How worried are you about climate change?

[Maciamo]

A new study found that 75% of young people were worried about Climate Change and many suffer from climate anxiety. I am among them. What about you?

[bicicleur 2]

I agree that climate change is a serious challenge, but I resent climate hysteria.
The tweets you posted won't cure the hysteria, on the contrary.
Climate change is a problem which will have to be handled on a global scale and it will take some time to devellop solutions which are efficient and cost-effective.
And there will be some collateral dammage, but humanity has faced many more threats and challenges in the past.
Humanity found solutions to overcome hunger, war and diseases and as a consequence, population grew exponentially, just like a virus.

[Ceribell]

I am not very worried about climate change. I think that rising CO2 levels are not necessarily a bad thing and may actually be a positive factor for the earths flora.
I would be more concerned if temperatures were steadily falling and earth was entering into another ice age.

[Maciamo]

And there will be some collateral dammage, but humanity has faced many more threats and challenges in the past.
Humanity found solutions to overcome hunger, war and diseases and as a consequence, population grew exponentially, just like a virus.

Actually I am not worried as much about humanity as about the loss of biodiversity and extinctions of species. There is no doubt that humanity will survive. But if we lose half of all plant and animal species, is that a win for you?

[Maciamo]

I am not very worried about climate change. I think that rising CO2 levels are not necessarily a bad thing and may actually be a positive factor for the earths flora.
I would be more concerned if temperatures were steadily falling and earth was entering into another ice age.

Then you don't understand the real issues of climate change. Who cares about CO2 levels in themselves? It's what they represent that matters. About 10% of global warming is caused by deforestation, mainly in tropical regions (developed countries tend to reforest more than they deforest at home, or are stable in terms of forest cover). This deforestation is the main cause of species extinction, especially in the Amazon and in Indonesia, but also in Africa.

Another leading cause of climate change is the petrol industry. Just burning petrol in itself is not a big problem if enough trees can absorb the CO2 and the more noxious nitrogen oxides. But the petroleum industry also pollutes oceans either directly (offshore oil extraction, accidental spills, coastal refineries) or indirectly (operational discharges from ships and from industries, atmospheric fallout, and especially plastics), which also destroys the environment and kills off sensitive species.

[bicicleur 2]

Actually I am not worried as much about humanity as about the loss of biodiversity and extinctions of species. There is no doubt that humanity will survive. But if we lose half of all plant and animal species, is that a win for you?

No, it is not a win. But neither is climate hysteria leading to rush decisions which afterwards prove to be counterproductive and a waiste of resources.
I like the climate plan Macron announced today. He intends to invest more in small nuclear plants and hydrogen technology. I believe that makes sense.
But the Germans won't be happy with that. They took a rush decision after Fukushima and converted from nuclear to brown coal. They based their decision on green hysteria. The green hysteria says Fukushima is a nuclear disaster while in fact it was a very exceptional natural disaster aggravated by the nuclear. More than 80 % of the death toll simply drowned.
Other examples of such rush decisions in the past are investments in power plants on biomass or heating houses on woodpellets.
Solar and wind energy can be very usefull, but the way it has been oversubsidised and implemented has created overspending, a lack of energy storage capacity and a mismatch between supply and demand. And what about the plans in Belgium to invest in large gas power plants to rectufy all this?
If many more such counterproductive rush decisions are made, many financial resources will be waisted and the enthousiasm of the taxpayer to finance all this will be gone.
Climate hysteria is not a win. It risks to destroy the motivation for the green transition in the long run.
Because I don't believe the green transition can be made in 1 generation, I think it will be a marathon which will last 100 years. And there will be collateral dammage in the mean time.
We simply don't have the technology yet for a swift and fast solution.

[bigsnake49]

Since I was involved in the power industry and some of the studies about integration of different technologies into the grid, I think it qualifies me to have an opinion.

To those that think that solar and wind have been overincentivized, you have not seen all the tax breaks that gas and oil have been getting over the last 100 years in the US.

