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Global Warming & Climate Change: Humans' Reactions & Responses

Maybe a candidate for Branson's £25 000 000 prize.
 
Dutch pioneer floating eco-homes
By Alix Kroeger
BBC News, Maasbommel, the Netherlands

Small and densely populated, the Netherlands is one of the countries most at risk from climate change and rising sea levels.

But in one village in the south of the country, they are trying out a new way of living with an increased risk of floods.

A small ferry shuttles back and forth from one bank of the River Maas to the other. This is the only way of reaching Maasbommel, in Gelderland province, from the south.

The landscape is saturated with water, criss-crossed by rivers and the network of dykes which are supposed to protect the area from flooding.

But the dykes are not always enough. In 1993 and again in 1995, floods forced tens of thousands of people to leave their homes.

Rising sea levels

Now, with climate change, floods are likely to be more frequent and more severe.

Dutch scientists predict a rise in sea levels of up to 110cm (43 inches) by the year 2100.

At the same time, there is growing pressure on land. The Dutch government estimates 500,000 new homes will be needed in the next two decades.

Most of the land suitable for conventional building has already been snapped up. So Dutch housebuilders are experimenting with new solutions.

Floating alternative

A row of amphibious houses lines the waterfront at Maasbommel, panelled in blue, yellow and green. They have a hollow concrete cube at the base to give them buoyancy.

A vertical pile keeps them anchored to the land.

Electricity and water are pumped in through flexible pipes. In all, the houses can withstand a rise in the water table of up to four metres (13ft).

"We are trying to develop new types of more sustainable buildings which have no adverse impacts on the environment," says Chris Zevenbergen of Dura Vermeer, the company which developed the floating houses.

At a starting price of 260,000 euros (£180,000 or $310,000), the houses are not a cheap option. But Mr Zevenbergen says demand is high.

"We have to make our first steps," he says. "It's a long process, but the transition to a more flood-resilient country is a prerequisite in the near future."

Growing popularity

The houses have attracted international attention. Officials from New Orleans, which was devastated by flooding in August 2005, have visited Maasbommel to see how the floating houses work.

Cees Westdijk and his wife bought one of the houses because they wanted to live near the water. They hardly notice it when the area floods, he says.

"You can build it very big, you can build it small, but I think for a lot of countries with the same problems as here, it is a good solution," he says.

He does caution that the floating houses are no replacement for conventional flood defences, including the dykes, a crucial failing in New Orleans.

But while the floating houses may be radical enough for some, others think the Netherlands should go much further.

Pressure on land

Frits Schoute runs a sustainable development project called Ecoboot. In collaboration with engineering and architecture students, mainly from Delft Technical University, he is working on pilot projects to build whole cities at sea.

He believes the coming shortages of land, energy and water will increase the pressure to find innovative solutions.

"Our traditional way of just fighting the sea with dykes has to give way to alternatives, like going with the water," Mr Schoute predicts.

The floating city is a long-term project, he admits. But the houses at Maasbommel are a good first step.

"(Change) should come from the bottom up, not just from the top down," he says.

"If you also have the support of the government, realising how necessary it is to find alternatives for mankind, then sometime it will happen."

Perhaps not surprisingly, Chris Zevenbergen believes the floating houses have a bright future.

"We have many deltas in the world which have problems with competing land claims for economic activity," he explains.

"So when you can create a community which coexists with water, then you have a very sustainable solution."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6405359.stm
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CO2 output from shipping twice as much as airlines

· Maritime emissions not covered by Kyoto accord
· Studies suggest 75% rise in 15 years as trade grows

John Vidal, environment editor
Saturday March 3, 2007
The Guardian

Carbon dioxide emissions from shipping are double those of aviation and increasing at an alarming rate which will have a serious impact on global warming, according to research by the industry and European academics.
Separate studies suggest that maritime carbon dioxide emissions are not only higher than previously thought, but could rise by as much as 75% in the next 15 to 20 years if world trade continues to grow and no action is taken. The figures from the oil giant BP, which owns 50 tankers, and researchers at the Institute for Physics and Atmosphere in Wessling, Germany reveal that annual emissions from shipping range between 600 and 800m tonnes of carbon dioxide, or up to 5% of the global total. This is nearly double Britain's total emissions and more than all African countries combined.

Carbon dioxide emissions from ships do not come under the Kyoto agreement or any proposed European legislation and few studies have been made of them, even though they are set to increase.
Aviation carbon dioxide emissions, estimated to be about 2% of the global total, have been at the forefront of the climate change debate because of the sharp increase in cheap flights, whereas shipping emissions have risen nearly as fast in the past 20 years but have been ignored by governments and environmental groups. Shipping is responsible for transporting 90% of world trade which has doubled in 25 years.

Donald Gregory, director of environment at BP Marine, said this week that BP estimates that the global fleet of 70,000 ships uses approximately 200m tonnes of fuel a year and this is expected to grow to 350m tonnes a year by 2020. "We estimate carbon dioxide emissions from shipping to be 4% of the global total. Ships are getting bigger and every shipyard in the world has a full order book. There are about 20,000 new ships on order" he said.

The estimate supports other academic studies which, until now, have been dismissed as "extreme", because the industry fears that emissions regulations will be forced on it if it is not seen to be addressing the issue. "The International Maritime Organisation [IMO] needs to come up with an emissions strategy, or it will be down to us," said Mr Gregory. "Aviation is in the firing line now but shipping needs to take responsibility. There will be increasing pressure to do something."

Dr Veronika Eyring, a researcher at the Institute of Physics and Atmosphere, calculates that the global fleet used 280m tonnes of fuel in 2001 and that could reach 400m tonnes by 2020.

"People are becoming more aware of the shipping emissions problem, but there is still uncertainty as to the exact amount of fuel being used," she said.

An IMO study of greenhouse gas emissions has estimated that emissions from the global fleet would increase dramatically in the next 20 years as globalisation leads to increased demand for bigger, faster ships. Without action the IMO predicts that by 2020, emissions from ships would increase up to 72%.

Yesterday the independent Tyndall Centre for Climate Change, which has launched a two-year study into shipping emissions, said the problem needed to be addressed urgently. "The proportion of [greenhouse gas] emissions from international shipping continues to receive scant regard within government. Shipping has been missed off the climate change agenda, said researcher Alice Bowes.

Britain downplays the problem, saying that ships in UK waters emit less than 2m tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. But no record is kept of the fuel used and most ships take on fuel outside Britain.

Although the industry maintains that ships are more efficient at transferring freight than air, it admits improvements can be made.

