Food for thought - Climate Change

[Malc1]

Might I suggest we all repair to a chilled out quiet country location and ask Miss Marple to make us a delicious cup of tea and sit in the garden with the vicar to more thoughtfully contemplate the problem 

Malc 

[GMB]

9 hours ago, Linas.P said:

That is why I am contemplating on leaving, the only problem is that within Europe there isn't much better choice. Recent pandemic kind of blown my bubble a little bit when they were talking about force vaccinating people. Have nothing against vaccine, but it can't be administered against the persons will, not to mention list of problems related to this particular case. Must be said - UK was one of the most reasonable countries in this aspect, no "freedom" passes etc. but driving situation in UK is becoming unbearable. 

I was thinking maybe Portugal/North Spain... or Slovenia/Slovakia/Croatia sort of place. Like I still want to live in developed world where rule of law still applies, but where government is not too invasive into personal live, nor where government has clear agenda... Now they are talking about penalties for 1 mile over the speed limit and make driving accidents comparable to attempted murder... just ridiculous what lobby groups are trying to achieve. 

Portugal is a good choice. France is not. We lived in France for 20 years and the taxation/intrusion/bureaucracy/ spying on the public is way over the top. Portugal offered good tax relief but that is sadly finished. It is also a civilised country with generally peaceful habitants and beautiful countryside.

The first thing that I noticed on returning to the UK was the smell of pollution and the severe overcrowding both on the roads and pedestrian life. Crowding makes people angry and there are certainly a lot of angry people out there in the UK.

See you on the silver coast Linas.

[Linas.P]

1 hour ago, GMB said:

Portugal is a good choice. France is not. We lived in France for 20 years and the taxation/intrusion/bureaucracy/ spying on the public is way over the top. Portugal offered good tax relief but that is sadly finished. It is also a civilised country with generally peaceful habitants and beautiful countryside.

The first thing that I noticed on returning to the UK was the smell of pollution and the severe overcrowding both on the roads and pedestrian life. Crowding makes people angry and there are certainly a lot of angry people out there in the UK.

See you on the silver coast Linas.

Yes - I know France has just as much if not more problems that UK. Although it is amazingly clean and tidy compared to UK (or at least parts of it outside of Paris), coming back to UK as you said it is immediately obvious how everyone are squeezed in and stressed about everything. I guess it could be said - grass is always greener on other side, but I have real issue with what is going on here and I can't see any reversal of regressive policies anytime soon. 

[dutchie01]

Try Catalunia. plenty of space great roads/food/climate low prices and they seem to dislike governmental interference a bit ....

[GMB]

1 hour ago, dutchie01 said:

Try Catalunia. plenty of space great roads/food/climate low prices and they seem to dislike governmental interference a bit ....

Agreed. Llafranc - (check it out)  or even Tossa de Mar or inland a bit,  Pals is nice- lovely places. Easy access vis Gerona airport too. Great roads and value for money food and drink.  Lovely!☺️

[Bluemarlin]

18 hours ago, Linas.P said:

First of all, I would like to separate these two groups clearly. Ecomentalists are not experts in anything, they are activists, they are pressure groups, they are lobbies - in short, they neither know the facts, nor they care about facts, their job is not to know the facts, but to persuade or recently FORCE other to take an action.

Secondly, Scientists do not agree that there is climate "catastrophe/emergency", but they generally agree that there is "climate change". There may be few outliers, but even the most pessimistic predictions are that it will take thousands and tens of thousands of years for meaningful change to happen. There is still a lot of debate and science itself is not clear and conclusive. So scientists may say things like "2C increase in temperature based on our models would mean these things". One of things often mentioned - melting of ice, other thing is extinction of some species (sometimes it is as well referred as destruction of habitat, but it is not necessary same as extinction), or increase in the level of oceans. Without context this is very hard to say whenever that is bad or not bad, for example extinction of species sounds bad on the surface, but if we consider that new species constantly appear and other species constantly goes extinct, then this is likely just normal. Same for sea level and ice melting - it may seem like undesirable thing, but context is easily lost, why it was normal for earth to have no ice 20,000 years ago, for temperature to be 6C higher and for seal level to be much higher, but now suddenly it is not okey. It is simply based on misconception that climate should be stable and remain the same, but historic evidence is showing that last ~6000 years of near constant climate is in itself unusual and outlier, a lucky coincidence and that we simply need to learn to live in changing climate. It goes back to my previous point - people make wrong conclusions because they lack perspective. They don't asks "since when" this temperature is "record", they don't understand that is completely normal for ALL the ice to melt, for sea level to rise, for animals to go extinct.

Third thing, there is no conclusive evidence that "climate change" is caused by human activity, so just to be clear climate change is real, temperature is rising, humans are emitting excess Co2, these are facts. BUT it is still theory that climate change is either caused or even impacted by this activity. I am not saying it is not, I am not saying that it is, I am just saying - this has not been proven. It is one of many hypothesis. There are some inconclusive evidence to suggest it maybe the cause, but not sufficient to say it for a fact. Most important evidence against it - Co2 level for a fact (this is not speculation, it is a fact) was higher in the past, temperature was higher in the past, sea level was higher in the past, earth was free of ice in the past and there was no human activity. So why was it? And if it is not human activity that caused it in the past, then why now it is ONLY human activity that is causing it? Clearly we need to do a lot more research to answer these questions. But the problems is that activists are taking hypothesis, or they taking partial conclusions from research and treating them as facts. And by the way some of those things may be facts, but in the subject where 10,000 things can impact the conclusion looking only at 3 of them isn't conclusive. So it is not enough to say "temperature is rising for last 150 years FACT" to prove humans are causing it, yet it is fact, but just one of thousands of facts.

As for "quality of life catastrophe", this is as well dependant on perspective. For example as I said - not being able to eat meat, or not being able to drive is end of life for me, literally not worth living. Quite seriously, so much that I am considering where I should go-to live next, because in UK it is getting to the point where I am uncomfortable, because my ability to drive is increasingly restricted, government and all the institutions are hostile towards drivers and I consider it absolutelly unacceptable. Heated pool is exageration and a joke, but driving isn't. And although so far I could afford it (so it comes to the point of money), it is not outright banned, but it is behind pay wall and I am still increasingly aggravated by extortionate duties, road taxes, parking charges etc. And it is becoming notably worse every day, there is increasingly aggressive rules against the drivers, bans on driving in certain areas, destruction of necessary infrastructure (lanes being converted in to cycling lanes, bus lanes, pavements, flower, benches), LTNs/15minute cities etc. So it is not some sort of scam or scare mongering, it is happening, same as air is warming-up is a fact, the quality of my life is decreasing with each passing day is also a fact. As I mentioned recently I paid like 65% of holiday costs just in taxes on flights, good for me I can afford it, but we may came to point where people won't be able to afford holidays just because of how extortionary they are taxed for sake of "climate catastrophe" fallacy, or you may have to take 8 hours train and 10 hours boat instead of 1h 20 min flight, which is huge degradation of quality of life and just generally regressive. And we as well have factual upcoming bans, to ICE engines which will be significant destruction of quality of life, as EVs simply do not offer same level of quality and they are much more expensive to own overall. So again I would not say it is "catastrophe", but it is continuous degradation and it has possibility of becoming catastrophe - for example in 2045 we may come to point where there are rolling black-outs and our "smart-meters" will block us from charging the cars considering it "not a priority need". I think evidence is clearly there - in UK we have now 15 "clean air" zones with massive detrimental effect, anyone who has petrol car older than 17 years, or diesel older than 8 years cannot drive them any longer if they happen to be near these stupid zones. And whereas at the face value it seems reasonable and I happen to have compliant car... there are literally hundreds of cars that I consider desirable, future classic or outright classic that have to either pay £12.50 A DAY, even just to be parked or else government suggest they should be scrapped. 

