Prepping and climate change

[PreppingPingu]

The only real answer is to drive less or have less vehicles. I became self employed in 2012 and rarely travel more than 15 miles from home. Before that i worked for a firm and we would regularly travel much further. A one point i was working in monmouth , south wales, and it took close to two hours to get there. Didn't help but the vans were limited to 62mph but that was four hours a day which is near!y a day a week just sat in a van. I wasn't paying for the diesel so didn't feel the cost directly but certainly felt the cost in time and i certainly don't miss it.

Yes driving less and owning less vehicles would ideally be a good thing. It goes back to the thought that we have to dramatically change HOW we live - ie far more people working local so within walking distance and those that are healthy enough, walk/cycle a mile or two to work, people sending their kids to a local school - not joining the parent run to drive their kids 3 miles in the traffic jams of the school run just because the school on the other side of town has a slightly better Ofsted report. Not driving to the next town because its got an Asda not a Sainbury's - you get the idea. For that to happen, the whole fabric of society and commerce would have to change. That is not really likely unless we have a global disaster of some kind. Then of course that are a lot of folks that do live miles out and have no choice but to drive for schooling and shopping. I am not sure what the answer is, you can try to legislate but as has been mentioned, politicians tend to have their term in office in mind and the public and the opposition would create a huge backlash so shelving any dramatic legislation meaning it wouldn't get passed. Also any legislation may well marginalise folk who do live out in very rural locations or those on the breadline.

[Deeps]

I tend to go with the flow as well . I was even accused of being a misery guts for even suggesting such a thing. To be fair though almost twenty years of marriage means i must be doing something right even if we don't buy wholly into the romantic bit. Last time ( well everytime) i gave my missus flowers she said " and who's garden have they come from? " They had but ... And it's not as if she's any better really. She sells a lot of stuff on ebay and had a load of greeting cards and one year said to me " if you want to give me a Valentine's card use the ones in this box , they're the ones without envolpoes" . Grand life.

Sounds like us to be honest, I stopped buying her flowers on a semi regular basis because I spat the dummy when she genuinely had a go asking "what had I been up to", damned if you do, damned if you don't.

She does like a card though (tree killer that she is) although I'm happy to give it a miss. She doesn't do too badly and she knows I'm not going to go all 'Philip Schofield' on her.

[Quill]

One small mercy is that the UK and Ireland will be one of the areas of the planet that suffers least from climate change. No free pass, but better than Australia or India and a hell of a lot better than the Gulf States where by mid-century it's forecast that it will be far too warm (even in the shade) to survive for more than a few minutes during parts of the summer.

I just finished the Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells and highly recommend it. Eye-opening and a world where there's a 4 degree rise is not going to be a nice place to live. It is the first thing I've read that looks beyond 2100 AD. At 8 degrees of warming, clouds will stop forming which will result in feedback loops increasing the global temperature average to13 degrees above pre-industrial levels. If we do nothing that could happen by the middle of the 22nd century which seems like a long time from now, but if I end up having grandchildren they'll only be in their 70s or so by then.

The two main things I took away from it were:
1) To keep warming within 2 degrees above the pre-industrial average (which while far from ideal is a hell of a lot better than a 3 or 4 degree world) it will require comparable effort to WW2 or the New Deal.
2) Following on from 1, the most important thing you can to stop this is vote. Individuals actions only matter so much, although modest lifestyle changes like cutting down the amount you fly and not eating imported meat can make a fair impact (pasture fed meat really isn't awful for the planet, corn-fed and imported corn-fed beef in particular has a massive impact). It is going to require systematic change led by governments and corporations (which actually are starting to realise the impact it will have on them).

In short, highly recommend the book and if we can't change things this decade, then resilience is going to become even more vital.

[jansman]

We are screwed.Read this,and accept it for what it's worth.I am a cynical basta#d - or a realist.

https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2020 ... ng-on-gas/

[Deeps]

We are screwed.Read this,and accept it for what it's worth.I am a cynical basta#d - or a realist.

https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2020 ... ng-on-gas/

An interesting read, when the author started on about the 'main stream media' I thought "oh aye" but no, he's made some good points about where we're going to get our energy from. You can't rule out some clever dick making a breakthrough on hydrogen or whatever but you can't depend on it either. Maybe not in my lifetime but the country and probably the world is going to have to make some big changes on how we live.

[Quill]

We are screwed.Read this,and accept it for what it's worth.I am a cynical basta#d - or a realist.

https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2020 ... ng-on-gas/

Perhaps I'm naive but I'm optimistic that we can keep the amount of warming between 2 and 3 degrees. The conclusion of that article is you can't just build a load of wind turbines, continue life as normal and expect it all to turn out fine you also have to reduce demand, which is entirely feasible. Insulating houses and installing more energy efficient heating, reducing the number of flights taken a year, using a petrol/diesel car less and eating less imported food all go a long way towards that. Even the republican party in the USA is beginning to talk about climate change (mostly to preserve votes among the young, but self-preservation is as good a motivation as any I suppose). I think politicians and business have finally turned a corner and realised how serious a problem this is.

[jansman]

Hydrogen will not pass through our current gas pipes.The molecules are smaller and will leak out.Obviously it is not as dense as petrol or diesel.So it would follow that it would take far more transport to filling stations to deliver the same energy transfer.Won't happen,because it will take more energy to deliver the energy than it is worth.Prepare to live in the Dark Ages.

[Deeps]

Hydrogen will not pass through our current gas pipes.The molecules are smaller and will leak out.Obviously it is not as dense as petrol or diesel.So it would follow that it would take far more transport to filling stations to deliver the same energy transfer.Won't happen,because it will take more energy to deliver the energy than it is worth.Prepare to live in the Dark Ages.

Its amazing how productive people can be when properly motivated, whether its nuclear, hyrdrogen or 'giant frickin' lasers' or whatever as the planet runs out of fossil fuels and the pressure ramps up something MIGHT come along, its not set in stone that we'll revert to the Dark Ages. As I said earlier though, you can't rely on some clever clogs saving the day, we do need to make changes and it has to be as a planet, no point 'little old Britain' busting a gut and ticking every box if the big hitters like the US and China etc aren't doing it too.

[grenfell]

I think it was Nietzsche who said that in the western world faith in religion was being replaced by faith in science Or to put it another way that belief technology will solve all our problems. I don't know if it will but we are a pretty inventive species even if at times our inventiveness can work against us but we can hope.
In terms of prepping and climate change then it seems likely we will be having more storms and extreme weather , those once in a century or once in a generation weather events seem to becoming increasingly more frequent. Prep for that . Droughts and heatwaves could cause disruption of food supplies so water harvesting and getting the garden productive should be the order of the day. Serious climate change will probably lead to an increase in migration , indeed it's already a factor. How that one is dealt with is probably more of a national effort but several million displaced people would have to live somewhere which will only impact further on food supplies.

[jansman]

Migration will be a massive issue.