Do you believe climate change is the most urgent global emergency

newmember2

Planetary climate systems are so vast and complex that if we really are seeing any changes due to human activity then it's already way past the point of doing anything about it. That ship has sailed.

MEGA BRO WOLF 5000

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119376293#Comment_119376293

Nah. I'm just sick and tired of being taxed to death in the name of "climate change" while other developing countries do nothing and the people lecturing you are elite millionaires flying around the world in private jets. It's got nothing to do with the climate and everything to do with making money.

Jequ0n

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119376159#Comment_119376159

….

Count Dracula

I think it is a real issue and I think it is a problem. However, I also think it gets rammed down everyone's throat a bit too much. There is no harm in everyone doing their bit, but it does not stop the sale of big 4 wheel drives and new mobiles every year. I think it more often then not gets abused as a stick to hit everyone with. It kind of appears similar to the power which Religious Clerics and Zealots had in the middle ages. They had the almighty power of "God" and if you did not believe them you were condemned to hell, you could be burnt at the stake for not believing in the bible, it happened.

It is all a bit hazy, the science.... and we will not really know the repercussions of the current human footprint for centuries to come?

As a species humans have evolved dramatically in the last 100 years or 3-4 generations. I can walk out the door and drive to a local Mickey Dees and buy my dinner from out my side window whilst talking into a metal perforated box, I can then eat that "meal" and throw the rubbish into a plastic bin which gets collected and dumped into landfill somewhere out of sight. My grandparents would be shocked by it. They had to grow their own Veg or they didn't eat, that is not that long ago? The world is tiny now, I can be in a nightclub in Cape Town by midnight, that journey used to take over a month 100 years ago. I think a greater threat to the human race is how we might be dropping the ball on how resourceful we are.

It also goes too far, chastising dairy farmers over methane from cow shight is too much of a stretch for me? Bovines have been shighting all over the planet for millions of years, all of a sudden some Danish professor announces that cow shight is killing the environment and every livestock farmer ends up in hardship, something is not adding up for me on that one? It is not unlike the clerics of the 15th century calling out heretics from the pulpit.

But that being said I think that humans are robust and natural survivors. Yes there will be problems with Global warming, but we will adapt and persevere. Life is not a disaster movie, it is a great gift and privilege, go and enjoy it.

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119376695#Comment_119376695

Your carbon tax adds up to a couple hundred euros a year. Your taxes have been used to subsidse the fossil fuel industry your entire life.

You're being manipulated by those same interests to associate green policies with taxes while ignoring the billions spent on oil and gas subsidies

Beasty

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119375810#Comment_119375810

Iceberg? What iceberg? - that iceberg has blended into its surroundings.....

The problem is everyone leaves it to someone else. And ultimately those of us who have benefitted from globalisation and the best standards of living are happy to leave it all for the next generation to sort out, by which time it will be too late (and probably already is too late to some extent, but equally starting to properly address it now will improve the chances for future generations)

bnt

I don’t think I would use the word “urgent”, since it places too much emphasis on the time factor. “Pressing” or “serious” would be better words for it. It demands sustained, meaningful, comprehensive changes to what we do and how we do it.

Metaphor: everyone knows that crash diets don’t lead to lasting weight loss, but rather that becoming more healthy requires more permanent changes to one’s lifestyle. In the same way, climate change won’t be “solved” quickly by panicking and making drastic changes that aren’t sustainable over the long term.

Thelonious Monk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119376695#Comment_119376695

ah here developing countries are not the ones who caused this mess. The fact that there are hypocrites or green politicians in business class doesn't mean we're not f*cked. I don't think people are going to take it seriously until crop failures become more and more frequent, and it's already happening.

Brid Hegarty

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119376695#Comment_119376695

So you're not a climate change denier then... good!

I don't see it as lecturing, and if it is then they're really lecturing each other, not you or me.

How much truth is there to the millionaires flying around in jets theory? I get the point but I suspect it's really just an Alex Jones type red herring. I guess only poor David Attenborough isn't smart enough to suspect that it's all about money?

And what are you saying so, that we should just do nothing about climate change? Wouldn't you be complaining about too?

Wanderer78

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119379671#Comment_119379671

tbf, i am finding this interesting!

https://twitter.com/CelebJets

Brid Hegarty

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119379772#Comment_119379772

Yeah, Spielberg in Ireland there recently.

KilOit

Not climate change as such but what affects it. hate seeing the rain forests being wiped out and plastic and oil spills into the oceans.

Pending fear would be evolving super powers, I think a civil war in America will happen and a 3rd world war, scary things happening in China now, massive financial collapse is about to happen. 10 years time the world will be a very different place

harmless

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119379772#Comment_119379772

Each one releasing more Co2 in 2 hours than I will be responsible for in 1 year.

Is this proof that Co2 footprint was just invented by British Petroleum to shift blame away from powerful people and corporations?

Wanderer78

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119379878#Comment_119379878

...maybe, we cant keep doing what we re doing, wealth will always be protected, but its up to us to keep highlighting its obligations also, including our own....

EOQRTL

Voted no. It's blown out of all proportion by interest groups that stand to make money from keeping people fearful.

