Category: Climate Change

Climate Change

Sceptics Have Infected The Guardian

Post author By Jo
Post date January 7, 2010
No Comments on Sceptics Have Infected The Guardian

It looks like The Guardian newspaper has been infected with Global Warming scepticism.

I thought the paper was supposed to have some decent editorial process on Science ! But, sadly, clearly, not.

Here are the main problems with the article :-

https://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/jan/07/religion-climate-change

1. The author does not understand the processes that govern the accumulation of Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere.

2. The author appears to have no knowledge of how the Earth system as a whole regulated Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere in the distant past within certain limits of extent.

3. The author does not recognise that the current level of Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere is much higher than in the distant past. Neither does he offer any explanation for why the level should have strayed outside the long-term boundaries.

4. The author accepts that periods of Earth History with more Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere were warmer than periods with less Carbon Dioxide, but fails to offer a possible mechanism that could draw down Carbon Dioxide from the Atmosphere now to the regulated boundaries of the distant past.

5. The author does not appear to appreciate that the Younger Dryas cooling event was almost certainly entirely unrelated to Carbon Dioxide levels in the Atmosphere.

6. The author does not appear to appreciate that the Younger Dryas cooling event was not global in scope. Or rather, although there are records of effects almost universally, the effects were not the same everywhere.

7. The author does not recount the extreme warming that ended the Younger Dryas event.

Which is what you would expect, since the main cause of the Younger Dryas event was not the level of Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere; and naturally, the levels of Carbon Dioxide still in the Atmosphere caused the temperatures to return to where they were prior to the Younger Dryas cooling event.

The author of the article appears to be a software engineer with an education in biological sciences. I doubt he has ever taken a course in Global Warming Science. I suggest he should. It’s all online if he wants it. Here are David Archer’s lecture videos from the University of Chicago :-

https://geoflop.uchicago.edu/forecast/docs/lectures.html

Tags Carbon Dioxide, Climate Change, CO2, denial, denier, Earth history, Earth system, Global Warming, sceptic, skeptic, Younger Dryas

Climate Change Extreme Weather Meltdown Methane Madness

Arctic Meltdown : Methane Eruptions

Post author By Jo
Post date January 7, 2010
1 Comment on Arctic Meltdown : Methane Eruptions

Video Credit : The Guardian

[ PLEASE NOTE : The animation is dated 6th April 2009, so the text in the sub-titles means the year 2008 when it says “last year”. ]

European Winter 2009-2010 is turning out to be a bit parky – best not to go outside unless you can help it (or you’re under the age of 10 and love snowball fights).

However, wintry as it may be in Europe, the Arctic region is experiencing slush-inducing temperatures, and once-frozen sub-sea permafrost is starting to warm up, rot and give off methane. Lots of it :-

https://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/01/more-methane-discovered-bubbling-up-arctic-sea-floor.php

Tags Arctic, Arctic Meltdown, arctic sea ice, Climate Change, Global Warming

Bait & Switch Behaviour Changeling Big Picture Climate Change Pet Peeves Social Change Voluntary Behaviour Change

Anthony Giddens : Blaming Consumers

Post author By Jo
Post date January 6, 2010
No Comments on Anthony Giddens : Blaming Consumers

Anthony Giddens, as a “key architect of New Labour”, disappointingly brings to the table a less than razor-sharp understanding of what is responsible for Global Warming Pollution.

He seems to be content to be cynical about the Consumers in the Free Market Economy, without questioning the role of the Producers of the Energy and goods consumed.

Tags advertising, Behaviour Change, Climate Change, coal, Consumer, Consumption, Energy, Free Market Economy, Gas, Lifestyle, Material Resources, Natural Gas, Oil, Petroleum, Renewable Energy, Stuff, Trade, Voluntary Behaviour Change

Climate Change Genetic Muddyfixation

How Many Times Do We Need To Say No ?

Post author By Jo
Post date January 6, 2010
No Comments on How Many Times Do We Need To Say No ?

The Guardian runs with a story on how the UK Government’s Chief Scientist, Professor John Beddington will push the idea of Genetic Modification of Food Crops :-

https://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/06/gm-food-revolution-government-scientist

Plant-breeding down the centuries of agricultural history have given us wonderful natural foods, suited to their growing environments and healthy for human life. The process of selection, inter-breeding and nurturing new variations of plants has involved changes in the genetic code for some lines of species. But this “natural genetic modification” bears no relation to laboratory work to splice and dice genes in food crops across and within families of plants (and even animals).

Tags BioTechnology, Climate Change, Genetic Modification, GM, GMO, Life Sciences

Bad Science Bait & Switch Climate Change Non-Science

Wolfgang Knorr : Denialist Soup

Post author By Jo
Post date January 6, 2010
2 Comments on Wolfgang Knorr : Denialist Soup

The new trend on the wires from the amorphous, shifting pack of wildcards that deny the very science of Global Warming – write the wrong conclusion about a piece of research by Wolfgang Knorr from Bristol University – and then circulate it on the Internet.

