Lots of hot air

[TRITON]

Here's another link outlining the dismal facts. Is the Livestock Industry Destroying the Planet?

So appropriate to place it in the 'Lots of hot air' thread. Thats exactly what it was.
Talking about clearing land in the rainforest for meat production, not that we use meat from South America, although thanks to brexit we're looking further afield, and those South American farmers, hoping to supply this large opening market would go about clearing even more land than they currently do.
Or lets talk about New Zealand, or Botswana, but in the end will these countries be following suit ?,nope and I doubt Botswana could afford it, leaving us to do everything, make every change, probably to the detriment of all other aspects of life in the uk, and it wont change one iota global wise.

 

[Rorschach]

So appropriate to place it in the 'Lots of hot air' thread. Thats exactly what it was.
Talking about clearing land in the rainforest for meat production, not that we use meat from South America, although thanks to brexit we're looking further afield, and those South American farmers, hoping to supply this large opening market would go about clearing even more land than they currently do.
Or lets talk about New Zealand, or Botswana, but in the end will these countries be following suit ?,nope and I doubt Botswana could afford it, leaving us to do everything, make every change, probably to the detriment of all other aspects of life in the uk, and it wont change one iota global wise.

Only rich countries can afford the luxury of purposely impoverishing themselves on the basis it gives them a warm fuzzy feeling inside.

 

[Jacob]

Only rich countries can afford the luxury of purposely impoverishing themselves on the basis it gives them a warm fuzzy feeling inside.

Silly remark, unusual for you!
It's not about a warm fuzzy feeling it's about climate change and how to deal with it.
Correct to say it is problematic - but that's how it is with problems - don't need to be told that, we need solutions.

 

[Droogs]

I don’t know what I don’t know. So, I don’t know how the earth survived when the coal and oil was living matter, the white cliffs of dover; calcium carbonate was shell fish. That’s a lot of carbon / CO2 that’s been locked up….but it was once free. Life survived / thrived when it was free so why does it make any difference if it’s free again? Equally where has all the carbon come from to replace that locked up to supported life before we started releasing it by using fossil fuels.
There was more oxygen in the atmosphere that supported super sized bugs when the dinosaurs were around…..where did it go, was it locked up with the carbon?

The biological epoch in which the white cliff of Dover and the Oil fields of the middle east are millions of years ago and the one in which the palm fronds of 4 star and unleaded were waving in the breeze under a slightly brighter sun was during a time when there was no animal life as such, yes bacteria and other things like that but now cows or dinosaurs or even insects really. That was all still to come but as an aside the atmosphere was around 30 bar thicker and had just under the ignition point of oxygen saturation in the air with a hell of a lot of water in the air at around 99.9% humidity all the time.

 

[TominDales]

Is the issue the efficient use of land for food production, or which is more environmentally sound - using land for biomass/crops or animal rearing.

Efficient use of land is more likely through crop production for food than the same area used for animals - animals are not 100% efficient in converting feed to meat.

This may only be an issue due to the growth in populations - were there only 25% of the people, it would not matter that meat production required 4 times the land.

Environmentally the answer is less certain. Solar energy forces the growth of biomass - grass, trees, crops etc. Biomass created is "consumed" in one of three ways:

• eaten as an edible crop by humans
• eaten by animals which are then eaten by humans
• simply rots - trees and plants grow, die and then regrow

The only variable is the length of the cycle - trees may absorb solar energy for centuries before eventually dying, rotting and releasing chemicals back into the atmosphere. The other extreme cycle is the time for a crop to grow to maturity followed by immediate consumption.

Adding water use (if this is actually a constraint) or the type of gases given off by decay (some gases are more "greenhouse" than others) may have an environmental impact.

In summary (as a committed carnivore) - without a very clear explanation I am currently unconvinced of the benefit to climate change of reducing meat consumption

From what I've read on this topic (its not my expertise, but relevant to my work as we are trying to reduce manufacturing emissions of CO2 to get to net zero), animal production - especially the intensive type seen in the US and now spreading to south america and Australia etc gives of relatively high amounts of methane which is a very severe green house gas about 80 times co2. So reducing meat consumption would be a quick way to buy time for CO2 reduction to click in. Methane is also lost to the atmosphere from fracking and oil and gas production, again those fugitive emissions can be quite eastly reduced. So an effort to reduce methane can buy valuable time.
We don't have to become vegetations, but just go back to the kind of meat eating levels of 30 years ago.

 

[jcassidy]

So my position is fairly simple; climate change is real, 90% of the world simply doesn't give a pineapple about it.

