The cost of living... what can we do?

@Jack McHammocklashing If you'd lived in London during the 50's & 60's & had suffered the coal smoke pollution I suffered as a boy you might think differently. I'm pretty sure that is why I have a propensity to catching chest infections.

 

It takes a long time for any changes we make to show any effects. Some of the co2 in the atmosphere today was put there decades ago. The earth is quite large. It takes a long time to warm it up.

As you mentioned steam engines, that sets us up for a good analogy. In the days of steam, you couldn't just get in a locomotive and start it up. You had to light a fire and wait for that fire to heat the water. With the fire roaring, the effect on the water temperature would seem negligible at first, but all that heat from the fire was slowly transferring energy into the water.

So what happens at the end of the day when the last train has finished for the night. The fire is put out, but the boiler stays hot for hours.

Climate change is like that but on a global scale. More atmospheric co2 traps more heat in the atmosphere. Because the earth has a lot of mass, it takes time to warm it up, which is why the climate change we see today is probably the time lag from the industrial revolution. Trouble is, we didn't stop adding to the co2. The effects we see today are the consequence of the slow build up of heat in the mass that is the earths surface including oceans. If we could wave a magic wand and instantly restore atmospheric co2 to pre industrial levels, we'd see no change in today's climate. So cutting greenhouse gas emissions now isn't about restoring the climate, it's about slowing down the rate at which it gets worse, which is important because only if we do that will we have any chance of avoiding catastrophe. Over tens or hundreds of years, the co2 in the atmosphere will be sequestered in the normal carbon cycle if we stop artificially topping it up, which is what the climate scientists hope for.

So in short, what we see in the weather now is the consequence of a couple of centuries or so of us filling the air with rubbish, and if we stop doing that, the earth won't suddenly cool, it will just stay as is for a couple of centuries or so until things fall back into equilibrium. Today's goals aren't about making things better, it's about stopping making it worse.

 

0.041% carbon dioxide as of 2018

 

It's not just the carbon dioxide it's also the methane, the nitrous oxide, the hydrocarbons, the perfluorocarbons etcall adding their little bits.

 

I am just a person not scientific
So why can not all this contaminate pass through the OZONE layer into space
(they have told us about a hole in the Ozone layer)

 

Sorry I should have posted this in the LATEST MOAN FROM ME NOT cost of living

 

I doubt the 1% figure.

In the UK our overall emissions are low for one major reason. We got other countries, most notably China, to make all our stuff. To get the true figure, we have to take into account the impact of the stuff we buy being made and shipped.

At the other end of the lifecycle, we also need to consider how our stuff is disposed of once we've finished with it. Our lovely green recycling policy sees stuff go by ship to third world countries, where we simply wash our hands of it.

 

Can I suggest that we keep this thread for cost of living and maybe start a separate one for climate change discussion.

 

It's kind of evolved, into cost of climate change.

 

When I was at school I'm sure it was more than that.