The research was published late last year, but it’s only in the last couple of days that the Climate Change Deniers have started a serious viral “Public Relations” campaign to promote their mis-quotation. The “Carbon Capture Report” shows an uptick in popularity of covering this paper :-

https://www.carboncapturereport.org/cgi-bin/biodb?PROJID=3&mode=viewpersonname&name=dr_wolfgang_knorr

Tags Airborne Fraction, Carbon Dioxide Concentration, Climate Change, Climate Change Science, denial, denier, Knorr, sceptic, skeptic, Wolfgang Knorr

Behaviour Changeling Climate Change Pet Peeves Political Nightmare Voluntary Behaviour Change

Anthony Giddens : The Politics of Habit

Post author By Jo
Post date January 6, 2010
No Comments on Anthony Giddens : The Politics of Habit

The habitual trend in politics is to utter without having done sufficient research, just relying on cultural assumptions, watercooler talk, hearsay and what you read in the newspapers, which is dumbed down and always resorts to cultural prejudices.

At least Anthony Giddens in his book “The Politics of Climate Change”, attempts to get beyond that kind of gutter press and move into the heady air of the moral mountain heights. But he takes with him some extraordinarily unhelpful baggage, Classical Economics being part of it. Plus, an inability to see the wood for the trees.

Allow me to quote from his Introduction :-

https://books.google.com/books?id=yXJKxmd2tWgC&printsec=frontcover&cd=1&source=gbs_ViewAPI#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Tags Climate Change, Consumer, Consumer Choice, Consumption, Energy, Manufacturing Regulation, politics, Regulation

Climate Change Contraction & Convergence

Saint Bono Preaches Equality

Post author By Jo
Post date January 6, 2010
2 Comments on Saint Bono Preaches Equality

It’s good to know that a rock star can contribute erudite and/or entertaining opinion to newspapers. Here’s U2’s Bono with a confusing, and internally conflicting, Top 10 for the next decade in the New York Times :-

https://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/opinion/03bono.html

On the matter of Climate Change (what ? Only at Number 3 ?), he contributes this street-cool support for Contraction and Convergence (C&C), the framework, and the framework-based market of equal global per capita shares of the atmosphere :-

“An Equal Right to Pollute (and the Polluter-Pays Principle) : In the recent climate talks in Copenhagen, it was no surprise that developing countries objected to taking their feet off the pedal of their own carbon-paced growth; after all, they played little part in building the congested eight-lane highway of a problem that the world faces now. One smart suggestion I’ve heard, sort of a riff on cap-and-trade, is that each person has an equal right to pollute and that there might somehow be a way to monetize this. By this accounting, your average Ethiopian can sell her underpolluting ways (people in Ethiopia emit about 0.1 ton of carbon a year) to the average American (about 20 tons a year) and use the proceeds to deal with the effects of climate change (like drought), educate her kids and send them to university. (Trust in capitalism — we’ll find a way.) As a mild green, I like the idea, though it’s controversial in militant, khaki-green quarters. And yes, real economists would prefer to tax carbon at the source, but so far the political will is not there. If it were me, I’d close the deal before the rising nations want it backdated.”

I think you’ll find that Equal Rights in Carbon are pretty hot in “deep green” quarters, actually, Bono; you just haven’t taken the trouble to find out.

https://www.gci.org.uk/briefings/ICE.pdf

https://www.gci.org.uk/contconv/cc.html

https://www.climatejustice.org.uk/about/contractionandconvergence/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contraction_and_Convergence

Tags C&C, Climate Change, Contraction and Convergence

Climate Change

Threats From American Zealots

Post author By Jo
Post date January 4, 2010
1 Comment on Threats From American Zealots

The great thing (not) about trying to get a higher profile for Climate Change is receiving threats, intimidation, criticism and personal abuse by e-mail and in the Comments on this web log. It really gives me joy and confidence (yeah, right) in the humanity of man.

Today I received an interesting little communication that appears to be threatening legal action for having exchanged in e-mail correspondence with Roger Harrabin, a reporter at the BBC.

It suggests that I should recant and repent for having tried to promote Climate Change Science.

It instructs me that Climate Change Science is fraudulent. Oops ! I hadn’t realised ! And there was I relying on the last 120 years of Global Warming Theory and empirical evidence, thinking I was on very firm ground !