Here is my opinion on the different power sources in terms of climate change:

1. Nuclear needs to be part of any future power grid energy mix. Maybe not current technology but it needs to serve as the base load serving source
2. Solar and wind need to be accompanied by storage otherwise they need to buy ancillary services from the market
3. Gas combined cycle units need to be part of the mix as load following units
4. No place for coal fired units

Rain forests need to be reforested. We have lost a lot when the Amazon and South Asian rainforests got cleared for farming. Please do your part by not buying any products from what used to be rainforest.

Please do your part by not contributing to overpopulation. Please also do your part by conserving energy, buying energy efficient vehicles and energy efficient housing.

To all the trucking companies: Please do not use trucks for long haul loads, use trains instead. For local distribution use electric trucks instead of fossil fueled ones. The goes for commercial trucks (plumbers, electricians, etc.)

To all the commuters: Please buy and use electric cars for your daily commute.

To all the car companies: Please help us transition from a fossil fuel economy to an electric car economy. Move the economies of scale down market so people can afford to be energy efficient.

[Ceribell]

Then you don't understand the real issues of climate change. Who cares about CO2 levels in themselves? It's what they represent that matters. About 10% of global warming is caused by deforestation, mainly in tropical regions (developed countries tend to reforest more than they deforest at home, or are stable in terms of forest cover). This deforestation is the main cause of species extinction, especially in the Amazon and in Indonesia, but also in Africa.

Another leading cause of climate change is the petrol industry. Just burning petrol in itself is not a big problem if enough trees can absorb the CO2 and the more noxious nitrogen oxides. But the petroleum industry also pollutes oceans either directly (offshore oil extraction, accidental spills, coastal refineries) or indirectly (operational discharges from ships and from industries, atmospheric fallout, and especially plastics), which also destroys the environment and kills off sensitive species.

What I mean is climate change is bad for humans, not animals and plants, maybe even beneficial for them
The main problem is over population and destruction of earths natural habitat. Once the land is destroyed, it is hard to imagine that it can ever be recovered. And the extinct animal species, gone forever.
It’s a very sad situation.

[Maciamo]

No, it is not a win. But neither is climate hysteria leading to rush decisions which afterwards prove to be counterproductive and a waiste of resources.
I like the climate plan Macron announced today. He intends to invest more in small nuclear plants and hydrogen technology. I believe that makes sense.
But the Germans won't be happy with that. They took a rush decision after Fukushima and converted from nuclear to brown coal. They based their decision on green hysteria. The green hysteria says Fukushima is a nuclear disaster while in fact it was a very exceptional natural disaster aggravated by the nuclear. More than 80 % of the death toll simply drowned.
Other examples of such rush decisions in the past are investments in power plants on biomass or heating houses on woodpellets.
Solar and wind energy can be very usefull, but the way it has been oversubsidised and implemented has created overspending, a lack of energy storage capacity and a mismatch between supply and demand. And what about the plans in Belgium to invest in large gas power plants to rectufy all this?
If many more such counterproductive rush decisions are made, many financial resources will be waisted and the enthousiasm of the taxpayer to finance all this will be gone.
Climate hysteria is not a win. It risks to destroy the motivation for the green transition in the long run.
Because I don't believe the green transition can be made in 1 generation, I think it will be a marathon which will last 100 years. And there will be collateral dammage in the mean time.
We simply don't have the technology yet for a swift and fast solution.

I agree with most of what you say.

It was a terrible decision of the German government to close nuclear plants and replace them by polluting and emission-rich coal plants. But the anti-nuclear lobby in Germany has been active for decades, long before climate change was on the political agenda. That decision was not related in any way to a desire to fight climate change. It was just brought by fear of radiations.

I have also never been in favour of burning biomass or wood pellets to make electricity. The businesses who lobbied for that argued that it was 'renewable' energy as plants can be regrown. But renewable energy is not necessarily clean or low emission.

Anyway the biggest environmental issue in my eyes is the extinction of species, which is caused mostly by deforestation, loss of natural habitat and pollution. Fighting these issues usually go hand in hand with combating climate change.

Too many people associate climate change with burning fossil fuels like gas and petrol, and think first of cars and airplanes as the culprits. But transportation is only responsible for about 15% of climate change, while agriculture (including deforestation, land use and methane emissions from cattle) is responsible for 30 to 35%. The rest of mostly mining (4 to 7%), construction (5 to 8% only to make cement) and industry (about 20%, including 8% for metallurgy alone), home heating and cooling.

