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Climate Change (Read 59769 times)

SA Chris

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#75 Re: Climate Change
October 11, 2019, 01:41:32 pm
I think it’s going to take serious technological strides before there’s a real replacement for face to face meetings for all but very minor interactions. So much is lost in translation when one can’t see body language properly in small important meetings, I’m not surprised by business men flying all over the shop.

It will take a complete culture shift but I think it will have to happen soon. Conferences etc, where academic associations come together, I don't believe there is viable technology in the near future, but directors or senior managers of companies basically flying loops a few times a month just to meet up with staff members is, in my view, no longer justifiable. I think some do it just to accumulate Air Miles. I know some who planned visits to offices in Houston to coincide with Black Friday weekend to do Xmas Shopping, flying back with an overfilled suitcase.

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#76 Re: Climate Change
October 11, 2019, 02:17:09 pm
Next is item 2.


2) Consumption


The biggest offences committed here are probably electronics; TVs, phones, household appliances, computers, cameras tablets all purchased in our desire to have the latest, best, fastest, biggest, smallest, shiniest. And discarded at the slightest notion of obsolescence, slight malfunction.



Off topic slightly.

This in an interesting one, the family business is a Hifi shop but also do repairs. The customer base is definitely getting older for sales and repairs as the younger generation tend to by the cheaper crap that cant be repaired and they throw away and get new, whereas the better quality equipment will be better, last longer and easily repaired. It's only a small shop in Lancashire but my dad has customers all over the UK bringing items in for fixing, some up to 30/40 years old.

Shows that equipment is built to a price and not to last very long. All the lcd/led type tvs can't be fixed due to the very complicated electronics unlike the old crt tvs which were just basic circuit boards where components can be replaced.

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#77 Re: Climate Change
October 11, 2019, 02:27:21 pm
I think this is v interesting and entirely in topic; planned obsolescence is a horrendous development in our electronic goods.

SA Chris

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#78 Re: Climate Change
October 11, 2019, 02:38:27 pm
Definitely on topic. The fridge in our van stopped getting cold, even though the fan still worked. Couldn't get anyone to even look at it for me and tell me inf it could be fixed, or if it was knackered.

I find municipal waste sites incredibly depressing places; Yesterday hi-tech is already today's landfill, just to keep up with the neighbours.

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#79 Re: Climate Change
October 11, 2019, 03:48:52 pm
I think it’s going to take serious technological strides before there’s a real replacement for face to face meetings for all but very minor interactions.

I kind of agree, although it's definitely possible to do things remotely already. I ran a project within my firm through 2017 involving very senior (and not so senior) stakeholders from all over the UK. Never met any of them during the project but delivered it very successfully.

Where the people you're dealing with are external to your business, I accept it gets far more challenging.

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#80 Re: Climate Change
October 11, 2019, 04:13:38 pm

I looked at getting the snow train to the alps this year, as a low carb option.

£560 each return, to thats 2200 for the 4 of us.
Flights are 240 each currently, so £960..

You do the math.

We might well end up driving as an even cheaper alternative.  Haven't done the Carbon maths, but driving is prob less CO2.


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#81 Re: Climate Change
October 11, 2019, 04:20:36 pm
Vehicle dependent naturally, but driving alone is generally worse than flying, with one passenger it is generally breaking even or better than flying, with more it's generally better.

A colleague of mine is taking a professorship in Belfast, but needs to travel backwards and forwards between his home in Shipley and Belfast whilst his daughter finished school and he ties up loose ends here at Leeds. He was concerned that flying so much would be bad, but when he calculated, it turns out that driving alone in his Focus and getting the ferry was actually worse than flying LBA-Belfast in a turbo-prop plane. I think this is a rare instance where this is the case though.

I’ve flown three times this year... Vienna, Dublin

...and I got the train to both of those places, which is fine for me as a PhD student with loads of free time, but for you was hardly feasible! A difficult balance.

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#82 Re: Climate Change
October 11, 2019, 05:04:30 pm
Yeah - thought it was something along those lines.

I'd happily take the train, but not at the price.  Had this conversation with a pal who noted that some friends of his had just booked return flights to the Alps for £50 each !!  :wall:

Until the train is cheaper than air travel, most folks will simply choose to fly and sod the climate change aspect.

Bizarrely, I bet the trains running costs are lower than the planes non?? 

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#83 Re: Climate Change
October 11, 2019, 05:10:55 pm
Have you checked the price using interrail tickets too? Often a good option.

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#84 Re: Climate Change
October 11, 2019, 05:16:36 pm
Bizarrely, I bet the trains running costs are lower than the planes non??

Hmm I don't know actually. With the disclaimer that I know bugger all about either, my instinct is that maintaining train tracks and all the associated aspects (power delivery, tunnels, scheduling, etc.) is more expensive. Not to mention that aviation fuel is supposedly rather cheap.