Please elaborate on the point of how this will "improve" our quality of life as I just can't see it. Nothing now prevents me from eating heathy diet, or exercising and generally doing everything to have good physical health, I don't need to be forced to use public transport, cycle or most likely walk, nor I need to be grass-fed to avoid being obese. I don't need to be banned from doing things I like to live better, this just assumes we are treated like animals or adult kids as if we can't figure-out for ourselves what is right for us. 

And I actually do not agree that "Politcally, economically, and technologically, no one is striving for that [i.e ruining our lives]". I think ban on ICE is either extremely negligent or short-sighted thing, or it is deliberate policy to take our cars and therefore freedom away. Sure "never assume malice when incompetence suffice", but it seems like malice here... our politicians may be incompetent to announce such policy, but it is likely that whomever lobbied for it did it maliciously knowing that we not going to have parking places, chargers, network capacity nor even electricity generation to charged BEVs... and only alternative is not to drive AT ALL. Remember scarcity = profit, make driving and owning the car, and charging difficult and suddenly you have captive market.

Finally, if all these restrictions would be result of genuine emergency, then even I would support it, but they are not - the yare just an empty attack on lifestyle which is deemed undesirable and unnecessary. And I think the battle here was already lost like 30 years ago when we have allowed grass eating communists to have an idea and even dear saying it out load that driving is dangerous and undesirable. Now we live in the society where people no longer even questions this notion, for them driving is not freedom, not convenience, not necessity, it is just dirty and dangerous thing which needs to be reduced or better eradicated. And once something is accepted as unnecessary, then suddenly it is alright to say it is undesirable, and when it is undesirable, then we can move to the point of calling it dangerous... and finally we can have a policy of stamping it out altogether. This is kind of similar reason why americans are fighting so much for their gun rights, often irrationally... but that is because they are afraid this will be taken away from them, so they fighting the even the most basic notion of saying "owning guns is unnecessary", because they don't fight now, then later the question will be come whenever it is undesirable, then whenever it is dangerous altogether and outright ban in the end. Obviously in UK we have long lost this option of having guns and defending ourselves, but now we going in the same direction on cars. I have even seen some communists on Guardian promoting the idea that home ownership is undesirable and suggested looking at Singapore model (just as note all houses in Singapore are 99 years lease, nobody owns anything, state owns it). How dystopian we want to get before we start fighting for our rights?

I get what you're saying LInas, but just don't agree with some it, or at least can see that there's another side to it.

I think some of the anti climate change rhetoric comes from activists too. They may not glue themselves to roads, but infest social media with pseudo scientific reasons as to why it's all a sham. Like I said before, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. CO2 prevents the planet from dissipating heat, hence warming. How much excess CO2 there is, and how much we contribute to it may be up for debate, but we can only control the CO2 we produce, so that's all we can try and reduce.

Sure, 20,000 years ago climate changed, ice melted, sea levels changed, and habitats were altered. However, 20,000 years ago we didn't have large populations living in permanent coastal dwellings. 20,000 years ago people could up sticks and move inland at little to no cost. 20,000 years ago people weren't affecting the environment to the extent we are now. The world has moved on, and in some ways we have the power to affect global changes (for better or worse), and in others we have the power to mitigate those changes, whether man made or natural. So what happened 20,000 years ago has little bearing on the world today.

I still don't believe that quality of life wil be affected to the extent that you do,  but the counter argument to that is that some of the quality of life improvements that we enjoy today have come at the cost of causing damage to our environment. As such, we're being asked to pursue a path that causes less damage, and explore ways in which that can be done whilst maintaining that quality of life.

I have mixed views on the motoring aspect. On the one hand, like you, I don't want my driving to be made more difficult, more expensive or more restricted. That said, in this country at least, part of the problem is the sheer number of cars on the road.  I'm inconvenienced far more by traffic levels than I ever am by speed restrictions, congestion zones and cycle lanes.  The problem is that I can't rant about traffic volume in the same way, as the only way to deal with that is to put restrictions on driving, and encourage the use of alternatives, which then makes driving more difficult, which I don't want.

Besides, whilst one may talk of the quality of life restrictions on drivers of older cars in cities, that ignores the quality of life of those affected by the pollution levels in those areas. There are plenty of people living in cities now, who neither want, nor need cars, and who feel their quality of life will be improved by a reduction. I'm not saying that one is right or wrong,  just that sometimes one man's restriction can be another's freedom.

So, let's say the climate scientists are right, and we destroy the environment to such an that we cause disaster.  Some, like you, might say "so what", disasters are a natural part of the planet, but life goes on and the planet adapts and deals with it. Fair enough

Equally though, let's say that what you say is right, and that we follow an an uneccessary path, at great cost and inconvenience, for no real gain. Well one could just as easily say "so what", we sufffer financial and economic disaster on a reasonably regular basis too, that severely impacts the quality of life of many people, and yet we survive those and carry on.

It's true, we don't know everything with any degree of certainty. We can only try and make best guesses based on the available information. The areas of doubt leave gaps which the zealots on both sides can exploit to their own advantage. Most of those zealots ae probably well intentioned, no matter how well of ill informed they may be,  and will continue to be exploited by those who have vested financial interests on either side of the argument.

So, whether we do something, or do nothing, there will be winners and losers on either side. If you have the power to afffect change in the direction you'd liike things to go, then by all means do so.  Otherwise one's best course is to try and predict which direction you think things might go, and do whatever you can to adapt to that environment.

I actually like the argument in favour of moving to somewhere more condusive to one's own preferences, although Brexit haas somewhat hindered that. 20,000 years ago people didn't moan about the difficulties of where they lived, instead they either adapted to it, or upped sticks and moved elsewhere 🙂

[Linas.P]

1 hour ago, Bluemarlin said:

I get what you're saying LInas, but just don't agree with some it, or at least can see that there's another side to it.

I think some of the anti climate change rhetoric comes from activists too. They may not glue themselves to roads, but infest social media with pseudo scientific reasons as to why it's all a sham. Like I said before, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. CO2 prevents the planet from dissipating heat, hence warming. How much excess CO2 there is, and how much we contribute to it may be up for debate, but we can only control the CO2 we produce, so that's all we can try and reduce.

Sure, 20,000 years ago climate changed, ice melted, sea levels changed, and habitats were altered. However, 20,000 years ago we didn't have large populations living in permanent coastal dwellings. 20,000 years ago people could up sticks and move inland at little to no cost. 20,000 years ago people weren't affecting the environment to the extent we are now. The world has moved on, and in some ways we have the power to affect global changes (for better or worse), and in others we have the power to mitigate those changes, whether man made or natural. So what happened 20,000 years ago has little bearing on the world today.

I still don't believe that quality of life wil be affected to the extent that you do,  but the counter argument to that is that some of the quality of life improvements that we enjoy today have come at the cost of causing damage to our environment. As such, we're being asked to pursue a path that causes less damage, and explore ways in which that can be done whilst maintaining that quality of life.

I have mixed views on the motoring aspect. On the one hand, like you, I don't want my driving to be made more difficult, more expensive or more restricted. That said, in this country at least, part of the problem is the sheer number of cars on the road.  I'm inconvenienced far more by traffic levels than I ever am by speed restrictions, congestion zones and cycle lanes.  The problem is that I can't rant about traffic volume in the same way, as the only way to deal with that is to put restrictions on driving, and encourage the use of alternatives, which then makes driving more difficult, which I don't want.

Besides, whilst one may talk of the quality of life restrictions on drivers of older cars in cities, that ignores the quality of life of those affected by the pollution levels in those areas. There are plenty of people living in cities now, who neither want, nor need cars, and who feel their quality of life will be improved by a reduction. I'm not saying that one is right or wrong,  just that sometimes one man's restriction can be another's freedom.

