Jo Abbess

Leave Africa Alone

Today’s news is that the pastoral life in Africa is sustainable, even with a certain amount of Climate Change :-

http://www.iied.org/climate-change/key-issues/drylands/african-livestock-can-triumph-face-climate-change

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Little Chicken

Now’s the right time to talk about gardening. Not just any old gardening, no. I mean food gardening, urban farming, home cropping, edible landscape-type gardening.

Now is the time to be thinking about enriching your soil for your next bumper harvest.

Get your resilience genes working !

http://www.londonwaste.co.uk/media/Compost%20Bag%20Leaflet_May09.pdf

OR

http://www.islington.gov.uk/Environment/RubbishAndRecycling/recycling_new/hrrc/compost_offer_HRRC.asp

Get into Transition mode !

In Transition 1.0 from Transition Towns on Vimeo.

In The Belly Of The BP

I was warned. And it’s true. BP are so protective of their company image that they live in denial. I should know. I’ve been inside the belly of the beast and spoken to one of their head sustainability honchos. Who had a total disconnect about the risks of Fossil Fuel depletion.

“Oil and gas will remain the mainstay of the “Energy mix”. We’ve said that publicly…”

So they’re telling the world what to believe, are they ?

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Stop Climate Chaos – Ask the Climate Question

There is an unelected, shadowy organisation in the United Kingdom; a cultish community of thousands, and their minions, that plots to dictate the leadership of the whole world, starting with the minds of the central Government.

You’ll see them at work in the run-up to the General Election, possibly suspicious figures masquerading as angels of light in brightly coloured costumes and carrying jokey banners; meddling in democracy at every level – leafletting, holding meetings, putting posters in their front windows and holding consciousness-raising green-fests in their local Town Halls.

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James Delingpole Trusts Known Obstructers

I think I might start using a new term : “Climate Obstructers”, people who make lots of challenges to the IPCC consensus, who have what seems to me to be an agenda to obstruct the course of Climate Change Science.

In his latest Web Log post, James Delingpole attracts attention to a “magisterial report” from Joseph D’Aleo (of web log ICECAP) and Anthony Watts (of web log WattsUpWithThat), which is actually a crock of shambolic fripperies, in my view :-

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100024023/global-warming-is-it-even-happening/
“Global Warming: is it even happening?”

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Do Hold Your Breath

If I had a eurocent for every time a Climate Change denier-sceptic told me that if I really, truly believe that Carbon Dioxide causes Global Warming I should just stop breathing…well, I’d be rich enough now to afford to buy the whole of Belgium, or at least most of economically-depressed Wallonia. Mmm…Waffles.

But seriously, holding your breath in the form of Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) is one of the big flashing signs for the future of ReSmoothing, smoothing Renewable Energy supply, that is.

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Earth Twinned With Venus

I think the group of artists proposing that Letterkenny, County Donegal, should be twinned with Mars, may have got their Climate Change facts a little twisted :-

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/foyle_and_west/8473116.stm

“Irish island twinned with Mars in climate change stunt : An island in County Donegal is to be twinned with Mars in order to raise awareness of climate change. A community near Letterkenny will be linked with an island outcrop on the Red planet. The unusual move was suggested by a group of artists asked by Donegal County Council to explore art’s role in addressing issues of global warming. The Council’s Public Arts Manager, Terri Duffy, said it would act as an “attention-grabbing wake-up call”. “I know it’s a bit ‘out there’ but it is taking a very serious look at the relationship of art and climate change. Some people feel the earth is becoming more Mars like due to the effects of global warming…”

Mars is rather cold, owing to the fact that it doesn’t really have much of an atmosphere and so doesn’t have the benefit of much in terms of the Greenhouse Effect :-

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Hot Babes

The Daily Telegraph has done its usual editorial flip-floppy, fence-sitting nonsense : publishing a pretty decent article about the last decade being the hottest ever and using the photograph of a chica in a bathing suit to accompany it. Talk about gratuitous sexism ! (Yes, let’s talk about sexism in the Media, shall we ?) :-

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/globalwarming/6944399/Past-decade-warmest-on-record-say-Nasa-scientists.html

How are we expected to take The Daily Telegraph seriously ?

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Send a Sceptic to Siberia

Yawn. Yet another anti-Science web log page floats into my field of vision. It’s so…boring, trying to keep up with the Global Warming Deniers. I can barely keep awake. Here’s an example of the trite, and frankly, petulant genre :-

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100023339/james-hansen-would-you-buy-a-used-temperature-data-set-from-this-man/

Actually, don’t bother reading it. It’s a waste of column inches.

If only the Climate Change Sceptics would just go away and let us get on with the gargantuan task of revitalising the Energy industry around sustainable technologies.

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The Blob Chart’s Back !

The NASA GISS Blob Chart has just been completed to finish off 2009, and it’s red, raw and angry. Don’t see any yellow in 2009, just orange and red. Getting kind of hot lately, isn’t it ?

The Blob Chart is…the best communications tool since the telephone, by the way. So simple. So visual. So colourful. So unambiguous.

