is a massive issue..... I've just had someone say it will cost between £9,000 to £11, 000 to update our existing solar panels to a more powerful and efficient system! Who has that kind of money spare,? and how is reinstalling new panels conserving existing resources? Where is the reuse part of the package?
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I think you are right. I think it is unsustainable to heat buildings 24/7, have 1000s flights a day etc forever more. I can see in the future things will have to be rationed once energy sources become scarce.
 
Milliemoo99 said:
We should stop producing virtually all plastic products.( I'll make an exception for maybe plastics used for medical purposes and sterile packaging for some foodstuffs. )

Food eaten should be locally produced and seasonal, as much as is possible, and grants and support must be given to farmers to make this affordable.
Click to expand...
What's a shame is there are many options for biodegradable packaging for food, but they cost 1p rather than 0.1p for plastic so they aren't used. The UK started a plastic bag charge and then ended it there, as if tackling 1% of single use plastic solves the problem.

Governments exist for the very reason to look out for people and stop corporate greed. I wouldn't mind regulation to limit single use plastic and it shouldn't cost more than a few pennies a person a week.

I'm finding I mostly have in season stuff these days as it's cheaper. But with the local stuff I used to live next to fruit farm in France and it was cheaper to go to Lidl and get berries that come from south America or south Africa than to buy the ones next door. The ones next door were worth the money and they are charging a fair price for what it costs them, but it was 1.89€ in lidl for a punnet of strawberries and €5 for the ones next door.

---

All these weather phenomenons are happening all the time. What's really concerning is there was no warning for an event that did this much damage

 
Yel said:
What's a shame is there are many options for biodegradable packaging for food, but they cost 1p rather than 0.1p for plastic so they aren't used. The UK started a plastic bag charge and then ended it there, as if tackling 1% of single use plastic solves the problem.

Governments exist for the very reason to look out for people and stop corporate greed. I wouldn't mind regulation to limit single use plastic and it shouldn't cost more than a few pennies a person a week.

I'm finding I mostly have in season stuff these days as it's cheaper. But with the local stuff I used to live next to fruit farm in France and it was cheaper to go to Lidl and get berries that come from south America or south Africa than to buy the ones next door. The ones next door were worth the money and they are charging a fair price for what it costs them, but it was 1.89€ in lidl for a punnet of strawberries and €5 for the ones next door.

---

All these weather phenomenons are happening all the time. What's really concerning is there was no warning for an event that did this much damage

Click to expand...


It's like it was some surprise monsoon dumped upon Valencia. Other parts of the world know and plan that they will get monsoon season, etc, but something like this, a year's worth of rain in a day, just blows my mind how that weather even formed and occurred so rapidly in a place that never floods. I think UK has had a mild summer with no much of a heatwave this time, whereas mainland Europe sizzled for weeks and weeks, almost as though the UK was just outside of their weather system. We also had a lot of wind this year in the UK, but the image of cars stacked up upon each other like they weigh nothing, no match for the surge of water, it really makes me think, because in my head car = heavy and hard to move. We underestimate how powerful water is and it can make things float. I can't get over those pictures. Plus rice fields damaged so crops reduced.
 
Milliemoo99 said:
This thread is incredibly important..... but the issue itself is so overwhelmingly depressing I find it incredibly difficult to cope with!

Its obvious that weather patterns have changed and that catastrophic climate change is a reality. But its too big and world wide a topic for small changes to make enough difference. And the world as it is, (with wars, anger and frustration) isnt in a space to work together at all.

I wish there was something somewhere to help....but....... one of the biggest issues is that any meaningful change to reduce our climate emissions will reduce things like our standard of living. There just isnt enough honesty out there.

