It's a bit warm/ wet/ cold outside

[Tiplodocus]

"Eating meat less, and from locally sourced butchers, has just as much an effect as veganism."

I'd be interested to see figures. To be sustainable from locally sourced butchers I would imagine you'd get very little meat per person per week.

But good on you for making the effort to eat less and make sure you source everything locally and sustainably.

I'd still rather we stopped killing the poor buggers enirely though. It's for no reason other than habit/convenience. (Cases like IP excepted)

[shaolin_monkey]

Those steel bottles are currently a fiver in Tesco and are the same quality as the ones you get on Amazon for at least a tenner.

Re doing stuff to reduce your own individual impact, I'm all for it, as you need to practise what you preach.

However, do not for one moment let the big corporations shift the responsibility of climate change and CO2 emissions on to the general public - that is a massive distraction technique, to hide their responsibility.

A few links for you:

https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10/100-fossil-fuel-companies-investors-responsible-71-global-emissions-cdp-study-climate-change



https://fullfact.org/news/are-100-companies-causing-71-carbon-emissions/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_contributors_to_greenhouse_gas_emissions


So yeah, individual action is great, but the real thrust of the climate change movement, the one that can do the most good, is to hold those fekkers accountable.

[IAMTHESYSTEM]

China's at the top of that list. All that lovely Coal is powering China's rise to Superpower. How do you persuade the Chinese to reduce their CO2 emissions when you helped prime the ticking time bomb of Global warming with your 19th Century Industrial revolution? 'That's a bit rich coming from you,' the Chinese are bound to replay. In that lays the dilemma one that sadly I fear can not be solved. Self-interests means China will keep using coal until something as useful and cheaper comes along. I've read that some of the Plasma powered reactors are just 30-40 years away or so but there are still a few technical problems to solve.   

[IndigoPrime]

'That's a bit rich coming from you,' the Chinese are bound to replay.

"We can sell everyone solar panels", more like. If anything, Trump is going to be a bigger roadblock than the Chinese at the moment.

[shaolin_monkey]

Bizarrely, WalesOnline, of all places, summarised nicely the arguments put forward by scientists regarding the approach to major polluters like India and China.

It's a fairly short article, and the commentary about India and China starts maybe a third of the way down;

https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/climate-change-warming-extinction-rebellion-16627664


Interestingly, China is working to reduce their coal consumption and move towards renewables. This Wiki article is a fairly in-depth read on the subject:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_in_China



If you're looking at CO2 output per capita, the UAE takes the biscuit, with the US not far behind (and the UK not far behind the US).

[shaolin_monkey]

Here's more from Professor Mann about individual actions being ok, but that they're diverting attention and responsibility from corporations and the fossil fuel industry.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/06/03/climate-change-requires-collective-action-more-than-single-acts-column/1275965001/

Basically, for us to get on top of this fossil fuels must stay in the ground.

[shaolin_monkey]

If you're on Twitter and want to stay abreast of developments, here are a few folk to follow:

@MichaelEMann

Michael Evan Mann is an American climatologist and geophysicist, currently director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, who has contributed to the scientific understanding of historic climate change based on the temperature record of the past thousand years.


@drkatemarvel

Kate Marvel is a climate scientist and science writer based in New York City. She is an Associate Research Scientist at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia Engineering'sDepartment of Applied Physics and Mathematics, and writes regularly for Scientific American in her column "Hot Planet.


@khayhoe

Katharine Anne Scott Hayhoe is an atmospheric scientist and professor of political science at Texas Tech University, where she is director of the Climate Science Center. Her videos in the true nature of climate change in 5 minute bites are great to watch.


@jacquelyngill

Jacquelyn Gill is a paleoecologist and Assistant Professor of climate scienceat the University of Maine. She posts regularly on a variety of climate change subjects.


@jksteinberger

Julia K. Steinberger is Professor of Ecological Economics at the University of Leeds. She studies the relationships between the use of resources and performance of societies. She wrote this great toolkit for environmental activism:

https://medium.com/@JKSteinberger/an-audacious-toolkit-actions-against-climate-breakdown-part-1-a-is-for-advocacy-7baa108f00e9


@ed_hawkins

Ed Hawkins is a Professor of climate change at Leeds University. He recently came to the public eye with the #showyourstripes campaign, via a website that allows you to choose your country and have the temperature record for about 130 years turned into a coloured 'bar code' type square that illustrates very well the hike in warming. Try it yourself here:

https://showyourstripes.info/


@geraldkutney

Gerald Kutney is Managing Director of Sixth Element Sustainable Management, a renewable energy technologies consultancy, and was until recently Adjunct Professor of Environmental Sciences at the University of Northern British Columbia. He is a prominent Twitter advocate for global action on climate change.