Tags Climate Change, denial, denier, Global Warming, sceptic, skeptic

Climate Change Marvellous Wonderful Political Nightmare Public Relations

Gordon Brown Saves The World (2)

Post author By Jo
Post date January 3, 2010
No Comments on Gordon Brown Saves The World (2)

Besides announcing lots of money for Renewable Energy :-

https://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jan/03/gordon-brown-wind-energy-programme

Gordon Brown is confident that he can steer the international Climate negotiations to a successful, sign-up-to-able deal :-

https://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE6021AT20100103

“Brown says climate change agreement possible : Sun Jan 3, 2010 : Prime Minister Gordon Brown said on Sunday he believed a global agreement to combat climate change might still be possible despite the limited results of last month’s Copenhagen meeting. “I’ve got an idea about how we can actually move this forward over the next few months and I’ll be working on this,” Brown told the BBC, when asked what came next after the U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen. “I think it’s not impossible that the groundwork that was done at Copenhagen could lead to what you might call a global agreement that everybody is happy to stand by,” Brown said. “I’ll be working on that in the next few months and I can see a way forward because what prevented an agreement was suspicion and fear and forms of protectionism that I think we’ve got to get over,” he said, without giving details of his plan…”

Tags Climate Change, Global Deal, Global Warming, International Negotiations

Big Picture Climate Change Extreme Weather

Climate Change : Insurance Warning

Post author By Jo
Post date January 3, 2010
No Comments on Climate Change : Insurance Warning

The giant German Reinsurance company Munich Re has reported that although 2009 was a relatively quiet year for natural disaster losses, there have been increased risks from extreme weather events related to Global Warming :-

https://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/98a3ac0a-f4e2-11de-9cba-00144feab49a.html

Tags Climate Change, Climate Change Damages, Climate Damages, Disaster Preparedness, Disasters & Emergencies, Global Warming, Global Warming Damages, insurance, Natural Disaster, Reinsurance

Climate Change Media Public Relations

Central England Temperature 0.63 Degrees C Above Norm

Post author By Jo
Post date January 3, 2010
No Comments on Central England Temperature 0.63 Degrees C Above Norm

The final calculations have been done by the Meteorological Office for the average Central England Temperature in 2009 and shown in a graph online :-

https://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/index.html

Tags Central England Temperature, CET, Climate Change, Climate Change Science, Climate Science, Global Warming, HadCET, Hadley Centre, Met Office, Meteorological Office

Bait & Switch Climate Change Public Relations Social Change

Dude, Where’s My Climate ?

Post author By Jo
Post date January 3, 2010
2 Comments on Dude, Where’s My Climate ?

Some of you are probably thinking, “what a crummy out-of-date cliched non-joke of a title !”, but I’m hoping for some web hits on the basis that corny can be cute, sometimes.

But what on Earth do I mean ? Well, just where is Climate Change in the Media ? It is the Number One story of all human time, so why does it still only occupy so few column inches and Tweets and Press Releases and web logs and TV programmes and printed communications, and why do the Westerner populations still think that money is still more important than an inhabitable Biosphere ?

Don’t know, but it’s bound to have to do with cultural inertia, how very slowly the Press, TV and social communications guys and gals are waking up to the overarching problems of Global Climate Change.

Tags Climate Change, Global Warming, Media, news, Newspapers, Press, Public Information

Bait & Switch Climate Change Public Relations

John Humphrys : An End To Fence-Sitting

Post author By Jo
Post date January 3, 2010
No Comments on John Humphrys : An End To Fence-Sitting

On 31st December 2009, John Humphrys, well-loved BBC radio interviewer and presenter, amongst other things, wrote an opinion piece for the Daily Mail newspaper.

He weaves a careful argument about why he and others should stop fence-sitting on the issue of Climate Change, but he is still in need of an educational experience to help him understand where the power and drive of Climate Change Denial comes from :-

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1239546/JOHN-HUMPHRYS-Noughties-No-Nasties–good-riddance-them.html

Tags Climate Change, denial, denier, Global Warming, sceptic, skeptic

Climate Change

Carbon Dioxide : Global Overheating

Post author By Jo
Post date January 3, 2010
No Comments on Carbon Dioxide : Global Overheating

As time goes by, the Science of Geology becomes more and more convinced that Carbon Dioxide is the major driver in Global Overheating.

It’s not the only cause of Global Warming, but it’s the factor that explains the high swings in warming and cooling, above and beyond any other explanation or cause.

Research is continually being published that confirms the role of Carbon Dioxide in the warming and cooling of the Earth throughout its history.

Tags Carbon Dioxide, Climate Change, Global Warming

Climate Change

What’s Tipping & What’s Toppling ?

Post author By Jo
Post date January 1, 2010
No Comments on What’s Tipping & What’s Toppling ?