Its so stupid to build all these 'green' solutions designed to maintain the same power usage in our domestic homes and businesses, as we are using at the moment. If we want to save the planet, we need to use less power and be a bit more discerning about how the precious power is used. But which political party is going to get away with that as a slogan?

in the UK we have all the issues around windfarms, and how once you have generated the green energy out at sea, there is no 'green' solution to transport this lovely green energy to the cities and homes that need them. The solution is to cut down trees, destroy unspoilt countryside or farmland to build pylon trails or 30 metre wide trenches to hide the cables underground. Not to mention the new concrete substations that will need to be built to convert the electricity into a useable form. Walberswick on the Suffolk coast has a new sign, Welcome to the concrete coast. A concrete coastline is not 'Green'.

Who needs trees, when we have a new housing estate to build? The lovely money generated for the building firms is just so much more important than people breathing, obviously! I just wish there was some way to change how we value trees and the natural world and the things they actually do for us. Changing carbon dioxide into breathable oxygen, as trees and countryside does, is priceless, but maybe we should put a realistic price on it, that takes into account say 300 years of oxygen production, for a mature tree, compared to how much it would cost to produce the same amount of oxygen in a lab?

We should stop producing virtually all plastic products.( I'll make an exception for maybe plastics used for medical purposes and sterile packaging for some foodstuffs. )

Food eaten should be locally produced and seasonal, as much as is possible, and grants and support must be given to farmers to make this affordable.

Transport is a massive issue, in the UK in 2024, we need a car or similar to access basic services, to buy food, to attend hospital appointments, to go to work and to see our friends. So how do we change the way we have lived for generations?

And cost is a massive issue..... I've just had someone say it will cost between £9,000 to £11, 000 to update our existing solar panels to a more powerful and efficient system! Who has that kind of money spare,? and how is reinstalling new panels conserving existing resources? Where is the reuse part of the package?
Click to expand...
This is such a good post..it's devasting how nature depleted the UK is and the attitudes towards wildness. I remember reading a news story about residents on an estate banding together to mow an area the council had set aside to grow wild because it looked messy. We manage the countryside to an inch of its life to make it look a certain way, praise is for being neat and idealic, when it's a sterile wasteland. Even the peak district national park is manmade, and it is intensely managed and controlled. What hope is there when even the national parks aren't used to their full potential?

Green energy is such a lie. Electricity should always be treated as a finite resource, but sadly we are so reliant on it now that it's hard to imagine how serious demand side management would work. Renewable energy has a massive environmental impact in terms of the affect of the installation on the environment , the materials used etc. there is no such thing as a free lunch.

The problem in the UK too is that historically things were done a certain way and we have so much old, traditional infrastructure. The housing isn't modern or efficient either. We definitely have to rely on cars to get around even on this small island, with public transport fragmented, expensive and often not feeling very safe as a women.

There is so much investment needed to change things, and a joined up, global approach is needed which seems impossible in the current environment. It is quite overwhelming.
 
There seems to be a new area everyday in Spain facing floods, Barcelona today and I'm sure Madrid had it a few months ago with flooded metros.

Screenshot 2024-11-04 at 19.51.43.png


You can never trust people on the internet, but apparently Spain has been leading the way at removing damns to promote biodiversity:
Screenshot 2024-11-04 at 19.51.51.png

Screenshot 2024-11-04 at 19.56.06.png
 
Spain doesn't even appear on the countries most at risk from flooding in 2024, but it could be an incomplete list.

We only really hear about flooding if it's countries like Spain or Australia where there are lots of English speakers living or visiting.

I can imagine there are lots of people in developing countries like Vietnam that have it far worse from flooding and even less support from governments but it goes totally unnoticed as it's the poor rural people in these countries.