[Maciamo]

Since I was involved in the power industry and some of the studies about integration of different technologies into the grid, I think it qualifies me to have an opinion.

To those that think that solar and wind have been overincentivized, you have not seen all the tax breaks that gas and oil have been getting over the last 100 years in the US.

Here is my opinion on the different power sources in terms of climate change:

1. Nuclear needs to be part of any future power grid energy mix. Maybe not current technology but it needs to serve as the base load serving source
2. Solar and wind need to be accompanied by storage otherwise they need to buy ancillary services from the market
3. Gas combined cycle units need to be part of the mix as load following units
4. No place for coal fired units

Rain forests need to be reforested. We have lost a lot when the Amazon and South Asian rainforests got cleared for farming. Please do your part by not buying any products from what used to be rainforest.

Please do your part by not contributing to overpopulation. Please also do your part by conserving energy, buying energy efficient vehicles and energy efficient housing.

To all the trucking companies: Please do not use trucks for long haul loads, use trains instead. For local distribution use electric trucks instead of fossil fueled ones. The goes for commercial trucks (plumbers, electricians, etc.)

To all the commuters: Please buy and use electric cars for your daily commute.

To all the car companies: Please help us transition from a fossil fuel economy to an electric car economy. Move the economies of scale down market so people can afford to be energy efficient.

I agree about everything except for electric cars for commuters. At present the batteries of electric cars have such a high manufacturing CO2e tag that it only makes sense to buy an EV for people who drive a lot (like taxi drivers) or those who uses only low-emission electricity (solar, wind, hydro, nuclear) to recharge their car. In Norway or Sweden where nearly all the electricity is clean that's not a problem, but in the US, China, Germany (now that nuclear is out) and many other countries, that really depends on your electricity provider.

[Twilight]

Then you don't understand the real issues of climate change. Who cares about CO2 levels in themselves? It's what they represent that matters. About 10% of global warming is caused by deforestation, mainly in tropical regions (developed countries tend to reforest more than they deforest at home, or are stable in terms of forest cover). This deforestation is the main cause of species extinction, especially in the Amazon and in Indonesia, but also in Africa.

Another leading cause of climate change is the petrol industry. Just burning petrol in itself is not a big problem if enough trees can absorb the CO2 and the more noxious nitrogen oxides. But the petroleum industry also pollutes oceans either directly (offshore oil extraction, accidental spills, coastal refineries) or indirectly (operational discharges from ships and from industries, atmospheric fallout, and especially plastics), which also destroys the environment and kills off sensitive species.

This is all the more reason to encourage companies to set up factories in the US; instead of internationally. Too many jungle products are ending up in our supermarkets.

[bigsnake49]

I agree with most of what you say.

It was a terrible decision of the German government to close nuclear plants and replace them by polluting and emission-rich coal plants. But the anti-nuclear lobby in Germany has been active for decades, long before climate change was on the political agenda. That decision was not related in any way to a desire to fight climate change. It was just brought by fear of radiations.

I have also never been in favour of burning biomass or wood pellets to make electricity. The businesses who lobbied for that argued that it was 'renewable' energy as plants can be regrown. But renewable energy is not necessarily clean or low emission.

Anyway the biggest environmental issue in my eyes is the extinction of species, which is caused mostly by deforestation, loss of natural habitat and pollution. Fighting these issues usually go hand in hand with combating climate change.

Too many people associate climate change with burning fossil fuels like gas and petrol, and think first of cars and airplanes as the culprits. But transportation is only responsible for about 15% of climate change, while agriculture (including deforestation, land use and methane emissions from cattle) is responsible for 30 to 35%. The rest of mostly mining (4 to 7%), construction (5 to 8% only to make cement) and industry (about 20%, including 8% for metallurgy alone), home heating and cooling.

Biomass will produce CO2 and or methane no matter whether you burn it or let it naturally decay so you might as well produce some energy while you're at it.

[bigsnake49]

This is all the more reason to encourage companies to set up factories in the US; instead of internationally. Too many jungle products are ending up in our supermarkets.

