Doom And Gloom.

[Khandro]

Here is a letter in last week's Spectator;

Sir: The depressing article by Tom Woodman (‘You must be kidding’, 16 October) confirms my growing fears about the damage being wrought by the promoters of apocalyptic climate change, which has become a dangerous cult with alarming echoes of millenarian doom which has stretched through many previous centuries. While sensible care for the environment is a good thing, the descriptions of a frightening future of the imminent end of the world through drought, flood and fire now imbues every aspect of education and politics. Constantly bombarding young people with the news that the end of the world is nigh has led many of them into completely unnecessary visions of death and disaster.

Those convinced by the relentlessly gloomy outlook should try reading some of the opposite viewpoints instead, of which there are many. Those responsible for the propaganda should hang their heads in shame at what they have done and are doing to the mental welfare of younger generations.

Dr Angela Montford
St Andrews, Fife

Does the Doctor not make a good point?

[MONEILL45]

Only compassionate socialism can save this world everybody shares alike.

[ichkeria]

It fails to say when records began, but also talks in terms of hundreds of thousands of years, & I definitely question that, # 17 of the 18 warmest years on record have all taken place since 2001.#

Well it says "on record" - we all know the records don't go back hundreds of thousands of years, but even if they only go back a tiny fraction of that I would say that is pretty significant on its own.

[Togo]

//Only compassionate socialism//

Interpretation ... Global Welfare State, with the alarmists hoping to be deciding who gets the "welfare".

[Togo]

I read a report (no you look for it) recently that stated, in no uncertain terms, that the Wooly Mammoth was driven to extinction by(You're ahead of me here again are'nt you) by glow bull warming. No main stream "news" outlets ran it. If the glow bulls killed the Wooly Mammoths what caused them to run amok? Ironbridge didn't exist, or the oily Arabs. What made the heavily clad Mammoth too insulated to cope with the heating turning on? It wasn't me guv, honest. Am I being framed?

[DTCwordfan]

She raises very good points in my view and we as a society ought to be more open to potential solutions and the way through - arguments and policies are flying out without full thinking and this is dangerous.....and folk often are not listening, either we as Joe and Josephine Public or our representatives in Government. Take eating less meat - evidence is coming to light that this may be a wrong root - less grass = less carbon capture something that grass is very good at, less animals and it's less dung for fertilisers thus more human (with inherent risk) or more chemical fertilisers that belch out more CO2 et al and soak up electricity.

I've just written this very day to the DT Letters about the UK's stance to taking out hydrocarbon cars lock stock and barrel - when the car companies ignore facts about the UK electricity generation is 65% oil and gas at the moment - and (ii) the potential arrival of syn-fuels through new and upgraded Fischer-Tropps, a number of projects around the world, particularly in Chile where Porsche and Simens et al inc AME and ENAP aim to be producing 550 million litres of fuel from air-drawn and concentrated up CO2..and by 2026 and, in doing so, really bring the technology down the cost learning curve from its current $4/litre. So why are a lot of folk in the UK and elsewhere so myopic in their thinking and putting in place legislation that could whack them in their rears down the line?

I was talking to BMW reps last week and they opined that the life of the electric car is probably only 8 years and synfuels (made as described to produce methanol and then tweaked to gasoline/diesel etc - with all the advantages of using the existing vehicle park and distribution plus providing a massive carbon sink) or Hydrogen will come through. By the way I am not shooting down Hybrid technologies or DRS - just those electric cars that need plugging in.

[bobbinwales]

Thats a non-point Togo. Noone saying humans caused the ice age or other natural changes over millions of years but over the last 150years human numbers have gone up 10 fold and clinmate change has been exaserbated

[Ellipsis]

The depressing letter by Angela Montford confirms my growing fears about the damage being wrought by the deniers of climate change, which has become a dangerous cult with alarming echoes of witch hunting and the Inquisition ...

[gness]

A significance that will be ignored by many, Ich.

An incredibly depressing letter, Ellipsis.

[Togo]

The wise amongst us, incidently most of the happier people live there, are more concerned about global cooling happening. It will happen overnight relatively) just as it always has. When the Earth becomes akin to a dirty snowball in space the population issue will most certainly solve itself. We could cope with rising temperatures, we would cope with a total ice melt, we will not survive an ice age. Particularly when we have destroyed any means to cope with such a cooling. A massive volcanic eruption, or seies of them along a tectonic plate, Solar events or Nuclear war would set just such a chain of events into being. Frozen windmills, hydroelectric generators, and snow covered solar panels will not help. Reduced levels of Carbon Dioxide will stunt all plant growth(all plants thrive indeed need carbon dioxide to live) in areas least affected by the freezing temperatures and prevent any chance of a quick recovery. As we speak a volcano is releasing more "toxic gas and climate destroying gas than the rest of the World's industries combined. It does not look like stopping any time soon. Instead of just "doing something" in a vain demonstration of being in charge, or caring more than the insensitive "others" we should be investing in coping with what is real. We wouldn't even have the power to extract the underground fuel that we now despise when it would be the only thing that could save us. Frittering resources away on a flawed hypothesis will not save the World. Quite the oposite.
Cheer up though ... the nutters haven't got complete control yet.

[Ellipsis]

> Cheer up though ... the nutters haven't got complete control yet.

OK, I will remain cheerful until nutters like Angela Montford have control rather than simply their nutty letters published in The Spectator.

[Gromit]

bobbinwales
// Yes in the last 3000 years the world population has grown from around 50 million to almost 8000Million

8 Billion for shorthand.

[bobbinwales]

Yes i know that gromit. It was to easily compere to the 50 million. Its increased by more than 150 fold

[CrapAtCryptics]

maybe the population increase of nearly 8 times over the last 200 years is a major contributor to.

[Hymie]

\\In fact, 17 of the 18 warmest years on record have all taken place since 2001.//

Not according to this chart from Wikipedia:-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_periods_and_events_in_climate_history#/media/File:Vostok_Petit_data.svg

[Togo]

This will shock you.

[tomus42]

She only makes a good point if she's right about the threat being overblown. If she's wrong then she makes a stupid point.

[fcc]

So if we get our carbon emissions down to zero we will not ever have
extreme weather conditions again,i don't think so.

[Deskdiary]

I remain constantly astonished at the experts on AB who appear to be the font of knowledge on everything, such as Gromit, Ich, et al.

You should get yourselves up to Glasgow - they clearly need you.

[Atheist]

Hymie; re your post at 20:35. Could you please explain the graphs a bit?
The x-axis seems to span a period from 400,000 years ago up to the present day, but you refer to "17 of the 18 warmest years on record have all taken place since 2001" and you seem to think that the graphs contradict this. Surely the graphs are nowhere near demonstrating any data trend over a period of 17 years?

[Atheist]

Desk; do you know better than "Gromit, Ich, et al."?
Where does your opinion come from? Why are they wrong and you are right? At least they seem to base their views on the global scientific consensus, don't they?