So, let's say the climate scientists are right, and we destroy the environment to such an that we cause disaster.  Some, like you, might say "so what", disasters are a natural part of the planet, but life goes on and the planet adapts and deals with it. Fair enough

Equally though, let's say that what you say is right, and that we follow an an uneccessary path, at great cost and inconvenience, for no real gain. Well one could just as easily say "so what", we sufffer financial and economic disaster on a reasonably regular basis too, that severely impacts the quality of life of many people, and yet we survive those and carry on.

It's true, we don't know everything with any degree of certainty. We can only try and make best guesses based on the available information. The areas of doubt leave gaps which the zealots on both sides can exploit to their own advantage. Most of those zealots ae probably well intentioned, no matter how well of ill informed they may be,  and will continue to be exploited by those who have vested financial interests on either side of the argument.

So, whether we do something, or do nothing, there will be winners and losers on either side. If you have the power to afffect change in the direction you'd liike things to go, then by all means do so.  Otherwise one's best course is to try and predict which direction you think things might go, and do whatever you can to adapt to that environment.

I actually like the argument in favour of moving to somewhere more condusive to one's own preferences, although Brexit haas somewhat hindered that. 20,000 years ago people didn't moan about the difficulties of where they lived, instead they either adapted to it, or upped sticks and moved elsewhere 🙂

Although we have different views I still enjoy the civilised debate, I agree it is somewhere "in the middle" I just don't think we at the moment agreeing where that middle is. I am kind of cherry picking on things you said, but that means I agree on the rest of what you are saying, so just to be clear - I am only picking on parts that I don't entirely agree with. 

My point about climate 20,000 years ago is that it changed without human activity, I totally agree that some seaside settlements will go under water if sea level continues to raise, basically I accept the future without Netherlands... However, my point is - if we look at the history, then this is inevitable either way. Sorry Dutch people - you just chosen wrong place to settle in and which will inevitably be under water few 100 years from now. This will happen regardless of what we do. I appreciate people can disagree with this, but they disagreeing with facts here. Why do we think we can stop something that has happened dozen times in the past. At least 5 times in the time of our own existence (i.e. last 300,000 years). And I mean we can all commit suicide today, all 8.1 billion and this will happen anyway if the past is any indication of the future, so why even try something that is going to just inconvenience us now for no result in future. Sure again... you can say this is "just a theory" that it will happen, but I think what I am trying to convey here - based on facts from the past climate it is reasonable enough to assume it is more likely than not it will happen. If somebody want to prove this wrong, then they need to come up with damn good evidence. It is like investment - "past performance is not indicative of future performance", so based on history we can't say it will 100% happen again, but it is more like 95% chance for it to happen and 5% chance of it not happening. It is still much more likely that cycle repeats, than that we will see exception to the case.

So I am just pointing out into fundamental misinformation and confusion here. Currently, widely accepted view in public is that "we are causing climate change and we can make it stop", whereas facts shows that "climate changes is natural and periodic warming is inevitable and we CAN'T stop it", at least not by just reducing our carbon emissions, so we starting from fundamentally wrong assumption and we arrive to fundamentally wrong conclusions. I am not saying we should do nothing, I am not saying that maybe economically it is cheaper to find solution than to move all Dutch people into Siberia once it turns tropical, but we need to take fundamentally different steps to get there. So what we talking about here is that instead of trying to prevent our pollution impacting the climate, we want to develop technology to control the climate. So we not helping the planet to be "it's natural self", NO - we rather want to prevent the planet to follow it's natural cycles and instead keep it in the conditions that is most suitable for us... And HEY - I am fine with this, but let's be honest to ourselves what we want to achieve, we are not some sort of naturalists here, instead we want to control the climate and terraform the planet, perhaps we want to start refrigerating the poles to slightly reduce sea level or at least keep it constant, perhaps we want to capture and store Co2 and other gasses so we can control the climate... great! But transition to BEVs and veganism is not getting us anywhere! It is like saying that you want to be best body builder in the world and setting out the plan to achieve that by only eating spinach and doing nothing else - that is just not going to work. It could work with the realistic goals and suitable training regime and diet, but not by just eating spinach!

I am still waiting for examples of how current plans are improving our life? I could probably extract from what you said that not getting seaside towns flooded and less traffic in cities are examples? But I think first one as explained is just inevitable to fail long term and second one can be achieved in other means. Specific examples would be good!

And yes I agree some of our live improvements caused environmental change and some even caused damage. Examples of such - farming changed habitats for other animals, that is not damage, it is just change... when invasive species of asian hornets kills bees that is as well change not damage, species migrates, they create their own habitats at the expense of other species, just natural but sad reality. However, plastic pollution is damage, we don't have to throw it to the water, it does not have to end-up in the oceans and our food, so that is bad. In short - as long as something made our life better I just see it as natural way of human species adapting environment around us to suit our needs, all the species from bacteria, to birds, to insects, to other animals does that. However, some things are unnecessary and I have already listed many examples, I think fast fashion is unnecessary, I think we can deal with our rubbish better, ideally we shouldn't drain our shaite into our beaches either, not that it is environmental damage, but it just isn't nice to swim in human excrement, but this is just hygiene factor, tidying-up the mess around us.

I disagree with you on motoring example - because it is not the amount of cars that is the problem. Amount of cars can NEVER be a problem, because each of those cars are heavily taxed and generates excessive surplus of fund. It is like saying - "damn, we have too many orders, too many customers, too much money and too much opportunities to grow". I often like to give analogy of cinema here... Imagine UK is cinema with 500 seats, our government just sold 10,000 tickets and they are blaming people attending to watch the movie for standing in the theatre and in corridors, and even outside because they can't fit. Whose fault it is - people who bought the tickets (i.e. paid road tax and fuel duties, and tax on car)? or is it a fault of cinema operator for overselling capacity? The answer is more and wider roads. Most of UK roads are of 1950s design and with capacity for 1960s, in 1960s smart people started planning roads for 1980s, but those plans were cancelled. So what we have today are 1950s roads designed for 1960s needs and number of people and the cars of 2023. Who is surprised we have problems? I am not surprised. Our government consistently failed to maintain the road infrastructure and plan capacity for future needs for 60 years.. and we are surprised we have traffic?! Seriously? We as drivers fund the roads 10 times OVER, 10 times! There is shaite loads of money to build perfect roads for you, for me, for cyclists, infrastructure for pedestrians and we still going to have shaite loads of excess money for public transport subsidies... that we have corrupt and inefficient government that does not mean the number of the cars is and issue. And why there is noise pollution and fumes in the city? Maybe because we have standstill traffic? Maybe if we had more efficient road network and more free flowing traffic we wouldn't have such problem. Good example is our cars MPG... mine can do ~40MPG on motorway, but if I go to London centre it will be 10MPG. So in simple terms I am polluting 4 times more because of BAD city roads, it is roads that bad not my car that is bad. And let's not forget that NET saving on BEVs compared to ICEVs is ~30% over lifetime. Yet we can achieve 75% saving by making the roads right!

No you may be surprised, but I actually like cycling... I just thing cycling on the road is fundamentally wrong solution. So I want more cycling infrastructure, good network of clean, smooth paths going trough the parks and forests, far away from roads and cars... sure that would be perfect. But current cycling plans are less about cyclists and more about "sticking it to the drivers", basically what our government is trying to do is to make traffic humps out of lycra clad cycle warriors, they using humans as "traffic calming feature"... wake-up guys - you being used! And you thought drivers are your enemies!?