Democracy : Alive & Kicking

Sheepishly creeping in late, (well I got lost, right, because my Google Map was on the wrong scale without the street names, OK ?), I attended my second Copenhagen de-briefing meeting of the year, with strong signals of properly functioning democracy all the way through.

I learned a lot more about the poor state of international negotiations, how disadvantaged peoples and nation groups were not heard, how the official news feeds were edited, how attempts to communicate from the public assembly at the Klimaforum into the Bella Center using video streaming were met with empty delegate seats, how the elite negotiating teams from the industrialised world failed to collect enough support for their position, how people got left queueing in the freezing cold…

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Spikes & Slopes

by Jo Abbess
3 December 2009

One Hot Year

1998 was a very hot year. Worldwide, the land and sea surface temperatures spiked sharply upwards. Scientists said it was supposed to get hot, but not this hot. Yet by the year 2000, things had cooled back down again. In fact, they were a little cooler than 1995. [1] The detailed analysis made it seem like a murder mystery – who killed the heat ? What happened to Global Warming ?

Part of the forensic evidence came from analysis of Mount Pinatubo. On 15th June 1991, it experienced massive volcanic eruption causing an enormous plume in the sky, easily visible from space. [2] [3] The sulphur dioxide in the plume deflected the sun’s heating rays from Earth, and temperatures on the ground plummeted around the world. Yet, despite this cooling effect, land and sea surface temperatures were back to normal by around 1995, just in time for the sizzle of 1998. [4]

It seemed likely that spikes and slumps were just natural cycles; the climate systems moving from one stable pattern to another. For years, big loops of wind will rotate in one direction, and weathermen know what the temperatures and rainfall will look like. And then the whole setup will flip and change, and temperatures, rainfall and winds will all be different. [5]

Research showed that the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) created drought weather conditions in 1997, causing massive forest fires in Indonesia that helped drive up worldwide temperatures in 1998. [6]

A “nuclear winter” from the occasional volcanic eruption, or a “fry up” from flip-flops in big climate circulations only have a short-term impact on global temperatures. [7] The Climate is always changing. There are ups, and there are downs, but no permanent changes. Don’t believe the spikes.

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Another Hot Year

NASA GISS scientists have analysed their data and have found that 2009 was, on average, the second hottest on record.

Sea Level Propaganda

The Times of London has developed what looks like a Climate Change Denier streak of late, reinforcing anti-Science propaganda currently in circulation.

Here they are with what I consider to be an unhelpful treatment of a story about Professor Stefan Rahmstorf :-

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6982299.ece

“From The Sunday Times : January 10, 2010 : Climate change experts clash over sea-rise ‘apocalypse’ : Critics say an influential prediction of a 6ft rise in sea levels is flawed : Jonathan Leake : Professor Stefan Rahmstorf : Climate science faces a new controversy after the Met Office denounced research from the Copenhagen summit which suggested that global warming could raise sea levels by 6ft by 2100. The research, published by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, created headline news during the United Nations summit on climate change in Denmark last month…”

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Goldilocks and the Melting Arctic

It seems, sadly, that Richard Betts of the UK’s Met Office has fallen for the “Goldilocks Fallacy”. In attempting to dismiss what he sees as alarmist claims, yet prevent sceptics or deniers getting a toehold; trying to steer a safe, middle course on the truth of Global Warming in the Arctic, he appears to have misquoted the evidence :-

http://climateprogress.org/2010/01/12/sciencerichard-betts-andy-revkin-dramatic-decline-in-arctic-sea-ice-in-2007-was-not-reversed-in-2008-2009-recovery/

Fearmongering may not be the correct response to this patently serious change in the Arctic Sea Ice, in fact, social management should be avoided at all cost; but telling the truth should be paramount, even if that rocks boats.

NASA GISS : 2009 Second Warmest

According to James Hansen and the crew at NASA GISS, 2009 was the second warmest year ever. Yes, even though December 2009 was a bit nippy for some, the Arctic Oscillation couldn’t ruin a grand total of warm.

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Glaciers Melting in the Himalayas

Video Credit : Asia Society

The satellites and cameras do not lie : glaciers in the Himalayas are melting, and the loss of any part of this “third pole” ice cover threatens the freshwater supply for billions.

This weekend’s Media clamour on the subject focuses on the trail of a mis-attribution of a claim regarding the complete meltdown of the mountain glaciers.

Just because somebody’s got their references wrong, doesn’t mean that the glaciers have magically not been melting after all.

Yes, the IPCC process has failed to pick up this prediction error. No, it doesn’t throw the whole of the IPCC reports into the trash can.

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Climate Connie

Connie Hedegaard, one time resigner from the United Nations Copenhagen “fiasco” of December 2009, now Denmark’s candidate for European’s first Climate Change Minister.