Yesterday Caroline Lucas, a Green MEP, said: "[Shipping] has got away with doing nothing and maintained a clean image which it does not deserve."

http://environment.guardian.co.uk/clima ... 26,00.html
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Why Channel 4 has got it wrong over climate change

Our science editor condemns television's latest foray into the debate on global warming

Robin McKie
Sunday March 4, 2007
The Observer

We live in an era of conspiracies. Princess Diana was killed by Nazis; 9/11 was the work of the US government, while the manned lunar landings were hoaxes filmed in TV studios. To this list of internet-fuelled daftness, we can now add a new plot: that the world's scientific community is not just wrong about global warming, but is collectively lying when it says industrial carbon dioxide emissions are heating up the planet.

Michael Crichton started the ball rolling with his novel State of Fear and the idea has bubbled along nicely in online chatrooms ever since. But now the idea is to get the full terrestrial TV treatment when Channel 4 screens Thursday's The Great Global Warming Swindle, a documentary which says claims that carbon emissions are causing global warming are 'lies' and that attempts to debate the subject are being suppressed.
Given that the world's climatologists have just published a careful, sober report showing global warming is real and worrying, the programme is an astonishing foray into the debate. Certainly, there many reasons to deride it. Its contents are largely untrue, for a start. That is Channel 4's problem. Yet a couple of important points do emerge from this nonsense and we should not make the mistake of ignoring them. To back his case, director Martin Durkin interviews climate-change deniers including Phillip Stott, Piers Corbyn, Nigel Calder and Nigel Lawson who reveal their antipathy to the idea we are altering Earth's weather systems.

These names are scarcely unknown. Listeners to Today and viewers of Newsnight have been hearing Stott and the rest promote their views for years. Indeed, they have dominated and distorted the whole global warming debate, a point stressed by Alan Thorpe, head of the Natural Environment Research Council. 'These people are never off the radio or TV, yet now they claim debate is being suppressed? It is preposterous.' So what, we might ask, is the deniers' problem? Examine their movement and you see a common thread: most proponents are elderly, only a few are scientists and several have pronounced pro-market views. And hereby hangs a tale.

'It is widely assumed that to control climate change, we will need a raft of government measures and increased bureaucracy - anathema to these people,' says political philosopher John Gray. 'So they deal with the issue by denying the problem in the first place. They say there is no such thing as global warming and therefore no need for more controls. They have closed their minds.'

The problem is that denial - in all its ludicrous glory - makes it easy for us to gloss over genuine concerns about society's right reaction to global warming and carbon emissions. And that is what is wrong with Durkin's programme. It opts for dishonest rhetoric when a little effort could have produced an important contribution to a critical social problem.

Consider emission controls. This is now assumed to be as much an issue of individual responsibility as of international negotiation. Petrol-guzzling 4x4s must be taxed, foreign holidays discouraged, TVs unplugged and lavatories left unflushed. After decades of waiting, the green movement has found the cause of its dreams: a crisis that gives them carte blanche, they believe, to rule our lives.

Hairshirts are being knitted and the self-righteous are gathering. The Observer's travel desk already gets hate mail merely for highlighting interesting destinations that might seem to encourage carbon-producing air travel. No wonder those poor old deniers cringe.

But it simply does not have to be that way. For a start, air travel accounts for only 2 per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions. So I refuse to feel guilty because I have a family holiday in Spain and then write about the threatened glories of the Great Barrier Reef.

Indeed, if one looks at the world's last great ecological scare, the dwindling of our protective ozone layer, it is intriguing to see how we dealt with a threat that seemed as apocalyptic then as climate change does today. Ozone depletion, caused by CFC chemicals used in fridges and deodorants, was not contained through individual sacrifice. We were not asked to sell our Hotpoint freezers or go smelly to the office. Governments and industries agreed to replace CFCs with safe substitutes. So there was no need for an army of self-appointed greenies to sniff our armpits to check if they were suspiciously non-malodorous. The crisis was contained at an industrial, not a consumer, level, as it should be with greenhouse gases.

Climate change is a bigger, more pernicious problem and will require broader, more intense efforts to cut back on carbon emissions, which, in turn, offers more opportunities for campaigners and politicians to hijack a sound cause to gain control of people's lives. 'That is the striking thing about global warming,' says Myles Allen, of Oxford's climate dynamics group. 'It is a Christmas tree on which each of us can hang virtually everything we want.'

Thus, everyone from EU commissioners and Ken Livingstone to parish councils and writers of green-ink letters now uses global warming as an excuse to tell us how to live. Some of this advice, and attempts at lifestyle control, is sound. Some is not. Either way, it is misplaced. The lead must come from government and industry. So far it hasn't. That is incompetence. Not conspiracy.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/ ... 91,00.html
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It really is about time that someone asked the IPCC why they have totally ignored the source of all warming on Earth, the Sun.

There's no point in tinkering with the fine tuning of the Earth's climate control if you don't try to understand how the engine works.
 
Scunnerlugzz said:
It really is about time that someone asked the IPCC why they have totally ignored the source of all warming on Earth, the Sun.

There's no point in tinkering with the fine tuning of the Earth's climate control if you don't try to understand how the engine works.
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So, you really think that, after working out the effects of greenhouse gasses, factoring in the Sun (if that hasn't already been done), as well, would make the anti-Greenhouse Effect argument better, in some way? :confused:

If you want to look clouds, look at Venus. Now, that is a 'Greenhouse effect' climate.
 
Pietro_Mercurios said:
If you want to look clouds, look at Venus. Now, that is a 'Greenhouse effect' climate.
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Oh yeah right, so how did that happen, too many people using cars and planes ?
 
Ronson8 said:
Pietro_Mercurios said:
If you want to look clouds, look at Venus. Now, that is a 'Greenhouse effect' climate.
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Oh yeah right, so how did that happen, too many people using cars and planes ?
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No just naturally occurring greenhouse gasses but a greenhouse gas does the same thing whether it's natural or man made.
 
Sorry, this is a bit long but it puts the other side of the debate.
Article.
Link is dead. The MIA webpage can be accessed at the Wayback Machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/2007030...html?xml=/news/2006/11/05/nosplit/nwarm05.xml

Here's the basic intro:
Climate chaos? Don't believe it
By Christopher Monckton, Sunday Telegraph

The Stern report last week predicted dire economic and social effects of unchecked global warming. In what many will see as a highly controversial polemic, Christopher Monckton disputes the 'facts' of this impending apocalypse and accuses the UN and its scientists of distorting the truth

Last week, Gordon Brown and his chief economist both said global warming was the worst "market failure" ever. That loaded soundbite suggests that the "climate-change" scare is less about saving the planet than, in Jacques Chirac's chilling phrase, "creating world government". This week and next, I'll reveal how politicians, scientists and bureaucrats contrived a threat of Biblical floods, droughts, plagues, and extinctions worthier of St John the Divine than of science. ...
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EXCLUSIVE: VULCAN: GLOBAL WARMING IS GOOD
12/03/2007

THE Tories green crusade was exposed as a sick joke yesterday as John "Vulcan" Redwood insisted we must welcome global warning.