All those container ships that cross the ocean to bring Chinese products to the shores of the US emit a lot of CO2 not to mention all the other byproducts of burning diesel.

[bicicleur 2]

I agree with most of what you say.

It was a terrible decision of the German government to close nuclear plants and replace them by polluting and emission-rich coal plants. But the anti-nuclear lobby in Germany has been active for decades, long before climate change was on the political agenda. That decision was not related in any way to a desire to fight climate change. It was just brought by fear of radiations.

I have also never been in favour of burning biomass or wood pellets to make electricity. The businesses who lobbied for that argued that it was 'renewable' energy as plants can be regrown. But renewable energy is not necessarily clean or low emission.

Anyway the biggest environmental issue in my eyes is the extinction of species, which is caused mostly by deforestation, loss of natural habitat and pollution. Fighting these issues usually go hand in hand with combating climate change.

Too many people associate climate change with burning fossil fuels like gas and petrol, and think first of cars and airplanes as the culprits. But transportation is only responsible for about 15% of climate change, while agriculture (including deforestation, land use and methane emissions from cattle) is responsible for 30 to 35%. The rest of mostly mining (4 to 7%), construction (5 to 8% only to make cement) and industry (about 20%, including 8% for metallurgy alone), home heating and cooling.

Well, at least those who claim to be so worried about climate change should have stepped in when Germany decided to abondon nuclear energy production, but there are many who are anti-nuclear and climate activist at the same time which is denying all logic.

Nor did I ever understand the reasoning why burning biomass or wood pellets to make electricity were classified as climate neutral.
To many climate activists and politicians reason from an ideologic stance instead of using unbiassed logic.

Climate change is not causing the extinction of species, but both problems have common causes indeed.

[Nicu]

Moderately worried to be honest. Should probably be more worried. Feel like we're passing on the problems to later generations, although we're already starting to feel the effects. Just feel like we as individuals are basically helpless against it. The major problems can only be solved by powerful actors: ie nation states, intl orgs, multinatl corporations, etc.
Human greed is boundless though, so I don't hope for a quick solution. However at the same time, I do think humanity will find a way to make it past this problem like others in the past... the solution may not be ideal but we will survive it.

[Maciamo]

Moderately worried to be honest. Should probably be more worried. Feel like we're passing on the problems to later generations, although we're already starting to feel the effects. Just feel like we as individuals are basically helpless against it. The major problems can only be solved by powerful actors: ie nation states, intl orgs, multinatl corporations, etc.
Human greed is boundless though, so I don't hope for a quick solution. However at the same time, I do think humanity will find a way to make it past this problem like others in the past... the solution may not be ideal but we will survive it.

I feel some sort of cognitive dissonance in what you write. You are not very worried, but you also admit that we, as individuals, have little control over it and that it won't be solved easily. How do you reconcile that? People are normally more worried about problems over which they have little or no control, especially if the problem is going to have economic and social repercussions for decades, over several generations.

Maybe it is because you can't easily imagine what these repercussions will be for you. I have heard a lot of people dismiss climate anxiety by saying that have warmer summer and milder winters might actually be a good thing, especially in northern Europe. But what they don't understand is that if northern Europe may get more pleasant to live, with an increasingly Mediterranean climate, other regions will become too hot, or too dry, or too battered by cyclones and hurricanes to live comfortably, causing tens or hundreds of millions of people from tropical regions to become climate refugees in milder places like Europe. There are already plenty of war refugees (from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan...) and economic migrants (from Africa, India, etc.). But that will be nothing compared to the mass of climate refugees, especially considering how fast the population of Africa and South Asia are growing now. Africa had 125 million inhabitants in 1913, 1.3 billion (10x more) in 2018, and it is et to reach 2.5 billion in 2050 (in less than 20 years) and over 4 billion by 2100. Europe's population will be stable if we exclude potential future immigration. If in 20 years even a fifth of Africa becomes to hot or harsh to live in, there could be 500 million refugees moving to Europe, essentially making half of Europe African. And I am not even including the Middle East and South Asia, which will be hit at least as hard by climate change. It would be even easier to flood the US given that its population is smaller. And yet that's just one of many possible consequences of climate change. Climate refugees represent maybe 20% of the total impact of climate change for developed countries.