Finally when it comes to economic crisis, I partially agree with you... so what that we waste money now, it is just another mistake of which we had plenty in the past. Key difference here however is that usually EXCESS has caused the crisis... so basically somebody lived too good to the point where rebalancing was needed. However, in this case of climate expense it is opposite - we wasting money to punish ourselves and to make our lives worse, so that we then get to the crisis and it will become even worse?! It is like double whammy - I have no issue taking penalty for living in excess and understand the need of putting things back in balance, but I don't agree to pay penalty now, to then be further penalised again in future!

[Malc1]

1 hour ago, Linas.P said:

I totally agree that some seaside settlements will go under water if sea level continues to raise,

I haven't read the rest of this specific post BUT of course that will mean all of London will be gulp gulp gulp coz the Thames Barrier is only just sufficing now and of course there are great chunks of Essex / Suffolk already sea engulfed from decades past ............... and bits of the Isle of Sheppey, Kent have dropped off too and now underwater .........

Let's see what the Govt of whatever day it is might be doing to  " save "  Londinium from higher tides and sea levels then ............... 

maybe convert many basements in the City buildings to swimming pools  .....  I remember many moons back when I worked in the NatWest Tower, now No.42 is it ..  and I often used the swimming pool there .......  I'm thinking that was a basement area ........ and a joy it was too .  and if it's still being used then a great " keep fit " facility for City Workers .....  p'raps a side benefit to Climate Change eh !  😉

Malc

[Kevin Williams]

Many of these posts are very interesting and good to read…

Many have an interesting perspective, and include some facts, if they are provable. That I, and other members, were not aware of... 

It would be a very interesting post from John Williams (Roy of the Rovers). A very much missed member of this Forum. If he was still a member… And he added a post to this topic…?

I do wonder what John would have said…

As Linas said in his post when we learned the very sad news in March…

John has always been the person who brought the sense of calmness and common sense into any discussion, was sincerely respected and will be greatly missed in the forum.  

[Linas.P]

53 minutes ago, Malc1 said:

I haven't read the rest of this specific post BUT of course that will mean all of London will be gulp gulp gulp coz the Thames Barrier is only just sufficing now and of course there are great chunks of Essex / Suffolk already sea engulfed from decades past ............... and bits of the Isle of Sheppey, Kent have dropped off too and now underwater .........

Let's see what the Govt of whatever day it is might be doing to  " save "  Londinium from higher tides and sea levels then ............... 

maybe convert many basements in the City buildings to swimming pools  .....  I remember many moons back when I worked in the NatWest Tower, now No.42 is it ..  and I often used the swimming pool there .......  I'm thinking that was a basement area ........ and a joy it was too .  and if it's still being used then a great " keep fit " facility for City Workers .....  p'raps a side benefit to Climate Change eh !  😉

Theoretical sea level if all the ice melted would be 70m higher than now, so yes - London would be pretty much no more. However, that assumes no water in solid state anywhere on earth and it kind of ignores the fact that warmer atmosphere can hold more humidity in it, because the higher is temperature the higher is condensation point. Looking back at what happened last time when all the ice melted in the interglacial period (which are common occurrence), the water level was ~36 metres higher than now. Still most of Thames delta would be quite deep under water. 

But most importantly, again - this is what will happen, regardless if we cycle, walk or drive 9.2L V10 lifted pick-up trucks! Question is just how quickly. If our climate would continue heating up as it does not, meaning - no environmental action at all, then it is estimated to take ~5,000 years for all ice to melt. So we have quite a lot of time to move all the settlements inland.

[Bluemarlin]

21 hours ago, Linas.P said:

Although we have different views I still enjoy the civilised debate, I agree it is somewhere "in the middle" I just don't think we at the moment agreeing where that middle is. I am kind of cherry picking on things you said, but that means I agree on the rest of what you are saying, so just to be clear - I am only picking on parts that I don't entirely agree with. 

My point about climate 20,000 years ago is that it changed without human activity, I totally agree that some seaside settlements will go under water if sea level continues to raise, basically I accept the future without Netherlands... However, my point is - if we look at the history, then this is inevitable either way. Sorry Dutch people - you just chosen wrong place to settle in and which will inevitably be under water few 100 years from now. This will happen regardless of what we do. I appreciate people can disagree with this, but they disagreeing with facts here. Why do we think we can stop something that has happened dozen times in the past. At least 5 times in the time of our own existence (i.e. last 300,000 years). And I mean we can all commit suicide today, all 8.1 billion and this will happen anyway if the past is any indication of the future, so why even try something that is going to just inconvenience us now for no result in future. Sure again... you can say this is "just a theory" that it will happen, but I think what I am trying to convey here - based on facts from the past climate it is reasonable enough to assume it is more likely than not it will happen. If somebody want to prove this wrong, then they need to come up with damn good evidence. It is like investment - "past performance is not indicative of future performance", so based on history we can't say it will 100% happen again, but it is more like 95% chance for it to happen and 5% chance of it not happening. It is still much more likely that cycle repeats, than that we will see exception to the case.

So I am just pointing out into fundamental misinformation and confusion here. Currently, widely accepted view in public is that "we are causing climate change and we can make it stop", whereas facts shows that "climate changes is natural and periodic warming is inevitable and we CAN'T stop it", at least not by just reducing our carbon emissions, so we starting from fundamentally wrong assumption and we arrive to fundamentally wrong conclusions. I am not saying we should do nothing, I am not saying that maybe economically it is cheaper to find solution than to move all Dutch people into Siberia once it turns tropical, but we need to take fundamentally different steps to get there. So what we talking about here is that instead of trying to prevent our pollution impacting the climate, we want to develop technology to control the climate. So we not helping the planet to be "it's natural self", NO - we rather want to prevent the planet to follow it's natural cycles and instead keep it in the conditions that is most suitable for us... And HEY - I am fine with this, but let's be honest to ourselves what we want to achieve, we are not some sort of naturalists here, instead we want to control the climate and terraform the planet, perhaps we want to start refrigerating the poles to slightly reduce sea level or at least keep it constant, perhaps we want to capture and store Co2 and other gasses so we can control the climate... great! But transition to BEVs and veganism is not getting us anywhere! It is like saying that you want to be best body builder in the world and setting out the plan to achieve that by only eating spinach and doing nothing else - that is just not going to work. It could work with the realistic goals and suitable training regime and diet, but not by just eating spinach!

I am still waiting for examples of how current plans are improving our life? I could probably extract from what you said that not getting seaside towns flooded and less traffic in cities are examples? But I think first one as explained is just inevitable to fail long term and second one can be achieved in other means. Specific examples would be good!

And yes I agree some of our live improvements caused environmental change and some even caused damage. Examples of such - farming changed habitats for other animals, that is not damage, it is just change... when invasive species of asian hornets kills bees that is as well change not damage, species migrates, they create their own habitats at the expense of other species, just natural but sad reality. However, plastic pollution is damage, we don't have to throw it to the water, it does not have to end-up in the oceans and our food, so that is bad. In short - as long as something made our life better I just see it as natural way of human species adapting environment around us to suit our needs, all the species from bacteria, to birds, to insects, to other animals does that. However, some things are unnecessary and I have already listed many examples, I think fast fashion is unnecessary, I think we can deal with our rubbish better, ideally we shouldn't drain our shaite into our beaches either, not that it is environmental damage, but it just isn't nice to swim in human excrement, but this is just hygiene factor, tidying-up the mess around us.