Redwood, chairman of the Tory economic policy group, first said we should be "sceptical" about scientific evidence that shows the Earth is heating up.

And then he said even if it is true we should not worry as "we'll benefit from the better weather for tourism, agriculture and outdoor sports".

His astonishing comments will be deeply embarrassing to leader David Cameron, who today unveils radical plans for new green taxes designed to reduce air travel.

The Tory leader wants to slap extra taxes on holiday flights and put VAT on domestic plane trips.

Cameron has been going to extreme lengths to convince voters the Tories care about the environment - at the weekend he was ostentatiously strolling around in shoes made from recycled car seats and firemen's trousers. But Redwood, who got his nickname over his resemblance to Star Trek alien Mr Spock, has blown his boss's efforts out of the water with his online diary claims.

He rubbished the idea that pollution was causing global warming, calling it a "swindle". And he added: "Things are not entirely as the consensus supposes."

He also mocked concerns over gasguzzling cars by saying: "Visits to Mars by space probes detect global warming there - but have not yet discovered the 4x4s causing it." Environment Minister Ian Pearson said the comments were insulting to millions worldwide already feeling the devastating effects of climate change.

Mr Pearson added: "His statements are an affront to the millions at risk of flooding in Bangladesh, severe famine in Africa and drought in China and India."

Last night Redwood tried to defend his remarks. He said: "If you read my blog in full you will see that what I was saying is we should get on with managing the consequences of global warming."

Redwood has a nasty habit of putting his foot in it. His most famous gaffe came in 1995 when as Welsh Secretary he tried to sing the principality's national anthem - and was filmed mouthing words he did not know.

Last year he revealed Tory plans to privatise the road network. In 2004 he bizarrely accused the government of murdering fish.

[.........................]

Chancellor Gordon Brown will today call on the UN to make the fight against global warming a top priority.

Mr Brown will also say Mr Cameron would be unable to lead a green campaign because the Tories have no credibility within the EU.
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http://tinyurl.com/2uqkjn

So that's all right then! :D :D :D
 
Long article, but worth a read:
'We should be scared stiff'

Renowned scientist James Lovelock thinks mainland Europe will soon be desert - and millions of people will start moving north to Britain. Stuart Jeffries meets him

If you think Britain is intolerably crowded today, you might well want to brace yourself before reading the next sentence. Because this country is going to become much, much more densely populated over the course of this century as millions of people flee the uninhabitable desert that mainland Europe is doomed to turn into.
Such at least is James Lovelock's fear. The esteemed - if controversial - environmentalist and futurologist (he prefers to be called a planetary physician) also believes that by the middle of this century, the America-sized chunk of floating ice that currently covers the Arctic will melt. As a result, the current habitat of polar bears will eventually be the place where we, or our probably very fed-up descendants, live out their pitiful existences. "Most life will move up to the Arctic basin because only it and a few islands will remain habitable," says Lovelock, who is most famous for coming up with the so-called Gaia hypothesis - the idea that the Earth functions as some kind of living super-organism.

Lovelock is now seriously concerned about said super-organism. Humanity's vast output of carbon dioxide over the past two centuries has prompted the deserts to spread towards the poles at an alarming rate, he says. "The Sahara is heading north. So where's the food going to come from? Not from the European mainland. Even here things are changing: there are in Britain now scorpions and snails hitherto only seen in the Mediterranean. Recently I saw hawk moths. Something terrible is happening." On the plus side, hawk moths are very pretty, I suggest. "That's not really the point," says Lovelock.
"I think people forget that the whole world is going to be affected," he goes on. "Climate change will affect China and the US." Indeed, Lovelock envisages that the Chinese people will press to live in a newly lush Siberia before the century is out. "No wonder Putin is arming like mad. In fact, Putin is one of the more far-sighted of global leaders." In the US, even now, distinguished academics are contemplating moving north, Lovelock says. "I gave a talk at Stanford [the Californian Ivy League university] a few months ago. Professors, including Nobel prize winners, were coming up to me asking where in Canada they should buy real estate because they believed me when I said much of the US will be uninhabitable."

Are they right to think that way? "Absolutely ... we should be scared stiff. If you speak to any senior climatologists, the summer of 2003 [in which thousands of Europeans, many of them elderly, perished in the heat] will be the norm by 2050. Old people might have air conditioning, but that won't help the plants which we need to regulate temperatures. It will become a desert climate."

But what of Britain? Is this green and sometimes pleasant land doomed to become desert too? Lovelock thinks not. "We'll be a bloody lifeboat for Europe. It will be their right to come here too." Why? "Because we're all members of the European community." Good point, but one tends to forget such footling matters as the rights that go with EU membership when one is staring global catastrophe in the face.

Lovelock reckons that the British Isles will be among the few island oases in a world given over to desert, scrub and oceans devoid of life: "Everybody in Europe will be wanting to come here." Even people who live in currently delightful spots such as Cap d'Antibes and Siena. They aren't going to like Milton Keynes or Cumbernauld one bit.

But then Lovelock reckons we need some radical rethinking in the way we organise Britain. Only with greater population density in urban areas can it be divided up in the way he believes to be sustainable: one third for cities, industries, ports, airports and roads; the second third for intensive farming, though only enough for the population's needs; and the final third left entirely to the natural world.

Lovelock may sound extreme to some, but although he is regarded as a sort of dotty uncle figure by some scientists, and his Gaia hypothesis has been criticised by the likes of Richard Dawkins, others hold him in high regard. His fans include biologist Lewis Wolpert, green thinker Jonathan Porrit, geo-grapher Jared Diamond, and philosopher John Gray. The environmentalist Fred Pearce once said Lovelock was to science what Gandhi was to politics; Prospect magazine included him in its list of the world's top 100 intellectuals.

Why, you might well ask, will the British Isles be spared the desert fate predicted for much of continental Europe? Because global warming will be, in our blissful case, cancelled out by a fall in temperature caused by the failure of the Gulf Stream. The suggestion comes from Lovelock's latest book The Revenge of Gaia: Why the Earth Is Fighting Back and How We Can Still Save Humanity.

