Climate Change Archives - More Zonkyness

Heatwave Scare-Mongering

Jul 232022

A certain bunch of … let’s call them idiots to be relatively polite … have been spewing forth idiocy in the online comments of various places labelling the heatwave warnings as “scare-mongering”. Mentioning the summer of 1976 and saying we all coped.

The heatwave of 1976 although it went on for longer, didn’t get as hot (36C was nearly reached). That’s 4C below this year’s heatwave peak. And people died during that heatwave too – there was a 20% increase in “excess deaths”.

So no we didn’t cope in the 1976 heatwave; at least not those of us who died.

A lot of criticism was aimed at the Met Office for the heat warnings, and mainstream media channels for repeating the warnings so endlessly. “Oh! We see such temperatures every year on holiday” the numb-brained drawl. No, you don’t; at least not often.

And when you do, it’s when you’re sleeping in air-conditioned hotel rooms beside a pool, with plenty of shade around. You aren’t stuck in offices with no air-conditioning, even hotter work-places (such as kitchens), or outside in the sun (nailing tiles to a roof). You’re not sleeping in a bedroom with the choice of leaving the windows shut (and building up heat), or opening them to let hot air (and noise) in.

When experts issue warnings, it is wise to pay attention to them. Whilst I understand an instinctive distrust of authority (I share it), subject specialists should be trusted – not blindly but (for example) when the Met Office issues heat warnings, it isn’t just one expert thinking it. If you want to question an expert, get as much education as they’ve had.

In short :-

That heatwave was dangerously high and justified the number of warnings issued.
It isn’t natural and was made more severe by climate change.
Being that guy who claims that we’re all snowflakes for being concerned about it just shows that you’re an idiot.

Saving the Planet

General, Politics No Responses »

Nov 272021

I can accept “Saving the Planet” as a political slogan for those who advocate taking action to combat climate change – political slogans don’t have to be entirely accurate although I might argue that “Saving People” is more accurate. Because no matter how serious climate change gets, the planet will carry on.

Don’t get me wrong, I think climate change is really serious – we will see millions of deaths at least; quite possibly billions of deaths. And climate refugees will make the Syrian refugee crisis seem like just a tiny taste of what the real thing will be like. And some historians put the collapse of the western Roman empire down to climate change refugees – I don’t think it’s that simple but it was certainly a contributing factor. That is the level of disruption from climate refugees that we can expect.

And if you’re one of those inhumane nasties that imagines military level forces using lethal force to stop refugees, you can forget it – not only are there enough of us bleeding heart liberals who will shout “fuck that shit”, but it is doubtful that any level of military force could stop millions of refugees.

Climate change won’t destroy the planet; it won’t even destroy the environment. It will change the environment catastrophically and humans are to blame. Whole species will become extinct, but probably not humans; we’re too adaptable and we’ve survived through extinction events before (although sometimes only just).

But before anyone gets too complacent, if we don’t do anything, humanity will survive by the skin of its teeth – if just 90% of us are killed, we’ll be lucky. If we act today to make drastic changes, we might keep things down to just a few million dead; if we had acted back in the 1980s, that would be considerably less.

The Climate Change Conspiracy

General, Politics No Responses »

Jan 302019

There are a bunch of people out there who jump on every single piece of ‘evidence’ they can find or construct that supposedly contradicts the evidence that the climate is changing for the warmer (and that it is mostly human activity driven).

Why?

In the beginning, some of them may have been honestly dumb, and objected to the notion of global warming simply because it challenged some of their favourite activities. After all who could believe that people could influence the climate?

And after all, what do climate scientists know? They’re just book smart and everyone knows that common sense beats book smart every time.

But over time, something else creeps in (and in some cases is there from the beginning) – a tendency to abuse the human liking for controversy to get more “hits” and a higher profile than would otherwise be the case.

And money of course.

So when you find random people on the Internet throwing rocks at the experts, bear in mind that they might just be innocently dumb or they might have an ulterior motive.

But let’s face it: They’re not after the truth no matter how much they claim otherwise.