YOU and todays 'Climate change'.

On a personal level I'm ambivalent about it.

I do believe it's a serious matter but, like a lot of people and governments, I think it will be a 'you first' situation which will get us virtually nowhere.

Cutting carbon emissions should be a priority anyway but I can't see much progress towards that point. Working on, and encouragement/incentives for, renewable energy has been cut back.

The government hasn't even brought in a law that all new build houses should have solar panels. This should be the cheapest and easiest first step. The cost to put them on buildings at the time of build is negligible. They haven't done so and are also cutting the Feed In Tariff to zero in April which certainly won't encourage the public to put panels on their roofs. I agree that the original incentives were much too high but they should definitely have kept it at a level to encourage people. Local authorities should be given a subsidy by the government to put them on their houses. Local authorities don't really have much money to do this but could recoup some of it from their tenants as the tenant's power bills will be lower - easily monitored by meters.

Businesses are now installing them as it cuts their power bills considerably. They consider the cost as an investment, which is the right way to do things. Some of them are finding it difficult to get planning permission to do it! Why?

Vehicle emissions:- how do they expect people to go over to electric vehicles when the premium cost of them is so high? Then there's the problem of charging points - and the, current (pun intended), problem of how long it takes to charge. There's also the loss of value of existing vehicles if electric is brought in too quickly (not a chance!) which makes further difficulties for buying electric.

They're also saying that people should stop eating meat. I'm not going to get into the vegetarianism debate but if everyone stopped eating meats then it's possible (just a thought and not part of this debate) that all those nice animals will disappear.

On a personal level, I have solar panels so am doing my bit there. I grow a lot of my own food and don't use chemicals.

I have no intention of stopping eating meat as I love it. I drive a petrol car and will do so for the foreseeable future as I've only just bought it (no public transport here). I didn't buy electric because the cost was too high for the type of car I wanted.

I shall also continue to fly or cruise to the places I want to. This is purely selfish and I'm not ashamed to admit it. We both slogged our guts out for over 40 years, with very little in the way of holidays, and said that when we retired we would spend our money on a nice car, keeping our house warm and travelling to see the peoples, culture and natural beauty of other countries. We shall continue to do so for as long as we can.

My opinion is that governments are talking about it but not taking responsibility to do anything about it. Although they try to tell us they are.

The efficacy of wind power, solar power and the advantages and disadvantages of nuclear power are a different debate.

 

Good morning I have had climate change from the day I was born and we will always have the climate changing,I personally don't intend to change anything,I remember the several winters with deep snow and freezing conditions,and really hot summers,my personal opinion is that that the sooner we just live our lives to the best of our ability and circumstances the more contented we will be,these days what with Climate change and Health issues ,technology etc etc people are being brainwashed 24/7.to much knowledge can be a dangerous thing,people have forgotten how to laugh ,enjoy your day my friends

 

For me, there are many facets to this debate, and whilst a lot of arguments in either direction can be backed up with scientific evidence, almost all of that scientific evidence has been produced as a result of research funded by people who have a vested interest in proving that their thoughts are right. If you set out to try and prove something that you think you already know, you will eventually find evidence to support it.

Do we have a problem - - yes, no doubt. But, I think that problem has many components, and each requires a certain approach.

Vehicle emissions are one that really (really) winds me up. Around a decade ago, I was running a Jaguar XJ that I had restored/rebuilt and it was a lovely car. Events happened in my life which meant that we had to part company (I was genuinely bereft, but needs must at the time), so I bought a stop gap petrol car (old Mercedes C Class) which I ran until the point when it almost killed myself and my daughter. Time for a new car. At the time, purchasing something like a newer Jaguar (which is what I wanted) was being made almost impossible unless you went for one with a diesel engine - - - and then, the cost of those was just astronomical. So, I ended up going for a VW Passat, with a diesel engine; it had cheap road tax, and did something like 50 miles to the gallon around town; only, it was about as reliable as a politician. It eventually got chopped in for an Audi estate, again a diesel. Bad move. It too was not the most reliable, and when it asked for its second clutch and dual mass flywheel (just under £2000 fitted) in less than 20,000 miles we parted company.

I then bought a nearly new Nissan Qashqai - diesel. Not a bad wee car to be fair, only let me down once, free road tax because it had such a low CO2 output. Then, someone somewhere realised that to reach these really low CO2 outputs, car manufacturers had been wringing the neck of their diesel engines and the net result of that was that NOX emissions had gone up. NOX is apparently terrible for human health, whereas CO2 only warms the earth up (allegedly). In short, some un-elected bods in Europe had decided on emissions standards that were in ever decreasing circles and the car manufacturers just had to get on with it. Many of them simply could not meet those targets, so they used technology to get round things -- and then they got caught. Meanwhile, those unelected bods in the EU decided to berate the UK about air quality, an threatened massive fines (where does that money go if we are fined?) if we did not clean up our act. Our government essentially sh*t themselves at this threat, and turned on the motorist yet again - - all of a sudden, those diesels that had been promoted as being the best thing are now suddenly the work of evil, and bang...... the residual value falls right out of them.