If, as Lovelock forecasts, the Arctic ice melts as a consequence of global warming, the Gulf Stream - the flow that moves warm water towards northern Europe from the Caribbean - will cease. This possibility has long been the subject of science fiction, with writers imagining the return of an ice age to the British Isles and the east coast of North America. Lovelock now thinks that possibility is less likely because any such cooling effect will be cancelled out by global warming.

I walk out with Lovelock into the unseasonably mild air, for a turn around Kensington Gardens in west London, where crocuses press their charms weeks too soon.

As we stroll, the 87-year-old scientist says: "Not only is the world turning and fearfully, but everything is happening very quickly." He points out that carbon dioxide emissions warm the planet and in so doing destroy some of the regulatory systems - such as the reflective powers of the poles' icy wastes - that have kept the earth cool despite the increasing heat of the sun.

"Things are changing all the time, but because we live in towns we don't see it. We modulate the temperature. We don't want to notice the big disturbing picture, we want to see the next episode of the soap opera. There are children," he says ruefully, shaking his head, "who live in cities and have never seen the Milky Way."

Where did we go wrong? "If we were hunter-gatherers and this was a bigger planet we would be all right. But we're not: we're farmers and that's what's screwed us up. There are just too many of us living the way we do. Our wrongdoing has been to take energy hundreds of times faster than it is made naturally available."

How can we reduce human population to more sustainable levels? "We can't solve the problem. There's no human way of cutting numbers. You can empower women and persuade them to have fewer children butwe don't have the time for that."

His diagnosis may be grim, but Lovelock's prognosis is much more bleak. He suggests that the current population of six billion humans will be cut to a more ecologically sustainable half-to-one billion people. "How will this mass cull happen? "It'll be worse than Hitler - Gaia's going to do it," says Lovelock. He writes about this chillingly at the outset of the Revenge of Gaia, where he considers the December 2004 tsunami. "That awful event starkly revealed the power of the earth to kill. The planet we live on has merely to shrug to take some fraction of a million people to their deaths. But that is nothing compared with what may soon may happen; we are now so abusing the Earth that it may rise and move back to the hot state it was in 55 million years ago, and if it does, most of us, and our descendants, will die."

Lovelock first came up with the idea of Gaia 40 years ago to try to account for his view that the planet's chemistry, climate and veneer of life worked together as a self-sustaining organism. It was widely ridiculed by scientists. "One even called it an evil religion," he says with a giggle, "but they later admitted not having read my books."

He maintains that no academic scientist would have been able to come up with such a radical idea as Gaia. "I hate academia. Most of the scientists who work there are not free men any more and they can't speak out. That's no way to do science." He believes the increasing specialisation of university science departments has made academic scientists unlikely to have the overview necessary to envisage the Earth as a self-regulating organic system.

As we walk, Lovelock talks about Gaia. "She's an old lady who has lived for three and a half billion years but she only has half a billion to one billion to go," he says. "She's a bit like me - near the end of her life. I'm pretty unlikely to live beyond 100. She will die the same way as me." How? "Your ability to resist perturbations gets less as you get older."

Looking at the dead red landscape of Mars, as he did during his years as an independent scientist, gave him a premonition of what Earth might become like if global warming continues. "Vast tracts of it will become like Mars - uninhabitable for humans." His suggestion is that all we can do is minimise humanity's impact on Gaia. "We have got into this mess by burning carbon. We shouldn't have burned things in the atmosphere to get energy. We shouldn't have burned forests to drive out animals as a cheap way of hunting, because Gaia demands that the forests are kept in order to regulate her temperature and health."

I suggest to Lovelock there are many sceptics about global warming. For instance, Michael Crichton, in his novel State of Fear, suggested that global warming was a fiction, while Mother Theresa said in 1988 that the fate of the planet was not humanity's concern, adding: "God will take care of the Earth." Recently Newsweek columnist George F Will wrote that the central tenets of the global warming thesis are all unproven, and that the benefits of trying to reverse it will far exceed the costs. "Maybe they're right," says Lovelock, sarcastically.

He goes on: "There are several things we can and should do to make the situation better, but they will only be like dialysis machines are for a kidney patient. It's not going to cure you." His suggestions for ameliorating global warming are intriguing. Among them are massive terrestrial or space-mounted sun shades to cool ourselves back to pre-industrial temperatures. He also supports the idea of the artificial production of clouds across large areas of the sky in order to reduce the input of solar radiation. His book also calls for sailing ships and even giant sailing airships for sustainable long-distance travel.

Lovelock, who is pro nuclear power, derides renewable energy, such as wind power. "It's gesture stuff. I'm not anti-wind turbines. You need 5-10-megawatt ones on oil platforms in the sea because the wind is more reliable at sea. Planting thousands of them in the country-side is not going to solve the problem." Nor does he like biofuels. Indeed, he is suspicious of any policy that results in more land being used in cultivation. "Gaia needs at least a third of the land for self-regulation."

Before we part, I ask Lovelock, who lives in Cornwall, if he is utterly gloomy about the future. "No! Humans have gone through seven major climactic changes in the million years we've been around. Even those changes - ice ages - were ones we adjusted to. Admittedly, those adjustments usually took place over thousands of years, and ours will involve an adjustment in little more than two centuries, but we are flexible as a species." He draws a parallel with his wartime experiences in London: "I was here for much of the war and when it happened it wasn't as bad as we had thought it would be. If people are honest, they rather enjoyed it. It could well be similar in the next few decades. Life will become a little more interesting than it was before."

· The Revenge of Gaia is published by Penguin, price £8.99.

http://environment.guardian.co.uk/ethic ... 70,00.html
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However, he doesn't mention that Lifeboat Britain will be getting smaller because of rising sea levels...
 
Here's a novelty:
£25 fridge gadget that could slash greenhouse emissions

David Adam, environment correspondent
Saturday March 17, 2007
The Guardian

It is made of wax, is barely three inches across and comes in any colour you like, as long as it's black. And it could save more greenhouse gas emissions than taxes on gas guzzling cars, low energy light bulbs and wind turbines on houses combined. It is the e-cube, and it is coming soon to a fridge near you.
Invented by British engineers, the £25 gadget significantly reduces the amount of energy used by fridges and freezers, which are estimated to consume about a fifth of all domestic electricity in the UK. If one was fitted to each of the 87 million refrigeration units in Britain, carbon dioxide emissions would fall by more than 2 million tonnes a year.

The patented cube mimics food and is designed to fit around a fridge's temperature sensor, which usually measures the temperature of the circulating air.
Because air heats up much more quickly than yoghurt, milk or whatever else is stored inside, this makes the fridge work harder than necessary. With the cube fitted, the fridge responds only to the temperature of the food, which means it clicks on and off less often as the door is open and closed.