@kevpluck

A data analyst and climate change expert, renowned for putting data into understandable graphical form. His current project is charting global ice melt. However, he has also created fascinating (but scary) moving graphics charting the increasing frequency of temperature extremes around the globe over the last 150 years.


@myGridGB

Gives regular updates on UK energy consumption, breaking down how the energy was created on a percentage basis, as per this example:

'Britain's electricity mix at midnight on 31st Jul 2019

Nuclear 25.4% Gas 25.9% Coal 0.0%
Wind 24.5% Solar 0.0% Hydro 1.0%
Biomass 10.5% Import 12.4% Storage 0.0% Other 0.3%

Generation 22GW
Carbon intensity 172 gCO2eq/kWh
vs a target of 50-100 gCO2e/kWh by 2030'


@severeweatherUK

Provides daily updates of severe weather around Europe, including the UK. Recent reports have included the supercell thunderstorms across Wales and south of England, flooding across Poland and Baltics, and hail the size of your fist in Italy and Romania.



@ExtinctionR

Extinction Rebellion - follow to see updates on the peaceful mass movement around the world, plus articles on climate change.

[JamesC]

Water bottles - we got ours from TK Maxx really cheap. They always seem to have loads of them.

I'm going further down the line of vegtarianism all the time. I eat very little meat and could really cut it out altogether but I value the convenience of being able to eat whatever's offered. Basically I don't buy or cook meat but if my mum offers me something I don't want to make things awkward for her. It's also useful when on holiday or when out with friends.
We have our own chickens now (I couldn't imagine eating them!) which are basically pets who give an edible by-product so I'm very comfortable with eating the eggs.
I wish I could cut out dairy but can't find a milk or cheese alternative that I can get on with (oat milk came closest). I've massively cut down though.

[IndigoPrime]

Vegan 'cheese' is... yeah. Not good. I eat lacto-free, which of course isn't helpful from a "don't piss off the animals" standpoint. Chickens... Hmm. Might be a problem around here, mind, given how many foxes there are locally.

[Tiplodocus]

You do get some nice vegan "cheeses" but they are best not thought of as cheese. The options are deffo better now than they were 7 years ago. So I guess that's one reason to thank hipsters for all going vegan

[shaolin_monkey]

Some rather alarming news from the Greenland Ice Sheet. Last month saw the most significant spike in melt than ever before, by an order of magnitude.

Check out the graphed data here - blue line is average over the last 100 years, red line is this year.

http://nsidc.org/greenland-today/

Why is this important? Well, this could be one of those 'tipping points' or 'positive feedback loops' scientists have been warning about.

First up, it means a shitload of CO2 and methane (a warming gas with 28 times the warming power of CO2) hitting atmosphere.

As there is less ice to reflect the rays of sun back into space (the albedo effect) that promotes more warning, and more ice loss.

This then increases the risk of more melt at the Arctic and Antarctic generally. Again, the less ice there, the less the albedo effect kicks in, which again allows more warming.

Then there's the risk to the jet stream, which circles the globe in a big wavy line, usually quite quickly. The speed of the jet stream allows weather to vary quickly across any landmass in its path (ie Europe).

This is driven by cold air/water coming from the north, and hot air/water coming from the tropics. However, the jet stream is very sluggish at the moment as hotter air is coming up, and less cold/warmer than usual air is coming down.

This means weather is becoming more static - highs and lows of pressure are staying fixed in place for a lot longer. It's thanks to this that Europe is suffering this abysmal heatwave.

So when we hit the tipping point it is possible we'll see s cataclysmic collapse of the jet stream. Climatologists and meteorologists are desperately trying to predict what this means, but I see the term 'extreme weather conditions' bandied about a lot.

Have a good weekend folks! 

[The Legendary Shark]

It's not something I'm into but, if you're looking for something to do, you might like this: https://nori.com/

[shaolin_monkey]

It's not something I'm into but, if you're looking for something to do, you might like this: https://nori.com/

Yowsers!  That's quite inventive - and quite a challenge!  Good 'out of the box' thinking going on there.  'Capitalism isn't working for the environment - but Blockchain might!'

[shaolin_monkey]

Hmm. Tried to link to oic on Imgur, but app doesn't give me the BBCide. Anyone know a solution?

[Dandontdare]

Sorry mate, I don't even understand the question.