The economic consequences for the world economy are even more worrying. Just look how just one virus like Covid-19 has disrupted the world economy. Or how the potential collapse of Evergrande in China, a single (though large) construction company, could cause another global financial crisis like in 2008. It doesn't take much for the markets to crash and for almost everyone to be affected by the economic repercussions on the whole society. The economic downturn that will be caused by climate change are almost unimaginably bigger than the collapse of single companies like Lehman Brothers or Evergrande. The unusually powerful hurricanes battering the Caribbean and Southwest USA, the new destructive floods in Europe and East Asia, and so on are just the beginning. All these damages will cost governments, corporations and individuals alike a lot of money. And ultimately for nothing, as they would just be repairing buildings and infrastructure that was (usually) fine before. Even if you are not personally affected by these natural disasters, it will progressively add its toll to the world economy, adding to national debts, cutting savings and growth, wasting money, and slowing the world economy, which in turn means less money for education, health care, other infrastructure, but also less money for companies to hire, and so on. Everything is linked in the world economy today.

Failure to realise that may be the main reason why some people do not worry enough about climate change. Worry about climate change is not about climate per se. I don't worry about temperatures increasing in Belgium. That was in fact a positive thing for me personally. In spite of that, I worry about climate change because of the more insidious consequences. I also worry about the causes of climate change, which, as I explained above, are linked to the destruction of the environment and the extinction of species.

In summary. What climate change anxiety means:

1. Destruction of the environment, pollution (petrol, plastic, industrial waste), deforestation, and the extinction of species. (some of the main causes driving climate change)
2. Increased heatwaves and forest fires in many parts of the world.
3. Desertification and lack of drinking water in arid regions.
4. Melting of ice caps potentially diverting the Gulf Stream, which could cause Europe to suddenly become as cold as Canada or Russia.
5. Rising sea levels threatening coastal cities worldwide.
6. Increasing diffusion of pests and pathogens, especially in temperate regions as they become warmer (in other words tropical diseases reaching Europe and North America, which has already started, e.g. with the West Nile virus).
7. Long-term global economic recession due to increasing cost of repair from natural catastrophes and rising sea levels.
8. Hundreds of millions or billions of potential climate refugees from arid and tropical to temperate regions.

[bigsnake49]

Well, at least those who claim to be so worried about climate change should have stepped in when Germany decided to abondon nuclear energy production, but there are many who are anti-nuclear and climate activist at the same time which is denying all logic.

Nor did I ever understand the reasoning why burning biomass or wood pellets to make electricity were classified as climate neutral.
To many climate activists and politicians reason from an ideologic stance instead of using unbiassed logic.

Climate change is not causing the extinction of species, but both problems have common causes indeed.

Biomass & wood pellet burning is climate neutral because no matter what you do, whether the biomass rots in the forest or gets burned in a biomass reactor, it will produce the same amount of CO2.

[bicicleur 2]

Biomass & wood pellet burning is climate neutral because no matter what you do, whether the biomass rots in the forest or gets burned in a biomass reactor, it will produce the same amount of CO2.

sometimes they go as far as deforestating the Amazon forest and sending the wood to biomass power plants overseas

[bigsnake49]

sometimes they go as far as deforestating the Amazon forest and sending the wood to biomass power plants overseas

I have long suspected that part of the current climate change is due to the deforestation of rain forests in the Amazon and Indonesia. We need to boycott Brazilian products until they stop clearing the forest and reverse the deforestation.

[Yetos]

Gush...

I have just read that scientists manage to teach cows to go to toilet, a place where their urine can be neutralised begore turn to NO2.

What else? now a farmer wth 200 cows must teach them to go to piss a certain place 1111.
and if a cow wants a moreluxury toilet?
offcourse cow's piss helps a lot to many agricultural products.
what next? Stop eat and produce beans?

[Mmiikkii]

And there will be some collateral dammage, but humanity has faced many more threats and challenges in the past.
Humanity found solutions to overcome hunger, war and diseases and as a consequence, population grew exponentially, just like a virus.