Countries most exposed to river floods worldwide in 2024, by risk index score
Screenshot 2024-11-05 at 09.19.55.png

www.statista.com

Countries most exposed to river floods worldwide 2024 | Statista

With a risk index score of 9.9, Vietnam, Egypt, and Bangladesh are the top countries worldwide regarding river flood risk, based on their physical exposure to this type of event.
www.statista.com www.statista.com
 
Ursaarctosarctos said:
This is such a good post..it's devasting how nature depleted the UK is and the attitudes towards wildness. I remember reading a news story about residents on an estate banding together to mow an area the council had set aside to grow wild because it looked messy. We manage the countryside to an inch of its life to make it look a certain way, praise is for being neat and idealic, when it's a sterile wasteland. Even the peak district national park is manmade, and it is intensely managed and controlled. What hope is there when even the national parks aren't used to their full potential?

Green energy is such a lie. Electricity should always be treated as a finite resource, but sadly we are so reliant on it now that it's hard to imagine how serious demand side management would work. Renewable energy has a massive environmental impact in terms of the affect of the installation on the environment , the materials used etc. there is no such thing as a free lunch.

The problem in the UK too is that historically things were done a certain way and we have so much old, traditional infrastructure. The housing isn't modern or efficient either. We definitely have to rely on cars to get around even on this small island, with public transport fragmented, expensive and often not feeling very safe as a women.

There is so much investment needed to change things, and a joined up, global approach is needed which seems impossible in the current environment. It is quite overwhelming.
Click to expand...
The closest wilderness to the UK (as of 1992, according to Graham Bell) is in Slovakia.

Our national parks and nature reserves must be managed to preserve their habitat. For instance, the fens want to turn to an oak forest, as agriculture outside of them keeps draining all the water away. Those managing do a lot of work to keep it wet.

Something that I've realised over the past few years is that we really cannot sit twiddling our thumbs and waiting for the government to fix everything. We have to build community in our own areas and take our surroundings into our own control. That means trying to talk to your local community about nature friendly management techniques, taking energy and water into our own hands and building actual skills that will help us, whatever the future may bring the human race.

Something hopeful I've seen is that people here in the UK seem to be at least dimly aware that nature in important, even if they don't quite understand it. You can do a lot by encouraging and convincing people to mow less, stop using pesticides/herbicides, cultivate perennials that bloom at different times of the year for pollinators, and leave the leaves down! All of which are free or will actually save them money and effort! People in the UK are generally receptive, I have found, to these ideas. One chap in my parents town has managed to get loads of people to manage their gardens in more nature friendly ways.

If you've never read up on it, have a look at permaculture. It's a design philosophy that I think would be right up your alley. Permaculturalists can be a bit doom-culty (they seem to believe that we are in the end times for western excesses) but their ideas around selfsufficiency and planet care are sound as a pound.
 
FolderDuvet said:
The closest wilderness to the UK (as of 1992, according to Graham Bell) is in Slovakia.

Our national parks and nature reserves must be managed to preserve their habitat. For instance, the fens want to turn to an oak forest, as agriculture outside of them keeps draining all the water away. Those managing do a lot of work to keep it wet.

Something that I've realised over the past few years is that we really cannot sit twiddling our thumbs and waiting for the government to fix everything. We have to build community in our own areas and take our surroundings into our own control. That means trying to talk to your local community about nature friendly management techniques, taking energy and water into our own hands and building actual skills that will help us, whatever the future may bring the human race.

Something hopeful I've seen is that people here in the UK seem to be at least dimly aware that nature in important, even if they don't quite understand it. You can do a lot by encouraging and convincing people to mow less, stop using pesticides/herbicides, cultivate perennials that bloom at different times of the year for pollinators, and leave the leaves down! All of which are free or will actually save them money and effort! People in the UK are generally receptive, I have found, to these ideas. One chap in my parents town has managed to get loads of people to manage their gardens in more nature friendly ways.

If you've never read up on it, have a look at permaculture. It's a design philosophy that I think would be right up your alley. Permaculturalists can be a bit doom-culty (they seem to believe that we are in the end times for western excesses) but their ideas around selfsufficiency and planet care are sound as a pound.
Click to expand...
I agree but I also feel like individuals can only do so much and it's much easier for governments to push it onto individuals than face the root causes- which can be frustrating.

