I was not happy with this article

[santaman2000]

Well until the ice all melts, its unlikely a significant temerature incerease will occour, as with melting and evaporation for precipitation will take more enegy like when melting snow and keeping a lid on a pot (venerable ray mears of the learned alumni of bushcraft). Its also unlikely that the ice has returned to what I was, only the surface ice on the northern pole, and I think it is undenieriableist, that the planet has warmed in the last 200 years since dickens and that it is continuing to warm, glaciers have shrunk, ice shelfs have dissapeared. What me and George W Bush wish to know is is it man made, because we could be rejecting coal fired power for no reason, I a lot cleaner than nuclear!

Back to being serious:

I suspect a great deal of it is the natural warming cooling cycle of the Earth. After all, the last ice age (mini ice age disregarded0 was 10,000 years ago and the next one is predicted to be 15,000 years in the future. That would mean we still have about 2500 years on the warming side (assuming it's symmetrical)

Of course man made pollution can't be helping, but just how big a factor it is, is far from settled science; despite what the so called experts say.

A third possible contributing factor (just from my own wandering mind without any outside reference) Could some of the heating (especially heat contained in the deep oceans) be from geothermal heat released by continental drift? Like I said, this is just my rambling.

 

[boatman]

Floods, droughts etc, all the dreadful things that could happen because of global warming pale into insignificance if we went into another Ice Age. That is something we couldn't cope with. Reminded, yet again, of Sir Fred Hoyle and his Ice Age theorising.

 

[dewi]

Actually the thread is about survivalists, but somehow got derailed onto global warming. Imagine that.

Yeah, imagine that, because its just me in this thread eh Dave? Nobody else has commented or argued a point... all me derailing a thread.

Wait a minute? Didn't you stick your oar in a few times trying to be a smart @rse? Imagine that.

 

[Corso]

Is it possible to be a man made climate change sceptic and still believe in climate change?

There is defiantly something going on but I can't get past the politics or personal agendas to get to the Science

There are however plenty of otherways to wipe out man without worrying the earths heating up a bit...

 

[demographic]

There is a vanishingly small percentage of Blogs I have ever found to be interesting and pretty much every one of them is a build blog where someone catalogues the build of a boat or vehicle.
The rest have pretty much all been self indulgent pap that would never get published to paper. That one falls into the latter category.

 

[boatman]

References to survivalist blogs on building a boat please. That would be interesting and a valid bug out method for, say, an EMP incident.

 

[David LaFerney]

Yeah, imagine that, because its just me in this thread eh Dave? Nobody else has commented or argued a point... all me derailing a thread.

Wait a minute? Didn't you stick your oar in a few times trying to be a smart @rse? Imagine that.

So, name calling now? But sure, I'll take responsibility for participating. I didn't intend to imply otherwise.

 

[British Red]

References to survivalist blogs on building a boat please. That would be interesting and a valid bug out method for, say, an EMP incident.

Try the book "bugging out" by David E Crossley

 

[mrcharly]

References to survivalist blogs on building a boat please. That would be interesting and a valid bug out method for, say, an EMP incident.

I've always thought that taking over a (moored) big cargo ship would make for an excellent refuge in the event of TEOTWAWKI

 

[British Red]

An oil rig was used in the book Afterlight.

 

[boatman]

Found several novels and have most of them. Practical blogs on various solutions is what I am interested in. Crossley is very general and I am still waiting for the next two Shadow books, although have reread the first one a few times. Extemporised boats fascinate me and bushcraft courses do illustrate a few.

 

[Tengu]

Davids right; I did start this thread about surviving and how important it is to at least try

 

[British Red]

What interests me Tengu is peoples responses to the Climate Change thread.

They are "normal" western responses - basically "I will make small changes but will not radically change my lifestyle for a less convenient and comfortable one". That is the normal response. What that means is that we, as a society, do not respond well to threats or prepare efficiently for threats.

Given that this is undeniably true (we as a society and as a government tend to take a short term view), how can it be anything other than prudent and sensible for families and individuals to make preparations for risks that society as a whole is unwilling to face up to?

 

[Corso]

What ever happened to the hole in the ozone layer...

 

[demographic]

What ever happened to the hole in the ozone layer...

We pretty much stopped using CFCs and if you look at NASA's figures its finally closing up. Still got some way to go last time I read it but its working.

 

[Tengu]

Well, as far as Im concerned aside from having a car Im not part of the problem.

My consumption is minimal and I have no kids.

However, as one of the Evil White People(TM) I am to blame for lots of things.