You said it. Even though Climate Change won't extinguish us like the most anxious fear.
It will cause droughts(Yihadi-ravaged Sahel region has been like a decade suffering droughts), rising sea levels(trading metropolis are maritime), floods(there are already 2M displaced in a Chinese province) if go to worse will cause all the war, poverty, hunger and death you talk about.
The worst of this is that I think we've peaked the amount to which we can grow and avoid the impacts. Now the times of decadence are coming, as with every civilization. Or at least the time in which we stop to grow.

[don_joe]

I'm moderately worried. Not enough in a panic to be very worried, I'm more a fatalist. Nothing will change until we hit the wall. It's a global problem and we don't have any global solution. We are soon 8 billion people on earth and if I remembered the facts from Harari's (?) book right, we represent 20% of the worlds fauna biomass, our food another 70% and all the wild life only 10%. Sure the humanity had overcame a few challenges in the past. But with this rising number of individuals, it's a challenge to have a control over anything and our environment can't absorb that much any more as when we were more insignificant.

We are witnessing recently how we are not able to agree on anything, even when people around us are dying. You can appeal to reason, it changes nothing however, cause the reasonable are already reasonable and the others won't hear you anyway. Pure psychopats are leading countries with a few hundred million inhabitants and that's more than a half of the population that is blocked in any action. Environment is not a top priority for poor people (90%). Poaching kills slowly the rest of the wild life, deforestation isn't even slowing down. We can't even agree on nuclear energy. We don't have any central authority on earth (maybe to our advantage). No authority - no sanctions, just agreements. And we see how this is progressing, summits here, summits there, new goals for next year etc. Just broken promises. They are all waiting for that wall.

At the end, not enough people are worried about environment. We should keep on doing the right things around us, for ourselves, that's the only control we have.

[olivand]

I'm very worried about it. The risk of catastrophic climate change under certain scenarios discussed in many IPCC reports should spur action by humanity to at least buy itself some insurance. Yet we remain relatively inert and calls for such action are dismissed as hysteria.

This is an issue that has been neglectfully ducked since at least the 1992 Rio 'Earth Summit' when issues of sustainable development rose to the fore. Since then, scientific knowledge has progressed but political action to combat man made climate change and environmental destruction has been stymied by vested interests and fear campaigns about the loss of jobs and prosperity that would result from decarbonising the economy. Carbon emissions are poorly priced, not simply as a result of the many subsidies enjoyed by fossil fuel emitting sectors of the economy (such as energy, transport and agriculture), but mainly because the price of hydrocarbons excludes negative externalities associated with particle pollution and climate warming CO2. It beggars belief to hear that CO2 is plant food and is thus a positive gas for the natural world.

I'm personally very pessimistic about the outlook. By and large, the poor world will not forgo the opportunity to raise their incomes to the level of the advanced economies (and do this by emitting more CO2) and the rich world won't accept to 'impoverish' itself by cutting down on its carbon emissions. Even when rich countries claim they have reduced their emissions (which is true for some countries), quite a bit of their carbon intensive manufacturing has simply been exported to developing countries. This doesn't reduce the aggregate carbon footprint, it simply shifts the geographic location of where the carbon is emitted. So I endorse the many good arguments raised by some on this forum for intensive investment plans in renewables so as to change the energy mix.

I have little faith in the non-binding targets governments set at each COP conference - vested interests will make sure we adopt the slow lane for change and they will make sure to fan fears in the community about the dangers of listening to the 'climate warriors' and Dr.Doomsday climate scientists.

This is the biggest challenge facing humanity and our ingenuity and adaptability will be useless under a scenario of catastrophic climate change since it will be irreversible and it remains to be seen whether life support systems will be reliable and resilient in that state of the world to support habitation of the planet by over 8 billion humans (and rising), not to mention other life (plant, animal).

[PaleoRevenge]

Not worried from your perspective. The problems you mentioned, loss of biodiversity is not climate related but human consumption related.

I am worried that we are heading into little Ice Age conditions, shorter growing seasons and more extreme swings in weather that is well documented in the 1600s and 1700s Europe. That is worrying. Solar activity is the ultimate pilot that drives climate trends and it looks like another Maunder minimum event is materializing.

[firetown]

Not the least little bit.