Solar panel discussion (and elsewhere). It basically doesn’t work, except in narrow scenarios e.g. low temperature hot water for pool heating, electricity for remote stations where there is no mains power, for virtue signalling purposes, or to get a building permission (for a “green” house) where a permission could not be obtained otherwise.
The best thing you can do for the environment is to not have children 
Or, if you must, have just one. Nothing else you can do will even remotely compare with the benefit to the environment which is obtained by not expanding the population. The benefit is felt locally, too, by fewer cars on the road, and all the other benefits of fewer people around (less pressure on housing costs, etc) rather than some distant possibility of reducing global warming.
Peter wrote:
The best thing you can do for the environment is to not have children
No one would argue that fewer individuals on the planet will have a positive effect.
But population growth is being outpaced by a growth in consumption, and it’s this which is the issue.
There are enough resources on earth to satisfy the needs of 10 billion, without damaging the climate.
There aren’t enough resources if those 10 billion demand to live like an average US/Australian/Canadian citizen currently does.
But population growth is being outpaced by a growth in consumption
I am not sure that is true in the 1st World. I think many are realising they are approaching the limit of how much junk they can buy and use.
In the 3rd World there is a growing “get rich quick” mentality (I see this in my dealings with China, for example) but we can’t do anything about that. It may be self limiting, especially as (or if) imports of Chinese goods by the 1st World countries reduce in the future, due to a decline in demand for junk retail goods, combined with reshoring. I am about to pull the plug on chinese whole-product manufacturing… they keep doing a runner and stealing our stock, tooling, test gear, etc. If you look at Africa (admittedly it is culturally / in work ethic very different to China) it is clear that it is by no means assured that every country will eventually get rich. Many stay poor for centuries, with no end in sight. It’s a complicated argument…
DavidJ wrote:
Fuji_Abound wrote: That may not be so.I remember that coming out. Just like climate change scepticism they’ll always be some outlier reports.
The colossal weight of contrary evidence does not support their conclusions. Changes in global climate occurred over extremely long periods of time.
So what does the geological record say about this event and why is the geology in the article disputed?
Is it possible the fresh water outflow and the changes in sea level will dampen down some of the currents that feed the poles with warmer water? Where is the science?
Peter – I agree, unfortunately the reality is population growth is a plague. We could all do exactly as we please were the population considerably smaller. Of course it is politically impossible to control population (at least at the moment) and economists are obsessed with the concept of growth, which rather depends on us all consuming more.
aart wrote:
and the rate of global warming is alarming.
Really? Where? Global lower atmosphere temp has a cooling trend for the last 3-4 years.
Fuji_Abound wrote:
Changes in global climate occurred over extremely long periods of time
Hmmm…. 1000 years old trees under a glacier….
https://www.livescience.com/39819-ancient-forest-thaws.html
Michael_J wrote:
Really? Where? Global lower atmosphere temp has a cooling trend for the last 3-4 years.
Right. And so it did 1980-1982, 1983-1985, 1988-1989, 1996-1997, 1998-2000, 2007-2008, 2010-2011 and still the temperature is higher now than in 1979. It is the long term trend that matters, not what happen during a few years.
As you can see from the diagram 1998 was an outlier – an unusually warm year. Global warning deniers loved this and for a long time used 1998 as baseline — conveniently ignoring what happened before. When 2016 was even warmer they changed to using that year as a baseline – just like you are doing now.
So where is the alarming rate?
Michael_J wrote:
So where is the alarming rate?
Let me Google that for you:
https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/climate-change-in-ten-graphs
graph one.
I don’t personally find a slow, steady average temperature rise of between 0.5 and 1.0 degree C (in total) over the last 130 years ‘alarming’ Beyond that I’m not convinced that, regardless of cause, its a bad thing overall (for people).
To me it’s mildly interesting, and not nearly as consequential as assuring adequate, secure energy supply (independent of source), non biodegradable waste and above all the issue of too many people. Pilots above all (literally) should be able to understand that coating the earth’s surface with so many people that it’s hard to find a place without them is fundamentally bizarre and destructive to the world as it would otherwise exist, something that people would enjoy if given opportunity, and which seems to me to prevent the ‘rats in a cage’ bad behavior that comes with high human population density.
The only solution that allows high standard of human living combined with allowing nature to operate relatively undisturbed is lower population. Few ‘leaders’ want to face that reality because their power and finances are derived from large populations. So instead the message is about behavior modification (delivered in whatever vessel is convenient) in the hope of reducing the impact of man while preserving the numbers.