I disagree with you on motoring example - because it is not the amount of cars that is the problem. Amount of cars can NEVER be a problem, because each of those cars are heavily taxed and generates excessive surplus of fund. It is like saying - "damn, we have too many orders, too many customers, too much money and too much opportunities to grow". I often like to give analogy of cinema here... Imagine UK is cinema with 500 seats, our government just sold 10,000 tickets and they are blaming people attending to watch the movie for standing in the theatre and in corridors, and even outside because they can't fit. Whose fault it is - people who bought the tickets (i.e. paid road tax and fuel duties, and tax on car)? or is it a fault of cinema operator for overselling capacity? The answer is more and wider roads. Most of UK roads are of 1950s design and with capacity for 1960s, in 1960s smart people started planning roads for 1980s, but those plans were cancelled. So what we have today are 1950s roads designed for 1960s needs and number of people and the cars of 2023. Who is surprised we have problems? I am not surprised. Our government consistently failed to maintain the road infrastructure and plan capacity for future needs for 60 years.. and we are surprised we have traffic?! Seriously? We as drivers fund the roads 10 times OVER, 10 times! There is shaite loads of money to build perfect roads for you, for me, for cyclists, infrastructure for pedestrians and we still going to have shaite loads of excess money for public transport subsidies... that we have corrupt and inefficient government that does not mean the number of the cars is and issue. And why there is noise pollution and fumes in the city? Maybe because we have standstill traffic? Maybe if we had more efficient road network and more free flowing traffic we wouldn't have such problem. Good example is our cars MPG... mine can do ~40MPG on motorway, but if I go to London centre it will be 10MPG. So in simple terms I am polluting 4 times more because of BAD city roads, it is roads that bad not my car that is bad. And let's not forget that NET saving on BEVs compared to ICEVs is ~30% over lifetime. Yet we can achieve 75% saving by making the roads right!

No you may be surprised, but I actually like cycling... I just thing cycling on the road is fundamentally wrong solution. So I want more cycling infrastructure, good network of clean, smooth paths going trough the parks and forests, far away from roads and cars... sure that would be perfect. But current cycling plans are less about cyclists and more about "sticking it to the drivers", basically what our government is trying to do is to make traffic humps out of lycra clad cycle warriors, they using humans as "traffic calming feature"... wake-up guys - you being used! And you thought drivers are your enemies!?

Finally when it comes to economic crisis, I partially agree with you... so what that we waste money now, it is just another mistake of which we had plenty in the past. Key difference here however is that usually EXCESS has caused the crisis... so basically somebody lived too good to the point where rebalancing was needed. However, in this case of climate expense it is opposite - we wasting money to punish ourselves and to make our lives worse, so that we then get to the crisis and it will become even worse?! It is like double whammy - I have no issue taking penalty for living in excess and understand the need of putting things back in balance, but I don't agree to pay penalty now, to then be further penalised again in future!

I enjoy the discussion too Linas and, like you, will cherry pick a couple of points. Not because I necessarily disagree with them, but just to offer an alternative perspective.

The fact that climate change happened 20,000 years ago, without human intervention, doesn't mean that human intervention doesn't cause climate change now, they're not mutually exclusive. We do things now that we were never able to before, that could either affect the climate on its own, or add to natural processes. But yes, natural events have caused death and disaster, but is that a reason to not do anything to mitigate our own actions? Following that logic we might just as well let everyone smoke in public places, do away with medicine, heck why not just allow murder. We're all going to die anyway at some point, so why bother about those who die from man made causes?

I would disagree with your portrayal of the public perception of climate. No-one believes that we can stop naturally occuring climate change, and no one is trying to do that. What people believe is that we are causing/accelerating certain changes to the climate, that are having an environmental impact, and that we can do things differently to mitigate that.  

You go on to say that we might be better served by trying to control the climate in such a way that we have a climate that is most suitable for us. There's certainly some merit to that, but I would say that's precisely what we're trying to do. A more suitable climate is one that doesn't heat so rapidly, and one way of acheiving that is to reduce things that cause warming, like CO2. I suspect though that what you mean is a method by which can produce as much CO2 as we like, and the means to preventing it entering the atmosphere to affect the climate. I believe there are already methods being employed for carbon capture, but how cost effective, viable, or even safe they are in the long term is not yet known. My guess is that by the time it does become viable we'd have already moved on to other energy sources.

As far as reducing carbon emissions goes, it's impossible to show where it's improved lives, as we haven't reduced much yet. However, regarding motoring, many cities have seen improvements in air quality, and certain neighbourhoods have benefitted from traffic restrictions. We could argue the pros and cons of such initiatives but, putting that aside though, let's look at the main initiative that seems to irk people, that being the transition from ICE to EV. Not really much diffferent from transitioning from horse and cart to cars, in my opinion. Back then people were opposed to cars, they though them too expensive, that there wouldn't be sufficient capability/resources to build them, and that it would be impossible to create a viable fuelling infrastructure. Restrictions were put on horses because of the pollution the manure caused in towns. Some even argued that it was a deliberate conspiracy to remove people's freedom that came from horses and force them into cars, and was uneccessarily expensive. Sound familiar? And yet we overcame the perceived difficulties, and motorised transport was a success, and gave people even more freedom.

Currently we're in the early days, and so there is freedom to speculate as to whether the shift to EVs, and away from fossil fuels will be a good or bad thing in the long term. My own view is that it will be a good thing, and not just because of the environmental concerns. As you say, nature might kill us anyway, but because I believe it will open the door to a host of new technologies and opportunities, that might bring many more as yet unexplored benefits. Our lives have improved vastly over the last century, not by doing nothing and maintaining the statues quo, but by changing, innovating, and finding  ever more creative ways to improve them. I don't much care for the politics of climate change but, as I said previously, I believe they're a catalyst to further innovation and improvement.

As for cars and roads, I'd also like to address your cinema analogy. Sure if 10,000 tickets were sold for 500 seats, then more would be built, but when we run out of room, the demand would be controlled by raising prices. That's the situation with roads in the UK. Sure, maybe we could expand the motorway network, but the congestion exists in towns, where there's no room to build more roads. I live in London, and simply don't see anywhere where you'd fit more roads, let alone the bridges to support them.

As to your last point, to date my life hasn't been made any worse yet and, despite the fear mongering, I'm not sure it ever will. You like referring to history, so let's look at history. There's been doom mongering for as long as I can remember but, on balance, over the years my life has only got better. Sure, there'll be changes, some good, some bad, some very smart, and some very dumb, but I suspect that the bottom line for most people is that their quality of lives will improve, as it has for centuries. That's history 🙂

[Linas.P]

2 hours ago, Bluemarlin said:

I enjoy the discussion too Linas and, like you, will cherry pick a couple of points. Not because I necessarily disagree with them, but just to offer an alternative perspective.

The fact that climate change happened 20,000 years ago, without human intervention, doesn't mean that human intervention doesn't cause climate change now, they're not mutually exclusive. We do things now that we were never able to before, that could either affect the climate on its own, or add to natural processes. But yes, natural events have caused death and disaster, but is that a reason to not do anything to mitigate our own actions? Following that logic we might just as well let everyone smoke in public places, do away with medicine, heck why not just allow murder. We're all going to die anyway at some point, so why bother about those who die from man made causes?

I would disagree with your portrayal of the public perception of climate. No-one believes that we can stop naturally occuring climate change, and no one is trying to do that. What people believe is that we are causing/accelerating certain changes to the climate, that are having an environmental impact, and that we can do things differently to mitigate that.  

You go on to say that we might be better served by trying to control the climate in such a way that we have a climate that is most suitable for us. There's certainly some merit to that, but I would say that's precisely what we're trying to do. A more suitable climate is one that doesn't heat so rapidly, and one way of acheiving that is to reduce things that cause warming, like CO2. I suspect though that what you mean is a method by which can produce as much CO2 as we like, and the means to preventing it entering the atmosphere to affect the climate. I believe there are already methods being employed for carbon capture, but how cost effective, viable, or even safe they are in the long term is not yet known. My guess is that by the time it does become viable we'd have already moved on to other energy sources.

