Climate Change

P.S. I hope that is not seen as a lecture.... rather another source of infomation that is worth reading.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change represents a unique partnership between the scientific community and the world's governments, thousands of scientists and experts are involved.

The IPCC assesses the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant for the understanding of the risk of human-induced climate change then prepares reports on this, on potential impacts of climate change and options for mitigation and adaptation.

The next report, the 5th Assessment, is due to be completed in Oct. 2014.
That such a body exists and conducted 'an expert meeting on the detection and attribution related to anthropogenic climate change' (Geneva Sept 2009), is enough for me!

Furthermore, in 2007, the IPCC shared the Nobel Peace Prize for ' efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations and measures that are needed to counteract such change'.

The rules governing both their assessment and reporting are stringent.
I make no excuse for quoting so much from their website, I have been reading it into the wee small hours. It makes fascinating reading and points out the damage for which we, as a human race, must take responsibility.

Baggy, I wonder if you heard Radio 4 this lunchtime:
"Costing the Earth" 1.30pm

I think you may find it interesting listening; you can hear it on iplayer

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/programmes/schedules/fm

They do talk about clouds, we already knew that clouds (depending on altitude) reflect sunlight and have a cooling effect. This is what geo-engineering is about - they are proposing to make extra clouds....listen to above.

Hello, Baggy. I'm just getting used to Gransnet. Very welcoming to have a 'hi'.
Thanks.

Hi, butternut!

So the BBC agrees with what I said, jess. It's the heavy rain of the monsoon, plus the fact that Pakistan and Bangladesh are major parts of the drainage plains from the Himalayas that cause the flooding, not something weird and wonderful and badly understood called climate change. What's the problem?

Only you and some others on here have mentioned plots, not me.

Only you and some others have suggested that I don't think it's a good idea to become more efficient in our use of energy (all types), not me.

The majority have been wrong before, many times, on scientific matters. Worth bearing in mind I think.

However, if you enjoy indulging in your guilt fest (climate change is the New Devil), carry on. Don't let me spoil the fun.

I hope you have fun down under on your hols.

I have just caught up with this thread, and have thoroughly enjoyed reading everyone's comments, particularly those between Baggy and JessM.

I've also become more informed, so thank you!

I err on the side of you Baggy, in my views.

I also have children and grandchildren + siblings worldwide. I'm afraid my carbon footprint is huge! :-)

headline on BBC site today "monsoon blamed for floods"

It seems to me baggy that one can adopt a number of positions:

1. Head in sand not interested. Carry on as before.
2. Conclude that majority of climate scientists probably right. So on balance of probabilities carbon consumption bad for planet and grandkids. Try to amend behaviour on this basis.
3. Conclude that the majority may be wrong and that it may be some kind of plot / collusion and therefore keep questioning this and looking for contradictory evidence. Carry on as before.

If 1 and 3 then the risk is that consequences will be even worse, sooner.
If one decides 2 then you may mitigate consequences or delay.
Either path incur costs, but they are different costs.
... ANYWAY i am just about to expend a ludicrous amount of carbon being transported around the world to visit inconvenient offspring and grandkids. A year's not using the tumble drier is not even going to touch it. So better get on and pack...

New info from the dark side :

... new paper by Richard P. Allan of the University of Reading discovers via a combination of satellite observations and models that the cooling effect of clouds far outweighs the long-wave or “greenhouse” warming effect. While Dessler and Trenberth (among others) claim clouds have an overall positive feedback warming effect upon climate due to the long-wave back-radiation, this new paper shows that clouds have a large net cooling effect by blocking incoming solar radiation and increasing radiative cooling outside the tropics. This is key, because since clouds offer a negative feedback as shown by this paper and Spencer and Braswell plus Lindzen and Choi, it throws a huge monkey wrench in climate model machinery that predict catastrophic levels of positive feedback enhanced global warming due to increased CO2.

Cheers,
Baggy (still listening to everyone, not just one side of the debate ; still open to conviction either way, depending on evidence).

PS jess, re the floods in Pakistan — they couldn't possibly have anything to do with the fact that large parts of the country (the flooded parts) are on a huge flood plain of a huge river system, that the floods happen during the monsoon season, and that people have been logging in the mountains upstream, could they? This doesn't detract from my sympathy for the sufferers nor my acceptance of our collective responsibility to help them. I just think there are more immediate and more logical explanations than the catch-all 'climate change'. That's rational thinking, which is what science is supposed to encourage. I know maths does.

