UKC

Check this video out. I think its an important register of climate change and some of its implications for mountain climbing especially in places like Chamonix where the rate of warming is much greater than the average...

youtube.com/watch?v=R0NGujTF1Xw&

Nice film but I don't think it offers any new insights....

A very good short film, thanks for sharing.

Adaptation seems to be an emerging theme to global heating, rather than trying to reverse it.

This is certainly my approach nowadays.

Fortunately I am not poor and live in a developed country, although clearly not without problems.

It will be the poor who suffer most from rising temperatures.

I hope that I can get back to the Alps in the next few years. There are still lots of doable routes, but as suggested in the film, they are likely to get fewer over the coming years.

Recently a new record for the 'zero degree line' was set at 5,300m over Switzerland.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/21/zero-degree-line-record...

I'm glad I don't have kids - future generations are going to have to do a lot of adapting 🧐

Thanks Ian. I couldn't agree more. 

Climate change raises many questions and issues, very few I have addressed here. But the main motivation for the post is the sense, based on UKC chatter, that there is a sufficiently large number of folk who are not quite in tune with how dramatically the Alps in general and Chamonix in particular are affected by climate change.

Having lived in Cham for many years i witnessed quite the number of extraordinary things in the hills (in what could have been deemed relatively safe circumstances), none of which had positive outcomes.

So the elevation in the level of danger is my primary concern, though quite how this is to be mitigated is very much an open question..

thanks for responding to the debate.

JC 

What can be done, the correct answer would be no overseas travel for sport or recreation, maybe acceptable for critical business or visit your family.

Or huts make may/jun the new july/august and change their opening times, but that just encourages travel.

This is always used as the east scapegoat, with minimal actual impact. Industrial production, farming, shipping and personal cars are much bigger problems but no one wants to talk about that because it’s much easier to blame everything in aviation

It also doesn't really work because access routes are still.covered in snow! It's not as simple new-May=old-July.

Maybe we have to accept change, ski in, snow shoes etc.. if we don't want to climb loose rubble in August. 

Nice little film. I agree with your view that very people are in tune with how dramatically the alps, or the wider world are being and are going to be affected by global warming as Antonio Guterres recently called it, global boiling.

Collapsing food systems and mass migration etc are going to have bigger impacts on our ability to go climbing than melting glaciers though.

I go to the Ecrins most years and I have decided June is best for Alpine stuff, certainly worked this year. Not only is July/August too hot and has lots of rockfall, it is also busier than it has ever been. There are more people heading for the few routes that might be in condition causing overcrowding. September and October are also potentially good months for Alpine rock as things have often stabilised and cooled down by then.

The short-sighted zealotry of the anti-flying crowd is baffling. What exactly happens to sensitive ecosystems around the world when the tourism industry effectively ceases? The natural resources will be pillaged and we'll be in an even worse mess.

Not to mention that people driving to climbing areas every weekend within the UK is a vastly bigger problem in terms of carbon emissions. Not so keen to point the finger at that environmental vandalism. 

That's short sighted in itself, yeah visit the maldives(for example), save their tourist economy. Then watch safely from afar when sea level rise covers it. 

I agree, we should climb local, 400 mile weekend dashes don't work, even in an EV as so much of our power generation isn't carbon neutral. 

We can still visit the Maldives and cut emissions. Kill the tourist economy and there's no economy to make the place habitable anyway.

400 mile. 50 mile. 10 mile. It's all emissions, none of it justifiable for recreation if you take this puritanical view. 

We need to travel cleanly, not stop travel. Pointing the finger at individuals for taking flights is a distraction from the people that actually can and should be effecting real change, those in government.

Things not looking good in the Ecrins at the moment.

https://alpinemag.fr/fermeture-sentier-refuges-sele-pelvoux-eboulement-ecri...

“Two more inaccessible refuges in the Ecrins National Park. A landslide occurred in the Pélas Verney corridor, in the Celse Nière valley, this Monday, August 21 at the end of the day, resulting in the closure of the access trail to the Sele and Pelvoux refuges.

The mayor of Vallouise-Pelvoux Gaëlle Moreau signed a municipal by-law prohibiting "access to the Celse Nière valley to the public upstream of the bifurcation to the Clapouse hump towards the Pelvoux and Sélé refuges from Tuesday, August 22, 2023, and until further notice". The order also specifies that the Sele refuge is closed to the public.”

They don’t appear to have closed the Pelvoux hut, so there must still be access to it.

Option A, find new employment, industry and save us all from severe climate changes.