Count Dracula

I still struggle to comprehend how 3rd millennium cow shight is producing more methane than the cow shight dropped by their ancestors over the centuries? Surely manure dropped 300 years ago was just as detrimental to the environment as manure produced by modern cattle? This is what the scientists have gotten over the line, did no one question this, or are we not allowed to?

I also doubt very much that Ireland's carbon footprint is of any significance on the global scale of things? I can only imagine that measures taken by the 6 million people on the island are merely token efforts when compared to the industrial carnage being raged in developing Africa, India, China or say the Philippines? I respect that it is very noble of us to recycle and purchase 80k electric cars, but the reality is that we are literally a blip in the Atlantic ocean, they may as well ban sheep farming in New Zealand.

What fuel is used to procure the lithium that is running those batteries? Lead acid, zinc air, nickel cadmium, lithium phosphate... be the hokey. The cringing reality is that you couldn't drive from one end of the country to the other without needing to recharge. What a shambles. I reckon they have as much future at the Betamax video, I said it first.

harmless

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119380017#Comment_119380017

But most well know climate change activists are super emitters. Responsible for the equivalent pollution per year as thousands of people.

Do they know something we don't? Why don't they believe in personal responsibility?

Danzy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119378260#Comment_119378260

No but they are going to be the ones that add most of the carbon this century.

So they will tip it from problem to crisis to disaster.

Largely fighting climate change is a Western Europe and North America passion, most of the world doesn't care.

That's a problem.

Western Europe and North America going net zero will be dwarfed by Asian carbon output alone.

We are all in it together, only sometimes it seems.

Wanderer78

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119380157#Comment_119380157

are they really, care to share those resources that confirms this?

harmless

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119380070#Comment_119380070

There was no industrilised farming. Eating meat was consider a luxury not so long ago.

Ireland has it's part to play as part of the EU which contains 450 million people.

If we can reduce our polution per capita to that of the developing countries you listed we will be on the right track.

A transition from cars to EV cars would be a mistake, there are much more efficient modes of transport.

Strumms

Agriculture and Industry are two of the biggest catalysts of climate change yet, there are precious few restrictions or limitations placed on their operations, especially agriculture that can influence climate change….positively.

much easier to target and tax the fûck out of Johnny and Mary with 3 kids, driving a 1.6 litre.

Wanderer78

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119380204#Comment_119380204

how will we run our economies will ageing populations?

what modes of transport are they?

harmless

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119380192#Comment_119380192

We have outsoutrced most of our manufacturing to asia and they still cause less of an impanct to climate change per capitia. How have they managed to do this?

Seth Brundle

I still struggle to comprehend how 3rd millennium cow shight is producing more methane than the cow shight dropped by their ancestors over the centuries? Surely manure dropped 300 years ago was just as detrimental to the environment as manure produced by modern cattle? This is what the scientists have gotten over the line, did no one question this, or are we not allowed to?

I think this is the second time this question has been raised on this thread.

Ireland has a cattle population of about 6,500,000 head, a sheep population of nearly 4,000,000 and 1,700,000 pigs.

These numbers are astronomical compared to those in our history.

Danzy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119380215#Comment_119380215

Johnny and Mary will be complaining about agriculture over supper and they will still decide to eat tomorrow again.

There is a hypocrisy in that.

They will also push for agricultural output to be reduced in Europe, where most of the best land in the world is, in favour of other locations where growth is achieved by abusing fertilizer to drive growth on poor soils, which is most of Asia, South America and most of Africa where environmental regulations are non existent.

You want low carbon and environmental protection then farm where the least damage is done on the best land and climate.

Strumms

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119380250#Comment_119380250

Not hypocritical, humans have to eat, that’s just a fact.

loads of agricultural machinery and vehicles are hybrids and have been for some time, but farmers engagement with such tech is slow.

Danzy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119380241#Comment_119380241

They produce massive amounts of carbon but have large populations.

Its why so many talk about Carbon per capita, otherwise the focus is going to have to radically shift to Asia, where the carbon problem is now and where it is growing exponentially.

If you want to reduce global carbon focus on Asia. Everything else is way down the list and often just Western narcissism.

Western Europe and North America are going in the right direction at a speed of knots, Asia is rocketing in the wrong direction.

What we do now is verging on also ran, passed out.

The hope is for European and American tech to meet the challenges and provide the Asian giants with the tech to mitigate their carbon footprint.

We all have to do something but a carbon neutral Europe is not going to have a global impact on carbon.

Danzy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119380247#Comment_119380247

.n

Danzy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119380267#Comment_119380267

They are very expensive, hard to find, produced in small numbers, near impossible to fix yourself, so additional expense and they have a very poor torque.

They are all big issues.

People are also obsessed with ever cheaper food so the economic sustainability of production is an issue as well, big reason to stick with current machines.

magicbastarder

this link would suggest otherwise. seems to show head of cattle going from about 300m in 1900 to about a billion in 2000.

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Global-animal-stocks-for-1900-1950-2000-and-2050-for-cattle-A-pigs-B-and-sheep_fig2_51130812