Here’s the research paper that Tim Lenton co-authored :-
https://www.pnas.org/content/105/6/1786.full.pdf

https://researchpages.net/ESMG/people/tim-lenton/tipping-points/

What’s toppling already in the Earth System ?

https://www.pethacker.com/tara-lohan-thanks-to-climate-change-you-can-kiss-these-8-amazing-things-goodbye

Tags Climate Change

Climate Change Social Change

How Dare You Be Optimistic !

Post author By Jo
Post date January 1, 2010
No Comments on How Dare You Be Optimistic !

How dare you be pessimistic ?

Tags Action, Al Gore, Belief, Climate Change, Global Warming, Inaction, Optimism, Pessimism

Carbon Capture Climate Change

Undue Influence at Copenhagen

Post author By Jo
Post date January 1, 2010
No Comments on Undue Influence at Copenhagen

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is a United Nations body set up under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change to research and advise the global Climate Change negotiations.

Climate Change deniers and sceptics accuse the IPCC of being under government control. That is not the case. All parties and sectors are involved in the IPCC, and the research is adopted by governments, not dictated by them.

There is however a significant Trojan Horse effect from allowing the large Energy, Engineering and Mining corporations to be involved.

Tags Carbon Capture and Sequestration, Carbon Capture and Storage, CCS, CDM, Clean Development Mechanism, Climate Change, Copenhagen

Climate Change Social Change

The BBC’s Richard Black : Tired & Inaccurate ?

Post author By Jo
Post date January 1, 2010
No Comments on The BBC’s Richard Black : Tired & Inaccurate ?

Why does the BBC always feel it has to give a definitive view on every single little thing that happens, even if they appear to need to resort to making stuff up ?

https://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8426835.stm
“Why did Copenhagen fail to deliver a climate deal?”

This article by Richard Black strings together what I think are some of the most ridiculous things I’ve read about the United Nations Climate Change talks at Copenhagen in December 2009. I think it’s quite a sorry, sordid recounting, with elements of dismissiveness. Hardly the kind of tone we need if we want to enthuse positive change, surely.

Tags Annex I, Annex II, Bali, Climate Change, Copenhagen, Developed Countries, Developed Nations, Developing Countries, Developing Nations, Global North, Global South, Industrialised West

Big Picture Climate Change Emissions Impossible Low Carbon Life Social Change

The Hamburger King Gets A Vision And A Mission

Post author By Jo
Post date December 30, 2009
No Comments on The Hamburger King Gets A Vision And A Mission

People have had Christmas to digest the awful reality that the Copenhagen Accord is nowhere near what it needs to be to start a meaningful transition to a Low Carbon World.

Up steps John Gummer, Member of the United Kingdom Parliament, to say that he’s stepping down from parliament, in order to take up Climate Change issues :-

https://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/dec/30/john-gummer-to-stand-down

“…Gummer said: “Climate change is not only a crisis without historic parallel, it is an urgent political threat. We will never win this battle if we diminish people’s lives or preach at them. The threat must not be used as an excuse for unnecessary state direction and control. Instead, it is all of us, as citizens, entrepreneurs, and consumers, who will make change happen. Politicians and campaigners have to enable that change: they must unleash the power of the free market; they must harness the skills and innovation that drive it; and they must create the opportunities for competition to deliver new answers to this entirely new challenge. Those of us who have any chance to influence the course of events, even in a small way, have simply to make that our first priority, however difficult the choice.”…”

He’ll be advocating vegeburgers in his new role, no doubt.

Tags Climate Change, Copenhagen

Big Picture Climate Change

What Did You Do In Copenhagen ?

Post author By Jo
Post date December 30, 2009
No Comments on What Did You Do In Copenhagen ?

What did you do in Copenhagen ? I mean, did you actually achieve anything ? Did you convince anyone of anything ? Did you put forward a proposal that was accepted ? Did you help build the case for strong action on Climate Change ?

What was Copenhagen all for, exactly ?

Tags Climate Change, Copenhagen, Global Warming

China Syndrome Climate Change

Anthropomorphising China

When it comes to “Foreign Policy”, commentators often fall back on a very simple device : describing a whole country as if it had the intentions and desires of a single person. This is called anthropomorphisation, or anthropomorphization if you read North American or publishing books. OK, to stop the language dispute, let’s call it “anthropomorphism”.

Tags China, Climate Change

Climate Change Media Public Relations

Climategate : George Monbiot Fights Back

Post author By Jo
Post date December 30, 2009
1 Comment on Climategate : George Monbiot Fights Back

George Monbiot recounts the Climategate affair with wit, verve and gusto; and then proceeds to suggest a sharp technique for making a fightback against public lying in the Media. Useful if you happen to be trapped in a television studio with a billion watts of stage lighting shining menacingly right down on you. It’s time that every Climate Change Scientist had their own personal Public Relations manager; because somehow the academic community have to keep the messaging Media-savvy. Seen enough geeks turn into dorks in the Press. Need to see a change.