As far as reducing carbon emissions goes, it's impossible to show where it's improved lives, as we haven't reduced much yet. However, regarding motoring, many cities have seen improvements in air quality, and certain neighbourhoods have benefitted from traffic restrictions. We could argue the pros and cons of such initiatives but, putting that aside though, let's look at the main initiative that seems to irk people, that being the transition from ICE to EV. Not really much diffferent from transitioning from horse and cart to cars, in my opinion. Back then people were opposed to cars, they though them too expensive, that there wouldn't be sufficient capability/resources to build them, and that it would be impossible to create a viable fuelling infrastructure. Restrictions were put on horses because of the pollution the manure caused in towns. Some even argued that it was a deliberate conspiracy to remove people's freedom that came from horses and force them into cars, and was uneccessarily expensive. Sound familiar? And yet we overcame the perceived difficulties, and motorised transport was a success, and gave people even more freedom.

Currently we're in the early days, and so there is freedom to speculate as to whether the shift to EVs, and away from fossil fuels will be a good or bad thing in the long term. My own view is that it will be a good thing, and not just because of the environmental concerns. As you say, nature might kill us anyway, but because I believe it will open the door to a host of new technologies and opportunities, that might bring many more as yet unexplored benefits. Our lives have improved vastly over the last century, not by doing nothing and maintaining the statues quo, but by changing, innovating, and finding  ever more creative ways to improve them. I don't much care for the politics of climate change but, as I said previously, I believe they're a catalyst to further innovation and improvement.

As for cars and roads, I'd also like to address your cinema analogy. Sure if 10,000 tickets were sold for 500 seats, then more would be built, but when we run out of room, the demand would be controlled by raising prices. That's the situation with roads in the UK. Sure, maybe we could expand the motorway network, but the congestion exists in towns, where there's no room to build more roads. I live in London, and simply don't see anywhere where you'd fit more roads, let alone the bridges to support them.

As to your last point, to date my life hasn't been made any worse yet and, despite the fear mongering, I'm not sure it ever will. You like referring to history, so let's look at history. There's been doom mongering for as long as I can remember but, on balance, over the years my life has only got better. Sure, there'll be changes, some good, some bad, some very smart, and some very dumb, but I suspect that the bottom line for most people is that their quality of lives will improve, as it has for centuries. That's history 🙂

That is correct and at no point I have denied human pollution is not contributing, but what I am saying is that we hold ourselves to unrealistic goal and standard. Current target is to limit temperature change to 1.5C... but that is clearly impossible considering that temperature will naturally raise by 6C. What it seems to be the case is that 1.5C limit was deliberately created to be impossible to achieve so that people could be forever punished for not reaching it. I am not suggesting to damage the environment deliberately, but if the definition of damage is anything about 350ppm of Co2, when even natural level could reach 2000ppm, then this is just punishing ourselves unnecessary. I don't think comparison with smoking or murder is relevant here... because climate change this is false premise. Both smoking and murder kills, I don't think there is evidence to suggest that climate change kills, or that human contribution to it does anything that is in itself unnatural.

 "No-one believes that we can stop naturally occurring climate change" - here you just got me confused... naturally occurring climate change is likely to raise the temperature by 6C and naturally occurring Co2 will get to 2000ppm level, anything below these number is is UNNATURAL, so to achieve them we need not to reduce our pollution, but to completely reverse naturally occurring Co2. Basically a carbon capture of some sort at massive scale. Now to be fair natural increase in Co2 is just about 0.1%, whereas humans are responsible for ~1.5-2% of Co2, so 90% of excess Co2 are created by humans. But then the problem comes to policies - ICEVs are responsible for only ~2.4% of global Co2, BEVs are 30% cleaner. So 30% of 2.4% of~1.5% excess means that removing cars from the roads will have total impact of the policy is 0.011%, whereas what we need is to actually reduce the carbon by 101% until it gets to 350ppm and then reduce by 100% thereafter. That is why I am saying - the goals they have are incompatible with human life on earth. It is not about just driving or eating meat, we can exist because we need not to reduce carbon emissions, but to completely eliminate them and more. 

"control the climate in such a way that we have a climate that is most suitable for us <...> that's precisely what we're trying to do" No... again, the argument is that pre-industrial period is most suitable for our life. This is debatable, but that is what ecomentalists are seeking and what the policies are trying to get, but again this is impossible, we need -101% to get there, not -0.011%.

Air quality benefits can be achieved by better roads as I have demonstrated previously, not necessarily by removal of the cars. In my view - if government charges the people to use roads, then they are responsible for providing infrastructure. If they don't want to provide infrastructure, including free parking etc., or if they outright want to ban people from using them, then they should not charge people for access. We know for a fact that driving is not worse and less accessible than before, yet road tax keeps increasing. So it is less of conspiracy and more of purely bad deal. I am not sure about comparison with horses and I may be just missing something, but I just can't see how BEV car can give me more freedom than ICEV. Let's not forget as well that large amount of pollution is coming from brakes, tyres and road surface wear, so again reduction is minimal. Air quality improvements are as well questionable, because again better improvements could be achieved by simply improving the roads and secondly methodology of how they are calculated is very much flawed, to the point where I consider it misleading.

There is no risk of us running out of space for the roads... currently only 3% of land in UK are used, which roughly translates into 1% residential, 1% commercial and 1% of roads and parking. So we can literally double all 3 and still have 94% of land left to use. So the argument of running out of space for roads is simply unfounded. Not to mention that road capacity could be increased vertically, thus not requiring any extra land. For example we can increase throughput of of crossroad by maybe 80%, by making it it into multi-level crossing and this requires no extra land. I agree with your argument that sometimes in the cities there is no space left for road widening. Sure that is bad city planning fault, but you can still increase capacity vertically. And by the way demolishing houses is not out of question, not sure what that would be the problem. Sure perhaps some historically important buildings in old town, but at the same time old town isn't an issue.

I think we have different perspective on quality of life, I have clearly not lived as long, but my quality of life has become worse every day since the day I was born, in pretty much all aspects - taxation has increased, real estate became less affordable, quality food became less affordable, driving became less affordable, penalties for minor offenses became much more severe, restriction of all types became much more intrusive, the place overall got much more crowded. The explanation to that could be - we considering different things in our life to add quality. I can't think of a single thing that improved. Okey maybe internet became faster, but that is kind of new thing altogether and it would be hard to argue it actually improved my quality of life. Generally, I don't think it is right to confuse digitalisation and computerisation with quality of live improvement. Sure it is convenient, but arguably it made everything more competitive - somebody with my current IT knowledge in 90s would have been best paid specialist in UK, now I am just about average. So yes we became more efficient, but at the same time expectation became that we should deliver more work, so there is no net positive here.

Again I would like to hear - what particularly has improved in say last 30 years?  

[Malc1]

7 minutes ago, Linas.P said:

what particularly has improved in say last 30 years? 

the free at point of need, NHS HealthCare for sure .... .  generally speaking but NOT dentistry coz for some reason the Govt allows us to be totally ripped off by that profession, oh, and Opticians too I'm sad to say ...... unless you're a minor needing glasses 

BUT overall dentistry and opticians have much improved our health BUT only if you can afford to pay for it in addition to that which one pays for the NHS generally methinks !

Malc

[Linas.P]

4 minutes ago, Malc1 said:

the free at point of need, NHS HealthCare for sure .... .  generally speaking but NOT dentistry coz for some reason the Govt allows us to be totally ripped off by that profession, oh, and Opticians too I'm sad to say ...... unless you're a minor needing glasses 

BUT overall dentistry and opticians have much improved our health BUT only if you can afford to pay for it in addition to that which one pays for the NHS generally methinks !