Just after coming out of hospital, I voluntarily terminated my PCP deal, handing back a car that I had paid over £13,000 for in the past three years; it was worth £3000 LESS than the money that I would have had to finance if I wanted to keep it. This is a car that is just over three years old, and only just out of warranty.

Electric cars are a joke - not enough range, and if we all changed to one tomorrow, the UK power network simply would not cope with the demand; even if we were able to buy enough electricity from overseas, it is highly questionable if our existing infrastructure would cope with the sheer amperage that would be needed.

And the other problem with electric cars is that everyone conveniently ignores two very simple facts; firstly, the rare earth metals that are mined to be used in the batteries and control circuitry (that only last around 8 years), and secondly the fact that the power used still requires energy to be converted from some sort of fuel - power stations do not run on unicorn farts.

Meanwhile, the government of this country decided that we shouldn't be firing our power stations with coal from this country anymore; we should use wood pellets from Canada as they are renewable instead (Drax power station is one that was converted). Trees are cut in Canada, transported somewhere quite a distance away, ground up into bits and then 'processed' into pellets. These pellets are then put into massive trucks, driven to the docks and loaded onto bulk carrier ships; these bulk carrier ships bring the pellets to the UK, where the pellets go onto massive lorries and trains and are then taken to the power station where they are burnt. How is this better for the environment??

IF there had been a serious approach to all the problems in the past decade or two, then we may have stood a chance. Instead, it was used as an excuse to tax, charge and penalise people left right and centre, which made certain groups of people very, very rich whilst doing naff all to help the environment - the net result now is that when the so-called experts say that we need to do x, y or z, the general populous roll their eyes and see it only as an excuse to raise more taxes.

 

That info about the sinking is interesting. I wonder whether it also happened with the digging of the original underground lines. Those were enormous and much more extensive. If they did cause subsidence then they, obviously, are not continuing otherwise it would have been revealed by the satellite scrutiny.

Does this mean there will be no more subsidence or is there more still to come?

Building the Metropolitan and District Line in the 1860s (I remember it well )

 

Surely the climate, particularly in relation to temperature, is an ever changing thing? Our current view is of a relatively short window of time - taking a longer term historical view reminds us that the planet had an ice age (and probably more than one), could it not be simply that the planet is still warming up?

And why is it always the same things getting hit - usually us consumers, and particularly any road vehicles? What about these MASSIVE ships (sorry @shiney), including the container ships - - the amount of fuel those things go through is just frightening.

Then there is planes - - I live very close to Heathrow, and once decided to calculate a plane's fuel consumption in relation to my car (just for poops and giggles), and was genuinely shocked when it worked out that I could run my car for something in the order of 25 years on the fuel burned by one fight to the US. How many planes are in the sky right now??? And how many of those flights are being done by people who don't really need to do it? By that, I am not talking about holiday makers, I am talking about business people that could use Skype and make video conference calls.

 

I'm just doing some calculations in my head as I'm typing to see what comes of it. Lets say you average 7,000 miles a year, then that equals 175,000 car miles. If the plane carries 400 people that would be 437.5 miles per passenger (ignoring crew). If those people were going on holiday but decided they would stay here instead they are unlikely to drive that sort of mileage so there would be a net gain for us. Unless they do what I do when I holiday over here. I go to the Lake district for a week and do 900 miles . It's not really a significant calculation but my mind is a bit peculiar with numbers! You did say it wasn't about holidays but business travel.

Agreed. I'm not sure how the cruise ships compare in fuel use between ones that carry 500 passengers and those that carry 5,000 passengers. Is the bigger ship more fuel efficient? The international rules did, a few years ago, put a limit on what speed the ships could go at to conserve fuel consumption and it apparently made a fairly large difference. It also pleased the shipping companies to a certain extent as they not only saved fuel but they had to reduce the amount of stops they made which saved port costs (very expensive).

I was on a river cruise in July that was extremely fuel efficient. The draft on the boat was 3ft but, because of the drought, the river was only 2ft deep! So the boat stayed where it was

Some countries would go bankrupt if it wasn't for tourism . I don't know how much international travel for business purposes is necessary! Neither do I know how much domestic car travel is necessary. I know that the Sunday drive out isn't done so much. Is driving to the corner shop (if they still exist) or the school run really necessary? If the weather is OK we walk the mile each way to our corner shop