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Gentlemen, this is encroaching on the Monty Python four Yorkshiremen sketch….
In Fife, we didn’t burn coal but mixed the dross with mince and onions and burnt the jobbies. Proper carbon capture and our lums never reeked. Nae piles either. School troosers melted on the fire guard in winter , the tar on the roads melted in summer. These days bairns are half human half plastic, back then we were full of soot. But we’re still here, despite it all. And Fifer’s rarely get chilblains or feel the cold, so the answer must be to eat coal and drink crude oil – it’s the best energy source after all. You southerners have always got it wrong…
I’m sorry for the last post – a poor attempt at humour. No offence meant.
West African Monsoon – WAM
In the past the Sahara has been bigger and more dry but it has also been smaller and wetter.
Possibly it was the expansion of the Sahara that led to agriculture along the Nile.
There are lots of rock art from the past showing large herbivores in North Africa, herbivores eat plants, every day, therefor there would have been more green leaf, at that time.
“Many of those animals no longer exist in the Sahara due to changes in climate that have caused the desiccation of the desert over the past several thousand years. Humans are shown hunting with spears and axes.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saharan_rock_art
At the present time the Sahara is getting smaller and wetter.
“The strength of the monsoon exhibits large variations over a range of timescales from interannual to decadal and longer. For instance, the Sahel drought of the 1970s and 1980s stands as one of the most significant climate anomalies, globally, during the 20th century.
The dire impacts of this drought on local populations spurred scientific research directed at understanding the drivers of historical WAM variability.”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590332220301007“Paleoclimate archives underscore even more dramatic variations of the WAM in the more distant past. 200–300 years ago, a prolonged drought caused the water level of Lake Bosumtwi in Ghana to fall by almost four times as much as it did during the drought of the 1970s and 1980s.
Despite intense human land use, the Sahel has been re-greening in recent decades as precipitation has recovered from the dry period of the 1970s and 1980s.”Hope for the future of a slightly more green Sahara.
A friend of mine has just been sent to prison for three years for taking action with Just Stop Oil. He has been very kind and supportive to me. He used to be a professor of geography.
https://www.thecanary.co/uk/analysis/2024/09/06/just-stop-oil-jailed/
As I posted, it occurred to me that he has been dealt a longer sentence than some, indeed most, of the right-wing rioters who recently set things on fire and hurled missiles at police.
Indeed, Clark – there has been some commentary about this. Throwing bricks at police, instigating riots and wanting to burn people alive in asylum locations is only half as bad as delaying traffic on the M25.
People do cause massive delays on motorways on a daily basis when they’re selfish enough to have accidents – happens all the time, it’s a predictable inconvenience.
I’m surprised at all the pearl-clutching as if nobody had ever come across a traffic jam before, and it was an unprecedented national catastrophe.
Hello glenn_nl, good to see you – on your own thread.
I didn’t know Xavier Trimmer-Gonzalez, who killed himself at the age of 22. I did witness first hand the months of extreme stress suffered by Trudi Warner, charged with contempt by the government’s chief lawyer for merely holding up a placard.
I realise that people do not want to say that Global Warming is a good thing
but do any of you think there could be any positives?Recently the New Labour Government have claimed they will be removing the Winter Fuel Allowance for pensioners.
This is being debated in Parliament at this moment. After the vote, many of the M.P.’s walked out of the chamber, perhaps they are not interested in pensioners?
Perhaps they do not want to hear that in the United Kingdom thirty times more people die of the cold than die of the heat.
People will die because of the removal of this benefit but I doubt many of them will be members of parliament or their parents. The poorer you are the larger part of your income you spend on heating.
Especially if you are old and don’t go out much.Now, if the world does get a little warmer, that will mean less pensioners will die of the cold.
To my mind that would be one of the positives.As the world now has more Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than was in the atmosphere before the Industrial Revolution – took off, that information has been disclosed by NASA and NOAA
https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/smd/joint-agency-satellite-division/noaa/
that since they have been scanning the earth with satellites, 40 years ago, there has been considerable increases of green leaf coverage, about half of this has been assigned to the increase in CO2, in the atmosphere.
This particularly means an increase in crops, bigger leaf, bigger seed/fruit.
So for no additional fertiliser, the crops are performing better.
In fact, less fertiliser is now needed.
Now I would also class this as a benefit.So maybe fewer will die from the cold in winter, but how many people will die in the summer from the heat?
I think we’ve done the temporary boost to plant life from increased CO2 before….remember the phytoplankton in the oceans that convert CO2 to O2 but are facing extinction b/c of acidification? You do know that commercial market garden growers pump CO2 into sealed grow houses to increase yield and shorten grow times? When we start getting summer temps like they’ve experienced in the Mediterranean and southern USA this summer on a yearly basis, then its game over.
– “Now, if the world does get a little warmer, that will mean less pensioners will die of the cold.”
No, it almost certainly won’t.
– “So for no additional fertiliser, the crops are performing better.”
No they’re not.
by Marjore Cohn who however is a lawyer for intern. law, not an environmental scientist
“US Militarism Is a Leading Cause of the Climate Catastrophe
US military interventions are not just wars on people — they’re also wars on the climate.”https://truthout.org/articles/us-militarism-is-a-leading-cause-of-the-climate-catastrophe/
Rich countries silencing climate protest while preaching about rights elsewhere, says study
Report says governments in global north increasingly using draconian measures while criticising similar tactics in global south
Wealthy, democratic countries in the global north are using harsh, vague and punitive measures to crack down on climate protests at the same time as criticising similar draconian tactics by authorities in the global south, according to a report.A Climate Rights International report exposes the increasingly heavy-handed treatment of climate activists in Australia, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, the UK and the US.
