Climate Change

That book gave me nightmares too! But so did the flight of the heron.

I read 'On the Beach' in my teens. Long, long time ago. Scary

*Annobel - your post "Population control was a matter of debate back in the early 70s. India tried enforced sterilisation at the time of Indira Ghandi - referred to as 'the witch' in 'Midnight's Children'. Might still be going on and, like jingl, I assume it was not aimed at the rich and educated."

Not that it matters.

Yes,*carboncareful*, we do all have a responsibility to future generations in our use of the planet. It just seems that nobody can agree on what should be done (vested interests, anyone? - gas, oil, nuclear power etc). We just have to keep on doing our best! Recycling day here tomorrow.

Sound bites

Interesting reading our electricity bill yesterday (here in France) and noting that more than 85% of our electricity is generated from nuclear energy. I think less than 2% was from coal and fossil fuels.

Very interesting essay here called Environmentalists' Amoral Disorder which was written in response to an article in Nature about why people disagree over climate change. There is a link to the Nature article so you can read both. Ben Pile writes well.

Excellent description of why talking about an average global surface temperature is bullshit a bit silly: Why are temperature anomalies important (or not, as the case may be)?

Hey! This is interesting! a courtroom style debate about climate change at the Orkney International Science Festival. The motion is: ‘That we should adapt to climate change rather than try stopping it.’ 

I would love to hear a broadcast of this Bags. Sounds very interesting.

Transcript of an interview with well-known 'Pragmatic Skeptic', Anthony Watts. Worth a read.

A paper published today in Geophysical Research Letters finds there was an “Abrupt change in atmospheric CO2 during the last ice age” which occurred “rapidly, over less than two centuries. This rise in CO2 was synchronous with, or slightly later than, a rapid increase of Antarctic temperature.” The authors also report “carbon cycle modeling doesn’t capture all of the processes for CO2 variations.” Thus, rapid increases in atmospheric CO2 have been shown to occur naturally due to processes not captured by climate models. In addition, temperature rise during the last ice age was found to be synchronous or leading CO2 rise, implying that temperature controls atmospheric CO2, rather than CO2 controlling temperature.
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, doi:10.1029/2012GL053018

Arctic sea ice extent is low, Antarctic sea ice extent is high, and meanwhile Life is as adaptable as ever.

Charles Wang, at Aberdeen University, says that "There is a direct correlation between star explosions and the temperature of the Earth's atmosphere". He's devising an experiment to test his theory with the Higgs boson at CERN. 

Bags, I know you don't have a TV, but you would have been very interested in Great Barrier Reef yesterday. It showed how coral reefs are being destroyed by a rise in sea temperature - something I experienced in The Maldives. The programme makers were in no doubt that the rise was due to human activity. Corals are ultra-sensitive to water temperature and are good indicators of the health of the marine eco-system.

Some corals are recovering/adapting to changes in sea temps too, G, as they have in previous warm periods. It's not all bad news.

Adaptability is what makes life tick.

Some of the damage to corals in the Maldives has been caused by dynamite fishing by the locals. I know this because DH went on a diving expedition there some years ago to 'educate' the fishermen and get them to use more sustainable methods.

Yes, I heard about that, but around the island I was on it was definitely bleaching due to temperature. The coral remains intact, but it is grey or brown - very disappointing. The big tsunami did a huge amount of damage, of course.
I watch every programme about the oceans, and in particular about coral, and I just wish governments would spend as much on oceanic research as they do on outer-space. Seeding new coral beds is one way forward.

Next time I come across info about coral recovery, I'll send you the links, G.

Bags: I see you are still spending your time searching for obscure items to challenge climate change (like the few bits of coral here and there that are managing to cope with increased temperatures - though goodness knows how that proves anything?). I sent your article re. star explosions to a Professor of Astro-Physics. Here is his answer :-

The phys.org item is very muddled and full of errors. I don't know if Wang is responsible for those or someone else. There is a less confused account at (unfortunately one needs a password to get into the site he suggests) so it is probably not Wang himself. I don't know what supernova problem he is talking about.

