Climate Change

Heavy rain in northern England and flooding river plains is not weird. It's normal.

If we humans were not in the Vale of York, more of it would flood every year. We have plonked ourselves in the middle of something natural that happens whether we are there or not. If we don't want natural events to affect us, we need to think more carefully and plan for the next similar, normal, natural events.

Why are people surprised when flood plains flood?

We have the technological and engineering knowhow to build effective flood barriers for towns that are built on flood plains. If we don't do that, the towns will sometimes flood. As you point out, jendurham, it was the local council's refusal to update flood barriers that is the problem, not the rain or the rivers.

By the way, a one in a hundred chance is only a probability. If weather events with that probability occur four times in a row, that's no more impossible than tossing a coin and getting four heads or four tails in a row. The questions to ask are things such as has the town expanded into higher risk flood areas (likely, at a guess), have flood defences been kept sufficiently up to date (unlikely, at a guess), do floods occur more often now than they did a hundred or two hundred or five hundred or a thousand years ago? If the answer to any of those questions (and more) give us pause to consider how we are managing a town built on a flood plain, then that's what we should do first before blaming climate change.

Floods on flood plains are actually beneficial for agriculture (think Nile, Egypt). If we are stupid enough to build on high risk areas without also building effective flood defences, we've only ourselves to blame when the inevitable happens.

River flood plains are called flood plains for a reason.

Carboncareful, I feel like you. Far too many people are comfortable with what is happening in the world.
Before moving to Durham, we lived in York. Over ten years there were four 1 in 100 year events. Now that is mathematically impossible.
During those ten years the council put out plans to build new council offices in one of the areas that would flood. Fortunately there were enough sensible people who wrote in to object and the council shelved these plans.
The floods in York were hardly on the news this year, there were so many others. There are two rivers that converge in York, the Ouse and the Foss. Normally the Ouse floods and the Foss is okay because it has a flood barrier.
It did not work this year, just like it did not in 2000.

I think this government should be held responsible for all the flooding that occurred because it cancelled the financing of flood barriers in places like Morpeth.

Obviously I've misjudged you bags and you can see the through the climate skeptics (horrible name but their choice I suppose) hogwash. Thank you for posting this.

BP, Greenpeace, and the Big Oil Jackpot

because I know y'all lurve such links

Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer argued that concepts are "mere abstractions from what is known through intuitive perception, and they have arisen from our arbitrarily thinking away or dropping of some qualities and our retention of others."
I am talking about facts bags.

Yes, I'm aware of that concept and how it is portrayed, jodi. Thankfully, I'm able to tell when something is real science or not, by publications' references and transparency, for instance.

bags talking of sensational bullshit, are you aware that much of the material out there is 'climate change denial' funded and published by the oil companies and the conservation far right lobby in U.S.A.? I'm surprised that intelligent people cannot see it for what it is and are drawn into believing this. I supposed its to do with the concept of denial.

BTW, flickety, that is no criticism of you, only of the stupidity of mainstream media in publishing sensational bullshit .

Flickety said: "That the world is going through a period of climate warming with more unstable weather and extreme weather events is also a fact."

I'd question that too.

From Nature, Sept 2012: www.nature.com/news/extreme-weather-1.11428
"one critic argued that, given the insufficient observational data and the coarse and mathematically far-from-perfect climate models used to generate attribution claims, they are unjustifiably speculative, basically unverifiable and better not made at all. And even if event attribution were reliable, another speaker added, the notion that it is useful for any section of society is unproven....Especially in poor countries, the losses arising from extreme weather have often as much to do with poverty, poor health and government corruption as with a change in climate."

Spiegel Online: Whether it’s hurricanes, thunderstorms or tornadoes, extreme weather is big business for insurers. Now German re-insurer Munich Re claims to have found proof that man-made climate change is causing more weather catastrophes in North America. Scientists are outraged....The main problem is the rarity of extreme events — and a lack of data about them. That alone makes it difficult to assess the situation. Vast amounts of data are required in order to determine whether an increasing greenhouse gas effect has already changed the frequency of extreme weather in past decades.....But scientists claim there is a lack of evidence. “The press release suggests that a ‘footprint’ of climate change has been found in loss data,” said environmental researcher Roger Pielke Jr. of the University of Colorado in Boulder. “But the report has no such claims.”
Scientists denounce dubious study

jodi

Indeed...very confusing these split/cross threads. I've pinned my colours to the mast in both threads. Just wanted to assure other posters that I'm happy to read other points of view. But do they have to be so long and deadly boring? I'm a bear of very little brain and I find it hard to maintain concentration. So as well as being an Eyore I'm a Winnie the Pooh too.

Jodi, I think we have already established which group you belong to on another thread!

I agree flick there is room for doom merchants, happy clappy ostriches and all shades in between.

