Climate change... Much ado about nothing?

So I looked up the per head figures and they are 5.7 and 7.7 for the UK and China respectively. Really not a million miles between them so I'm afraid I don't agree with Berny as we're both per-head in the same ballpark.

I don't particularly agree with the prevailing view of climate change in general but if I did, it would seem unfair to penalise large population countries just because they are large. It would seem fairer to broadly have every country work to the same per-person CO2 emissions per capita per year.

looking at www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-per-capita/

we are below most of the more developed countries in Europe.
interestingly below Norway where we import a lot of Green energy from, and just over 1/3 of the Americans.

According to my EPC the Average Household in the UK is 6 Tonnes of CO2, my is currently said to be 5.5 Tonnes, but that is based on my house using 20,000 kWh of gas a year when I actually use < 10,000 they say at EPC rating of B I would be down to 2.2 Tonnes.
Whats the relevance well the figures per capita say 5.6 Tonnes in the UK. if the average house is 6 and lets say 2.3 occupants ( 29 Million Properties, 69 Million residents). this means that housing in the UK is 6/2.3 ie 2.6 tonnes per head.
if every house were upgraded to a B EPC at 2.3 tonnes  that would be 1 tonne per head ie a reduction of 1.6 Tonnes or 28%
At 4 Tonnes per head we would be below the world average and the average person in the UK would have a much more comfortable house, and the cost of heating those properties would be 50% less than now.

isn't that something we should aspire to

Two problems with this.  If the world doesn't come down heavier on the worst offending countries, the climate crisis will worsen, so yes the larger population countries will have to face up to their responsibilities.  Nobody else can reduce their monstrous emissions but them. 

Secondly, even taking their per-capita emissions as the yardstick, China's 7.7 continues to increase at the rate of 15% every four years, while our 5.7 reduces by 12% in the same timescale.  That difference cannot be excused, nor explained away so easily.  The worst polluting nations should at the very minimum be leading the way, per-capita. 

Using your logic, Australia is one of the world's worst polluters at 16.5, as is tiny Gibraltar at 18.1.  Yet Australia's overall emissions contribution is similar to ours - another tiny minnow on the global scale - while Gibraltar emits next to nothing.  Are we really going to wait around until theirs comes down 'per capita' before the real big fish like China actually do something positive?  We don't have time for that nonsense. 

Ireland, at 8.2, outstrips China.  Does anybody seriously believe Ireland should be reducing their global emission footprint before China does a stroke? 

Then there's economies of scale to consider.  All things being equal, large populations should be able to operate at lower emissions per head.  Constructing one power station, or stadium, factory complex, shopping centre, etc, for 100,000 people doesn't emit ten times more than constructing the same structure for 10,000, for example.  So 'per capita' alone doesn't give a full picture.     

I concluded some time ago that this 'per capita' view is a spurious diversion and a dangerous way to look at the problem.  It lets China, the worst offender by far, straight off the hook. 

I sort of mentally added to that list Nick Clegg, but deleted that so as not to stir up any hornets. In a fairer system, a centre party like the Lib Dems would have had representation relative to the size of their vote and would have attracted intelligent influential people. But centre is crushed by the left-right two party system.

Of course I always bang on about PR, and this is the real reason, to allow the creation of a pragmatic centre party.

Take this for instance, my dream is to be able to vote for a party ith which I wholeheartedly agreed:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democrats_66

Back to the subject of this years significant abnormality/step change in Antarctic sea ice coverage. The abnormality has continued into mid September:

Antarctic sea-ice at 'mind-blowing' low alarms experts


Apologies in advance to any sensitive souls: a) its a BBC article, so lets be clear up front that it's simply 'more propaganda' b) it contains an updated version of that graph, you know the one that is "nonsense" and doesn't show what "you'd want it to show", (original source: the National Snow and Ice Data Centre, University of Colorado). Personally I'd prefer it didn't show any reduction in the ice coverage at all, but heh. No mention or piccies of cute penguins in this article though. 

He's got a book i saw in a charitry shop recently "How to stop brexit" he could write a few more books from my recollection ... "why not to build nuclear power stations"... and "why i will cancel university fees but wont"