Climate change is real, only rich Western countries are worried about it, we are unlikely to be able to stop it, so you'd better start getting ready.

I know (because I work for one) regulators are very concerned about the impact on financial stability when vast tracts of housing can't be insured as they are near the sea or in newly defined flood areas. The impact on banks (all those mortgages! !!) is not to be underestimated.

On top of that you can add the cost of adverse weather events. Insurance companies may start excluding storm damage or "once in [x] years events.

Add to that an uncertain amount of economic activity that will be impacted, be that industrial zones that will become unusable, lost harvests or reduced agricultural productivity, unusable transport systems, urban areas that need flood defences, etc. etc.

Is already difficult or impossible to insure a sea side house against erosion or flood damage. I can't remember the criteria, something like within so many hundred meters distance and less than 6 metres above high tide mark. Something like that.

Just my 2c.

 

[Selwyn]

So my position is fairly simple; climate change is real, 90% of the world simply doesn't give a pineapple about it.

Climate change is real, only rich Western countries are worried about it, we are unlikely to be able to stop it, so you'd better start getting ready.

I know (because I work for one) regulators are very concerned about the impact on financial stability when vast tracts of housing can't be insured as they are near the sea or in newly defined flood areas. The impact on banks (all those mortgages! !!) is not to be underestimated.

On top of that you can add the cost of adverse weather events. Insurance companies may start excluding storm damage or "once in [x] years events.

Add to that an uncertain amount of economic activity that will be impacted, be that industrial zones that will become unusable, lost harvests or reduced agricultural productivity, unusable transport systems, urban areas that need flood defences, etc. etc.

Is already difficult or impossible to insure a sea side house against erosion or flood damage. I can't remember the criteria, something like within so many hundred meters distance and less than 6 metres above high tide mark. Something like that.

Just my 2c.

A newly defined flood area is basically a floodplain that was there before the houses anyway. A lot of this is to do wit water management rather than excess rainfall

 

[TominDales]

So my position is fairly simple; climate change is real, 90% of the world simply doesn't give a pineapple about it.

Climate change is real, only rich Western countries are worried about it, we are unlikely to be able to stop it, so you'd better start getting ready.

I know (because I work for one) regulators are very concerned about the impact on financial stability when vast tracts of housing can't be insured as they are near the sea or in newly defined flood areas. The impact on banks (all those mortgages! !!) is not to be underestimated.

You raise a good point. We are already paying an flood surcharge.

The UK government has known about the effects of climate change for a very long time, the earth summit in Rio provided a thorough global analysis. Yet in the UK we continued to allow development on flood plains etc and have been slow to adapt and we are currently paying the price through an insurance surcharge on all households.
When the floods and coastal floods of a few years ago put flood insurance beyond the means for most effected, the government stepped in and an agreement was made by the insurance industry to continue to insure at risk homes, in return for a flood insurance surcharge on the rest of the population, even so its still expensive cover for those affected, but there is a national scheme to help spread the pain.
If we do nothing we can expect more of the same, as coastal regions and those displaced from flood plains will need compensating and the most likely outcome will be a general insurance surcharge to pay for the compensation. The more we plan and prepare the better we can avoid some of these issues by not building in coastal or at risk areas. We can plant upland vegetation that reduces flood run-off etc. The more we prepare the lower the longer term costs.
In an earlier post someone compared our situation to biblical times. The story of Joseph of the coat fame is quite apt. As chief minister in Egypt he prepared for drought during the times of plenty and neighbouring countries supposedly didn't. Its during the relative good times before the climate radically changes that we need to prepare, whilst we have time to adapt.

 

[planesleuth]

The biological epoch in which the white cliff of Dover and the Oil fields of the middle east are millions of years ago and the one in which the palm fronds of 4 star and unleaded were waving in the breeze under a slightly brighter sun was during a time when there was no animal life as such, yes bacteria and other things like that but now cows or dinosaurs or even insects really. That was all still to come but as an aside the atmosphere was around 30 bar thicker and had just under the ignition point of oxygen saturation in the air with a hell of a lot of water in the air at around 99.9% humidity all the time.

What a load of tosh!

 

[Droogs]

@planesleuth try being a little less ignorant about how this planet evolved and works
https://forces.si.edu/atmosphere/02_02_06.html

 

[Jacob]

..... A lot of this is to do wit water management rather than excess rainfall

Wishful thinking. Half true in some cases where water management is abandoned as no longer possible.

