Or perhaps memory deficient illigimate temporary Pres Joe might just order flipping polarity to stop.

That would work as that's something Trump never did or would do.

hahaha

"There is no point to a planet without human beings;"

On a planet without humans there'd be no creature with the wherewithal to ask if there was any point to anything. It'd be a planet teeming with utterly unknowing lifeforms, none of which would be asking "what's the point".

THE point is that only a human brain can ponder what the point might be.

Its a pretty good summary of the issues which, when looked at this dispassionately, come into focus as being far from urgent and far from insurmountable.

Just a couple of points...

"Deforestation continues on a large scale across the planet..."

Well not quite. Deforestation continues in parts of the planet but not across the planet. Oceania, which is basically us, has shown an increase in forest cover this century. Equally, the US/Canada have shown an increase. The main reason the globe has suffered a small decline in forest cover is the deforestation in Africa and South America.

Likewise, overall, the global has shown an increase in vegetation cover this century.

So two things can be surmised from that. 1. The author's fear about oxygen levels is misplaced. 2. Rich countries increase their forest cover, poor countries don't. So solve the problem by making the poor countries richer.

Similarly, while the author talks about 'we' adding plastics to the ocean, the fact is that the vast majority of those plastics come from developing Asian nations - China primarily. So in the same way we can't do much about their decisions continue to burn coal, there's bugger all we can do to stop them dumping plastic in their rivers. So fret all you want but our efforts are futile.

Overall though a pretty good summary of the situation.

A better dissertation than the average, but still far too green tinged to be taken seriously.

For example he goes on about plastics in the ocean. "Great Garbage Patch in the north Pacific - a concentrated soup of microplastics, or tiny fragments less than 5 mm across. It is 3 times the size of France and was discovered in 1997", & presents it as a major problem.

He fails to mention that when a greenie expedition went out to photograph & publicize it, they found not islands of plastic, but nothing. It was only by dragging a micro sized net through the water that were able to gather anything.

He then ignores the fact that it has been recently discovered there are a number of microbes that are happily consuming this plastic, & growing in number as the feed source increases.

Surely this is a garbage control problem, if it is really any sort of problem, not a reason to stop using the most useful material yet developed by man. I doubt that a little inert plastic is any worse for them when ingested by fish, than the sand you find they have ingested naturally. Meanwhile the entire modern medical system would cease to exist without a host of specialist plastics, as would our entire safe food storage systems.

Charles Hemmings,
>Although caution is recommended, we should not panic about climate changes that we
>may not have any control over and needlessly sacrifice the quality of living on the planet

The panic thing is a strawman; everyone knows it's unproductive. People such as Greta Thumberg are trying to induce action, not panic.

Doing nothing is a much much much bigger threat to quality of life than taking action.

>Since the Industrial Revolution the concentration of carbon dioxide has increased
>from about 200 ppm to 400 ppm
The generally accepted figure is only a 50% rise, from 280ppm to 420ppm.

>and is considered an anthropogenic effect, which is a reasonable assumption but not proven fact.
How is it not a proven fact when calculations have shown that the amount of fossil fuels humans have burned is more than enough to account for the rise?

>Although the concentration of carbon dioxide has doubled since the Industrial
>Revolution, this increase of 200ppm is equivalent to 0.02% absolute change in the
>concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which is a miniscule change in concentration.

THAT'S A RED HERRING! The amount of non greenhouse gases in the atmosphere doesn't stop the greenhouse gases from having the effect they do. But expressing the 50% increase in CO2 concentration in terms of percentage of the total atmosphere makes it difficult for the feeble minded (such as yourself) to comprehend the huge effect it's having (as evidenced by the doubts you repeatedly express based on the claim that it's "miniscule").

BTW any figure expressed as a percentage is relative, not absolute.

(tbc)

Charles Hemmings (continued)
>There are other greenhouse gases, like methane, but the increase in carbon dioxide is
>singled out due to our dependence on combustion of fossil fuels, emitting carbon dioxide.

Wrong! The increase in carbon dioxide is singled out because it's got such a bigger impact on climate. Apart from water vapour (which wrks at the atmosphere can hold)s a feedback mechanism because increasing temperatures increase how much of it the atmosphere can hold) CO2 is dominant because there's so much more of it. But the other greenhouse gases are not ignored, and their effect is often calculated in terms of CO2 equivalent.

You're also clueless on energy! The high capital cost of wind power is not ignored at all, and is one of the reasons why the renewables' market share is still fairly low. But the economics have changed, and new coal is already economically unviable (as well as being environmentally unacceptable, being much higher than from anything accept old coal). China's investment in coal power certainly won't pay off, but continues for political reasons albeit at a reduced pace.

mhaze is correct about plastic.