Of course climate has changed of the millions of years. However man-made climate change is happening much faster than (changes) ever before. The industrial revolution masked this initially because "ordinary" pollution i.e. particulates has a cooling effect (reflecting the suns rays back).

The last few years we have been having La Nina (the opposite of El Nino) which has a cooling effect. So the planet does not warm at a regular rate: it is the overall average over a number of years that shows a warming.

Now accuse me of lecturing...I don't care, tackling climate change is more important than my feelings!

Baggy agrees that climate is changing. She must also acknowledge that CO2 causes a Greenhouse effect: that is science. So, whatever the cause, we have to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere. Or are we supposed to just let it happen???? I really do not understand the thinking behind denying? Baggy, do you actually believe there is a global conspiracy - and all the governments are taking part in this conspiracy?

faye, thank you for the Kogi story. I think I have heard of these people before but a long time ago.

faye and jess, with regard to the precautionary principle, I have doubts as to its usefulness in a world full of needy people already. Insurance is a luxury I'm not sure we can afford, though I do see why people favour it. At present it is just so costly and not very effective, whereas similar billions spent where they actually and obviously are needed right now rather than in some uncertain future would seem more sensible to me.

However, it is not my choice. I really don't mean to preach so sorry if it seems like that, it's just that it feels to me as if I'm being preached to all the time (I not talking about any individuals here). Anthropogenic Global Warming is like a religion with its dogma and lack of tolerance towards people who ask questions and argue rationally. I used to be as pro AGWer as anyone could want, but reading books and articles around the subject — because I cared so much — on both sides of the argument, for several years now, and finding out about some of the misinformation and how it is used to mislead people has made me sceptical. Of course, any scientist worth their salt is naturally sceptical and never stops questioning the status quo, as you know, jess, and that is healthy.

Recent experience with my local council on a schools issue has also made me very dubious about what I'm told from "on high" — another case of statistics being used to mislead and other horrors — with a lot of schools and communities threatened because of it. We fought the misinformation and there is anow a government-led commission into rural education in Scotland as a result.

Recent polls say that over 50% of Brits are at least partially sceptical of AGW now so I'm not alone, however much it seems like it. The vast majority of GNers say nothing.

Thank you for letting me have my say.

Baggy, I hope Peter Taylor is right and we are just small cogs and insignificant self-glorifying apes. This is actually a primitive culture or maybe a more enlightened culture think of what we are doing to the Earth:

^'The Kogi are an indigenous people living in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountains of northern Colombia, in South America. The Sierra Nevada is the highest coastal mountain in the world only 26 miles from the beach. It is located near the Equator, which means it has no seasons. Day and night are of equal length all year round. It has every eco-system in its 17,000 km2 area (8,000 sq. miles) You can find coral reefs, mangroves, arid deserts, rain and cloud forest, and in the higher elevations, plains and snow-capped peaks with temperatures close to –20 degrees.'

The Kogi, call themselves the Elder Brothers of the human race and us the Younger Brothers. They say we are destroying the balance of life on earth.
The Kogi believe their mountain is the heart of the world. 'The snows had stopped falling and the rivers were not so full. If their mountain was ill then the whole world was in trouble.'^

'Their warning and message to the 'Younger Brother.' We are the "Younger Brother" who are destroying the Earth and causing an ecological imbalance that may affect future generations to come.'

tierra-y-vida.blogspot.com/2006/09/kogi-elder-brothers-warning.html

In 2000 my niece lived with a Kogi tribe for two months. The Kogis said the Younger Brother were stealing their clouds.
www.theelderbrother.com/index.cfm

With advance apologies for being a bit flippant about a serious issue......

There was a programme on TV last night about dinosaurs, with computer generated beasts and lots of details about where remains were found and the scientific basis of conclusions reached about how and where they lived etc.

One massive beast was Spinosauraus, bigger than T Rex. It fed solely on fish and amphibians from the lakes and rivers of the part of Africa (I think) that it inhabited. The graphics then showed how all the lakes and rivers disappeared under a bigger area of blue and joined with the sea. The narrator explained that climate change led to a massive increase in the levels of the oceans, and this resulted in Spinosaurus becoming extinct as its food source disappeared.

