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davieG

Technology, Science and the Environment.

By davieG, in General Chat

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foxes1988

foxes1988

Posted
Posted
20 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

...anyone else notice that the BBC news website now has an entirely separate tab for climate related news, rather than keeping it in with other science news?

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-56837908

 

Hopefully it might cause even more people to engage with the topic.

We can only hope :fc:

 

Also encouragingly It's the second tab along after only coronavirus which is fair enough 

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Pliskin

Pliskin

Posted
Posted
22 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-58750164

 

As the younger folks are pointing out, talk is cheap.

It’s potentially all it will ever be. Because the practices that are most harmful to our planet are also the most financially rewarding. And the to those at the pinnacle of their respective fields will say all of the rights things, but not necessarily do them, as they’re not willing to take the financial hit. 
 

It’s a farcical situation, and the fact a lot of sectors are still in denial about it all despite the scientific evidence is startling.

 

 

To be honest I think there’s more of a threat to us as humans from ourselves than the environment, like I’ve said in my opinion tensions are starting to fray, and it will end up being a battle to get the more powerful nations to adhere to the sacrifices needed to improve the climate crisis. But, I just can’t see the whole world singing from the same hymn sheet, and it could potentially lead to more military action. 
 

I hope I’m wrong, but the slowness to react to something that I can remember being taught about 20 years ago in year 7, still haven’t been addressed…. Doesn’t fill me with confidence going forward.

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leicsmac

leicsmac

Posted
Posted
36 minutes ago, Pliskin said:

It’s potentially all it will ever be. Because the practices that are most harmful to our planet are also the most financially rewarding. And the to those at the pinnacle of their respective fields will say all of the rights things, but not necessarily do them, as they’re not willing to take the financial hit. 
 

It’s a farcical situation, and the fact a lot of sectors are still in denial about it all despite the scientific evidence is startling.

 

 

To be honest I think there’s more of a threat to us as humans from ourselves than the environment, like I’ve said in my opinion tensions are starting to fray, and it will end up being a battle to get the more powerful nations to adhere to the sacrifices needed to improve the climate crisis. But, I just can’t see the whole world singing from the same hymn sheet, and it could potentially lead to more military action. 
 

I hope I’m wrong, but the slowness to react to something that I can remember being taught about 20 years ago in year 7, still haven’t been addressed…. Doesn’t fill me with confidence going forward.

I can't say that I disagree with any of that.

 

The idea of human savagery finishing what climate change started as it puts the pressure on is one that has been mooted for some time and I'm amazed more people haven't cottoned on to how possible it is, instead just considering climate change a threat purely by itself and thus possibly underestimating how bad the results might be.

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Heathrow fox

Heathrow fox

Posted
Posted
On 29/09/2021 at 07:53, leicsmac said:

...anyone else notice that the BBC news website now has an entirely separate tab for climate related news, rather than keeping it in with other science news?

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-56837908

 

Hopefully it might cause even more people to engage with the topic.

I’m afraid a lot of the public’s concern for the planet is fake.This week has proved that.Deprive them from their precious petrol and see the results.

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String fellow

String fellow

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, leicsmac said:

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-58754882

 

Another triumph of astrodynamics, this one partly generated close to home - I remember reading about Bepi when I was studying at Leicester University and knowing some of the players involved.

 

Look forward to seeing what it can tell us about Mercury in the future!

Strangely, when first reading this sentence, I read it as:-

Look forward to seeing what (the) Mercury can tell us about it in the future!

Same words, different order. Maybe I'm lysdexic!

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leicsmac

leicsmac

Posted
Posted
22 minutes ago, Heathrow fox said:

I’m afraid a lot of the public’s concern for the planet is fake.This week has proved that.Deprive them from their precious petrol and see the results.

I would certainly agree that folks aren't going to be on board with doing stuff about a changing planet if it adversely affects their quality of life and daily routines (lack of petrol being just one example there). That's why it's important for any measures involving such transitions to supply an alternative that maintains that quality of life. Having enough people onboard is of course crucial in a democracy.