Option B, just keep doing everything we are already doing, with a still growing global population. 

clearly you can do 40 trips with later compared to the first, for an equal amount of emissions. Puritanical or just blazingly obvious?

If people stopped using polluting forms of travel then commercial pressure would change everything quicker. Lobbying MPs doesn't matter, so many have donations from oil companies it's pointless. 

I'd love to hear your suggestions for new industries and employment in the Maldives when you destroy a third of their economy at a stroke.

That's exactly what will happen if people just get screeched at to stop taking holidays abroad.

Option C, we address the *actual* major source of transport carbon emissions, which is private cars.....and which we can do without telling people to stop driving.

And how many 10 mile single occupant trips happen in private cars every day? 

I hope you've given up your car.

You're changing the argument, many people do solo car journeys because of poor town planning, lack of public transport, no safe cycle or footpaths, to work, to shop etc..

My point is millions of people flying around the world purely to sit on a beach, tourism, to do some sport is non essential. 

Yes, i do walk and cycle as much as possible, park and ride etc.  too, driving wise we have an ev, but uk power generation isn't remotely green. 

Interesting article in Le Monde (EN) regarding warnings over climbing high peaks in the alps in the current heatwave that parts of Europe are experiencing. 

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/environment/article/2023/08/22/authorities-urge-a...

Emissions from aviation account for less than 12% of transport emissions. Even with all these emissions eliminated, you are still left with substantial emissions from all other modes of transport. 

By contrast, road travel accounts for about 75% of transport emissions, with about 45% coming from passenger vehicles and 29% from trucks. 

It's fairly clear that making serious efforts to deal with road travel will have a greater impact on transport emissions. 

Right. The vast majority of transport emissions.

A very small percentage of transport emissions.

The future you seem to be espousing is one where we don't address the vast majority of geenhouse emissions that come from essential travel, so the climate is screwed anyway.....*and* nobody gets to travel abroad....and you wonder why people aren't falling over themselves to embrace this vision

Seems like a third of emissions come from the home, best sell the house and live on the streets, very little comment on that though

Many (on UKC) seem to still advocate gas central heating, which has a significant environmental impact ("but its cheaper than electric" I hear you say)

https://www.theccc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/5CB-Infographic-FINAL-...

I don't think we are in a position to just target the worst offenders, we have to accept lifestyle change, all forms of travel, manufacturing, uk housing standards, energy production and so on. 

I know it pointless as industry is driven by profit and everyone thinks their polluting habits are a special case that exempts them. 

So that would be walking or cycling. Everything else is on a scale from more to less in CO2 emissions. Encouraging the "less" forms of travel is more likely to result in change than expecting people to stop all long-distance travel, as in general, they won't.

Now you're just being an ar... how many drive a distance they could comfortably cycle or walk in under 30mins. It's not coincidence that we have a obesity or diabetes time bomb looming. Driving short distances is unnecessary population. 

£500 a head carbon tax on all long haul travel? They might change then. 

I think you're missing the huge investments being made in to greener alternatives, Hydrogen fuel for planes etc. Taxing the most polluting fuels would drive this much more quickly.

Punitive taxes will just stop the flights and need for investment, it's a balancing act for sure. Same goes for road transport. 

There are areas where huge improvements could be made but require integrated systems, but short sighted thinking always wins.

And how is most hydrogen currently produced? All the talk of hydrogen is just used as means of avoiding making real significant change. Like homes using hydrogen instead of natural gas, it won't ever happen. 

And the alternative is????????

Everyone lives and works within walking/ cycling distance of their home. Community housing with sleeping pods , none of these selfish homeowners with wasteful personally owned houses, and no travel anywhere unless self propelled. Better turn of this computer as well, another waste of resources???

This post is a testament to the success of the anti climate change lobby, that perpetrated the myth that rather than reduce carbon emissions through practical, moderate changes, what's required is a wholesale abandonment of modern life.

That said, the idea that we cannot have houses is a new extreme in anti-green hysteria.

Exactly the opposite of what I was getting at. I'm far from anti green/progress but I am realist. We need workable solutions of which there many, but many seem blinkered to their own impact i.e climbers are some sort of guardians of the environment, when we're just the opposite.

ps what are your proposals?

Electric through green and nuclear generation. 

As for home heating, insulation, better to reduce the need to heat at all rather than chase the cheapest means to heat inefficient housing. We approaching the problem for the wrong direction. 

Not entirely possible, but we've spent the last 30 years doing the opposite deliberately building everything out of town, with no connectivity between work, shop, schools and home, forcing people to drive everywhere, then having no where to park the multiple cars per household normal life requires. It's an example of how not to do it.

