Vocal Voices

"How would Sir like his plastic, deep fried or poached?"

The Mediterranean is awash with plastic. There are an estimated 24,000 tonnes of the stuff floating on the surface and up to 3,000 tonnes of micro plastic, ingestible by fish, in the water. Think of how much a plastic bag or bottle or takeaway box weighs and try to imagine what those figures mean.

There are also rafts of plastic in the oceans, and even in the remote Barents Sea, that are kilometres in diameter. But out of sight, out of mind, eh?

Now go visit the South China sea where China is pouring millions of tonnes of sand and concrete onto living coral reefs in order to create more land.

We screw up the atmosphere with noxious gasses so that we can feed our addiction to fossil fuels. We desertify the land by chopping down the forests to create grazing land for beef or growing the same crops in the same place, over and over again. And we are doing our level best to overfish known depleted fish stocks, that is when we are not poisoning them.

We are insane!

Workingman wrote:We are insane!

Yes, we are insane. But what can we do about it?

As I've said before, the human race is doomed. When at last nations wake up to the
fact that we are destroying planet Earth, it will be too late to rectify the problem.

Eat, drink and be merry.

Aggers wrote:

Workingman wrote:We are insane!

Yes, we are insane. But what can we do about it?

As I've said before, the human race is doomed. When at last nations wake up to the
fact that we are destroying planet Earth, it will be too late to rectify the problem.

Eat, drink and be merry.

Aggers, there is an article on the BBC website: url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-32131142] Tired Enough [/url) pointing out much the same thing, and it is something that I have challenged..... for ages.

I have constantly said that regurgitating graphs and spreadsheets about the current state of affairs was the wrong way to go. What was always needed was a multi-pronged approach bringing in all the many different ways that our current lifestyles will impact on my children and grandchildren....

Most politicians, businesses, the rich and the poor, are wedded to the here and now. There is no workable long-term plan, one which we can all buy in to.

WM I'm glad you said workable long term plan. Because there is definitely a long term plan. But it's not one we would recognise as one which will resolve the root problems we are facing. It's more of issue management or "Whack a Mole". They are trying to push the issue (lack of clean energy and our CO2 emissions because of it), onto us. They are trying to force us to use less energy every day so that they don't have to create the same clean energy infrastructure as they have fossil fuel infrastructure.

And whilst we carry on in that journey, there is a clear decision to allow companies to make obscene amounts of money delivering minimal infrastructure which will in no way resolve our dependence on fossil fuels. Instead of funding deep research in realistic power sources like tidal and HDR geothermal and also heavy research into power capture and delivery (truly ground breaking accumulators of power), so that the power we do generate is not lost; they are throwing huge sums of money at wind farms and home solar. Neither of which will ever deliver full baseload power to the UK or anywhere in the EU.

They talk about the Hydrogen infrastructure, forgetting that most Hydrogen is made using massive amounts of electricity, so much so that one company I know about has a huge control centre in Australia that, quite literally, swaps production facilities and re-routes ships to collect the gas, based on USD0.01 changes in the cost of electricity. Then there is transport and storage of Hydrogen just as we do with fuel today. Except it is far more difficult to transport and store hydrogen than petrol or diesel, even LPG is better.

Of course we then have EV. Battery powered cars which are supposed to replace our petrol and diesel powered cars of today. Great I say. Except, what about those crappy CFL light bulbs. And smart kettles, irons, coffee makers etc. All needed because we use WAY too much power already. Most UK houses will have either a 60Amp feed or a 100Amp feed. Most UK houses use way less than that at any one time. So we're going to put 26Million cars on the road that require a 4 hour 75Amp charge 2 or 3 times a week.

So who is lying to whom? Either we have loads of power and we don't need CFL or smart appliances which turn off the second they are not needed, so we can run EV. Or we truly don't have enough power for day to day living. So where are we going to get the electrical power the equivalent of the millions of barrels of oil we burn on our roads ever month????

Then there is the message. It's almost impossible to get a single consistent message which the people will listen to. Most people won't even be interested if what you tell them is not going to happen in the next 5-10 years. So all this "in the next 100 years......" business is just a complete waste of time. Then there are those who don't care if we burn or our children starve or millions drown or even if billions are lost in war because the land they lived on is under water. All they care about is profit today. So every time a reasonable message is made up, they use their power and money and the press and either gullible or corrupt "scientists" to challenge the message. "Prove it" they say. "Show me how the last 5 years prove it" they say. All the while making as much money as possible to insulate themselves from the impact of what they are doing.