My immediate thought was....'Those damn pre-historic fridges'

<hides under the table>

I know you are concerned about the environment baggy but you seem to be on a mission to preach climate change denial. But don't you think Faye's point about erring on the side of caution is valid?
I'm not sure we can just assume that grandchildren's lives will be a bit like the 1950s or 1960s.
They could be putting up with astonishingly high fuel bills (paying Russia for gas...) and power cuts combined with either hotter or colder weather. Those living in hotter parts of the globe could be finding that they were no longer habitable due to lack of rainfall. Those living in countries like Bangladesh could find they don't have a country left.
(Poor Pakistan is having even worse floods this year than last with the heaviest monsoon for 100 yrs).
Those useful products that we all throw away, made from petrochemicals, will not longer be available.
Increasing plunder of rainforest timber, even if it does not affect global warming, is a huge tragedy, whether or not plants like more CO2.
So say you are right, Baggy, and none of these things come to pass. Should we carry on consuming, wasting and despoiling in a jolly free-for-all that carries on until the petrochemicals run out?
We are testing or promoting alternative energy sources but not in any concerted and determined manner. The last government dragged its feet as well. Unfortunately we will have to resort to nuclear, or the lights are going to go out. If we can find companies that will take the job on.

Peter Taylor's scientific review of the breaking science in the fields of clouds, oceanography, geophysics, solar magnetic cycles, in his book Chill, puts back into perspective our place in the indifferent universe as insignificant self-glorifying apes, addicted to doom and gloom predictions, who still haven't got out of the rather primitive habit of thinking they are big cogs. The science he reviews is fascinating.

The "corporate creep" he speaks of, the idiocy of the Global Development Model in not only allowing but encouraging ecological madness, the naive collusion of scientific institutions and of environmental groups in the dissemination of misinformation is monumentally scary. Taylor says on pp291-2 what I have been feeling in my guts for some time but unable to articulate:

The organizations that should be my natural allies now show all the signs of corporate creep, collusion and denial. They are not willing to look at the way their internal organization has changed, their embrace of the corporate ethos and how this affects their goals and policies, or their collusion with government and alliance with other corporate entities, or their assessment of climate science. Moreover, they are adopting the same irrational response to criticism that has marked government and corporations throughout the decades of environmental campaigning.

Consider, as an example of corporate creep, charity mugging, now so common.

Consider the nuttiness of Norwegian farmed salmon. Its itinerary from farms in Norway to processing plants in China and back to Britain for sale is considered in today's completely bonkers politico-social climate to be economic. It may be economical in monetary terms but it is just as assuredly unsound by almost any other terms of reference.

Like Peter Taylor, I care about the environment. I do not deny climate change but I think adapting to it will get us further than other behaviour, as it has with other problems we, as a species, have faced.

I thought we were in the process of researching and testing alternatives to fossil fuels so I don't quite understand your point, jess.

faye, and anyone else who cares to read this and absorb it (sorry for the dig; I have said it before but it doesn't seem to go in), I don't know anyone who denies climate change, only people who are not convinced on current unadulterated evidence, that it's our fault that climate changes. If you look at the big picture and not just the last half century, and if you look at both sides of the picture, as I do, it's hard to be convinced that the anthropogenic 'signal' is other than fairly insignificant on a planet where numerous things cause various and continuous changes in both weather and climate (which are not the same thing).

Besides which, in spite of increasing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, average global temperatures have stayed level for the last decade. That alone defeats the AGW hypothesis and, as Einstein said, it only takes one refutation to disprove a hypothesis.

Meanwhile the biosphere is thriving because of the extra plant food (CO2) in the atmosphere. Sounds good to me, especially where growing food for us and other animals is concerned. How many of you are aware that farmers who grow crops in greenhouses/poly tunnels pump extra CO2 in to help the plants grow? How many people remember how many useful "side products" of oil there are? Anyone wearing any synthetic fibres today? Polythene for the tunnels comes from oil too, and all the plastic we all use every day. Clean coal technology is doing well, and so on and so on.

I guess I'm just a positive and optimistic person who thinks that past evidence of human adaptability is a good sign that we'll adapt in the future as well. The thing that saddens me is that in spite of being a mere pinprick on the "life cycle" of this planet, we think we're so important.