I will look into permaculture thank you!
 
Ursaarctosarctos said:
I agree but I also feel like individuals can only do so much and it's much easier for governments to push it onto individuals than face the root causes- which can be frustrating.

I will look into permaculture thank you!
Click to expand...
That's very true. Governments have a high degree of efficacy, but your own personal small scale activism can really help move the political process along.

I think a lot of activism minded people (perhaps yourself) get very disheartened because they focus their activism on trying to personally wrest the wheel from the national government, when there are those with far deeper pockets who already have it. However, you can affect a lot if you dedicate what time and resources you already have in your local community. For instance, it would be great if the government fed everyone, but a very effective thing you can do in your own community (if you can afford to do so) is to feed them. It would be great if the government housed everyone, but an effective thing you can do is help squatters networks find suitable long term empty properties (or donate to organisations like shelter, if you're not about that kind of action). It would be great if the government pulled their finger out on the national ecology, but you can do a lot by encouraging your community and then your council to manage the green spaces they have in a more conscious way.

All of these things are community building, and provide a basis for larger political action. Together we stand, divided we fall and all the rest.
 
Ndrangheta said:
It's very disheartening when well-off people who fly all the time lecture though. One long haul flight negates 3 years of putting all of your waste into the green bin. Also, all of the stuff you see about "we plant a tree for every flight" is absolute bollocks. Yes, tree's are planted but they are more often than not planted in very poor soil and not maintained. All of those tree's are dead within three years and the energy used to plant them in the first place also contributes to climate decline.

It's a losing battle in this greedy selfish corporate age I'm afraid. You have to face facts:

We're a dying species, on a dying planet, orbiting a dying sun.

Let's just make the most of it. I do my bit and I'm sure you do to. But in reality we're just pissing in the wind.
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I mean, if you think it's all over, what's the point of staying? Why ride out the pain if you don't think there is a future?

I reject doomerism like this (and this is what you've fallen into, apocalypse cult thinking) on the grounds that even if it is right, even if the world quite literally ends and nothing is left alive in 20 years, it doesn't get me anywhere (at that point, I won't be around to worry about it). In fact, it incentivises me to add to the destruction. It is a dead-end ideology.

I don't know. I look around. The earth isn't dying. It's changing. Life on this planet is incredibly hardy. Crazily hardy. Walk around any city, notice the ants coming up through the pavement, and the mice fighting in the bushes. Notice the mosses and lichens that colonise our structures. The Buddleia and brambles that colonise brownfield sites. Poppies and bindweed and grass and knotweed. Gulls and pigeons and rats and all of it. Life isn't going to end on this planet without nuclear armageddon, even if the area around the equator becomes uninhabitable. Even if there is nuclear armageddon, the weird protazoa around the sulfurous vents on the sea floor will probably be there. The world will become uninhabitable to us long before life goes extinct.

We are but a sneeze into the cosmos in comparison. If the earth ends up shaking us all off, she will. Many species may go extinct, but not all. I don't even think humans have had their day, though the future of human civilisation is perhaps up for debate (which is why I spend time learning useful skills for the future).

This isn't me being blindly optimistic. We are definitely living through a mass extinction event. But no mass extinction event has managed to end life just yet. It just changes it. The change will be big, and it will be violent (it has been violent thus far) but it isn't the end. As long as one kind of living thing remains, life goes on. That's literally all life is good at. Going on.

*You* have to face facts: humans aren't dying out (our population is still increasing), the planet isn't dying (again, a lot of species will, unfortunately, and we can do what we can to preserve them and fight for a less extreme future, but life WILL go on), and the sun isn't dying (it's just about middle aged, and unless you want to tell 35-40 year olds they're actively dying, maybe drop that one.)
 
It seems every couple of days there's a huge downpour somewhere in Spain and Portugal. Cant remember this happening before.
 

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