15th October 2009 will be Blog Action Day on Climate Change :-
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Category: Climate Change
Climate Change
In the continuing saga of the mainstream Media massaging of the facts, and framing our concerns for us, you may have noticed news about a deadly earthquake in Sumatra and a horror tsunami in Samoa, but you probably won’t have noticed the very active Typhoon season in the Western Pacific.
After our Masters class on the last 600 million years of Earth Climate history, a number of the students all collected together in the student bar.
One of our number pulled out a block of A4 paper on which he had written a number of probing questions.
At the very top of the list : asking how one could justify the “social cost” of Carbon.
I pulled my “remember Montreal” cat out of the bag.
The Claverton Energy Group will be holding its 8th Conference from 23rd to 25th October 2009 at the headquarters of Wessex Water, Claverton Down in Bath, England.
Advances in Energy technologies old and new will be presented amongst a wide-ranging and influential forum of engineers. The focus, as ever, will be the development of new infrastructure, within the context of the urgent need to de-Carbonise Energy supply.
So I’m in the hospital emergency room with a very aged relative with a dodgy ticker, and I’m doing what I can to offer some shred of comfort, stroking head, clasping hand, chatting about this and that.
And I’m looking at the digital monitor, displaying readings from various intensive care technology. And I watch as the arrhythmia, the irregular beating of the heart, clearly shows itself if you stop to look at the display for long enough.
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Sensational Japan Climate Change
Professor Mimura’s interview 1 of 3 from UNUChannel on Vimeo.
Climate Change costs in Japan are going to be “sensational”, and worse if storms become more violent.
That could well happen :-
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/09/090925-supertyphoons-japan-global-warming.html
“Supertyphoons to Strike Japan Due to Global Warming : Julian Ryall in Tokyo, Japan : for National Geographic News : September 25, 2009 : Increasingly powerful “supertyphoons” will strike Japan if global warming continues to affect weather patterns in the western Pacific Ocean, scientists say. Supercomputer simulations show there will be more typhoons with winds of 179 miles (288 kilometers) per hour—considered an F3 on the five-level Fujita Scale—by 2074…”
A report into the waterless conditions in the South Eastern United States of America concludes that Climate Change is not the predominant factor.
Phew ! We can all breathe a sigh of relief !
After a week of parry and counter-riposte, it is time to shout “en garde” to the editors at the Daily Telegraph newspaper.
In a peaceful way. Without swords.
After my careers in engineering and information technology, I went back to university today, to train for my third career, in sustainable development.
Like most of the other people enrolling on the course, I want a green job, and I’m prepared to study for it.
The only future for the economy is in clean energy and saved energy, Renewables and Conservation, and I want to be in there, doing something productive and practical.
In answer to one of my many raging, almost apoplectic, detractors, I have written this.
Since I believe that sceptics can be people, too, I’m going to respond to you, even though I think you’re being unfactual, and I feel you’re being unreasonable.
Some of the science that needs to be presented is the psychology of denial.
People who deny the science of Global Warming do so because they don’t want their life, wealth and freedom to be interfered with.
They feel they deserve liberty. But anybody who lives in any kind of community, especially in an urban environment, is not free at all, and never can be.
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Change or Lose
https://www.unep.org/compendium2009/
Not a fairytale, and not a comforting bedtime story either.
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Global Warming : Public Nuisance
The floodgates of change may well open in the United States of America. It appears that power companies can be brought to court for the public nuisance of Global Warming…
https://www.thepoptort.com/2009/09/yowsa-major-environmental-ruling-in-greenhouse-gas-case.html
“September 30, 2009 : Yowsa! Major Environmental Ruling in Greenhouse Gas Case!”
“Corporate polluters have been getting hauled into court for many years for lotsa reasons, one being that their dirty activities are a “public nuisance”…”
“Well now, thanks to a landmark New York federal court ruling, this “public nuisance” theory has been applied in a major global warming case brought by eight states, New York City and environmental groups.”
“In a nutshell, the court panel (which consisted of two Republican appointees) found that the nation’s largest coal-burning utilities could be held accountable for global warming.”