Trials are under way with supermarkets, breweries and hotels. One of the largest, the Riverbank Park Plaza hotel in London, fitted the device to each of the hotel's 140 major fridges and freezers. David Bell, chief engineer, says energy use decreased by about 30% on average - enough to slash the hotel's annual electricity bill by £17,000. The Park Plaza group plans to fit them throughout its UK hotels, and to recommend them overseas.

An independent report by Campden and Chorleywood Food Research Association Group said: "The devices do indeed save energy. The slightly increased variation in temperatures in dummy loads would indicate that food safety would not be compromised."

Spencer Freedman of Ecube Distribution said about 10,000 of the devices have now been sold, and tests are under way at the Dorchester hotel in London, as well as Asda, GreeneKing IPA, Iceland, Netto and Starbucks. Guy Lamstaes, co-inventor of the device, said heightened concern about climate change had made companies more interested in saving energy. "We tried to market these for years but nobody was interested."

Mr Freedman said the devices would have the biggest impact in the large freezers and open chill cabinets used in the catering and supermarket industries. They do reduce the energy consumption of domestic fridges, but the saving is not so great because the door is not opened very often.

The company is talking to supermarket chains about fitting them to the refrigerated lorries used to ferry chilled and frozen foods.

The company is also about to report the results of trials at a central London pub, which had them fitted to 34 fridges.

Ecube Distribution claims the results will show the brewery could save around £3.5m and 17,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide each year if it used them nationwide.

Energy efficiency is one of the key pillars of a government pledge to save 60% of UK carbon emissions by 2050, which will be made legally binding by the climate change bill announced this week.

http://environment.guardian.co.uk/clima ... 83,00.html
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Caution urged on climate 'risks'

Professors Paul Hardaker and Chris Collier, both Royal Meteorological Society figures, are voicing their concern at a conference in Oxford.

They say some researchers make claims about possible future impacts that cannot be justified by the science.

The pair believe this damages the credibility of all climate scientists.

They think catastrophism and the "Hollywoodisation" of weather and climate only work to create confusion in the public mind.

They argue for a more sober and reasoned explanation of the uncertainties about possible future changes in the Earth's climate.

As an example, they point to a recent statement from one of the foremost US science bodies - the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

The association released a strongly worded statement at its last annual meeting in San Francisco in February which said: "As expected, intensification of droughts, heatwaves, floods, wildfires, and severe storms is occurring, with a mounting toll on vulnerable ecosystems and societies.

"These events are early warning signs of even more devastating damage to come, some of which will be irreversible."

According to Professors Hardaker and Collier, this may well turn out to be true, but convincing evidence to back the claims has not yet emerged.

"It's certainly a very strong statement," Professor Collier told BBC News.

"I suspect it refers to evidence that hurricanes have increased as a result of global warming; but to make the blanket assumption that all extreme events are increasing is a bit too early yet."

Source
 
Jerry_B said:
Caution urged on climate 'risks'

...

Source
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I read this. They're quite right. The whole subject is very complex, so there's no point in scientists jumping ahead of the science.

The bottom line is that the majority of scientists are now pretty sure that human GH gas emissions have a serious effect on Global Warming, but the whole GH Effect system of relationships is so complicated that they can be less sure how it all interacts, so caution would be required in the making of Public statements. Especially considering how the Media can pick up on stuff and make corkscrews out of it in the search for a 'good' story.

No point in starting one too many panics, since the real wolves are out there searching for chinks in the debate that they can leap through with their crap.

Doesn't mean we shouldn't be aiming for zero emission targets, though.
 
from the above link:
"I've no doubt that global warming is occurring, but we don't want to undermine that case by crying wolf."
Click to expand...

Going quite off-thread, but there's another article today using that phrase:
Chief Superintendent Kevin Moore, of Brighton and Hove Police, spoke about Lady Mills McCartney's frequent calls to his force: "We are dutybound to respond, but clearly people who make lots of calls to the police run the risk of being treated as the little boy who cried wolf."
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http://news.independent.co.uk/media/article2362770.ece
 
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/climate_change/article2368999.ece

Global warming is a 'weapon of mass destruction'
Climate experts hit back after being accused of overstating the problem
By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor. Published: 18 March 2007

Global warming is a "weapon of mass destruction", one of Britain and the world's top climatologists said yesterday.

Sir John Houghton, former director-general of the Meteorological Office and chairman of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, entered the debate over the seriousness of climate change after two meteorologists were reported as saying that "some scientists have been guilty of overplaying the available evidence". He said he agreed with the Government's chief scientist, Professor Sir David King, that it posed a greater threat than terrorism.

The comments of the two meteorologists, Professor Paul Hardaker and Professor Chris Collier, both of the Royal Meteorological Society - billed on Radio 4 as "leading experts on climate change" - threatened to revive the row over the scientific view of global warming after the broadcasting of Channel 4's polemic The Great Global Warming Swindle 10 days ago, which took issue with the view set out in Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth.

One of the most distinguished scientists featured in it, the oceanographer Professor Carl Wunsch of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says he has registered a formal complaint with Ofcom.

Sir John says he agrees "we must not exaggerate the evidence, and if anything must underplay it". But he adds the evidence of serious climate change is now "very substantial".

Sceptics charge that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change exaggerates the dangers. But Sir John, as one of the founders of the panel, says that it had "deliberately underestimated the problem".

He says the latest projections of the floods and droughts that will result from the heating of the globe are "frightening". And he adds that the 20,000 deaths caused by the 2003 heatwave in Europe justify the view that it is more dangerous than terrorism.

Some confusion surrounded the views of the RMS scientists yesterday after Prof Hardaker told the IoS that he could not think of a case where a scientist had overstated the position. He did however mention a statement by the American Association for the Advancement of Science that described an "intensification of droughts, heatwaves, floods, wildfires and severe storms" as "early warning signs of yet more devastating damage to come".

He said he did not disagree with any of this, but thought the AAAS should have made it clear what could be justified by the scientific evidence and what was based on judgement. He pointed out that he and his colleague were not experts on climate change.
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Nasa's climate scientists 'gagged by White House'
By Steve Connor, Science Editor
Published: 20 March 2007

James Hansen, the Nasa scientist who first warned the US government about global warming, yesterday delivered a withering critique of the way the White House has "interfered" with climate scientists at the space agency.

Dr Hansen, the director of Nasa's Goddard Institute of Space Studies in New York, said that the space agency's budget for studying the Earth's climate has been slashed and that its scientists have been systematically gagged about speaking of their concerns.