 

[David LaFerney]

On survivalists - personally I have always had a desire (or innate need) to prepare for hard times that might come. Since long before anyone coined the term prepper.

We've already seen what it looks like when the spritz hits the fan several times in fairly recent history - hurricanes, earthquakes, epidemics, Insane despotic ruling dynasties (hello DPRK), ruinous hyperinflation, the collapse of the Soviet Union - not to mention the hordes of people currently being displaced by war and barbarism. For the people caught in the middle of those disasters it probably seems like the end of the world.

Any of that could happen to any of us at any time, and it only makes sense to consider what you would do, and try to be prepared just in case. I bet plenty of those refuges wish they had (been able to) planned better - better shoes at least.

Anyway, short of becoming a refugee or having war break out around me the worse case scenario that I think can really be prepared for (for me) is the one where my family has to get by on a lot less money (or the equivalent where income stays the same but prices inflate drastically) in which case being able to make things, and grow things, and fix things, and get by on less should be (and actually have been) valuable skills - and my stock of tools and the ability to use them are far more valuable than a rifle.

People have been worried about the coming hard times as long as I can remember. They haven't been wrong, hard times do come, but they also pass - and no matter what there is always still a mortgage and taxes to pay. It will take a lot more than an outbreak of zombie flu to change that.

I think that the over wrought article that you referred to when you started this thread was hyperbolically speculating that the idea of a societal reboot that actually did do away with the tax man, and bills, and the alarm clock, and the rich/poor class distinction, and corrupt politicians, and all manner of social parasites... Well there IS a certain positive aspect to all that - in theory - but an event big enough to cause those changes would be truly horrible. So, my position is to prepare for the worse, but do everything possible (precious little) to keep it from happening. I hope that very few misguided people actually want that to happen - but I'm also sure that a few do. Unfortunately some of them are quite influential.

It's an intriguing subject.

 

[demographic]

What interests me Tengu is peoples responses to the Climate Change thread.

They are "normal" western responses - basically "I will make small changes but will not radically change my lifestyle for a less convenient and comfortable one". That is the normal response. What that means is that we, as a society, do not respond well to threats or prepare efficiently for threats.

Given that this is undeniably true (we as a society and as a government tend to take a short term view), how can it be anything other than prudent and sensible for families and individuals to make preparations for risks that society as a whole is unwilling to face up to?

I'm sure some people can vastly lower their consumption as soon as they have paid off a mortgage retire and can "leave the rat race" to the point where they don't have to do a few hundred miles a week driving and their kids leave home.
Bit like yerself really.

 

[British Red]

Lots of people could do lots of things demographic - me included. But we all choose not to because we like our comfortable lifestyles.

We could all stop buying imported food stuffs because of the amount of food miles they have travelled and the emissions that brings about. But most don't because we like choice and cheap food.

We could all stop using planes to take holidays because exhaust emissions in the upper atmosphere are far more damaging than those lower down. But we don't because we enjoy our trips.

My point is not that my family are in any way better than anyone else.

My point is that we in the UK will never give up on all those things like imported foods and holidays and that if any government tried to make people do that they would be unelectable, so to pretend that we actually plan to do anything about burning fossil fuels and the pollution they cause to any significant degree is disingenuous bordering on rank hypocrisy.

The only logical thing to do therefore, either individually or as a society, if we believe in climate change or not is to prepare for the fact that all fossil fuels will be used upwith the emissions and societal changes that implies.

 

[dewi]

We could all stop buying imported food stuffs because of the amount of food miles they have travelled and the emissions that brings about. But most don't because we like choice and cheap food.

That is quite an odd argument BR.

Without food imports, we'd be forced to have some form of rationing similar to that during WWII, but aside from that, do you really believe that without cheap food (cheap being a relative term) people could afford to eat? We already have record numbers of food banks and people making the choice between heating and eating. Sounds more like cheap food is a necessity to me?

The UK passed the point of being self sufficient long ago and very few have the luxury of the life style you enjoy. And although I don't choose to fly abroad for holidays, I don't work in a mind-numbing 9 to 5 job, sit in traffic jams for 3 hours every working day and have to put up with the contradictory rules of employment that many have to. Given the option during the average persons amazingly generous 2 weeks break every year, do they spend a small fortune driving to an overpriced holiday destination here in the UK with the guarantee of poor weather, or do they fly abroad for pretty much guaranteed good weather and a nice beach to relax on?

In short, what you're suggesting is that people should starve and be miserable to offset emissions that don't contribute even a 10th of the emissions spewed out by industry, and ironically the very power stations providing the power for us to have a debate online about them