The Sixth Extinction (Environmental News)

[Sporting]

As I suspected.

[ursus arctos]

Yes, and I am fairly certain that Newsmax and OAN are even worse

[Nefertiti2]

The BBC meanwhile invited the Prime Minister‘s father on to discuss climate change

[Nefertiti2]

https://twitter.com/xkcdcomic/status/1424752232910655488?s=21

[Eggchaser]

See, it's not as bad as predicted. What are people worried about?

[Nefertiti2]

See, it's not as bad as predicted. What are people worried about?

A year to go…

[Eggchaser]

Pfft. It was raining yesterday!

Anyway, it's too expensive to do anything about it, and long term it won't affect me, I'll be dead in 50 years.

[hobbes]

Anyway, it's too expensive to do anything about it, and long term it won't affect me, I'll be dead in 50 years.

Shut up, you marxist hippy. You drive an electric car with indicators and everything so you can signal and virtue signal at the same time. I bet it runs on 5G and vaccines.

[Eggchaser]

It runs, partly, on solar off the panels on the roof and out the house battery.

The rest is powered by smugness.

[Nefertiti2]

This is good

https://twitter.com/emorwee/status/1425160555057328131?s=21

[Nefertiti2]

https://twitter.com/cjayanetti/status/1425416498051526662?s=21

[Nefertiti2]

https://twitter.com/metoffice/status/1425508578366984200?s=21

[anton pulisov]

The Joe Biden Green Revolution continues as he asks OPEC to lower oil prices in order to simulate consumption and revive the economy.

[Nefertiti2]

https://twitter.com/mark_lynas/status/1426091806266204165?s=21

[Balderdasha]

I don't think this is news as such, more an alarming thing that I noticed and wondered if anyone else saw.

A few weeks or months ago, whenever it was that we had scorching hot weather in southern UK, I'd be out walking with the kids and would see a mouse or a rat that appeared to have just expired in the middle of the pavement. It happened about three or four times though the kids were mostly unphased. None of the creatures had any visible sign of damage, it seemed as if they'd just died of heat stroke or had their feet burned by the asphalt.

Now, I have no great love for mice and rats, but they're notoriously said to be what will survive along with the cockroaches. If existing temperatures are actually frying them on pavements already, I am a little concerned.

[ad hoc]

They might have been poisoned.

Mice and rats successfully live in climates much hotter even than mid-heatwave UK so I can't really imagine it's that

[Sporting]

I have an internet friend who has rats as pets. I'm not sure if I would and my partner would be a firm negative.

[ursus arctos]

I would also think poisoning is the most likely explanation

[S. aureus]

Rats supposedly make good pets, though I'd have issues with their short lifespans (only a couple of years). The domesticated ones are quite different to the wild ones (much like dogs aren't wolves).

[Nocturnal Submission]

Very sad but I'm not surprised: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-58549373

[Eggchaser]

What are they worried about? The Government has a plan to upgrade houses with no central heating - they're going to install gas boilers! Subsidised, naturally.

By all accounts, just like Hammond before him, Sunak is massively against green crap spending and is actively in favour of cutting it.

[john the revelator]

He's not alone
The FT today has a piece about the German elections.
After the summer floods, the Green party support has gone up by zero in worst affected areas in Germany.
Despite watching their houses swept away, the folk will still stick to the traditional parties.
In Bavaria, the voters flag that climate change is a top concern but are opposed to putting money into public transport or sustainable food production.
The situation is FUBAR.

[ad hoc]

He's not alone
The FT today has a piece about the German elections.
After the summer floods, the Green party support has gone up by zero in worst affected areas in Germany.
Despite watching their houses swept away, the folk will still stick to the traditional parties.
In Bavaria, the voters flag that climate change is a top concern but are opposed to putting money into public transport or sustainable food production.
The situation is FUBAR.

I saw an interview with one woman who was still dealing with the fact that her house is still unliveable and the point that she made was that after the floods it was farmers and fire brigades who dealt with the aftermath using tractors to clean the rubble, generators and pumps to clean up - all of which were running on diesel. So (in her opinion) the Greens were right on climate change but in the aftermath of a global warming related disaster they all needed things that the greens would ban.

Not sure how to square that circle

[ursus arctos]

My understanding is that the van proposed in their manifesto a).applies only to cars and b) would only come into effect ten years out.

[Janik]

But that doesn't address the underlying point the lady Ad Hoc saw was making, nor the unfortunate response to her - which is that humanity is existing beyond the earth's means. Not only do we need not to grow any more, but we actively need to scale back what we do... which, in effect, means not using diesel powered machines to repair things after climate change disasters, even if that actually means stuff is never put back how it was (the repair just contributing to further, worse man-made global warming disasters down the line).

It is a hard sell as an argument to someone whose town has just been devastated, especially if they know that the technology exists to do so, it just isn't being employed. Which is why those scared kids are encouraging as well as saddening - they are more likely to look at the medium or long-term, not just the immediate.