In detailed written testimony delivered yesterday to the US House of Representatives, Dr Hansen said that there had been creeping politicisation of climate change with the effect that the American public has been left confused about the science of global warming.

"During my career I have noticed an increasing politicisation of public affairs at headquarters level, with a notable effect on communication from scientists to the public," Dr Hansen writes in his testimony. "Interference with communication of science to the public has been greater during the current administration than at any time in my career," he says. "In my more than three decades in government, I have never seen anything approaching the degree to which information flow from scientists to the public has been screened and controlled as it has now.

Political appointees within the public affairs office at Nasa headquarters were accused by Dr Hansen of interfering in scientific statements and of blocking reports that link rising temperatures or melting sea ice with global warming. He says instructions and reprimands were often made orally so that there was no paper or electronic record of the interference, which allowed press relations personnel to dismiss gagging allegations as hearsay.

"My suggestion for getting at the truth is to question the relevant participants under oath, including the then Nasa associate administrator for earth sciences, who surely is aware of who in the White House was receiving and reviewing press releases that related to climate change," Dr Hansen says.

When Dr Hansen gave a lecture to the American Geophysical Union about the record global temperatures in 1995, the White House called Nasa headquarters to complain of the resulting media attention. "The upshot was a new explicit set of constraints on me, including the requirement that any media interviews be approved beforehand and that headquarters have the right of first refusal on all interviews," he says.

"It became clear that the new constraints on my communications were going to be a real impediment when I was forced to take down from our website our routine posting of updated global temperature analysis."

Since then, Nasa has slashed its budget for the study of earth sciences.

"The impact is to confuse the public about the reality of global warming, and about whether that warming can be reliably attributed to human-made greenhouse gases," he says.

http://news.independent.co.uk/environme ... 374354.ece
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LIGHTS OUT

Sydney in climate change blackout

Lights have been turned off across Australia's largest city, Sydney, in a hour-long event aimed at raising awareness of global warming.
At 1930 (0930 GMT) the city's skyline dimmed and normally bright landmarks like the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge went dark.

The so-called Earth Hour is supported by the New South Wales government, environmental groups and businesses.

Sydney hopes the event will make a very big statement on climate change.

The city of four million people is aiming to become the first anywhere to achieve a blackout on this scale.

The BBC's Phil Mercer, in Sydney, says by and large Sydney had never been this dark.

He says lights were off in the majority of the central business district's office blocks and large parts of the suburbs were also in darkness.

Co-operation

Greg Bourne of environmental group WWF, one of the driving forces behind Earth Hour, said the big switch off took months to plan.

"The logistics is really quite amazing in the sense every tower block is owned by one company, maybe leased by another company, have 10 tenants in and a manager and working through all of these people has been fantastic."

Many restaurants signed up and planned to serve diners by candlelight.

The owner of the Newtown Hotel, which says it is Australia's oldest gay bar, told the BBC before the blackout that they would have fun while trying to send a serious message.

"Sometimes drag queens [female impersonators] do look better in the dark anyway," said Roger Zee.

"It's up to the patrons. They'll actually have their own torches so they'll be able to light up the drag queens on the stage themselves."

Organisers want to encourage Australians to conserve energy and to think carefully about what they can do to cut pollution.

Every day millions of lights and computers are left on in deserted office blocks as well as in apartments and houses.

Campaigners have said that simply switching them off could reduce Sydney's greenhouse gas emissions by 5% over the next year.

Australia is one of the world's largest per capita producers of carbon dioxide and other gases that many scientists believe are helping to warm the earth's atmosphere.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-p ... 509437.stm
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Sadly, this is not an April Fool joke:
Wars of the world: how global warming puts 60 nations at risk
As scientists deliver a detailed report on the impact of climate change this week, an 'IoS' investigation shows it will spark a major rise in conflicts
By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor
Published: 01 April 2007

Scores of countries face war for scarce land, food and water as global warming increases. This is the conclusion of the most devastating report yet on the effects of climate change that scientists and governments prepare to issue this week.

More than 60 nations, mainly in the Third World, will have existing tensions hugely exacerbated by the struggle for ever-scarcer resources. Others now at peace - including China, the United States and even parts of Europe - are expected to be plunged into conflict. Even those not directly affected will be threatened by a flood of hundreds of millions of "environmental refugees".

The threat is worrying world leaders. The new UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, told a global warming conference last month: "In coming decades, changes in the environment - and the resulting upheavals, from droughts to inundated coastal areas - are likely to become a major driver of war and conflict."

Margaret Beckett, the Foreign Secretary, has repeatedly called global warming "a security issue" and a Pentagon report concluded that abrupt climate change could lead to "skirmishes, battles and even war due to resource constraints".

The fears will be increased by the second report this year by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The result of six years' work by 2,500 of the world's top scientists, it will be published on Good Friday.

The first report, released two months ago, concluded that global warming was now "unequivocal" and it was 90 per cent certain that human activities are to blame. The new one will be the first to show for certain that its effects are already becoming evident around the world.

Tomorrow, representatives of the world's governments will meet in Brussels to start four days of negotiation on the ultimate text of the report, which they are likely to tone down somewhat.

But the final confidential draft presented to them by the scientists makes it clear that the consequences of global warming are appearing far sooner and faster than expected. "Changes in climate are now affecting biological and physical systems on every continent," it says.

In 20 years, tens of millions more Latin Americans and hundreds of millions more Africans will be short of water, and by 2050 one billion Asians could face water shortages. The glaciers of the Himalayas, which feed the great rivers of the continent, are likely to melt away almost completely by 2035, threatening the lives of 700 million people.

Though harvests will initially increase in temperate countries - as the extra warmth lengthens growing seasons - they could fall by 30 per cent in India, confronting 130 million people with starvation, by the 2050s.

By 2080, 100 million people could be flooded out of their homes every year as the sea rises to cover their land, turning them into environmental refugees. And up to a third of the world's wild species could be "at high risk of irreversible extinction" from even relatively moderate warming.

International Alert, "an independent peace-building organisation", has complied a list of 61 countries that are already unstable or have recently suffered armed conflict where existing tensions will be exacerbated by shortages of food and water and by the disease, storm flooding and sea-level rise that will accompany global warming, or by the deforestation that helps to cause it. The list forms the basis of the map on the opposite page.

Four years ago the Pentagon report concluded: "As famine, disease and weather-related disasters strike... many countries' needs will exceed their carrying capacity. This will create a sense of desperation, which is likely to lead to offensive aggression."