 

Of course, the Earth really doesn't care about what folks do or want to do from day to day so if we're going to maintain the current quality of life (or improve on it) things do have to change, it's just a matter of doing it in a way that is both palatable to enough people and satisfies the rather stringent time requirements we now have.

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String fellow

String fellow

Posted
Posted
5 hours ago, leicsmac said:

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-58754882

 

Another triumph of astrodynamics, this one partly generated close to home - I remember reading about Bepi when I was studying at Leicester University and knowing some of the players involved.

 

Look forward to seeing what it can tell us about Mercury in the future!

Uranus is often cited as the most boring planet, but for me it's Mercury, due to it not being a night-sky object and because it lacks moons. Its most interesting property is the non-Newtonian precession of its perihelion, which helped a certain scientist confirm one of the most famous theories of the last century. The same guy also explained why tea leaves behave as they do when a cup of tea is stirred!

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Carl the Llama

Carl the Llama

Posted
Posted
21 hours ago, leicsmac said:

I would certainly agree that folks aren't going to be on board with doing stuff about a changing planet if it adversely affects their quality of life and daily routines (lack of petrol being just one example there). That's why it's important for any measures involving such transitions to supply an alternative that maintains that quality of life. Having enough people onboard is of course crucial in a democracy.

 

Of course, the Earth really doesn't care about what folks do or want to do from day to day so if we're going to maintain the current quality of life (or improve on it) things do have to change, it's just a matter of doing it in a way that is both palatable to enough people and satisfies the rather stringent time requirements we now have.

Perhaps it would help if we changed the common line of discourse on this because you're not wrong at all.  It's not that we need to save the planet, we need to stop making it increasingly inhospitable to human life.  Plenty of species will thrive in our absence, I'm sure some will even benefit from the changed climate we leave them.

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leicsmac

leicsmac

Posted
Posted (edited)
18 minutes ago, Carl the Llama said:

Perhaps it would help if we changed the common line of discourse on this because you're not wrong at all.  It's not that we need to save the planet, we need to stop making it increasingly inhospitable to human life.  Plenty of species will thrive in our absence, I'm sure some will even benefit from the changed climate we leave them.

I think that's happening already - I see at least some work on "saving humanity rather than saving the planet". Kurzgesagt - one of the best SciComm YouTube channels out there btw - did a very good video on it a while back.

 

 

And yeah - humanity will at worst cause an extinction event to rival one of the "Big Five", but complex life survived the changes brought about by those and undoubtedly would survive this event too.

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Carl the Llama

Carl the Llama

Posted
Posted
15 hours ago, leicsmac said:

245152073_424265139264405_85726321874074

 

Energy solutions to make fossil fuels a thing of the past and address climate change have to include Gen III and IV fission if we're going to maintain the same quality of life that humanity is accustomed to.

If only the USA didn't vote out the President who knew a lot about nuclear, bet they'd be right on it by now. 

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leicsmac

leicsmac

Posted
Posted
3 hours ago, WigstonWanderer said:

Are you supporting this viewpoint?

It's technically correct, so why not?

 

People have this incredibly fearful image of fission power when they use fossil fuel power sources that overall are so much deadlier than fission power is.

 

Until we get to the day that renewable sources and storage can power everything that we have (and I'm entirely unconvinced that day is anywhere close), if we're going to phase out fossil fuels for power generation quickly (and we need to), fission power needs to be part of the answer. We simply don't have time to argue the toss between renewables and nuclear power when the global average temperature is skyrocketing, with all that entails. Plan to use both depending on circumstance.

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nnfox

nnfox

Posted
Posted

And to continue the theme of cosmic impacts, I find the Younger Dryas Impact Theory compelling, not on the same scale as the dinosaurs but still very significant.  12800 years ago a comet strike (or even several strikes over a few years from a fragmented comet) struck the northern hemisphere, particularly the North American Ice Sheets and is a possible cause of mass megafaunal extinction and a sudden climate cooling that lasted for a thousand years.  Humans would have witnessed the event and may have been the spark civilization as we know it.

 

https://bigthink.com/hard-science/younger-dryas-impact/

 

https://www.science.org/content/article/massive-crater-under-greenland-s-ice-points-climate-altering-impact-time-humans

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