A quick Google shows the third runway at Heathrow coming in at c. £10-14bn whilst HS2 is somewhere North of £30bn, for example.

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#85 Re: Climate Change
October 11, 2019, 08:09:08 pm
If we have to or choose to fly, surely the very least we can do is pay the extra for carbon offset? Yes, it never fully compensates for the damage caused but at least it should be seen as the 'minimum personal contract' required for engaging in one of the most environmentally damaging acts one can perform?

Or am I just being too naive/simplistic...? :-[

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#86 Re: Climate Change
October 11, 2019, 10:24:44 pm
I don’t get this argument at all. Seems like you just pay money to counter your guilt.

Re travel.
To properly make a change we all need to stop travelling unless essential and climbing, surfing, skiing, getting pissed in the sun is in no way essential.
This won’t happen so it has to be the tech route.

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#87 Re: Climate Change
October 11, 2019, 11:41:32 pm
The flaw in that logic is that 'the tech route' is mostly a fantasy. How long it takes for that penny to drop will determine our fate (if it isn't already determined).

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#88 Re: Climate Change
October 12, 2019, 08:21:32 am
The flaw in that logic is that 'the tech route' is mostly a fantasy. How long it takes for that penny to drop will determine our fate (if it isn't already determined).

Anyone else here been to, say, Greenland and witnessed the retreat of the ice firsthand?

I spent several months there back in 2000. With one of the staff from the university campus at Qaqortoq (no, the dog didn’t jump on my keyboard), we sailed up a fjord to the south western end of the ice cap.
On the cliffs of the fjord, the uni researchers had painted a line to mark the ice limit, every summer, since (iirc) the 50’s/60’s.
At first, those lines were a few meters apart, but always in retreat.
By the 90’s, they were hundreds of meters apart. From the 1999 line, to the edge of the glacier that year, 300 meters.

The rate of retreat is more exaggerated in the fjords, than in the ice shelves (for instance), because fairly large sections float off and calve  as broad catchments of melt water concentrate into the relatively narrow channels, I was told.
Damned alarming to witness, mind.
For reference, the first marks, were almost a nautical mile from the 2000 edge.

So, yeah, probably this is all a bit late, really.

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#89 Re: Climate Change
October 12, 2019, 08:27:37 am
But I’d argue it’s not too late to restrict sea level rise to 1-2m instead of 2-4m.....

As a race - humans have success in reversing our global impacts - with the example of the ozone hole shrinkage. But - this was helped by an open and shut science case (non wiggle room for doubters) and the availability of CFC substitutes...

I am not optimistic for wholesale change to reverse CC soon, but it is possible.

Oldmanmatt

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#90 Re: Climate Change
October 12, 2019, 08:39:31 am
But I’d argue it’s not too late to restrict sea level rise to 1-2m instead of 2-4m.....

As a race - humans have success in reversing our global impacts - with the example of the ozone hole shrinkage. But - this was helped by an open and shut science case (non wiggle room for doubters) and the availability of CFC substitutes...

I am not optimistic for wholesale change to reverse CC soon, but it is possible.

Well, we better hurry up then:

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/10/09/truly-terrifying-scientists-studying-underwater-permafrost-thaw-find-area-arctic

But, from my limited knowledge of Methane clathrates and hydrates, we’re in for a rough ride soon. Storegga slides and tsunamis etc.

Aren’t the flanks of the Canaries essentially held together by clathrates? And, if that goes, it’s bye bye most of western Africa, Atlantic Europe and a good twatting of the Atlantic seaboard of the US?

Edit:

Sorry. Too brief and obscure.
My point being, sea level rise is not our only issue. Sea temperature is a biggy.
That might already be too far gone and the negative feed back loop in progress. A massive Storegga, and the associated methane release, would tip the atmosphere into a precipitous warming event.
The increased venting, in a supposedly cold zone, seems to indicate this event might be imminent.
As the oceanic temperatures even out (currently we principally have surface warming, but thermodynamics kinda hints that will, um, spread, deeper) we can expect more methane release and clathrate collapse becomes more and more likely.
Right?
« Last Edit: October 12, 2019, 08:47:50 am by Oldmanmatt »

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#91 Re: Climate Change
October 12, 2019, 10:08:53 am
Right, OMM, I’m no scientist, but the concept of tipping points and self-driving release of stored gases is terrifying. The non-linearity does not seem to get much public air time, but it should.

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#92 Re: Climate Change
October 12, 2019, 10:09:43 am
We don’t know is the honest answer. Methane is a potent GHG and the masses stored in Siberia and Canada are a real big issue.

