h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Apparently I have a carbon footprint of 3.5 hectares according to http://www.earthday.net/footprint. Happily that's less than the national average of 5.3 hectares per person.

Unfortunately, if everyone on Earth lived like me (and I don't drive, walk most places and rarely fly) we'd need 1.9 planets...

I know the source for this obviously has an agenda, but when things are put like that in black and white in front of me, it does make me think.

So does anyone have any thoughts?

Just took the test and I came out with a carbon footprint of 2.5 and if everyone lived like me we'd need 1.4 planets. This seems strange to me since I drive, use public transport and all my food is imported and packaged. My only saving grace appears to be that I don't fly.

Well, I came out at 10.2 Hectares and we'd need 5.7 planets.

So could everyone else please tighten their belts

You're right, they have an agenda and it looks like scaremongering.

footprint of 2. Still need 1.1 planets though.

Just done it again. To get it down to 1 planet, I would have to be a vegan living in the smallest green house with more than 7 people, no electricity, never driving and never flying.

Tosh.

I don't see how it's tosh just because you don't like it. I mean why would their figures be inherently wrong? It's pretty bloody obvious that the West has a lifestyle that we can't sustain. It's a fairly recent thing, and it's out of control. The fact that most Westerners aren't aware of this just makes it worse.

And once China and India really get with the Western lifestyle, we're in serious trouble.

Good old clean green NZ has one of the highest footprints per head of population in the world.


That footprint calculator's been around for a while, and I'm not sure I agree with all of their criteria, but I think overall it's a useful thing because it makes people think about how their personal life fits in the global scheme of things.


There was another marker this year, where it was calculated that we used up all the resources that could be used in a sustainable way by October. That means for the last few months of this year ALL our lives are taking the planet into a deficit. I missed who did those calculations but again I think it's a useful marker to get people thinking about the *fact* that we live on a planet with finite resources, and that for the first time in history we're at a point where we could use them all up.

We've know about this kind of thing for ages. Yet people still don't do anything. We're too short-sighted - I think it might even be a species thing we cannot help.

The depressing reality is we are going to have to deal with our lack of resources in the future when we actually reach that point. It's going to get really messy.

I'm not saying it's tosh because I don't like it, I'm saying it's tosh because it is rigged to give virtually everyone a negative result.

It's scare-mongering. I'm not convinced by the whole "carbon footprint" argument anyway. Is it just another trendy label to wave around which the vast majority don't really understand?

I don't for a second doubt that the climate is changing. I do have serious reservations that man has any but a negligible part to play in it.

That site leads people to believe that we have to regress to the stone-age to strike a balance.

Maybe the planet is overpopulated? Who's going to be the first to step forward for a voluntary cull?

"I don't for a second doubt that the climate is changing. I do have serious reservations that man has any but a negligible part to play in it."

Please check this page out it makes the scientific case for climate change caused by human acitivity - I found "Fingerprint 3" and it's graph particularly interesting:

http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science/Fingerprints.html

Take home: Science thinks humans are behind climate change.

Ste

That's an interesting site, but I'm not a scientist. I worry when I see generalisations and assumptions like "The measured increases in water temperature lie well outside the bounds of natural climate variation."

How do they know? How long have we kept records? And how long has the planet been here? Even ice core samples only go back a fraction of the time the ecosphere has been around. The theories and models they use are just that - theories open to debate and models based upon insufficient data.

You say "Science thinks humans are behind climate changes", which is itself a bit of a generalisation.

David Bellamy, hardly a hysterical reactionary, refers to "a petition produced by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, which has been signed by over 18,000 scientists who are totally opposed to the Kyoto Protocol"

http://www.junkscience.com/july04/Daily_Mail-Bellamy.htm


I am sceptical of any scientific report that attempts to give definitive answers. I'm reminded of the debate over the first railways in Britain. The canal owners found scientists who stated categorically that humans would asphyxiate at speeds over (I think) 34mph.

Scientists need funding. Funding is available for studies to prove global warming. Scientists that produce results that go against the wishes of their political paymasters don't get invited to do further studies.

Again I stress that I am not a scientist. Although cynical, I genuinely welcome incontrovertible proof to change my opinion.

Hmmm I have to say I think that thing is rigged.

On that basis the Earth is oging to hell in a hand cart and there is diddly squat we can do aobut it. I think they exagerate to make the case stronger.

I dont think that needs to be odne. Global Warming is serious enough as it is and we need to do something.

I agree FB, we have 5 people in household (three of them children) only one bin liner goes out each week. We recycle virtually everything, even the teensyest bit of card goes into a seperate bag, and the smeggiest banana goes into the compost. Yet we still need 1.5 planets! I don't drive, source the majority of my food locally, the only thing we do is have a three bed home (well, we couldn't live in a one bed flat) and my partner drives (to take his mum shopping and to hospital - she does live a fair way away - but no-one else can be arsed)

We could all become vegans, but that doesn't help much, apparently (still 1.5 planets)

What do you mean by rigged?