I'd say it is like insurance - we look after the earth in such a way as to fend off the worst scenario, and if it does not happen we are none the wiser, but still surviving. Or we can believe the best scenario is going to happen, not insure, and find out too late that we were wrong.

Remember the year 2000 computer date crisis (or potential crisis) ? Early computer programmes, when computers had far less memory and working space, used a shortened form of the date year - 80 for 1980 - because the full date would have taken up 100 times the memory, every time it was used, and the software referred to the date very frequently, as a check on whether things were still synchronised OK.

Come the change from 1999 to 2000, a lot of software still in use was in danger of falling over when it thought that errors were creeping in. Disaster for hospital equipment, traffic lights, banks, defence systems, public utilities.

So responsible IT users manually checked every single line of code in their programmes, corrected dates, and made all safe. DH was employed by a major energy supplier to head up a team of 4 for eighteen months doing just that - making absolutely sure that the nation's power did not suddenly switch off at a second past midnight.

On the first of January 2000, 99% of the nation appeared to be saying that all the hype was a con, there had been no disasters, money had been wasted etc etc and we could have ignored the possible threat.

Duhh !!

I expect that our grandchildren will not have the same quality of life as we have NOW but perhaps more like that we had when -some of us- were young that is one fireplace and being cold and wearing more clothes.
We started off poor and cold and eating potatoes and they will have to go back to it I suppose. This doesn't upset me too much as we had terrible scares and danger and survived and they will grow into what ever way of life there is. They will have no choice.
As to affordable housing. That must be flats and not a house and backyard and a bit of garden for everyone. Flats are easier to keep warm and energy usage can be better controlled and refined.50% of people on the continent live in flats. The sore point in the UK is that no one wants or is willing to accept rules for communal living.
Flat dwellers in Germany have to take turns in clearing snow, washing down the communal staircase and in bigger places paying a monthly sum for the cleaning of staircases and lifts, and eventual repairs, even long term for the repair of roof tiles etc etc.
There are rules about noise pollution -no washing machines after 10 p.m. and noise levels are to be kept down at all times. Now there are all the recycling bins. It sounds terrible all these rules but it doesn't work without and these rules have grown over a century of communal living.

I find it pleasant when visiting friends that the lifts are clean and well kept and that you can enjoy the view from a high balcony without loud music from next door.
The most acceptable flats are what we call 3 family houses which are a family on each floor. These are not too high, you know your neighbours and most people are well satisfied with them. I used to live in a 2 family house on the first floor with a large balcony. I brought up two children there and now, when my grandchildren come to my house, I am permenantly running up and down stairs and am glad I had my two all on one level when they were young.

And killer crabs invading Antarctica due to warming water.
Excellent point Faye. Even if man made warming a complete myth then using up all the fossil fuels and not putting anything in to replace them not good for grandchildren.

Baggy not everyone believes in climate change but lots of us do. If those of us who believe are wrong there will be no harm done, and we will live on a cleaner planet. If those who don't believe are wrong, we face a disaster!

I don't believe we have a lot of time to do something and am concerned when people deny climate change exists. What would you say to islanders who are most severely threatened by rising sea levels.

'For the first time since civilization began, sea level has begun to rise at a measurable rate. It has become an indicator to watch, a trend that could force a human migration of almost unimaginable dimensions. It also raises questions about responsibility to other nations and to future generations that humanity has never before faced.'
www.earth-policy.org/plan_b_updates/2001/update2

Disappearing Islands:
www.globalislands.net/news/newsdeskitem.php?newstype=Special&newsid=4660&mfxsr=8

Not everyone believes in it, carbon. Ordinary people are fed up with all the failed prophecies of doom. Yet another prominent scientist has just resigned from the American Physical Society to protest the organisation’s stance on global warming. The science is far from settled.

Sorry Baggy I meant man-made climate change (as you well know!)

Well I guess they day will come Faye. It would be sad if, when it does, we have completely trashed the planet and all the other animals and plants, but it looks like trash it we will, by pollution, agricultural practices, destruction of ecosystems etc We've been working at it ever since we discovered fire and the process is speeding up. (global warming or no global warming)

Baggy and carbon, sounds like Groundhog Day.....

I like the idea of Zero population!!!

Yes there would. Climate changed before there were people on the planet and it will carry on changing after we're gone.