Climate change happens naturally

How many of those 125 were meteorologists? Are they challenging the 'orthodoxy', or are they challenging the data?

If you go to the link, feetle, all the names and their fields of study are listed.

And how many are employed by the oil companies!

How many people at the Doha meeting are funded by Greenpeace?

How many writers/editors of th IPCC reports are funded by Greenpeace and similar activist organisations? Investigations (e.g. that by Donna Laframboise) have shown that it's quite a lot.

By the way, producers of power from oil and coal pay a lot towards renewable energy production too -it's very profitable because subsidised by tax-payers' money.

I don't suppose either of you have actually read the article.

I think most people accept that climate change is happening but there is some disagreement about why. I am not a scientist and therefore rely on the articles written by scientists to get my information but with so many differing views it becomes very confusing.

Scientists put forward their interpretation of the findings depending on which camp they are in. Those connected with the renewable energy industry say it is man made. Those connected with the oil industry say it is a cyclical and has always happened. Personally, I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. Yes it has happened before but by using so many carbon fuels we may be causing it to happen sooner.

That oil, gas and coal are finite resources is indisputable and we need to find alternatives

I don't know if we're having any effect but the climate has always changed.

Greenland was green when the Vikings discovered and settled it but the climate changed and the settlers died. There is evidence of the Vikings on Newfoundland which we know as being cold but they called North America Vinland which suggests they found some sort of vines there.

The Thames used to freeze over in winter during the 1600 to the extent that they could hold Ice Fairs on it.

Famines have happened throughout history because of washout summers or droughts. In the reign of Mary Tudor the crops failed for a series of years which people felt was a message from God because she was taking the country back to Rome. She on the other hand believed God was telling her that she wasn't taking the country back fast enough so increased the burning of heretics. They didn't know anything about climate change they just knew the weather wasn't as it should be so tried to explain it in ways they understood.

I don't understand how the climate works but I know some using melting glaciers as evidence that it's getting warmer. If that's the case how come some glaciers are growing?

The funds currently dedicated to trying to stop extreme weather should therefore be diverted to strengthening our infrastructure so as to be able to withstand these inevitable, natural events, and to helping communities rebuild after natural catastrophes such as tropical storm Sandy.

Remaining aware of climate change is one thing, but investing billions in preventative measures to try to prevent it, I feel, is shortsighted. Working with the existing infrastructure surely provides a better future for all those who live and work in communities which are most at risk.

I don't understand all the finer points of this huge debate, but this point of view is where I choose to plant my flag.

Butty, I do not think they are talking about investing money to prevent extreme weather events, more investing money so that extreme events are easier to cope with.

In the past week the Environment Agency has been talking about making houses in flood prone areas more flood resilient; having tiled floors, waterproof plaster on the walls, electrical wiring and sockets a metre above floor level and proper flood proof shutters to put on external doors when floods are predicted.

If you go to York and see all the ground and lower floors of the quayside houses that flood every year and make it into the national papers each time, you will find the owners have done all these things. The pub for example has one lounge at quayside level. When floods are forecast it just moves the light tables and chairs from its waterside lounge upstairs, lets the floods do their worst and within days after they clear the room is hosed down, the furniture moved back and it is back in business in that bar.

FlicktyB Perhaps I put that v. badly. Your comment said what I was trying to say.

Butty, sorry i misunderstood.

I am not a climate change denier, but the climate, worldwide, has always been ever changing, as vampire queen has pointed out, so there is not anything exceptional about what is happening at the moment. It is part of the normal changes the world has been through over many thousands of years.

I also think that now whenwhere ever in the world you live people are on line, have mobile phones with cameras etc etc, extreme events are being reported and photographed and shown on television and that newspapers that years ago would not have been considered of more than local interest.

A relative grew up in Selby in Yorkshire in the 1920s and 30s. His home, near the river, flooded a number of times during his childhood, his school flooded even more frequently but I doubt these events made the newspapers. Now you see the same pictures of the river Ouse in York flooding the quayside and ground floors of the adjacent properties on television year after year after year.

This is because these floods have happened every year for more years than anyone can remember, all the rooms that flood are tiled and plastered so that they just need a hose down when the floods go and can return to use. The event worth publicising would be the year they didn't flood. But the impression people get is that York is flooding every year now but didnt in the past because nobody told them about it.

I wonder when people will stop pretending it's surprising when flood plains flood? The flood plains were there before we were and, pertinently, before we built on them, putting our buildings at risk of... er... flooding, unless we build adequate flood defences and/or floodable buildings (such as flickety describes) and accept that we can't control nature.

The city I live near is on a flood plain and when I was a child parts of it flooded every year. They managed to stop the floods by building a tidal barrier. There are also a lot of pumping stations which prevent other parts of the city flooding but like all machinery sometimes the pumps break...usually when they're most needed. But as Bags said if you build on a flood plain you have to expect floods.

Building on the flood plain mainly started in the 19th century, the boom in industrialisation meant houses were needed to house the workers and they were put on any available adjacent land, which was usually the flood plain, I mean, who cares if the pleb's houses flood every year!

The problem is that now, for first time buyers and buyers otherwise on low incomes, these little gardenless two up two downs are the cheapest houses available and all they can afford.

DS started on his home owning life on the Ouse flood plain in York, a house as described above for the reasons above. The area used to flood regularly but flood protection works had made it virtually flood free until 2000 and again 2012. It was then he discovered to his relief that the flat road he lived in actually rose several feet along its couple of hundred yards length so that although the start of the road flooded his end didnt.

York has been pretty bad recently hasn't it?
I think the main climate problem may be that there are just too many people everywhere in the world now. More building on flood plains, more concrete so that water can't drain, more pollution, more emissions. It didn't effect anything when there was a lower population density.

For me seeing pictures of Tewksbury Abbey and the High Street standing high and dry out of the severe floods of the river Severn in 2007 was a major pointer to the folly of building on floodplains. We are now doing just what our medieval ancestors had the good sense not to do.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1558314/Floods-Spirits-dampened-in-Tewkesbury.html

I am not sure our medieval ancestors always got it right, that or there was much less rain in the medieval period. Most of the main medieval spine road in my village is firmly in a flood zone . The Environment Agency maps show that clearly. The first quarter mile of the road flooded in 2007

I am lucky enough to live the high end of the road above the flood zone and I am currently arguing it out with my insurance company as I have been told that if I change insurance company I will not be able to get flood cover because I live in an flood zone. Not only do the EA maps show I am not in the flood zone but whenI queried it with the EA they said I was not in a flood zone.

I think our ancestors probably got it even more wrong than we do but there weren't so many of them to do the damage and, I suppose, they weren't industrialised.

Message deleted by Gransnetfor breaking our Talk Guidelines. Replies may also be deleted.