It's popular to moan about the 15min city concept, but wouldn't it be great if everyone just had more free time and less time spent commuting or driving in general. They'd save money on fuel and pollution would be lower. There is no down side. 

I have none. We are helpless animals condemned to our fate.

Here's a classic example of small thinking. 

https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/network-rail-details-10m-plan-to-al...

Rather than improve the facilities and track to cope with the lorry carrying trains, enabling the lorries to be carried up the M25 and further, taking huge amounts of road transport of the road, they spend a very small amount £10m on "little" improvements. HS2 could have been designed to take road vehicles as well, but again poor planning got in the way.

p.s. £10m may sound a lot but the recent mtb race in Glentress cost £1.4m for a few days playing in the mud

Many years off, due to years of under funding and maximizing privatization profits

Difficult to insulate old houses, poor regulations on new builds, will mean this is near impossible.

Agreed, but you only need to take a look a planning application complaints to see nimby's are strong in stopping developments

Mind set has a lot to do with it, on recent trips to S.Korea the people I worked with classed a 20 year old home as old, the most desirable homes being in new tower blocks, with all the convenience that gave ie shops and restaurants all in the one building.

Little englanders want the country cottage 

A short but worrying video

https://www.ledauphine.com/environnement/2023/08/23/un-eboulement-impressio...

It's a competitive world: we'd just be over-run by people who work harder.

An enormous number of countries or areas that rely almost entirely on tourism supplied by air travel. The Mexican Caribbean is a good example: tourism there employs millions of people. Cut out their tourist industry and most of them would be out of work, living in extreme poverty.

One of the big problems is replacing aviation fuel with green energy, and that transition will be needed regardless of climate change.

Catch 22, parts of mexico and southern california were hit by a typhoon for the first time in decades this week. Will it be decades before the next? 

It's worth noting that none of the eight Republican candidates for the US presidency believes that human activity is causing climate change. 

So, sit back, relax and watch the planet burn!

It is a bit more nuanced than that. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/08/18/us/politics/republican-candi... has a summary of their positions.

Nuanced! That's a laugh in the face of an existential threat. 

That's a pay site, so I can't read the article in any case.

Turn JavaScript off on the site and you I can read it. That usually works for paywalls.

As for "nuanced", I was being polite. Your original statement "none of the eight Republican candidates for the US presidency believes that human activity is causing climate change" is plain wrong, starting with there being eight.

I am a dull person, I like accuracy and detail. Sorry.

I do find it quite sad that so many still find ways to argue that, whatever is done about climate change, it shouldn't include anything that would significantly impact on their own lifestyles, be this driving, flying abroad or whatever.

'Thunderf00t' on YouTube touches on this point in a recent video about climate change - it is simply in our nature. His graphic illustrations of the relationship between the burning of fossil fuels and global warming really put things into perspective, and the persistence of C02 is something that I think many are not aware of.

He could have gone further, as many also fail to understand just how profoundly C02, methane and so on increase global temperatures, saying things like 'If C02 only accounts for 0.04% of the atmosphere, how can even a doubling of that have any effect? The reality is that 0.04% makes the difference between the earth being a pretty much a snowball and the temperatures we have today. A doubling would push levels close to those not seen for 50 million years, equating to a 10 degree C temperature rise, an almost ice-free Earth, and sea levels 60m above what they are today.

As Thunderf00t implies, the human race will probably survive, but the ultimate cost will likely be the genocide of the greater part of the Earth's population, and the mass migrations driven by climate change, and the conflict and wars this will produce are surely not that far away.

youtube.com/watch?v=otbxOvu069Y&

I know that most on here are aware just how much climate change is affecting the Alps, but this short video captures the scale (and accelerated rate) of this impact better than most I have seen.

youtube.com/watch?v=3MG4n2mEdvA&

The UKC plan to deal with climate change goes like this:
1) if anyone suggests that people take personal steps to reduce their climate impact (eg stop flying off on multiple climbing trips per year) then tell them that it's pointless because what we need is systemic change.

2) If anyone argues for systemic change to reduce our combined climate impact, tell them that it won't happen because people aren't even willing to take personal steps.

3) Whatever anyone suggests, tell them that it's hypocritical unless they live in a cave and survive on foraged nuts and berries.

4) Enjoy the satisfaction of being the cleverest person on the internet.

5) Repeat until literally on fire or under water.

The Scientific American is pretty damning of the eight candidates who featured in the televised debate and their stance on climate change.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/at-debate-republican-presidentia...

That's the bottom line.