Fair dinkum, pollution’s the real mongrel here, mate.
Pollution – that is the only word politicians and activists should be using to describe what the problem is and its impact upon the human body. The problem is not climate change, just pollution!
It seems that people, even AGI (because it only learns from the stupid crap we put online), are factually mixed on whether the Earth is warming or cooling. The UN says humans are responsible for global warming, Yale says the upper atmosphere is cooling whilst close to the surface is warming, Climate.gov says the earths temperature has risen by only 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 degree Celcius), MIT says this has happened across tens of thousands of years, warmer and cooler, and is part of a environmental cycle, albeit without what we know about human interference present or past.
So much differing opinion stated as fact. Makes your head spin faster than a Cyclone Tracy souvenir. So much unknown spoken about as though known. We have little understanding of the history before us. We thought we developed from apes, yet that is not the evidence being uncovered today, and that previous generations existed with technologies we don’t understand, nor can replicate, though for some reason an event likely happened that reset civilisation back to basics. It is proposed we have started many times over, only to be nearly wiped out by a significant event, and apes have nothing to do with us beyond similarities.
We know as much and as little as we know; the rest is a best guess.
Pollution – I think we can all agree that pollution is a problem affecting all human beings. Pollution comes in many forms; fossil fuels are just one of them. The problem is that we need to fix what we, human beings, put into the atmosphere that we then breathe in. Sickness is growing globally. Birth rates are declining globally.
Righto, time to call a spade a bloody shovel. Let’s be honest. EVs are not environmentally friendly. We mine everything, the metal, the minerals to make batteries and wiring. If you want to call yourself an activist, but you have a mobile phone, a home with refrigeration, lighting, plumbing and so forth, then all you are is a hypocrite. You’re uninformed and blinded by the reality around you. Our clothing, food, nearly everything we interact with daily, has plastic. Yet someone will want to ban it without knowing, nor accepting, the consequences of that action.
What is the solution?
I don’t know. I can admit that. I know we have to change, yet we also need to find cleaner technologies to replace things that are bad and polluting both the Earth and air. Maybe the activists need to start finding the cleaner technologies and advocating for those instead of just yelling and ranting for change, yet not having any solution to that change, nor wanting to live outside with no heating, cooling, refrigeration, etc. What do you do for food? Start hunting? Yet you’re against hunting? Burning timber, but you’re against cutting down trees? Problems, problems, without solutions.
I believe our largest polluters are bulk transport, not cars. Planes and ships are our biggest polluters. Do we stop all planes and all shipping? The next is power generation. I think there are solutions to these major polluters, but there is also history, investment and cost to change. Mining can shift to hydrogen-powered vehicles, Australia is testing it and doing it. Unsure what other countries are doing in their mining sectors. Ships should all move to nuclear-powered engines, that removes a large majority of air pollution but creates another pollution in nuclear waste. If hydrogen-powered ship engines exist, then maybe more needs to be placed into that technology to retrofit all existing ships and have zero fossil-powered shipping.
Planes… I don’t know of any current technology to change from fossil-fuelled engines. We’re so focused on changing consumer cars and trucks to electric, but they’re a minor polluter globally compared to the big three. A fraction of the problem compared to the big three. There is nothing environmentally friendly about EVs, not when we have the big three that aren’t clean energy. We need clean energy first at power generation, whilst solving the air and sea transport problem. That will then filter down to vehicles with an infrastructure to support a technology that works to provide distance, with clean and cheap replenishment.
Ground every jumbo? Yeah, nah, good luck selling that at school-holidays check-in.
The big three flow into everything else, food supply, farming, manufacturing, to the consumer. We need to stop this throw-away production that exists today. We must implement right-to-repair globally. Hell, we need to implement a you-must-repair policy as a start, and only if something can’t be repaired, then it should be replaced.
Anyway, that’s my two bob’s worth, rant over, beer-o-clock.
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