Iceland commemorates first glacier lost to climate change

So unless you are disputing that a large worldwide increase in greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere affects climate, your position that humans can't affect global climate is untenable.

Global warming is like having cancer. You go to the doctor( or scientist), you check if you have cancer (or global warming), he tells you yes you indeed have cancer and only 5 years of life left (a few decades with global warming) and if you get treated right away they might even prevent the cancer from spreading and you will have a good chance of growing old and dying in your 80s. Except you are stingy and don't want to pay the (very cheap) bill. 3 years later you are bedridden and the bill has quadrupled.

Also if you think climate change wasn't accelerated by humans then please take a look at this nice chart. https://xkcd.com/1732/

> - An asteroid could wipe out all life on Earth. - The supervolcano known as Yellowstone might erupt. Again. - Supernova gamma ray burst might hit the planet, sterilising it (and us). - A massive and catastrophic solar flare hitting Earth. - If Carl Sagan is correct, and extra-terrestrial intelligent life does exist, and they turn out to be belligerant, Earth could be attacked. - A global pandemic caused by some super-disease suddenly emerging.

True, all of these things are out of our control and also not currently happening. Climate change is and we can also do something about it.

> And this is 100% going to happen: our own life-giving star, Sol, WILL destroy the planet in a few billion years time.

Ehh sure, this and the above paragraph are prime examples of what-aboutism. This is generally not useful for solving problems.

> I am yet to be convinced human beings are responsible for a changing global climate. Global Climate Change is a thing, yes, and that climate has been changing since the formation of planet Earth 4.54 ± 0.05 billion years ago.

Yes the climate has been changing. It generally did not change at the rate we're seeing now. It might not be manmade but that would make timing (right after the industrial revolution, coal power plants, plastic, etc that all happened at a __very__ large scale recently) a huge coincidence.

I don't think humans can possibly affect this planet in terms of /global/ Climate Change in any measurable magnitude. There are forces which affect and cause /global/ Climate Change which are vastly more powerful than us mere humans.

Maybe it helps to think about it like that; Humans aren't changing the climate - you're right. But corporations are doing it to satisfy human demand. While corporations are run by us they exhibit vastly different behavior as well as operating at a completely different scale than us.

> Humans can affect their local climate for sure - a city has a different local climate compared to an equivalent area of wildland. All that tarmac and concrete does have an effect locally. But to suggest that the human race - which inhabits a small percentage of the landcover of a planet of which two thirds of its surface is water - is the main cause of Climate Change, reeks of hubris and agenda.

We use most of that land cover for agriculture and changing it by deforestation etc. The water parts of earth are.. Well I don't really see your point there. 1/3 is a looot of area to affect, surely enough to change the climate by a tiny bit (2 deg) which then causes runaway effects. It throws the system off balance.

> The best thing we humans can do is to put things into perspective, deal with a dynamic, ever-changing global climate which is out of our control, try our best to keep the place tidy - we do need more effort on that front - do what we humans are great at doing which is coming up with great and new technologies (I'm looking at you, fusion power to be a workable thing within my lifetime!), and make the most of our individual limited time on this Earth by following your aspirations and fulfilling your potential.

I think you're right here. In the end it doesn't after what causes climate change anyway - it is happening and it is killing us so we need to do something about it. Thing is, if we don't know the cause for these extreme rates this will be hard. Humans seem like a very likely cause here and the specific sources (e.g. coal, flying) are conveniently in our control. So even if you're still not sure, acting as if we're the cause is a good action plan, don't you think?

Please can you support this with a cite, because I think you've misunderstood what you've read.

Plastic in the ocean comes from roughly 3 sources.

1) Microfibres in clothing. It's likely that the West dumps significantly more of these into the environment because of greater numbers of plastic clothing and increased amounts of washing of those clothes.

2) industrial equipment, mostly lost fishing nets. I haven't seen anything that says these nets are disproportionately from African boats.

3) plastics from sewage systems, and plastics washed from land into rivers and thus into the ocean.

It's this last one that I think you're talking about. But it's important to realise that 1) many of these rivers aren't in Africa, but in Asia and 2) most of that plastic was exported from the West to Asia.

I'd like to read more about that, have you got a link? Full disclosure: I hate paper straws, they turn into mush too fast and kids can't deal with them at all.

I am a pick-up-the-litter kind of guy, but I am not going to do without air conditioning.

Leanardo DiCaprio feels passionately about climate change, but he's not giving up his private jet flights.

Barack Obama feels strongly too, but he's not going to give up yacht vacations.

Human nature dictates the final result. Perhaps we'd better devote our energies towards ways to deal with the inevitable. Because nobody's going to voluntarily live 100 years in the past for the benefit of those 100 years in the future.

Which is very good in many ways, one of which being that we get scared too easily from headlines and tend to forget about many other pressing issues that all have to be taken care of all the time.

Most leaders - at least in democratic countries - don't actually have a lot of power to do things that the people don't want them to do. Just look at Macron attempting to raise taxes on gasoline. He wishes he had approval ratings as "good" as those of Donald Trump. People are rioting in the streets.

Now perhaps if you have a really wealthy country like Norway, you can afford to subsidize electric vehicles or renewable energy. The same won't work for other countries, especially emerging economies.

And politicians do some mix of what they personally believe is right and what will get them re-elected— When political leaders try to make big changes without the support of the populace, the result is generally bad. The question then turns to how to increase popular support for actually taking governmental action on climate change.