There is a quite separate question about the effect of cosmic rays in modifying the cloud cover over the Earth and so changing the temperature. This has been a big controversy but Lockwood at RAL has shown it is not responsible for more than a fraction of the change over the last 50 yeras. Actually a big reduction (not an increase ) in the flux would be required and that can be ruled out as responsible for the whole temperature change.

Hi carbon. Long time no see. I hope you are keeping well and happy.

Is the Met Office unobscure enough for you? And Judith Curry (Georgia Tech University)? And Roger Pielke Jr (professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado-Boulder and author of “The Climate Fix: What Scientists and Politicians Won’t Tell You About Global Warming)?

Not about coral adaptability this time, just (not) rising global temperatures in spite of increasing CO2:

Global Warming Stopped 16 Years Ago

Met Office Quietly Releases Missing Data

The world stopped getting warmer almost 16 years ago, according to new data released last week. The figures, which have triggered debate among climate scientists, reveal that from the beginning of 1997 until August 2012, there was no discernible rise in aggregate global temperatures. The new data, compiled from more than 3,000 measuring points on land and sea, was issued quietly on the internet, without any media fanfare, and, until today, it has not been reported. This stands in sharp contrast to the release of the previous figures six months ago, which went only to the end of 2010 – a very warm year. --David Rose, Mail on Sunday, 14 October 2012

Global warming stopped 15 years ago and the average temperature has not risen at all since 1997, the Met Office said last night. But critics said the Met Office had released the figures onto the internet without publicity – in contrast to the attention it gave to those released six months ago that reinforced the case for global warming. Those figures went up to 2010 – the hottest year on record – and showed a continuing warming trend. Dr Benny Peiser of Lord Lawson’s Global Warming Policy Foundation said: “It is quite scandalous that the Met Office is misleading the public. The latest data proves beyond any doubt that there has been no warming [trend] over the past 16 years.” --John Ingham, Daily Express, 15 October 2012

The data confirms the existence of a ‘pause’ in the warming. The impact of this pause within the climate dynamic community has been to focus increased attention on the impact of natural variability, particularly the impact of internal multi-decadal oscillations in the ocean. The new climate model calculations for the AR5 have focused on trying to assess what it would take to accurately simulate these multi-decadal ocean oscillations and how predictable they might be. These new observations and climate modeling results will hopefully impact the the IPCC AR5 deliberations so that we do not see the same overly confident consensus statements that we saw in the AR4. --Judith Curry, Georgia Tech University, 14 October 2012

The Met Office says that the world has warmed by 0.03 deg C per decade since 1997 based on their calculation of the gradient in the Hadcrut4 dataset. But what the Met Office doesn’t say is that this is statistically insignificant. There is no case to be made for a statistically significant increase in global temperatures as given in the Hadcrut4 dataset between 1997 and August 2012. The Met Office says the 15-year standstill is not unusual. This is true but again the Met Office is being economical with the truth. --David Whitehouse, The Global Warming Policy Foundation, 15 October 2012

Does it matter that campaigners and the media are actively peddling disinformation? For the most part, probably not, as the public is by now used to such nonsense on just about every subject from unemployment figures to Barack Obama’s birth certificate. But there is one group that should be very concerned about the spreading of rampant misinformation: the scientific community. It is, of course, thrilling to appear in the media and get caught up in highly politicized debates. But leading scientists and scientific organizations that contribute to a campaign of misinformation — even in pursuit of a worthy goal like responding effectively to climate change — may find that the credibility of science itself is put at risk by supporting scientifically unsupportable claims in pursuit of a political agenda. --Roger Pielke Jr, Denver Post, 12 October 2012

Denver Post ??????? Scraping the barrel comes to mind.

Denver Post ??????? Scraping the barrel comes to mind.