Through out his time in the white house, Donald Trump attacked climate change science foolishly mocked it by pointing out hot weather and generally undermined the long-term leading position that the American government has had in the climate change fight. It is of course true, that what ever words presidents have said about climate change, they have not invested enough in doing something about it. As such, despite having roughly 5% of the worlds population, the USA is the second biggest emitter, emitting roughly 15% of the world emissions each year.
Continue reading “Donald Trump spent his time in the White house saying America couldn’t afford climate mitigation – what a foolish position”Jair Bolsonaro is having a similar impact on environmental laws in Brazil to the impact of Donald Trump in the USA – will the effect be longer lasting?
Just like Trump in the USA Jair Bolsonaro has taken an axe to the environmental protections that Brazil has created over decades. Also just like Donald Trump, the majority of these moves have been done by Executive act. Between march and may last year, Jair signed 195 infralegal acts – and just like under Trunp these acts are thought to be only just legal and should have gone through their governmental body.
In a conversation on CNN Bill Gates states by 2050 climate change will kill as many people as Covid has and by 2100 5 times as many
The video in question (I will include it below this article) is actually discussing the pandemic and Bill Gates predictions for the future.
However, in passing he points out that the current likely global warming to take place in the next almost 3 decades before 2050 would leave us with a planet warm enough to kill roughly the same number of people a year as Covid has. More scary, by 2100 the death rate could be 5 times as high (and it should be remembered that these are direct deaths rather than indirect deaths from starvation due to crop failure).
Look at the global effort to fight Covid! It is true that world wide it has killed roughly 2.5 million, however this number must be put in context. The number of deaths in 2019 was roughly 60 million, or approximately 1% of those alive. As such 2.5 million is just a blip up on the radar – it is a change of less than 5%.
Roughly 1/3 of the human population lives within 5-10m of the sea (vertically). More concerning, roughly 200 million live less than 1m above sea level. If we meet the current 2 degrees c target, limiting temperature rise, the sea is expected to rise somewhere between 60cm and 110cm.
In this situation, roughly 3% of the human population will have to move, given the expectation that weather will get worse as the temperature rises, the actual percentage that will have to move is likely to be far higher.
Remembering all the indirect problems such as weather changes, loss of remaining forests, desert expansion and many more, the world we are heading towards leaving for our grandchildren is one that we would not want to have to live in.
These comments about global warming are just examples. They are not the main point of the interview.Â
Humanity has shown an incredible ability of working together effectively during the pandemic.Â
This must continue, we must address climate change to halt the doomsday scenario that our most educated are predicting we are heading towards.
For me (and for the website) one of the most exciting points is that a large part of the fight against climate change could be succeeded in by undoing the damage to many ecosystems around the world.
This would be surprisingly cheap and could lead to far higher financial benefits than the costs involved. It would serve a second fantastic goal of halting species loss, and allowing many wildlife populations to recover.
Two birds with one stone is always good. When they are both so essential this is fantastic news.
A conservative MP in the UK has spouted rubbish about global warming again
At the moment there is an alarmingly high frequency of British conservative members of Parliament stating things about global warming and reducing carbon footprint that are categorically wrong.
Polar ice is now melting 6 times faster than it was in the 1990s
This statistic on its own is alarming but to put it in Context this suggest that we are tracking the worst of the three scenarios put forward by climate scientists in the past.
It just been uncovered: people working for trump are implanting climate denialism into scientific research
Multiple times in the last few years administration has taken a scientific report and decided to do something that completely contradicts his findings.
The most obvious of these is global warming, where it extends to the import of hunting trophies from abroad and the huge increase in the number of trophies allowed to be taken in the USA (likely to decimate wildlife populations within the country).
However having run up against this time and time again the trump administration is increasingly trying to forced all the arguments by putting in his false information into the report before it’s published.
An Insider in the interior department has been inputting the the totally discredited idea that trump has been regularly spouting- there’s an actuality extra carbon dioxide in the environment is good. Given the basis of the recent globally agreed treaties to deal with the increase in carbon dioxide emissions- and the clear need for the USA’s reduce it’s emissions given that it accounts for 25% of the world’s total, this is a clear attempt to justify abandoning its agreements.
In particular Trumps appointment who arrived early in his presidency, has continually tried to push the idea that at the current models have over-estimated the amount of warming that would occur. This is despite the data clearly stating this is not the case indeed if anything is has underestimated the impact.
The trump administration has attacked aggressively the interior department scientific outlook both in terms of studying future global warming and of studying diseases and epidemics. This second area has quite rightly come back to bite them as the Outbreak of the Corona virus has demonstrated the lack of readiness that the trump administration has for a significant illness spending in the population.
