Are we, as the IET, declaring a climate emergency?
It's really that simple a topic, should we be adding our professional voice to the growing number of countries and organisations declaring such an event, to bring better awareness of the threat of the climate crisis and to encourage more discussion in addressing it!
Frankly I think you miss the point about climate change.
The skeptic view and the narrative.
You mention climate emergency which is totally wrong.
In mine and many others view.
I try to see both sides you don't. There you go. When I here from climate alarmists I feel duty bound to respond. There is plenty of information to back a skeptical view I suggest you understand why that might be.
I'm not trying to be awkward here.
There is plenty of information
It's not about the volume of information, it's about the quality of the information.
Being sceptical is about considering the quality of all information you are presented with. You may want to be careful about using the spelling "skeptical" as that seems to have acquired quite a different meaning - ironically the exact opposite of "sceptical". I find this quite interesting, "skepticism" seems to be to hold a quasi-religious belief that something you want to be true is true based on selected evidence that appears to be esoteric. ("The published papers don't say this secret hidden information known only to my gang!" "No, they don't say that information, but that's because it's not backed up by evidence.") Which of course plays into the hands of those who see the benefit of people taking this approach. And then (this gets more interesting) to claim that those who hold other views think about their views in the same way - so the "skeptics" claim that those that accept climate change consensus are basing their views on faith rather than data. And at that point the debate, as in most of these threads on this forum, becomes pointless - both sides claiming to be scientifically based with the other being belief based.
My experience has been that the scientific community is based on genuine scepticism - the whole principle of the current scientific method is to try to disprove hypotheses and only accept them if you can't disprove them. I can see why being part of the "skeptical" movement is reassuring, but it's worth considering whether that reassurance is real.
The funeral last weekend made me look up how George V and George VI died. Both died of smoking related illnesses. For years the (what would now be called) "skeptical" community refused to accept the link between smoking and ill health, and successfully slowed down health promoting legislation, having been fed lots of information by the very same agencies who are now promoting climate change denial. Then those agencies were working for the tobacco industries, now they work for petrochemical interests. This is what makes some of us really quite angry, we are seeing exactly the same happening with climate change. Long term deaths for short term profit.
Or to put it another way, and repeat a neat Twitter meme: Plot idea: 97% of the world's scientists contrive an environmental crisis, but are exposed by a plucky band of billionaires & oil companies.
But genuine informed scepticism based on credible information is good.
Your looking too deeply.
It's just an American spelling I like to use as alot of what I read comes from the USA.
I can assure you I'm not religious in the slightest.
97% believe the climate is changing.
Quite rightly so.
As been discussed before they don't all agree on the man made bit.
And at that point the debate, as in most of these threads on this forum, becomes pointless - both sides claiming to be scientifically based with the other being belief based.
i am alarmed at the amount of threads regarding this on here that seem to go around in circles.
Baffles me, we're supposed to be the brightest minds out there, and we spend more time trying to disprove source after source rather than coming together and improving the state of the climate.
I have been looking on the IET website for around a week now, and I'm genuinely struggling to find any kind of area or community that's actually engaging with either the public, the govt, industry bodies, companies etc. to actually provide evidence based science in support of greener working practices in an attempt to get us to do something over nothing.
I'm quite literally here with a call to action for members here, and we can take this into another thread, liase with working groups, whatever it might be, to actually progress, but there's little to no movement or anyone willing to put their heads above the parapit. :/
As has been said before the IET is an engineering community and not a place for political venting of a certain position regarding climate change. You will find differing views.
Along with Roger I'm done with this thread.
They go round in circles only because we engage with the climate deniers - the best policy is to ignore them and get on with practical actions that will save us (and them) in the long run. The climate deniers won't listen to logic nor evidence it really isn't worth the energy arguing with them.
Remember their aim is to distract, deny and delay taking the actions required
Agreed.
I suppose I'm just conscious that I'm not seeing a great deal of movement in anything at the minute, and it concerns me.
There's so much activism going on but there's rarely a professional body that steps forward and says, here's what WE can do to help.
Shouldn't we be doing that?
It might be more professional to decide what the actual problems are and to agree exactly what the range of suitable solutions to those problems are, before offering to 'help' .
Declaring an Emergency is about as much use as Corporal Jones in Dad's army running about shouting "don't panic". There are enough people who should know better doing that already. We should not join them, until we actually have something positive to say.
Mike
It might be more professional to decide what the actual problems are and to agree exactly what the range of suitable solutions to those problems are, before offering to 'help' .
Declaring an Emergency is about as much use as Corporal Jones in Dad's army running about shouting "don't panic". There are enough people who should know better doing that already. We should not join them, until we actually have something positive to say.
Mike
But shouldn't we be part of the people who know better?
Yes I agree in terms of listing the problems out, and I'm happy to get everyones involvement and begin sketching that out to discuss each area in more detail - but as I've said I can't help but feel the public are consistently worried about the climate and from a professional standpoint there's little that actually appears from professional groups to try and support or acknowledge it.
Look at the recent news, UK PM is trying to green light fracking and is committed to getting every last bit of oil and gas out of the north sea - I didn't realise oil and gas extraction sprouted overnight, I thought oil platforms took a while to build :/
well yes, and with friends like the UK govt, who needs enemies. For my monies worth we need to be looking at energy storage of a few days times national demand, because if that can be cracked, a lot of the issues that make it awkward to run solar and wind as the main supply start to fade a bit. As part of that, as well as H2, hot sand and compressed air, we should probably be looking again at longer haired things like tidal lagoons - being British it will be the first of some novel kind and highlight all the problems other nations can later side-step, and we can put it under the control of the national trust and do guided tours in the next century ,but for now we really need to be trying stuff, and probably not insisting that it makes a profit on the first attempt. Fracking is a bit of a side show, we still have the basic problem that we use more energy than we have on our own soil and we have used most of the north sea gas and oil, so what comes out now is better than nothing but we need to understand it is clearly running down. Even if we had so much it was possible to not import fuel, there are pollution reasons for looking at the alternatives.
We also urgently need to get away from the idea that computer models and managing things from behind a desk are the future and the only skills that need teaching.- at some point we need a new generation of engineers who can actually do practical stuff like climb ladders and use tools and weld so they stop specifying things that are impossible or very hard to make, and we end up subcontracting the 'mere detail' of actually making things to other countries and then wondering why it costs so much and is not quite what we expected.
Mike
Totally agree Mike. We as engineers agree that global warming is a fact and sea levels are going to rise but we are beyond being able to stop it now. No point in the greens trying to lay the blame on someone much to late for that
So an action plan to reinforce sea walls etc needs to be undertaken by councils funded by government now.
The oil/gas price hike is a totally separate issue exaggerated no doubt by the loss of Russian gas that would normally be piped into Europe. CO2 gas emissions as used in greenhouses is not the problem but running out of hydrocarbon fuels certain is.
Green alternatives should be encouraged but only if they are proved experimentally to be economically viable by modelling them practically in a laboratory.
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