There’s lots we don’t know still about the global climate system or earth system to be clearer. Some may turn out to be irrelevant and some may turn out to be more important than we thought. The issue is that we (humans) are warming the planet at an unprecedented rate and this is bound to trigger off things we’ve not seen before or thought of! 


One I like is they’ve recently found evidence for an event like El Niño occurring in the Indian Ocean X thousand years back.

Btw - the grand Canaria mega landslide wiping out the USA has been pretty much debunked as better tsunami modelling indicates much of the wave would dissipate/diminish by the time it got to the USA. You still see the documentaries based on the old science coming around n tv channels though.


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#93 Re: Climate Change
October 12, 2019, 11:03:20 am
I actually knew the Canary issue was less potent than first described. It was recently brought to mind by an article I read about the Clathrate “cementing” of fissures around  sites of Sub-oceanic volcanism (methane released by volcanic activity, as opposed to biologically derived) and that the current pattern of small, staggered slides in the Canaries, might change catastrophically, if that cementing is lost. I think they say a ~5+ quake (or caldera collapse) would be needed now, but that would be reduced to ~3 if the speculated cementing in lost...

Anyway, just picked it as a well known example.
Isn’t the main concern the combination of increased melt water (and  therefore sediment flow and deposition) combined with loss of clathrate stability; possibly setting up another Storegga somewhere in the higher (or very low) latitudes? A North Atlantic event being the most likely to impact large numbers of humans?

Anyway, for those that don’t know, 1m³ Methane  Clathrate, would release ~164m³ of methane at surface pressures.
There’s several Giga-tonnes of  it, globally, even if it’s much less than the estimates if the 70’s and 80’s.

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#94 Re: Climate Change
October 12, 2019, 12:39:02 pm
Bizarrely, I bet the trains running costs are lower than the planes non??

Hmm I don't know actually. With the disclaimer that I know bugger all about either, my instinct is that maintaining train tracks and all the associated aspects (power delivery, tunnels, scheduling, etc.) is more expensive. Not to mention that aviation fuel is supposedly rather cheap.

A quick Google shows the third runway at Heathrow coming in at c. £10-14bn whilst HS2 is somewhere North of £30bn, for example.

The current HS2 budget for a plan now pruned significantly from the original one is £56 billion and some are predicting a £30 billion overspend.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49048823

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#95 Re: Climate Change
October 12, 2019, 03:16:32 pm
The flaw in that logic is that 'the tech route' is mostly a fantasy. How long it takes for that penny to drop will determine our fate (if it isn't already determined).

If that really is the case we are fucked. Your not going to stop people travelling to a point where it will make enough difference so it needs to be done in a non damaging way or develop ways to clear up the damage we cause.

And it needs to be done in a way that companies can profit from it or it will never happen.


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#96 Re: Climate Change
October 12, 2019, 05:42:39 pm
As human beings, our motivations are largely emotionally driven - fight vs flight, to protect those we love, to fight for life etc

It seems to me that the whole climate change debate only tackles this in a mostly tangential way. Until a critical mass of us feel personally threatened, little will change. Behaviours are pretty much based on self-interest and self-preservation.

The fact that beginning to listen to a 16 year old literally fighting for her future and try to understand the science, for example, is what it has taken for some of us (me included, embarrassingly) to even begin to think about these 'big non-personal' issues is sobering (to me, at least).

I don't profess to know the answer to how to get more of us to 'wake up' and remove ourselves from the state of comfortable denial in which we live our everyday lives but I feel that at least part of the answer lies in finding a way to connect and engage with our personal emotional drivers.

Apologies for the psycho-babble. I know what I mean - just can't put it into any form of coherent language!

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#97 Re: Climate Change
October 12, 2019, 06:28:07 pm
seems like the people on the british isles can not imagine drastically cutting down on their flying holidays  ;)

i predict people will become more and more ashamed of flying the coming years, probably starting with kids who are thought to think about climate change in a very personal way.
also eating more meat than one needs to be healthy (could vary per person) will become a similar choice.

on the flying side, i would like to propose a cunning plan: just go on one long holiday a year, however many weeks you have in one return flight. might take some organising with work and such, but not a terrible hardship.

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#98 Re: Climate Change
October 12, 2019, 07:55:22 pm
More than 50% of people in uk already don’t fly and if you fly 3 times a year your a frequent flyer which I think was 15% ish. 
I would guess the stats on this forum would put a good amount of us in the later.
If all of us still only took one flight the numbers would go up.
I had only flown once before I was 25 and never flew anywhere for climbing. Probably fly three or four times a year now, mainly short hall for work and to be honest doesn’t seem much compared with some. 11 long hauls in my life and one more coming up.

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#99 Re: Climate Change
October 12, 2019, 08:41:56 pm
On the BBC website earlier (I think) that 15% of the UK population take 70% of the flights...

 

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