Hmm well my concerns are less about whether or not climate is or isn't and to what extent this and that, my problem is more the cheap and stupidly political response to it. Politicians using it to get brownie points. I remember in an election debate some years ago, our UK leaders were all standing next to each other, asked about what they'll do about it, and then each one of the five just started numbering the amount of trees they were going to plant like an auction
I'm going to plant 1 million trees when I'm in office
Oh yeah? Well that's NOT ENOUGH, I'm going to plan 1.5 million!
Meanwhile in the time they had that debate China opened about 17 coal power plants that generate more CO2 than the UK does in 10 years.
We as a species are meant to innovate our way out of problems, not freeze and starve our elderly in the name of some idealistic, globalist endeavour. You can't expect India and China to stop producing thus never having the same developmental privileges we in the west did just because we did it first. The fact is, Africa, India, China, they're all going to start producing more and more emissions. You could wipe Europe of the face of the earth and it wouldn't make a blind bit of difference. I mean, the UK is less than 1% of global emissions. Even if you did wipe the UK out of existence, China would just see an open market opportunity and pick up the slack.
We see the farce in so many ways. We cut our emissions and the politicians announce it with pride. 2 minutes digging into the details and you find they're just importing energy resources from around the world, which not only is made in less sustainable ways, but also has to be shipped on large ships across the oceans. We're not reducing climate change at all, we're just shunting it off to poor places. It's all a massive joke.
Solar panels on your houses? Great! You'll break even in 45 years, except the panels only last 20 years and lose efficiency as you go. Also, you're in the country with fourth lowest sunlight hours on the planet, roughly the same as Iceland and Alaska. Oh, now you want to block the sun to cool the earth, over a country you just make completely bankrupt investing in solar panels? Nice!
(I'm sure there's more nuance to that last one but you get the point).
None of these people give an honest shit about climate. If they did, they would stop importing immigrants to the country given that their carbon footprint invariably skyrockets when they land on our soil. Surely it's greener to leave them where they are and help out charitably in reasonable ways? But no, that goes against their political posturing. Ideology before consensus I'm afraid.
Ok I went on a bit of a rant there so I'll keep the rest short!
I'm always a bit wary of 'consensus' because it's treated like some kind of godlike status, which just automatically makes me skeptical. In China, it's scientific consensus that acupuncture works 100% of the time to heal everything ever. Who's to say the West's consensus is anymore valid than theirs? We're already well aware of the Replication Crisis which we just conveniently sweeped under the rug and forgot about.
In principle, it's a noble thing though and I try to trust things to the best extent that I can. (scientific) conspiracy theories are just too easy at this point to even bother with.
RE: Smash the Cat. How much time left with my best friend?