If you read the FAQ you'll see that they say they used *conservative* estimates, so I guess they're 'rigged' it to be less than it actuall is.

Although I can't see any evidence that they've rigged anything. I can see some people finding the results too much to believe credible, but how many here have a grounding in environmental sciences or auditing, which is what this is based on?

Like I said, you may not like the results but that doesn't mean they are tosh or rigged.

I don't think it' so much a matter of we can't do anything. And I think it's an error to assume that everyone has to live in a grass hut in order to prevent ecological catastrophe. There are PLENTY of things we can be doing in the West to reduce our footprint, but most of those things are things that need to be put in place by governments. We have the technology, we don't have the political will.

eg Some of the results are based on how your country produces electricity. So obviously if your country switched pronto to renewable and low emission generation schemes your personal footprint would lower.

But switching to sustainable power generation isn't enough if we think we can keep consuming at the rate we are. We *have* to use less (per head of population), there is no two ways about it.

And as much as some people are going to hate this, we have to embrace ecological philosophies. In NZ there is a push for big windfarm projects, but these come at a cost to the environment. What really needs to happen is for lots of smaller local, micro schemes to be set up, that each community makes decisions about. We also need to invest majorly in solar water heating, but of course the current, greedy economic model we have won't allow that because how can the now privatised power companies make money from that.


I also think that personal actions are important not because me driving my car less will make any impact on climate change, but because (a) we all have to do our bit if we want others too as well, and (b) changing our lifestyles changes culture and politics. We can't expect governments to make big changes unless we are also making them.


I agree with Ste. We are in for a big shock within our lifetimes. This isn't just about climate change, it's about lots of resources and environmental crises.

>> Yet we still need 1.5 planets!<<

Go and read the rest of the website. The footprint is based on many things that you personally have no control over.

The point is that the West's lifestyle is using up more resources than exist. We are going to run out.

I really can't understand how you can think something is rigged just because the figured don't match what you think they should. Is it so inconceivable that we are using too much?



I'm curious that you buy most of your food locally. Do you mean locally produced? That would be incredibly unusual.

Did you read the Bellamy link Kea?

Yes, kea, I do mean locally produced, I live in a fairly small town, we have farmers markets and butchers/greengrocers that sell local produce. I have tried to make that a priority since moving here.

What exactly is it measuring? Why is electricity generation, transport and shelter relevant to hectares of biologically productive land?

I get 2.5, of which 1.8 is food. I'm unsure whether I could really using that much land - sure I eat a lot of animal products, but from animals that are stuffed into the smallest spaces fed on the highest yield crops. Its cruel I suppose, but it hardly seems inefficent.

Wow. It's like watching an alcoholic micturate in the street after dropping his cider bottle to the ground and hearing him beg for money insisting he never touches a drop.

btw The site say we'd need all of one planet if everybody lived like me.

"That's an interesting site, but I'm not a scientist. I worry when I see generalisations and assumptions like "The measured increases in water temperature lie well outside the bounds of natural climate variation.""

It's not an assumption, it's a measurement. They say it is not natural for the reasons outlined in the article.

"How do they know? How long have we kept records?..."

The, um, measured it - and there are ways of getting at temperature in the past.

"The theories and models they use are just that - theories open to debate and models based upon insufficient data."

This is what the graph for "fingerprint 3" is about. A model without human activity shows a constant mean temp - does not reflect measure reality. A model factoring in human activity matches the real sitation amazingly well. It's a good model. Also, you know they mean "theory" as in "scientific theory" - not just speculation, like the creationists like to think it means.


I wouldn't trust the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine as far as I could throw it. And for it's size that might not actually be that short a distance. Nor would I trust JunkScience.com nor the Daily Mail as reputable sources of information.


"I am sceptical of any scientific report that attempts to give definitive answers..."

The link I provided was an attempt to sum up the scientific position into a nice bite-size chunk. It was a colourful essay - Thesis statement; evidence 1; evidence 2; evidence 3; restate thesis; conclude. Lovely. Science is of course a little more slippery than that, but the clear consensus in science is that humans are driving climate change.


"Scientists need funding. Funding is available for studies to prove global warming. Scientists that produce results that go against the wishes of their political paymasters don't get invited to do further studies."

Two things:
1) Funding is availble for scientists to study global warming. That's it. It's happening, it's proven and we need to know *why*. They are not paid to prove humans are causing it!
2) If your second statement were true then why aren't dozens of reports stating that humans do not cause climate change pouring out of US government-funded labs? On the contrary, US scientists are complaining that the Bush administration is putting unprecented political pressure to not release findings that do not fit with their agenda.


"Again I stress that I am not a scientist. Although cynical, I genuinely welcome incontrovertible proof to change my opinion."

Not to sound too wanky, but I am a scientist. We do not deal in proof, incotravertible or not, but evidence and theory.

Ste