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

Global Day of Action on Climate Change: Dublin parade

Get out on the streets on Saturday 8th December and make a noise!

Meet at the Civic Offices, Wood Quay at 1 o'clock to hear talk and entertainment; at two o'clock, when the bells of Christ Church ring out a special peal, we move off to hand in a petition signed by over 25,000, saying Stop Climate Chaos.

http://www.stopclimatechaos.ie/content/blogcategory/0/17/

Sign the petition yourself at http://www.stopclimatechaos.ie/component/option,com_chronocontact/chronoformname,petition/Itemid,36/

Stop climate chaos?

...

Have you consulted any meteorologists on this?

Surely our climate IS chaotic? Are you asking it nicely to stop?

Sorry, I cant see external links or I'd check for myself...

That's interesting; I posted a call for Researchers to attend a peaceful demonstration in Dublin on the 8th of December, to support the Bali Conference on climate change http://unfccc.int/meetings/cop_13/items/4094.php and it's been removed.

The demonstration will include the ringing of various church bells, including those of Christ Church; we have the Dean's blessing. The organisation running the parade is a coalition of environmental, charitable and faith-based organisations, including Oxfam Ireland, the Irish National Trust (An Taisce), Eco-UNESCO and others -- see http://www.stopclimatechaos.ie/content/blogcategory/2/24/

I trust my post breaks no rules and will be reinstated once it has been vetted.

Ah . . . it's back! Thank you, O ever-vigilant mods.

What was that about chaos? Would that the weather were still as chaotic as ever. We are now seeing very clear trends, and they don't look good.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjlJ_CS_xWw

hmm.. Strangely I still cant see external sites...

However, I dont think that trends and theories will ever change the long view on weather and climate, which is pretty chaotic, even if in the short to medium term it doesn;t look too crazy. Chaos IS everything, moments of calm and order are sort of included in it, just that it doesnt STAY that way!

I agree with what you say about chaos, Robyn Hoode. Why do you say it though? Is that a note of scepticism I hear?

Sorry, that looks a bit rude, and I don't want to be rude. What I mean is that the graphs meteorologists have come up with show such a sudden and sharp upward curve that they call it a "hockey stick". I think they have ice hockey in mind.

hee hee!

It's the idea of asking climate to kindly stop being chaotic that tickled me...

I'm a little fatalistic about climate, while I do believe we have contributed to accelerating it changing, I dont believe we are CAUSING it, there's been acid rain since day one (or was it day six? I cant remeber what order He made it all in )... And once we have been wiped from the face of the earth, the earth will reclaim an equilibrium again, momentarily, and will pass again into different epochs and cycles... And no doubt the sharks or alligators will outlast us all...

Yes indeed; there have been mass extinctions before, even worse possibly than the one predicted after runaway global warming. It is likely that many species will survive, in greatly reduced numbers, including humans, and go on to repopulate the globe as before.

It's the "greatly reduced numbers" that give me the willies. Think "holocaust".

why? The earth doesnt choose according to race, creed, gender, personal choice of belief or lifestyle. In what way is the holocaust relevant?

By holocaust I mean a lot of death and destruction. And it actually would be selective: the most vulnerable would be those in countries that are already hot.

so their geographic location is the deciding factor, which is a lot less theorteically selective than the holocaust was.

Dont get me wrong, the sort of suffering that will come about is horiffic and I dont doubt that many many people will suffer unnecessarily because many people will panic and respond badly to hard times, pressure and lack of resources, however I also feel it will be a cleansing experience, like cutting away gangrene... painful but for the greater good.

And I dont think it would be any great loss for the world if we ceased to exist in any recogniseable form, and the likelihood is that if people do survive generations of extreme weather (high water levels, extremes of heat and cold, another ice age?) then they won be the same people we can look around and see today.

I still dont understand how a petition is going to stop the natural cycles of the planet, even if we do stop and perhaps undo a little of the harm we have done. I dislike the damage we do to the earth, but we are not the cause of climate change, simply an added difficulty, like having asthma when you get a cold, it makes it harder to get over!

Sorry, but I have to challenge you on two things there:

1 "I dont think it would be any great loss for the world if we ceased to exist in any recogniseable form" -- we have an amazing capacity for going into theoretical mode, and calmly contemplating our own death and that of others around us. But in daily life, what do the words "great loss" usually mean to you? Is there no such thing? This just doesn't add up, to me.

2 "we are not the cause of climate change" -- alas, that is unmistakably established by now. Look at any NASA climate site. We are raising the temperature, and after some more years of going on as we are, it will no longer be possible to stop it rising.

I believe we may contribute to accelerating temperature rises, we may be skewing the natural changes, but the climate WILL change no matter WHAT we do or when. How it would change without our additional help is pretty academic now, and chances are, there is no way to tell for sure.

Yes, theoretically it'll be no great shakes when there arent any of us here any more.

By our nature we change our environment to better suit ourselves, correct? We've taken it to a degree that means we soon will not be supported by our environment. No, I dont want to be there, but I cannot help but see the bigger picture.

In my lifetime or our children's lifetimes we may or may not experience great losses here in the western world. We cannot know for sure, nobody actually knows.

In certain ares of the world there is great suffering due to weather anyway. This is in no way meant to dismiss the hardships, but it's not going to get any easier, and as more of us suffer and experience these things it will be harder to help.

My view is pretty bleak, mankind will not help itself until the 11th hour and it may, then, be too late.

I still dont understand how asking climate chaos to stop will help at all. As I said I cant get to the site so I cant read it for myself. What climate chaos? Who are you asking to stop the climate?

Maybe it is an unhappy choice of title -- "stop climate chaos" -- but it follows similar movements in other countries, particularly Britain http://www.stopclimatechaos.org/ and http://www.icount.org.uk/

Strange that the external links aren't working for you; in any case you can google it up. Anyone else having trouble with the links?

In the sixties we sang along with Tom Lehrer, when the threat was nuclear war, "We will all go together when we go" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zv6mPgtay6E and strangely we took comfort from the thought.

But we won't all go together. And chaos in the human world means the collapse of economies, displacement of populations, greatly increased extremism, a multiplication of all the problems we already face . . .

Of course, when we are dead we will be immune. It only hurts while you are alive

My point exactly. And no, I'm not having trouble with the links, I cannot access external sites.

I was first drawn to use the word 'holocaust' when I read an edition of Newsweek last year. It had several articles saying "global warming needn't be all bad news". I wrote to them (don't suppose they published it though) saying that their best-case scenario still amounted to a holocaust.

It just seems as though we are in the position of people watching a catastrophe approaching a section of the world's population, and so far doing virtually nothing to prevent it.

It's not as though we can't do anything: George Monbiot gives a perfectly achievable list of measures in his book "Heat".

Our current climate isn't particularly chaotic - in fact, the Earth is in a calm state. In fact, when you really have a look at how the Earth works and what it's made of, its natural state should either be locked in ice or hot and volcanic

They say the Earth will have a 6-7 billion year period in the habitable zone, before the Sun expands. We've had 4½ bn already, during which life has evolved pretty smartly, all things considered, so if we just survive the next hundred years, we could have a few billion ahead http://www.astrobio.net/news/print.php?sid=1526

For the last few millennia, the story has been "the end of the world is nigh". Now we can see that, on the contrary, mankind is still in its infancy.

Though here's someone saying we may only have a few hundred million years http://www.astronomycafe.net/qadir/q79.html

That's still a few hundred times as long as mankind has been around so far, so yes, we're still in our infancy.