I should mention that this article was written in isolation from yesterdays article and on the basis of other articles, though it should be concerning that the Us government is both trying to make scientific papers play a smaller role in choosing what to do- and the same week an article suggesting that Trumps administration is demanding the right to change scientific articles to fit their own views before publishing.
Why is it necessary to do both? Is it clear, even to Trump, that whatever the position on scientific research you cannot be seen to continue to go against the evidence all the time? America currently leads the world in the amount of research it creates- however if Trump damages the reputation of this research and its impartiality, it could do untold damage to american universities and their world standings. This is likely to last far beyond Trumps administration- reelection or not.
people say adapting to climate changes too expensive- would you say that it was too expensive to defend yourself in a war?
One of the biggest arguments that keeps being made by many people is that even if climate change is true it’s going to cost far too much to do anything about it.
SUV sale to blame for co2 emissions, not falling diesel sales
Over the last couple of decades, the UK had gradually reduced the amount of co2 emissions. Unfortunately, over the last couple of years the number of people driving large suv cars, which use far more fossil fuel has increased dramatically.Â
This recent increase in fossil fuel suv use, has increased co2 emissions so much, as to eradicate the gains of the last 2 decades. If the UK is to meet its carbon reduction targets, the government must be paying more attention, and we must start increasing taxes on fossil fuel SUVs so that they are not a good option for most people, making the electric alternatives for economically viable.
Party leaders had a climate debate, what should we think
It is still frustrating that often climate issues are one of the lowest priorities for a government. Sure, we want clean air air and clean water but even Donald Trump talks about this. As such it was fantastic to see that one of the main debates was on the climate.
As such it was fantastic that the majority of political parties in the UK sent their leaders to sell their climate policies to the British public.
What should we make of the fact that 2 of the parties failed to turn up. It is true that the Conservatives sent Michael Gove in Boris Johnson’s place, however what does it say about the most likely candidate for Prime Minister that he did not think it was worth turning up and debating with other leaders on climate change.
We live on an island, if as we are currently heading we hit the temperature rises that are predicted by the end of the century then significant parts of the United Kingdom will be underwater. A collapse of the the ice shelves in the Antarctic that hold the ice in the middle, could mean Rises in sea level above 10 m worldwide.
I have been thoroughly frustrated by the conservative party’s record over the last decade in power. For those who read here regularly you have seen occasional articles on this subject in question. From scrapping the the solar subsidies ( apparently because they were too expensive) to continue to give subsidies to fossil fuel companies, for instance by only charging 5% VAT on gas for heating, amounting to over 10 billion pound a year ( I hope I the people see the contradiction here as well).
In my opinion, Boris Johnson’s cowardice yesterday evening in failing to turn up and have his parties environmental policies debated, simply says that he is not a suitable Prime Minister. It is unfortunate with the current standing of the Labour Party that the Conservative Party are a long way in the lead.
I myself live in one of the safest conservative seats in the country. I have proved to be a bit of a political butterfly, unwilling to Settle on one particular party for the simple reason that no party is satisfactory when it comes to the environment ( the greens may indeed come closest but they have some odd views on other areas such as the monarchy, which relegates them in the majority of the country to protest vote).
Given the incredible importance of making dramatic improvements to to our carbon emissions over the course of the next Parliament or two, Brexit is a distraction we’re dont need- when we should be concentrating on making sure that the environment we leave for our children and grandchildren is hospitable, we’re going to spend the majority of the next decade trying to sort out the mess caused by brexit.
I know some would argue therefore for that we should all vote conservative give them a huge majority and allow them to push through whatever they like like leaving us a clean slate to get to work on the environment. However there are still other problems with their position. They are extremely keen to do a trade deal with America, and while it is certainly important for our future prosperity as a country this should not come at any cost. Trump’s government are demanding extraordinary things when it comes to climate and environmental protections: we run the risk of being on the wrong side of History.
It was good to see those leaders who bothered to turn up having a serious debate about climate change and the environment. I certainly hope that some of their policies are able to be put in place whoever wins. My own feeling is that on this occasion both over the climate and Europe we cannot afford a conservative government. With a Coalition of some sort they will have to work together, as such it is worth looking at voting tactically to deny them the ability to go off on their own.
If you wish to have your say either way, and live in the uk the election is today.
The dishonesty of Google
Google has made a big show over the last few years of being active in reducing CO2 emissions and trying to avoid the worst of global warming. This is of course commendable, they have made an effort to offset all of their CO2 emissions.
However what seems to have come to light is that they have been funding significant announce of global warming denialism.
Continue reading “The dishonesty of Google”