Is it really? Were there 6 months wait lists 30 years ago? Did GPs gave painkillers pretty much regardless of your symptoms or why you came to see them? 

The technology became better, I agree, but the service overall?!

[Malc1]

5 minutes ago, Linas.P said:

Were there 6 months wait lists 30 years ago?

not for much maybe.... .  people just died thru' simple lack of knowledge about the problems that the NHS has now identified and can hopefully cure or at least mitigate 

Cancers spring to mind ......  cataracts too ........ hearing improvements ......  the NHS has so much positive stuff going forward that simply hadn't been " invented " 30 years back 

Dr Finlay's casebook would now be a might more technical these days ....  and he'd be seeing patients  now that would have long pegged out some 30 years back 

[Linas.P]

20 minutes ago, Malc1 said:

not for much maybe.... .  people just died thru' simple lack of knowledge about the problems that the NHS has now identified and can hopefully cure or at least mitigate 

Cancers spring to mind ......  cataracts too ........ hearing improvements ......  the NHS has so much positive stuff going forward that simply hadn't been " invented " 30 years back 

Dr Finlay's casebook would now be a might more technical these days ....  and he'd be seeing patients  now that would have long pegged out some 30 years back 

Statistically cancer death has increased, not decrease in last 30 years as proportion of all deaths. Again I agree that technology has increased, we have better medicine, better diagnostics methods, but service in my opinion became worse. 

To be fair, I have not used NHS yet, in the time I lived in UK I only been to doctors once and that was privately as I have private health cover anyway, but looking at statistics it seems to become worse and worse each year. 

As well, I would question if people 30 years ago considered that having private medical insurance was necessity as it is today, so I would put NHS with it overstretched capacity overall in the list of how quality of life became worse.

[Malc1]

55 minutes ago, Linas.P said:

so I would put NHS with it overstretched capacity overall

any ideas for solving that problem then ?   ................  stop doctors servicing private clients so ALL their valuable time is spent with the NHS maybe ?

Pinch even more medical staff from other countries maybe ?

Malc

[Linas.P]

45 minutes ago, Malc1 said:

any ideas for solving that problem then ? 

Corruption... I know it sounds generic, but I have some inside knowledge or how contracts are handled. So basically 80% of NHS budget is outright wasted on overpriced contracts. 

We all know how bad it is in US, where certain drugs costs to patient $200/day and just bankrupts the people. But it is pretty much same in UK, except the cost is not transferred to actual patient, but paid by NHS and then NHS goes bankrupt, but it is hidden in bureaucracy and corruption, so instead of seeing individual inefficiencies and extortionate prices we see one single number of overall budget and it seems like it is never enough. 

Contracting for doctors and contracting overall should probably be outlawed, but that is not possible unless they as well significantly increase tax free allowances all the way. There are certain doctors who gets £2000/day to go to certain hospital and some hospitals are even bidding on their contracts. This is double bad because junior doctors are getting ridiculously small salaries, so they basically have to go contracting. Nurse working for NHS gets £27,000/year, same nurse in the agency will get £350/day and agency will get £100 on top (~£99,000/year equivalent). So as far as I know all the doctors who cars about their own lives get their degrees done, get some qualifications on NHS expense and as soon as they have like 3-5 years experience leave their jobs and goes contracting via agency, some of them come back to work to the same hospital doing exactly same job just for 5 times higher salary. 

Sadly, I don't have satisfactory answer to this... but if it would be up-to me, then the steps would be 1. NHS has to prioritise, they cant treat everyone, but that kind of undermines their fundamental existence - £80,000 spent on hip replacement for 86 years old is just not in public interest, I know it sounds horrible, but that is just reality - not all patients have to be treated. Same goes for many things, but particularly - plastic surgeries, breast enlargements, gender transitions etc. 2. they need to start charging money, only emergencies and basic care should be free, but if people want "good quality" they need to pay extra, so only basic treatment should be free. Again I don't want to go into the detail, but let's just say there are bone screws that costs £120 per screw and there are the ones that costs £1800 per screw. Sure the more expensive one is better, but £120 one is sufficiently good, the patient should pay for upgrade not tax payer 3. corruption... this is very wide and complex topic, but NHS is overpaying 10 times over for everything, from complex MRE machines, to building works, to surgical equipment, to stupid things like toilet paper and hand sanitiser. Corruption in NHS is in no way different to general corruption anywhere else. Simply said they need robust system for conflict of interest, oversight, independent supply management. 4. they actually need to start paying decent salaries and contracting should be forbidden. But FIRST they have to start paying decent salaries. 

Obviously... I am probably not the best person to ask - young and healthy, obviously NHS for me means completely different things as for somebody who is old and has health problems. 

[Malc1]

Blimey …… yes it’s heartbreaking to try to understand how some NHS Consultants have to scrimp by on £120k a year or more 

Best close this dialogue down methinks ……. 
it’s going to get quite heated and challenging ……. I’ll bow out now to keep some sanity 

Good luck

Malc 

[dutchie01]

4 hours ago, Linas.P said:

what particularly has improved in say last 30 years?  

Linas i dont know if you have crossed the dreaded line of 30 years old yet but i sure have and can simply reply with "Everything". 

The jump in 3 decades in the western world has been immense. Healthcare, Economy, Freedom, Automotive, Air travel, Employment i can go on and on. Yes of course not all is rosy and happy and every period of life has its own problems but overall my life has improved drastically compared to 30 or even 40 years ago. May i politely suggest that if you feel your quality of life has been decreasing you might find a way up again? Like you said maybe find your luck in another country or, but that is my free tip, leave the overcrowded London area and move to more rural surroundings? That is what i did 25 years ago and after 2 years of getting used to the deafening silence and staring at cows i really found my place. I promise you will never look back! Oh, and if you are not happy in your job just get a new one! ( was not so easy 30 yrs ago my friend..).

[Linas.P]

7 hours ago, dutchie01 said:

Linas i dont know if you have crossed the dreaded line of 30 years old yet but i sure have and can simply reply with "Everything". 

The jump in 3 decades in the western world has been immense. Healthcare, Economy, Freedom, Automotive, Air travel, Employment i can go on and on. Yes of course not all is rosy and happy and every period of life has its own problems but overall my life has improved drastically compared to 30 or even 40 years ago. May i politely suggest that if you feel your quality of life has been decreasing you might find a way up again? Like you said maybe find your luck in another country or, but that is my free tip, leave the overcrowded London area and move to more rural surroundings? That is what i did 25 years ago and after 2 years of getting used to the deafening silence and staring at cows i really found my place. I promise you will never look back! Oh, and if you are not happy in your job just get a new one! ( was not so easy 30 yrs ago my friend..).

I am glad you feel that way, but I honestly don't believe statistically that adds-up, at least not for me, not for people born in 90s. Not for those that finished the school in 2008 during financial crisis. I think there was strong growth from 70s to 90s, so generation before me kind of had it better. There was as well strong growth and improvement of all aspects of life after WW2, sort of 50s-70s. Some issues in mid 70s, but to be fair worked out into everyone's favour. Whereas since 90s we just have crisis after crisis.

Leaving London is indeed on the cards, although it would be the same amount of effort to just leave UK altogether. The issues in UK are way beyond just London. I have changed job last year and probably will do again soon, unless the pay rise surprise me somehow. At least in that aspect I have no issues, but I am more of exception here. 