 

[planesleuth]

Try being accurate in your summation of the planet's 'evolution'.

 

[Selwyn]

Wishful thinking. Half true in some cases where water management is abandoned as no longer possible.

Which of the latest floods in the UK have been "acts of god" with no explanation beyond climate change? Very often up and down stream things haven't been managed very well, and very often these are natural floodplains anyway

 

[Jacob]

Which of the latest floods in the UK have been "acts of god" with no explanation beyond climate change? Very often up and down stream things haven't been managed very well, and very often these are natural floodplains anyway

Climate change pushes things beyond their expected range so you could argue that ALL of the out-of-the-ordinary or record breaking floods are amplified by, and hence a result of, climate change. They all happen in places already vulnerable of course.
River management ends up being revised accordingly - improved dredging may make things worse down stream in some places, in others may help. Deliberate flooding/re-wilding becomes a tactic as in Ennerdale Wild Ennerdale – Shaping the Landscape Naturally which arguably could be the answer to recent record breaking (climate change caused) floods in places like Cockermouth. The flood in Cockermouth, 19th-20th November 2009 | Visit Cumbria n.b. this off the top of my head - google for details.
The big problem comes where rising sea levels meet increased run-off due to higher intensity rainfall.

 

[AlanY]

The problem is animal farming, which uses 20 times the land area of the equivalent vegetable food production.
S America is being rapidly deforested for cattle farming and animal fodder, following word-wide trends.

I don't see animal farming as a 'problem'. I see it as ribeye steak on the barbie, washed down by wine imported (via container ship) from Australia. The greenies would deny me these things and I see that as a 'problem'. COP26 is a joke, given the three biggest polluters don't give a toss about the environment or about climate change (if they did, they would stop building coal-fired power stations and move to cars with small efficient petrol engines. But aircon is nice and you just cannot beat the sound of a throaty V8 engine so, sod the climate).

 

[Jameshow]

I don't see animal farming as a 'problem'. I see it as ribeye steak on the barbie, washed down by wine imported (via container ship) from Australia. The greenies would deny me these things and I see that as a 'problem'. COP26 is a joke, given the three biggest polluters don't give a toss about the environment or about climate change (if they did, they would stop building coal-fired power stations and move to cars with small efficient petrol engines. But aircon is nice and you just cannot beat the sound of a throaty V8 engine so, sod the climate).

Don't forget the cheap tat from China via Amazon and the foreign holidays - all of which makes the electric vehicles the middle classes buy look rather like fig leaves.....

Cheers James

 

[Spectric]

I know (because I work for one) regulators are very concerned about the impact on financial stability when vast tracts of housing can't be insured as they are near the sea or in newly defined flood areas. The impact on banks (all those mortgages! !!) is not to be underestimated.

I can remember that during the last big floods we had up here apart from the emergency services & RNLI we had the enviroment agency and I believe some partner company who were marking up maps to redefine the flood zones and this info was for local councils, highways and you guessed it the insurance companies. After this there were some people with huge excess on their insurance premiums.

They talk of these sea level rises and yet not only are they doing nothing about the climate change issue they are also not planing about what to do when it happens. They must realise London is a high risk, thames barrier is basicaly obsolete and when the levels rise it will just flow in from the Essex coast so unless they build huge dykes then they should be looking at where to site the new capital, perhaps Birmingham to be more central.

 

[TRITON]

I think you should increase your scope about oil and remember it is not just a case of oil = petrol, oil = diesel, a great number of products are made from it and its unlikely we'll be able to replace them all with interwoven strands of plant matter.

 

[Rorschach]

Fuels, plastics, medicines, preservatives, fertilisers, solvents, cleaning products, cosmetics........ the list goes on.

 

[Spectric]

Without petrochemicals an awful lot of products will no longer be produced. One of the first to come out the process is Asphalt and bitumen so are we just going to use concrete instead. At the other end you have Lpg, ie propane and butane so thats a lot of forklifts without fuel not to mention the leisure industry, but not an issue for the road gangs as they will not have any tarmac to lay anyway. Then in the middle you have paraffin and jet fuels, end of the aviation industry but what about the military, can you forsee an electric F15 or B2! Perhaps they all go and get replaced by drones so thats solved. You also have a lot of other things like plastic , polypropylene think rope and food packaging. Polyester is insulation, fabrics but also a key ingredient to plastic pollution and don't forget PTFE so thats another load, but luckily we will be able to import from other countries who will still be selling ICE vehicles for some time and keeping their refineries going unlike here in the UK.