The British Climate Change Minister Ed Miliband has admitted at the Labour Party Conference that there are low commitment levels to dealing with the causes of Global Warming :-
When I was asked to review a chunk of the 2008 Climate Safety report from the Public Interest Research Centre, I was less than positive about the social movement building outlined in the recommendations for “mobilisation” of the public (see below).
Tim Holmes, one of the people involved in the Climate Safety report, has started a new web log critiquing the very same issues :-
https://convenientlies.wordpress.com
https://convenientlies.wordpress.com/2009/09/28/greenwashing-government/
Image Credit : Climate Change News
There are a couple of compilations of facts out this week that are a mix of the good, the bald and the beautiful.
Note to any journalists reading : if you don’t understand the significance of any of the following facts, don’t hesitate to ask.
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The Great Repatriation
The “Big Dry” continues in Australia. News this week confirms that the Murray River is in dire straits and that Adelaide may soon be without drinking water as a result :-
https://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/28/adelaide-water-drought
“Adelaide latest victim of global water shortages : Australia’s fifth-largest city could be reliant on bottled water as early as next week as overuse and drought stretch the Murray river to its limit…”
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Let’s Talk Paleoclimatology
Image Credit : Hans Joachim Schellnhuber
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/news/latest/four-degrees.html
The word that no one dares mention, for fear of tripping over their own tongues : paleoclimatology, the study of Earth’s Climate history, on the long scale.
The presentations from the 4 Degrees conference are being uploaded to the Internet website :-
My attention has been turned, once more, to the writing of James Delingpole this week.
This article, in my view, contains a number of pieces of misleading information, which in my view should be re-framed into their proper context by the author.
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This Is Not A Doomsday Scenario
Dr Richard Betts of the British Meteorological Office speaking at the 4 Degrees (and beyond) conference in Oxford this week :-
https://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/4degrees/programme.php
“It’s important to stress it’s not a doomsday scenario, we do have time to stop it happening if we cut greenhouse gas emissions soon.”
Some of the potential problems from a four degree average rise in global temperature are being outlined to the conference.
There are spectacular regional warming issues, most notably for the Arctic region.
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Let’s Get Serious
The Copenhagen Agenda is unwieldy and littered with areas of dispute :-
https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2009/awglca7/eng/inf02.pdf
https://unfccc.int/documentation/documents/advanced_search/items/3594.php?rec=j&priref=600005444#beg
Image Credit : A Sound of Thunder Movie
Students of Chaos Theory well know what is known as the Butterfly Effect – apparently small changes in system forcings result in major outcomes.
We’ve heard repeatedly about rising sea levels resulting from Global Warming, but there are more bugs crawling out of the woodwork now.
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God Is With Us
Many Christians continue to perpetuate narratives that are at odds with the Bible, in my humble opinion.
Three in particular annoy me : that the Kingdom of God is only to be reached after death; that God is in second-to-second control of our every robot-slave move; and that God is far away from us in Heaven.
As they say in detective novels, “nothing could be further from the truth”, and there are billions of people of different kinds of faith that can attest to the very opposite of those three unhelpful pieces of theology.
People always talking ’bout two degrees. For the last ten years. But now, almost overnight, people whispering four degrees under their breath. And shivering, in a kind of anxious, fearful manner.
What, I want to know, happened to the three degrees ? Why do we have to jump all the way to four degrees straight away ? Can’t we do it gradually ? Give ourselves some time to adjust, and chill.
This could all happen within 50 years ? You mean it’s all happening sooner than we thought ? Oh. My.
Not just a rainy weekend :-
Image Credit : Click Photo
Whenever I am in the Westminster area of London, I try to make time to go and sit awhile with Brian Haw at his Peace Camp opposite the Houses of Parliament.
The juxtaposition of ragged ad hoc unspun protest shrine facing the ornate Gothic seat of power carries an enormous significance, not only for me, but thousands of activists and tourists and peaceloving citizens.
Brian must be the most photographed and sought-after person in London. He is an icon, alongside Tower Bridge and Buckingham Palace.