There is only one message that needs to be told today and people need to wake up to it.

If we do not stop burning fossil fuesl:

Your Children's lives will be much worse than yours
Your Grandchildren's lives will be brutally short
You will have no Great Grandchildren

Perhaps when people wake up to that reality of burning fossil fuels, then they might actually realise that there are some sacrifices that are needed right now, in order for our future generations to have much of any future at all.

But don't hold your breath.....

I look at the way our moral society is breaking down and I think "Rome, 500 AD".

Suff wrote:I look at the way our moral society is breaking down and I think "Rome, 500 AD".

That's a very profound summing up of the situation, Suff.

I think that says it all.

AS for the plastic stuff.

Googling "Plastic Gyre" gives a real sense of the problem.... I've known about this for nearly two decades. In the end there is little I can do about it, but there will come a time when I need to support those who are doing something about it and I will.

I am surprised that some of these topics are not studied in-depth during school geography lessons to bring some awareness to a wider audience.

Global warming or climate change might be too nebulous, too theoretical or even too political for real study to take place. However, the plastic gyres are real, they have physical form and we know where they are. So too do we know about China's land reclamation in the South China Sea. We also know about algal blooms caused by the run-off from over fertilised farmland, and we certainly know about the over fishing of popular stocks.

We need to get these and other messages across to today's school pupils as it is they who will be the first to suffer. Those in their mid-twenties and older have probably been lost to any cause unless they are actively interested, and sadly most are not.

Sorry these subjects have to go well behind

"How to call someone a racist" without opening yourself up to criticism
"How to correctly defer to your 'political' betters"

And other such nonsense.

I scanned through the news today and saw that the number of young children (starting around 10), with transgender issues has skyrocketed. Really? No Shit Sherlock. We bombard them with cross gender material 24x7 and then we wonder why they are confused?

Nothing in our society makes sense any more. So why would we expect them to do the sensible thing with this level of pollution choking our food chain.

Perhaps it might be interesting for children to learn that 50% of the oxygen they breathe is provided by the sea.

It might also be interesting for these same children to learn that we are slowly but surely killing the life in the oceans which produces that oxygen...

Or perhaps not. After all we have more important things to do. Like correctly recognising the flags of foreign nations when they are flying over the town hall..........

Sorry my sarcasm gene is in overdrive. Probably because I'm tired. Perhaps I should sleep....

Suff wrote:I scanned through the news today and saw that the number of young children (starting around 10), with transgender issues has skyrocketed. Really? No Shit Sherlock. We bombard them with cross gender material 24x7 and then we wonder why they are confused?

What a load of nonsense this transgender business is.
If you have testicles you are male.
If you have ovaries you are female. Amen.

Children who say they want to change sex should simply be told,
"Don't be so daft".

Who's making money out of fostering these foolish ideas?

Since the repeal of Section28, which was a section of the equal opportunities act brought in by Maggies government, it has become mandatory to teach same gender relationships to the 5-14 age group.

Note I say "mandatory" and I mean mandatory. Like literature must contain this in "equal measure" to normal heterosexual relationships. Starting with Mummy and mummy and daddy and daddy for the Age5 through to homosexuality/lesbianism as part of the sex education taught in school. I know this very well as Mrs S used to teach Sex Ed in her school as all the other teachers were too scared to face the questions of a sink school. She related to me about how one of the children (or monsters if you like), introduced the subject of homosexuality in one of the sex ed classes. She related how it was completely forbidden for her to talk about it because of Section 28.

Over and above that, it seems to be the mission of the media and even the political parties to throw same sex relationships at us as if it's a "badge of honour".

Is it any wonder why our young children are confused? Never mind that we are talking about 2.5% of the population here. Being represented as a full 50% of the sexuality of the country.

No point in teaching our children useful things like the kinds of pollution which is destroying the liveable habitat of the planet they are going to live on for the next 70 to 80 years. Oh no, let's make some politically correct statement that totally screws them up. Why not, they can't do much right so let's do something totally wrong....