I should have added the Doom Merchants do have a very valuable use, they draw our attention to problems that may face us in the future if we do nothing about them. The problem is, when riding a high horse it is very difficult to get off and my respect for James Lovelock, the proponent of the Gaia theory, is immense because of his willingness to adapt his views and accept the necessity of nuclear power. As J M Keynes said: 'When circumstances change, I change my opinions, What do you do?'

I came back to this thread to pass on Bags' link, but she had already done it.

On my posting on the 'Apocalypse Not' thread I referred to a current general belief in Scientific Infallability. If a Scientist says something it must be true because they are a scientist. To begin with the description 'Scientist' is a very generalised description for a large swathe of disciplines, like 'Engineer', but if there were technical problems with an aircraft I was about to fly in I really woudnt feel safe if a civil engineer was consulted on the problem, I would have much more confidence in the expertise of an aeronautical engineer.

Science consists of putting forward theories that seem provable in their time but can be superceded when further research is done. There are also incompetent and fraudulent scientists around, Lysenko is the most egregious, but also the Korean Scientist who fabricated his research into cloning, and the work of Andrew Wakefield on the MMR to name but three very well known ones.

Much scientific work and results is surrounded by 'what ifs' and 'buts', anathema to journalism, which is why scientist are so chary of popular science. Statistics based on surveys are fine but you need to know how the sample was drawn, how it was filtered, and what were the questions before you can accept the conclusions.

On climate change we know that CO2 levels in the atmosphere have been rising since the beginning of industrialisation. That is fact. That the world is going through a period of climate warming with more unstable weather and extreme weather events is also a fact. The evidence that the two are linked is debateable and it is not yet clear whether the cause of climate change is manmade or natural. That there is a 'tipping point' and we have reached it is even more debateable.

butternut

Well said, Butter.

Butter You are wise. You always lift my spirits.

I've said it before and I'll say it again - I have no academic background in this field, but you know what, my take on climate change is just as valuable and comes from a deep belief that it's a natural progression of natures own making. Our planet is very accommodating in how we humans evolve, regardless of what we throw at it. Living with that whilst using our understanding, sensibility and awareness,and owning that, needs to be recognised. The future of our planet needs to been held with care, but with open arms and a continuing curiosity.

Thanks for the link B

I am fascinated by all the perspectives, although I rarely have much to offer as the subject of climate change is so contentious that every day something else comes along to push the argument somewhere else. I honestly don't know where to go to nail my colours to the mast, so I remain a floating voter.

Not convinced that a lot of people are put off the thread. I write where I choose, and follow threads that interest me, as I'm sure others do. If i don't like a thread, I go elsewhere. No problem

"I think a lot of people have been scared off this thread by the doom and gloom alarmism" .... possibly?
Can't think of any other reason???

“It is in the admission of ignorance and the admission of uncertainty that there is a hope for the continuous motion of human beings in some direction that doesn’t get confined, permanently blocked, as it has so many times before in various periods in the history of man.” – Richard Feynman

Thanks, gaga, for confirming what I had gathered from other comments and for the encouragement.

jess, I'd like to challenge your suggestion that my arguments about the degree to which humans affect climate change is in the same category as the crackpot creationist arguments against evolution. If I was the type to take offence, I'd be insulted, but actually I'm shocked at what you imply on your behalf as it suggest to me rather shallow thinking, which you don't show on other subjects. People who claim evolution is not true are, as I said above, crackpot creationists and similar. Why? Because there is nigh on 150 years' worth of evidence in support of evolution and nothing but ancient myths to counter it. The articles I link to about climate change are not written by crackpots, but by scientists. Many of the papers are published in scientitifc journals. Other writers are previous environmental campaigners who, because of scientific research, have changed their minds about the apocalyptic view that some people take of climate change.

I suspect that you made that silly comparison because of the widely quoted "97% of scientists agree with anthropogenic climate change" meme. Here are some inconvenient facts about that:

The 97% number is easily dismissed. It comes from a 2009 online survey of 10,257 earth scientists, conducted by two researchers at the University of Illinois. Strangely, the researchers chose to eliminate almost all the scientists from the survey and so ended up with only 77 people, 75 of whom, or 97%, thought humans contributed to climate change.

Besides the fact that, with tens of thousands of climate scientists in the world, 77 is a trivial sample size, the survey coordinators did not ask respondents how much humans had contributed to climate change. The poll is therefore meaningless.

In reality, no one knows, or even currently can know, what the “consensus” is in the world climate science community. This is because there has never been a meaningful, comprehensive worldwide poll about the topic among the thousands of scientists who specialize in the many relevant disciplines.

Scientific theories are never proven by a show of hands, of course. Otherwise, the Earth would still be considered flat and space travel impossible. It is indeed those who go against the flow—independent, original thinkers –who are usually responsible for our most meaningful advances in science.