Many experts believe this has begun. Last year John Reid, the Home Secretary, blamed global warming for helping to cause the genocide in Darfur. Water supplies are seen as a key cause of the Arab-Israeli conflicts. The Golan Heights are important because they control key springs and rivers and the Sea of Galilee, while vital aquifers lie under the West Bank.

John Ashton, the Government's climate change envoy, says that global warming should be addressed "not as a long-term threat to our environment, but as an immediate threat to our security and prosperity".

http://news.independent.co.uk/environme ... 411376.ece
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Looks like the guys in the green hats are gaining ground:
Blow for Bush as Supreme Court clears way for action on pollution
JAMES VICINI AND PETE YOST IN WASHINGTON

THE United States' Supreme Court yesterday issued two landmark rulings paving the way for a major crackdown on pollution from vehicles and power stations.

In a defeat for the Bush administration, the Court ruled by five votes to four that the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had the power under clean air laws to regulate greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming.

It said the agency "has offered no reasoned explanation" for its refusal to regulate carbon dioxide and other emissions from new cars and trucks that contribute to climate change.

The ruling came in one of the most important environmental cases to reach the Supreme Court in decades and was the first high court decision in a case involving global warming.

In a separate decision, the Supreme Court gave a boost to a federal clean air initiative aimed at forcing power companies to install pollution control equipment on coal-fired power plants.

In a unanimous decision, the judges ruled against the Duke Energy Corporation in a case brought by the Clinton administration.

Most companies settled out of court with the government, but rulings affecting more than two dozen power plants in the South and the midwest are still pending. The remaining lawsuits demand fines for past pollution that if levied in full would run into billions of dollars.

In the first case, Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the Court majority, rejected the Bush administration's argument that it lacked the power to regulate such emissions.

He said the EPA's decision was "arbitrary, capricious or otherwise not in accordance with law".

The decision effectively ordered the federal government to take a fresh look at regulating carbon dioxide emissions from cars.

The Bush administration has consistently rejected capping greenhouse gas emissions as bad for business and US workers.

Lawyers for EPA, in arguments before the court last year, said the new regulations could hurt the economy because 85 per cent of the US economy is tied to sources of greenhouse gas emissions.

The court's four most conservative members - Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, both appointees of President George Bush, and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas - all dissented from the ruling.

Chris Miller, the director of the global warming campaign for Greenpeace, one of the environmental groups that sued the EPA, said the policies of the Bush administration were set to change.

"In many ways, the debate has moved beyond this," he said. "All the front-runners in the 2008 presidential campaign, both Democrats and Republicans, even the business community, are much further along on this than the Bush administration is."

Responding to the decision, the US car industry called for an economy-wide approach to global warming.

The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, an industry trade group representing General Motors, Ford and other American car companies, said that "there needs to be a national, federal, economy-wide approach to addressing greenhouse gases".

In the power stations case, the court over-ruled a lower court's decision that implicitly invalidated 1980 EPA regulations designed to force an emissions clean-up, interpreting them in a way that favoured Duke Energy.

The enforcement programme is aimed at reducing power plant emissions of nitrogen oxide and sulphur dioxide that contribute to smog and acid rain.

PLEA TO US ON CLIMATE
THE European Union's top environment official criticised the United States and Australia yesterday for not doing enough to cut carbon dioxide emissions.

The US should end its "negative attitude" to international talks on a new climate change pact to reduce emissions, the EU's environment commissioner, Stavros Dimas, said in Brussels at the start of a United Nations summit on global warming. "It is absolutely necessary [that the US] move because otherwise, other countries, especially the less developed countries, do not have any reason to move," he said.

http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=511142007
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Climate change warning for Sydney
By Nick Bryant
BBC News, Sydney

A report on the effects of climate change in Australia paints an alarming picture of life in the city of Sydney.

It warns that if residents do not cut water consumption by more than 50% over the next 20 years, the city will become unsustainable.

The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation report also warns that temperatures could rise 5C above the predicted global average.

This would leave the city facing an almost permanent state of drought.

Rise in heat-related deaths

With its spectacular harbour and beautiful suburban beaches, Sydney is often portrayed as one of the most desirable cities to live in.

But this report paints a disturbing picture of how life here could be completely transformed by the year 2070, if climate change goes unchecked.

It warns of severe droughts nine out of every 10 years, a dramatic rise in the number of bush fires, and freak storm surges which could devastate the coastline.

Scientists predict that rainfall will fall by 40% by 2070, not only creating a massive water crisis, but producing double the number of bush fires.

Heat-related deaths would soar from a current average of 176 a year to 1,300.

Sydney would come to resemble the harsh, dry and inhospitable conditions of remote inland towns.

The government of New South Wales, which commissioned the report, has been alarmed by its findings.

The state premier called it a doomsday scenario, but one which the city and country had to confront.

Along with America, Australia has refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol, the only two major industrialised nations to do so.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-p ... 315885.stm
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Forget the palm trees - now America and Australia are beginning to see the grimmer side of global warming:
US braces for global warring
Email Print Normal font Large font Tom Allard, Mark Forbes and agencies
April 10, 2007

THE United States fears climate change could trigger new humanitarian crises and force countries to go to war over diminishing water and energy resources.

American politicians are so concerned about the threats posed by the effects of global warming, they are legislating to elevate it to an official defence issue, with the CIA and the Pentagon required to assess the national security implications of climate change.

Australia has also signalled its intention to broaden its treatment of the issue from one that is just environmental to one that draws on expertise from all arms of government, including defence and intelligence.

In Jakarta yesterday, the Environment Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, said Australia would use its spy satellites to monitor illegal logging in Indonesia as part of a push to ban or confiscate furniture and other products made from logs harvested illegally overseas.

Already, Australia's leading intelligence agency, the Office of National Assessments, is conducting its own detailed study on the security implications of climate change. The research began late last year.

The US proposal, which its sponsors expect to pass through Congress with wide support, calls for the director of national intelligence to conduct the first-ever "national intelligence estimate" on global warming.

The effort would include pinpointing the regions at highest risk of humanitarian suffering, and assessing the likelihood of wars erupting over diminishing water and other resources.

The measure would also order the Pentagon to undertake a series of war games to determine how global climate change could affect US security, including "direct physical threats to the US posed by extreme weather events such as hurricanes".

Experts say the increasing focus on global warming as a security issue could open new avenues of support for tougher efforts to limit greenhouse gases.

"If you get the intelligence community to apply some of its analytic capabilities to this issue, it could be compelling to whoever is sitting in the White House," said Anne Harrington, director of the committee on international security at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington. "If the White House does not absorb the independent scientific expertise, then maybe something from the intelligence community might have more weight."

