Business As Usual For Climate Change?
“Global warming may ’stop’, scientists predict.” - Daily Telegraph
That’s one way of summarising the paper recently published in the scientific journal Nature documenting recent research by the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in Kiel, Germany.
This paper has attracted a lot of media attention on both sides of the debate, with some parties using it as proof that greens have been ringing the alarm bells unnecessarily, and other parties defensively disputing the results and raising concerns that the predicted delay in temperature rise will take the wind out of the sails of recent climate treaty progress. (See Daryl’s post on the challenged made by RealClimate.)
Just in case anybody managed to miss it - here are some of the statements made by the report and it’s authors which demonstrate how parts of the report can, and have been taken completely out of context:
What Is Climate Change Causing Today?
Continuing with my long line of excuses for not getting posts out regularly on TalkClimateChange, today’s lack of posting has been caused by an almost terminal computer failure.
Can this have been caused by global warming?
Back tomorrow..
Decision Time: The Climate Is Changing
But which way?
I’ve been intrigued by the number of different interpretations following Nature’s recent publication predicting a temporary lull in global warming on which Daryl recently commentated.
Right now I am in the midst of putting together a post contrasting the different reactions, and - crucially - the impact this has on the world’s decision making as politics, self interest, pre-determined belief and ideology spectacularly collide.
But since mining the vast amount of material out there is taking longer than expected (as usual) I thought I would share something in the meantime that I found on Brett Anderson’s excellent Global Warming Blog.
Most Stupid Idea Ever?
Is this the most stupid idea ever?
edie.net writes that farmers in Estonia are to pay green taxes on greenhouse gasses emitted by cows.
I didn’t quite believe it as first either, and so I spent a couple of minutes with Google to confirm that it is indeed true. I also notice that a similar scheme was mooted in New Zealand, but protests killed the idea of pretty quickly.
This particular news has prompted one of those rare occasions where I write on the Red side - what exactly would a cow tax achieve? Are there alternatives to cows? Are there more efficient cows which may be used to reduce emissions? Or are we just supposed to give up on diary products for good?
Whatever next?
Renewable Desalination
As most people know, the British Isles is a rainy place..
One of the first things Boris Johnson has done having been newly elected as Mayor of the self-proclaimed greatest city on Earth (Ed: that’s London - just in case) is to drop the former mayor’s objection to Thames Water’s proposed desalination plant in Barking.
"Thames Water has satisfied me that the desalination plant will minimise its impact on the environment by using renewable energy, and by being used only when absolutely necessary.” (Times Online)
I can’t help wondering what this renewable energy will be, and how long "only when absolutely necessary" will last?
Betting on Climate Change - How Do Scientists Resolve Differences?
I’m almost at a loss for words here, and I guess the simple thing would be just to attempt to explain what is happening.
The “scientists” over at RealClimate.com have challenged German climate modellers - who recently published their “peer reviewed” paper on the results of their new climate model runs - to a wager on the validity of their predictions. This new paper Keenlyside et al. 2008 makes some short term, single decade long predictions regarding the global combined land and ocean surface temperature record.
The basis of the wager is simple;
Cars Might Fly
As I walk home humming to my iPod, I can pretty much keep station with the cars crawling along next to me. Sometimes one of us inches ahead of the other, but rarely do either of us have a decisive advantage. Many a time I have reflected on the absurdity of this situation as I realise that by some measures we seem to have hardly progressed since humans learned to walk on two legs.
As more and more of us become city dwellers (today over half the world’s population lives in cities), the car is becoming more and more ridiculous as a mode of transport as our cities’ arteries become increasingly clogged with cars barely travelling at walking pace.
But despite this problem becoming evermore obvious, we continue to cling doggedly to the car, wholly unwilling to give it up for the horrors of public transport.
So what’s the answer?
TalkClimateChange Takes a Holiday -Something To Consider In The Meantime
Some thoughts before TalkClimateChange takes a brief 10 day sabbatical.
The Blogosphere thrives on debate - the very nature of the medium encourages discussion and the presentation of alternative view points. This is the reason that TalkClimateChange exists, and the reason why Daryl, Matt and myself organise our viewpoints into Red, Green and Blue categories, often in direct confrontation with each other.
The results are always interesting, and whilst we have often disagreed with much, we’ve agreed on many points too. We’re also grateful for the many insightful comments and arguments received, both here on the blog and in the forum.
It’s always interesting to receive feedback on this approach, and I’ve recently had a number of interesting comments which are worthy of review:
Stern Report Not Right or Wrong, Just Irrelevant
Following the discussion on the Stern report’s projections for the economic cost / benefit of tackling climate change, I’d like to introduce a new perspective: The cost of climate change avoidance is irrelevant, since most of today’s avoidance schemes are wholly ineffective anyway.
I make this assertion following UK treasury projections that the “green levy” on motorists announced in this year’s UK Government budget will provide an additional £4 billion to the treasury, but reduce vehicle emissions by 1% (0.06 of the total Co2 emissions of the UK).
Despite the huge sums raised, current investment in energy research is approximately one tenth of the amount spent on space research, and there seems to be no coherent and encompassing plan to make significant cuts in CO2 emissions. If raising £4 billion in taxes achieves so little, then surely lofty goals of reducing emissions by 80% are pure fantasy?
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Impending catastrophe, or political scam? Whatever your belief, Climate Change will affect you in some way. TalkClimateChange discusses the issues that will affect us, and our world, from all sides.
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