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/expert/infopress_page/008-67223-013-01-03-901-20100113IPR67222-13-01-2010-2010-false/default_en.htm

“Summary of the hearing of Connie Hedegaard – climate change : Institutions – 15-01-2010 : In five years from now, “I would like to see a Europe that is the most climate-friendly region in the world” said climate change Commissioner-designate Connie Hedegaard at her three-hour hearing on Friday. Members of the Environment, Industry and Transport committees quizzed Ms Hedegaard on the Copenhagen climate change conference results, her climate protection strategies and nuclear energy. If approved, Ms Hedegaard would become EU’s first climate change Commissioner. Ms Hedegaard was disappointed that the Copenhagen conference had not delivered binding targets, but stressed that “a lot has changed in the last few years” and that the EU “had played a tremendously important role in paving the way for change”. Much of the climate legislation needed in the EU, e.g. on energy efficiency and CO2 emission reductions, is already in place and “must now be implemented properly”, she said, adding that transport and agricultural policies also need to be made more climate-friendly: “We must mainstream climate into all relevant policy areas”…”

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/579bf374-023f-11df-8b56-00144feabdc0.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/16/connie-hedegaard-copenhagen-resigns

The Burn Goes On

At the turn of every month, I check the websites of the agencies charged with collecting and analysing the available data on Global Warming, to find out what the latest position shows.

Some agencies update their online resources faster than others. For example, as of today, the Hadley Centre of the Meteorological Office has produced a summary of the Central England Temperature (HadCET, or CET) for both December 2009 and the whole of 2009 :-

http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/cet_info_mean2009.html

And so has the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) – finally :-

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/?report=global&year=2009&month=13&submitted=Get+Report

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Anything But Climate Change

WARNING : The text appeal above is only valid in the United States of America.

The whole world and its Media turn their full gaze on the chilly weather in the Northern Hemisphere, neglecting the excessive heat in parts of the Arctic and the Southern Hemisphere.

And then the forest of cameras pans around 180 degrees to look poor Haiti in the eye.

Give in-depth focus to anything, as long as it’s not Climate Change. Don’t let us have to think about Global Warming for another six months.

Yes, please give to one of the appeals for emergency relief of the earthquake victims in Haiti. But don’t forget about Climate Change.

One day, your own country might be making a very similar appeal because of extreme manmade weather.

http://www.dec.org.uk

The Hotline To God

Yesterday, I took part in the launch of an international video-conferencing platform, commissioned by the Bible Society, a faith organisation concerned about Climate Change.

The technology is collected together on a project website called Faith Climate Connect, and it is free to use by anybody :-

http://www.faithclimateconnect.com

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Copenhagen in Retrospectacular

Talk to almost anybody who went to the Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change, or waited outside the Bella Center for hours in sub-zero temperatures with no hope of admittance, or who cycled to Denmark from Middle England wanting to take part in the most important meeting the world has ever held, and they’ll tell you how despondent they are.

The United Nations Climate Change talks in Denmark in December 2009 were an “abject failure”, a “washout”, “pointless”, “undermined by corporate interests”, “derailed by China”, “overruled by the United States”, and so the list of complaints rolls on.

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Laughing With James Delingpole

James Delingpole is so endearingly consistent in barking up the wrong tree, it’s sometimes easiest just to laugh along with his rambling, unscientific meanderings.

“‘AGW? I refute it THUS!”, he shouts out amusingly in his web log post of today :-

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100022226/agw-i-refute-it-thus-central-england-temperatures-1659-to-2009/

proving to me once and for all he could never be a statistician or a Police Officer, as he doesn’t know enough to detect an outright fabrication when he encounters one.

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We’re Not Done Yet

Copenhagen was a complete and utter shambles. No doubt about it. Various commentators and participants have been fishing around since it dribbled away to its weak conclusion, looking for someone or some organisation to blame.

The British blamed the Chinese, the Africans blamed the North Americans, the socialists blamed the elitist imperialists, and the NGOs blamed the international companies who had a corporate interest in swaying the whole deal their way, protecting business interests.

One story, much repeated by Climate Change Denier sources, blames the United Nations in effect, or at least the whole of Denmark, for allowing 30,000 Non-Governmental-Organisation (NGO) people to be registered, when the Copenhagen Bella Conference Center could only accommodate 15,000 people.

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Pershing Missile Strikes United Nations

The United States of America have launched their secret bearded missile at the United Nations – Jonathan Pershing – in a direct strike on the international Climate Change negotiations.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/14/climate-talks-un-sidelined

“America sees a diminished role for the United Nations in trying to stop global warming after the “chaotic” Copenhagen climate change summit, an Obama administration official said today. Jonathan Pershing, who helped lead talks at Copenhagen, instead sketched out a future path for negotiations dominated by the world’s largest polluters such as China, the US, India, Brazil and South Africa, who signed up to a deal in the final hours of the summit. That would represent a realignment of the way the international community has dealt with climate change over the last two decades…Pershing said… “But it is also impossible to imagine a negotiation of enormous complexity where you have a table of 192 countries involved in all the detail.”…The lack of confidence in the UN extends to the $30bn (£18.5bn) global fund, which will be mobilised over the next three years to help poor countries adapt to climate change. “The UN didn’t manage the conference that well,” Pershing said. “I am not sure that any of us are particularly confident that the UN managing the near-term financing is the right way to go.”…”

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