It found the crackdown in these countries – including lengthy prison sentences, preventive detention and harassment – was a violation of governments’ legal responsibility to protect basic rights to freedom of expression, assembly, and association.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/sep/10/climate-rights-report-draconian-measures-protest
…same goes for any other “freedom” that the west crackdown on, against their own populations but are quick to condemn if the same type of “freedom” is crushed in the Global South.Michael, it’s been nearly four days now. I hoped you might show some curiosity as to why I just flatly contradicted your two assertions.
Clark, a rather slim rebuttal, by you.
I am sure many, many people, especially pensioners, the homeless, the poor, die of the cold in the United kingdom than ever die of too much warmth in the U.K.
The figure is 30 times more die of the cold than die of the heat.
If it does get slightly warmer, those living on the streets will be pleased.
those on basic incomes will be pleased as they will have less worry about lighting their paraffin heaters.
When I was quite young I had a second job delivering, with my older mate, who was the driver, paraffin to pensioners and people living in sheds and caravans, I did most of the carrying.
I think these poor people used paraffin, which was quite dangerous, because they, did not have the gas connected.
Some of them were living beneath the radar, other than wood or coal, this was their only chance to keep warm.Most people had paraffin stoves in their house and garage during the 1950s and 60s. There was no gas then. If you were fortunate, a baxi fire which gave central heating and hot water. But I’d like to ask you about the 30x rate you mention. Where did you find this info, Michael? What do you mean by cold and heat – do these figures relate to hypothermia or frostbite compared to heatstroke for example – or are you comparing seasonal mortality i.e winter -v- summer?
Over 61,000 people in Europe died of heatstroke in 2022 – this study was published in 2023:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-023-02419-z
There are plenty of related studied under that link.
Over 47,000 died in 2023 – and this article notes how measues have been taken to ameliorate effects of the heat. Had this not been done, and we used the same measures as 2003, the death toll would have been an estimated 80% higher.
Sudden and harsh winter freezes following distortion of the polar vortex are also caused by climate change.
That some people are desperate to claim global warming is a good thing can only be a result of denialism or industry propaganda.
This is overlapping of environmental policies and the carceral system in the US:
via naked capitalism:
“Compost Co-Op: Recycling the Discarded”
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/09/compost-co-op-recycling-the-discarded.html“This story presents an institutional version of helping. Ex-cons have a terrible time securing regular employment. A composting program at a rural jail evolved into a workers’ co-op that provides former inmates with regular employment and even a say in how the business is run. “
Michael, of those thousands who died of cold, how many do you think were in places where people live together? Until recently, multiple generations of a family shared a house all living together; the whole family would get together to share meals. People are dying of cold because of isolation, because our natural communities have been progressively shredded since the industrial revolution. The way we try to live now isn’t natural.
You asked for joined up thinking about climate, well here’s some. I said that the global average temperature was really just a technical parameter for climate scientists. If the global average temperature increases by one degree, that doesn’t mean that the hottest day will be one degree hotter, and the coldest day will be one degree less cold.
What it does mean is that there is more energy in the atmosphere, which will make it behave differently in lots of different ways. For instance it means that sometimes the atmosphere can hold more water, which means it can sometimes drop more water, causing more floods, as in your Sahara link. Warmer seas can cause more rainfall too. Conversely, warmer air can evaporate water faster, sometimes making things drier causing more fires, and more severe droughts. It means that temperature differences can increase, sometimes causing stronger winds. With more energy, the atmosphere will do everything it does already but often more so; the extremes will be greater.
It’s not much help being one degree warmer (on average) if your house floods or a tree blows down onto the roof or takes the electricity cables down.
All this also means that crops will fail more often, putting the price of food up. Then people can afford less energy, so when it does get cold (which it still will, sometimes) people will be harder stretched to afford heating. So in addition to dying of all these other increased hazards, probably even more people will die of cold!
Such increased extremes are happening more and more; just look around the world. Not everywhere gets hit at once, but everyone will get hit by something or other, sooner or later.
“Global average temperature” is really just a way to gauge how much energy is in the atmosphere. What the extra energy does is another set of matters entirely.
Shame on these people who have spread the idea that the world will heat up evenly, one or two degrees everywhere, as if it was a lump of metal! Even in a system as small and simple as a pan of water on a stove, if you turn the heat up the water churns around faster, it becomes more turbulent.
In our vast and complex world, oceans stabilise temperature, so temperature rises a lot more inland. Remember that the one or two degrees is an average, but four fifths of the world’s surface is ocean, so the deviation above average is mostly crammed onto the fifth which is land.
Shibboleth, my paraffin delivery days were very early 1970’s.
“Warming temperatures don’t just increase the risk of heat-related deaths. They also reduce the risk of cold-related ones. The total impact of climate change is the sum of these two opposing forces. To date, the reduction in cold-related deaths has slightly outpaced the rise of heat-related ones.
A widely-cited study by Qi Zhao and colleagues, looking at the distribution and change in temperature-related deaths from 2000 to 2019, found that heat-related deaths had increased over these decades.1 But, the number of cold-related deaths had fallen even further. In total, annual temperature-related deaths had fallen by around 650,000 per year.”
https://ourworldindata.org/part-two-how-many-people-die-from-extreme-temperatures-and-how-could-this-change-in-the-future#:~:text=Every%20year%2C%20several%20million%20people,of%20around%20nine%20to%20one.At present the figure for the U.K. is thirty times more people die from cold as die from heat.
I expect those who die, other than people caught out in snow drifts, would be the very poor, the very old, the very vulnerable. probably the same people most likely to die from pneumonia/covid.