I have covered healthcare, I don't think it has improved in UK, but at the same time it isn't relevant for me. Economy is way way way worse, not even comparable, everything today is much more expensive than it was 30 years ago if we compare like for like, Freedom is definitely worse - nowadays you have to be careful what you say, because almost anything could get you cancelled (jokes aside I was even banned on this forum for suggesting IS300h is not fast car, so forget saying something more seriously politically incorrect), Employment is much worse, not for me in particular as I am jumping from enormous pay rise to another enormous pay rise and I have head hunters standing in the line to offer me new role, but the job market overall is trash nowadays. There was short period last year where after covid there was sudden shortage and it set back the clocks for maybe pre financial crisis days, but compared to 30 years ago is horrible. Especially for new graduates now trying to find first job is thought, I have hired many graduates, I did mentoring... it is unbelievably competitive and the career opportunities are junk. Companies really do not promote people anymore, so the only solution is jumping around from competitor to competitor and getting on the career ladder that way, but forget the times where one could join junior position and in 10 years become MD... those times are gone. Salaries are generally speaking jokes as well, or at least if you compare it with real estate prices (although this is more British problem), but somebody in my position in 90s would have been buying houses in cash every year, nowadays I can barely afford 2 bedroom flat on 30 years long lease. Air travel... not sure... I think first time I was on the plane was in 1998 and back then Ryanair had food included in price and normal size luggage... certainly it was overall more expensive and less common, but quality itself I would argue was better. Sure now you can have weekend city trip and flights for less money than the bus to airport, but you treated like animal on low cost airlines and even on normal airlines quality has degraded. 

All in all, I reckon that the problems is with me being born on the downturn, for somebody who lived longer it may not be so noticeable as the life got better and worse many times, whereas in my case it was only getting worse and there were no periods of it getting better. I wish it to be true, that this is just period of temporary down-turn which will be followed by 20 years growth... but again it seems to me it will be double whammy with all this environmental nonsense and "self-censoring", I think life is bad as it is now and if there is crisis to follow on top of that it will get very dire. 

[Malc1]

Linas I’m truly saddened to read your perspective on life here in the uk right now, especially where you live, London area is it ! 

Maybe the Climate Change resolution by Herr Khan in wiping Ls400s from the face of all London will improve your air quality and enable you to awaken each day with a smile on your face and that up-beat in your heart to know that it’s all going to improve a little before the day is through ……. and blessed Climate Change will hugely benefit from all those £12.50’s that are being spent on ???????? …….. ah yes, maybe fresh Cycle Lanes 

Malc 

[dutchie01]

Not sure Linas if the differences are so big. Maybe it has to do with different expectations as well. When i entered the workforce early eighties in The Netherlands it was in the middle of a big economic crisis following the Oilcrisis. Youth unemployment was 25% and when i bought my first apartment some 10yrs later interest rate was 17% and yes it was a 2 bedroom flat at a 30 year lease. My first car was 100 Euro did not have more cash.  I grew up during the cold war and there is just no comparison with regard to overall quality of life and financial situation of the average household, just not. Now you can eat left turning quinoa yoghurt from Argentina each day and then you were lucky if you could afford meat when you wanted it. Also then it was not possible to go from a junior position to MD in 10 years. Thats a dream. I requires hard work, long hours and just be better than your colleagues. It took me 30 years to be where i am now and it will still take you decades to climb the career ladder. Thing is the younger generation sometimes does not seem to be willing to put in that effort. 4 day working week does not bring you to the top. Nor does hopping from job to job when there is something that you dont like or offends you. Just hang in there, work hard and try to enjoy life as much as possible, have a drink and a good meal and enjoy friends and family. Cheer up mate!   

[Linas.P]

3 hours ago, Malc1 said:

Maybe the Climate Change resolution by Herr Khan in wiping Ls400s from the face of all London

Seeing LS400 would brighten my day to be honest!

12 minutes ago, dutchie01 said:

Not sure Linas if the differences are so big. Maybe it has to do with different expectations as well. When i entered the workforce early eighties in The Netherlands it was in the middle of a big economic crisis following the Oilcrisis. Youth unemployment was 25% and when i bought my first apartment some 10yrs later interest rate was 17% and yes it was a 2 bedroom flat at a 30 year lease. My first car was 100 Euro did not have more cash.  I grew up during the cold war and there is just no comparison with regard to overall quality of life and financial situation of the average household, just not. Now you can eat left turning quinoa yoghurt from Argentina each day and then you were lucky if you could afford meat when you wanted it. Also then it was not possible to go from a junior position to MD in 10 years. Thats a dream. I requires hard work, long hours and just be better than your colleagues. It took me 30 years to be where i am now and it will still take you decades to climb the career ladder. Thing is the younger generation sometimes does not seem to be willing to put in that effort. 4 day working week does not bring you to the top. Nor does hopping from job to job when there is something that you dont like or offends you. Just hang in there, work hard and try to enjoy life as much as possible, have a drink and a good meal and enjoy friends and family. Cheer up mate!   

Don't get me wrong - I don't have depression or something, but knowing economic realities is kind of my job, or at least those that I manage nowadays, so I greeted with large dose of reality everyday. I guess it could be as well related to worldwide squeeze of what was known as "middle-class", poor people were always poor and had horrible quality of life, rich people likewise were always rich and got all the spoils, but it is middle class that was aspirational for many working class people and that is what is disappearing nowadays. It is no longer an option of getting good education, getting into desirable field, working hard, better than all your colleagues and getting yourself from just hard worker into middle-class and getting little bit more relaxed. I am fully subscribed to the model - "work hard and play hard", so I am not afraid of hard work, for all of my years in employment my appraisal was "exceeded expectations", the problem is that nowadays if you work hard, you just going to pay excessive amount of taxes and when it comes to "playing" you are told that 99% of things you can't do anymore. So it ends up just being work hard for sake of working hard and never play. I myself came basically from poor family in poor country, but I am nowadays firmly in what would have been classed "middle class" in 90s and the quality of life is much worse than it was. Important to say - arbitrarily restricted, so it is not like middle-class has less money, simply said that money provides lesser quality of life (and I don't mean it is just inflation), you are simply not allowed to enjoy your wealth anymore. So in 90s poor struggled because they were poor, today poor still struggle because they are poor, but middle-class are not struggling because they are poor, but because they are arbitrarily restricted from enjoying their life with all sorts of excess taxes and rules etc. I guess I would summarise it as middle-class nowadays having quality of life of what used to be working class, and working class is even worse off - we have terms like "working poor" nowadays.

And I am not even joking - 30 years ago, person in my position would have had corner office, dedicated parking space and would drive 911 into work (this is quite particular position we are talking about and I am not exaggerating, I know exactly the people who did this work in 90s and their life-style)... however nowadays it is all virtue-signalling, specifically related to climate scam. Nowadays people in same position are either cycling or using public transport, not because we can't afford 911, but because we are not allowed to show-off. For example our new office building came without parking spaces at all, they had like 10 in the basement and all of them were empty all the time, because it is simply embarrassing or not fashionable to drive anymore. I have tried all possible ways to get parking there, but it is simply impossible, because once I get parking space then climate facade falls down, because everyone pretends they don't want to drive, or that others don't want to drive, but when suddenly one person drives then everyone are like "why is he driving and I am cycling in the rain like idiot"... basically it is wide spread psychosis where everyone pretends they like punishing themselves so much, talking how they had another puncture and how they £4000 carbon bike got stolen again and walking with brown line of shame on their back... but it only works as long as everyone are doing it. When somebody come and says - "fff it I drive"... suddenly everyone pulls the knives out. Again, not even a joke, part of the reason I had to change the job was that I didn't get pay rise and promotion, just because I was vocal about parking and new manager didn't like it so much. Now that is good for me and tough luck for him, because with single e-mail I got job doing less and with 30% higher salary, but the whole move was predicated on him hating me because I drive to work and he cycles... 

[dutchie01]

13 minutes ago, Linas.P said:

part of the reason I had to change the job was that I didn't get pay rise and promotion, just because I was vocal about parking and new manager didn't like it so much.

Haha, how come i am not surprised??