The global warming intelligence assessment would identify where nations or ethnic groups were most likely to fight over resources; where large migrations of victims would occur; how warming would affect global food supplies; and the increased risks of infectious disease.

The Australian initiative by the ONA - undertaken with other intelligence agencies - is understood to have proceeded slowly, and is some time from completion. It does not have the scope of the proposed US national intelligence estimate.

Graeme Pearman, a climate change expert from Monash University, said security had to be looked at in a broad sense, "the security of food, the security of water and fuel, the possibility of invasive species destroying our productive ecosystem".

In Jakarta, Mr Turnbull's Indonesian counterpart, Rachmat Witoelar, said Indonesia would be happy to use information "from sophisticated surveillance methods that Australia can provide and … we really want to know where and who, so I would welcome this data sharing".

He said shops and manufacturers should not buy wood suspected of coming from illegal logging in Indonesia. Consumers should reject any suspect wood and the Australian Government should make greater efforts to combat the trade, he said.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/us-bra ... 24092.html
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You wait, the climate change rap will be next!

Schwarzenegger: Make climate hip

The environmental movement must become "hip and sexy" if it is to succeed, California's Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has said.
Speaking at a conference in Washington, he urged campaigners to focus on the positives of cutting carbon emissions rather than making people feel guilty.

The movement must change its image just as he helped transform the "sketchy" reputation of bodybuilding, he said.

California is seen as leading the way in tackling climate change in the US.

The state - the sixth largest economy in the world - signed a law last year which set a target of cutting its greenhouse gas emissions by 25% by 2020.

And while Mr Schwarzenegger cannot stand for president in 2008 because he is not US-born, he has made it clear he wants his views on climate change to play into the race.

'Tree-huggers'

Addressing a largely student audience at Georgetown University, Mr Schwarzenegger said he was optimistic attitudes to the environment were changing.

But, he said, campaigners on climate change needed to shake off the image of being "tree-huggers" and "fanatics".

"Environmentalists were no fun, they were like prohibitionists at a fraternity party," he said to laughter.

The Republican governor - the former body-builder turned film-star turned politician - invoked images of pumping iron to make his point.

Weight-lifting was once considered a pursuit for weirdos, he said, carried out in dungeon-like gyms by people embarrassed to admit to doing it.

But with positive marketing "it became mainstream, it became sexy, attractive, and this is exactly what has to happen with the environmental movement", he said.

The same thing happened when the John Travolta film Saturday Night Fever made disco-dancing hip and sexy, he added, reaching even his little village in Austria.

'Muscle cars'

Mr Schwarzenegger, who has been criticised in the past over his fleet of Hummers, pointed out that his vehicles now run on bio-fuel and hydrogen.

"We don't really want to go and take away the 'muscle' cars, the Hummers and the SUVs, because that's a formula for failure," he said.

"What we have to do is make those cars more environmentally muscular."

He rebuffed criticism from US carmakers, saying the fact they had to meet Californian standards on vehicle emissions would ensure they kept up with foreign competitors.

And he urged campaigners to move away from using guilt to pressure people over greenhouse gas emissions.

"Successful movements aren't built on guilt, they are built on passion," he said.

He believes the environmental movement is approaching a "tipping point" where it will enter the mainstream, galvanising business and individuals.

And California is leading the way, Mr Schwarzenegger said, especially as Republicans and Democrats are working together to pass pioneering legislation on the environment.

"California is big, it's powerful and what we do in California has unbelievable impact and it has consequences," he said.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6546975.stm
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The Telegraph's Matt makes a typical ironic point with today's cartoon:

A woman is reading a paper with 'Climate Change' as the headline.
On TV, a grumpy-looking weatherman says:

"It's going to be hot and sunny - I hope you're all ashamed of yourselves."

:D :D :D
 
Oh, to be in England, now that April’s just like June
Lewis Smith, Environment Reporter

Spring may still be with us but summer weather is predicted for this weekend, when temperatures are likely to reach 28C (82.4F).

April is likely to be the hottest on record, the Met Office said yesterday, with little sign of the warm spell coming to an end. Sunshine and clear skies are expected for much of Britain today and tomorrow and the weather is forecast to become even drier.

Conditions are expected to be so warm that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has issued its first summer smog warning. The risk of pollution from low-level ozone clouds formed by the reaction to sunlight of nitrogen dioxide and other substances will be high across England and Wales.

Only the east coast farther north than the Humber is likely to experience cloud, fog and cool weather this weekend. The rest of the country is expected to be warmer than usual, especially in the Midlands and the South, though sporadic rainstorms could creep in from the South Coast.

Barry Grommet, of the Met Office, said: “I would expect it to be very hot in the Cotswolds and I am sure the beaches in Brighton and Bournemouth will be packed. Generally, it will be around 23C across England and Wales. It could well be as hot as 28C late on Sunday or Monday in London, the South East, the West Midlands or Wales.

“The northeastern coastal areas will not enjoy such good weather because there is high pressure over Scandinavia and the northern North Sea, which is bringing easterly winds and sea fog. But inland and in the South East and West, there will be highs of around 25C on Saturday, rising through Sunday and Monday.”

Figures released by the Met Office showed that, up until Wednesday, the month had been the warmest in 348 years of records. Mr Grommet said: “The April average is already half a degree above the current record and the weekend is going to be very hot. April 2007 is going to set several records.”

The expected average temperature for the month is 11.1C, beating the record of 10.6C set in 1865, according to the Central England Temperature (CET) records that date back to 1659. The average for the 12 months up to this month stands at 11.6C, exceeding the 11.1C record set in the 12 months up to October 1995.

The warming trend since the 1980s is consistent with predictions of climate change. Debbie Hemming, climate scientist at the Met Office Hadley Centre, said: “The effects of temperature rise are being experienced on a global scale.”

April was one of the driest in Britain since rainfall records began in 1914. The month has been drier in only three years. Only 24.6mm (1 in) had been recorded on average across Britain by Wednesday, compared with 14.1mm in 1938, 14.4mm in 1974, 17.8mm in 1980, and 27.5mm in 1984. This year the Met Office said that there was a 70 per cent chance that the average temperature between July and August would be above 14.1C. That would make it the ninth consecutive year that the season has been hotter than usual.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/w ... 717361.ece
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Well the Russians are too rich on carbon to change, the US thinks it's a new chance to make money and the Chinese and the Indians think they've got enough folk to ride out the "change" so I can't see any change of policy re the subjugation of the Earth to Oil. :? :? :cry: :cry:
 
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