china/India - Cop 26

Given that China and India have decided not to sign up to any binding agreement to reduce the use of fossil fuel, perhaps we should seriously consider looking at alternative sources for lathes, mills, chucks, and many other products which have their origin in these two countries. There are european sources, I know, our pockets will be hit, but given that there are islands which are going to disappear of the face of the earth, and many coastal regions are already being affected by rising sea level, paying more is perhaps a price worth paying. Regards Lynne

Unfortuanateley we all have prostituted ourselves to the cheap Eastern goods & I think China has truly got an 'agenda', good luck with your crusade but doubtful anything will change. I remember Maggie T back in the 80's asking us to buy British, well that worked well didn't it! As a starter you can buy a new 'Myford' lathe, the price is say twice what a far eastern offering is & I'm not even sure where it's now made, does anyone know?

Tony

Edited By Tony Pratt 1 on 15/11/2021 10:40:12

I'm in the anti king canute camp, The sea level has been rising for thousands of years

Overpopulation will cause chaos in the next 1 to 200 years

Everyone wants to be a first worlder and that takes industrial output

The government could ban everything from china the usa and india

if they wanted to

Bottom line is I think we're all going to have to wait until it all falls apart, and then things will change

Impossible to prove but I listened on the radio to an elderly (ex- Rhodesian ) man tell of marks he made on the rocks in the Seychelles 50years ago after 'nightmare' stories that Mauritius and the Seychelles would be 'underwater' in 50 years time ie now.

He returned to find nothing had changed between high/low marks he had made all those years ago.

I believe the global capitalism is incompatible with saving the planet

global capitalism is the problem not the solution

But who wants to be a war war rationing communist to save resources?

Who wants to give up the SUV and the bi-annual holidays?

Guys like musk I think are trying to get off-planet so that capitalism and the human race can continue to exploit resources without trashing the home planet at the same time

Meanwhile, overpopulation is the gorilla in the corner

There's also a large element of hypocrisy with westerners if you are living in the third world

"Now I'm rich we really need to stop doing the things I did to get rich."

I, too, think out current consumerist society and over population are the major issues, but not the particular energy source in use.

Like many of us here I can remember the awful smogs caused by domestic fossil fuel burning, fortunately long gone in most of the Western World - however I am also unhappily aware that my enthusiasm for fossil fuelled replicas is reinforcing in a miniscule way that which we are trying to do away with and my hypocrisy is compounded by the dark thought 'Where I am going to find coal for my models' if no more is being produced?

I've always wondered what effect land reclamation has on sea levels - building an entire island (e.g. the Hong Kong airport, various projects in Dubai, Dutch polders, etc.) must displace an appreciable amount of water.

Rob

I very much doubt that model engineers make up a large percentage of any country's population so refusing to buy anything from India or China would make very little difference except to give some people a warm, inner glow.

I am always amused that when we have floods/droughts/bushfires/extreme hot weather/extreme cold weather in this country (Australia), so many people shout ''see.....climate change''.

Best all give up running those Locos on coal too

.

Your are entitled to be amused, Brian … but I don’t think the shouts are entirely unreasonable.

What we are seeing is less-moderate swings : which is a sign of the ‘system’ having less ‘damping’

MichaelG.

A lot of those false islands are created by sooking up the seabed and piling it up into shallower water, so there's no effect on sea levels, or it makes them go down slightly

Edited By Ady1 on 15/11/2021 13:48:21

I know it’s a gross simplification of the situation with climate change, but this plot of various levels of damping of a sine-wave nicely illustrates the concept: **LINK**

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damping#/media/File:2nd_Order_Damping_Ratios.svg

MichaelG.

Anyone have a view on the 'effect' of the massive movements of water which have taken place over the last 100 years ?

For example , the Aral sea has disappeared , the 3 Gorges has appeared , as has the Hoover dam , Aswan , etc etc.

As we are effectively "taxing" ourselves with the green initiatives it would seem fair to make global trade fair by taxing, heavily, imports from the likes of India and China to level things up.

Especially as we have destroyed the very industries which made the 'things' to which we have become addicted.

Just what we need , not.

Apparently China is still a developing country and "entitled" to continue to use coal.

Booming over population is still a significant propblem. So as we have more people, less land for crops and variable crop yields due to adverse weather, the world may well starve to death before it all gets too hot to live.

Well done India and China, hopefully, this means we aren't signing up for zero coal either.

Why would anyone want to ban something vital to their economy before a credible substitute has been found?

Ground up American forest is not a credible substitute for UK coal.

OTOH, fracking our own gas reserves is a very credible substitute for Russian gas. A few beardy weirdy, anorak tree huggers having a hissy fit and glueing themselves to the road is not an insurmountable obstacle.

UK coal would have a lower carbon footprint than coal inported from elsewhere, hence the need for the new coalfield until steel making can be changed.

Whilst still on COP26, where will the EV tyre materials come from when we cease producing oil?