July 16th, 2009 | Climate Change, Government Action, International Action
Sunny and Warm, with Scattered Deaths - it’s the Future (Honest!)
“And now for the weather. The 2020s are looking warm and dry, with occasional heavy winter showers. The 2050s should be sunny and warm, with scattered deaths due to heatwaves across London and the south-east. And looking ahead to the 2080s, temperatures could reach 41C, so be sure to pack the suncream for your picnic. And watch out for those great white sharks!” So writes David Adam in last month’s Guardian, as the government released more detailed information about the future we have already dealt ourselves.
What of the present? Local Farmer John Henderson MBE (congratulations, Mr H), writing in the Parish Mag, says “Rainfall at East Wall during May was 56.5mm, approx 2.26 inches. This was low when compared with the last five years average which was 82.8mm, about 3.31 inches. We are still in a situation of soil moisture deficit”. And for what it’s worth, in the 70s our strawberries were weeks away from harvesting when Wimbledon was on, whereas this year they were almost past it. Doesn’t prove anything, we know, but it’s another straw in the wind…
What are we going to do about it? Paul Bettison, chair of the environment board at the Local Government Association, says, “We need to start encouraging people to plan for the future…Simply building in dirty great air conditioning units is not the answer.”
At the risk of frightening you even more, in the last two years the scientific view is that emissions, atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, global temperatures and sea levels are all rising faster than the worst case scenarios explored by the IPCC in 2007, and the feared planetary bio-feedbacks such as methane from melting permafrost look like they have now begun to kick in - meaning the ‘tipping point’ to runaway, irreversible warming may be much closer than we’d thought. (more)
But..The Good News..
..is that the Isle of Wight and Scotland have committed themselves to serious carbon reduction. Click on each to find out more.
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Did you link to the wrong article when you risked frightening us even more? That AFP article doesn’t say that ‘emissions, atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, global temperatures and sea levels are all rising faster than the worst case scenarios explored by the IPCC in 2007′. It says that ‘greenhouse gas emissions and other climate indicators are at or near the upper boundaries forecast by the IPCC’ in 2007 (AR4). That is, some indicators - not including surface temperature, which is nowhere near the upper boundary - are said to be approaching or crossing the limits of AR4’s worst-case projections but haven’t exceeded them, so they can’t have risen faster than feared.*
If you’re a True Believer, that might seem like a mere logic-chopper’s quibble. Where is the harm in slightly overstating the science when faced by such a nightmarish threat? Well, it’s because misrepresentations like these are so widespread (TV and the newspapers are even worse than blogs in some ways) that so many of us are so sceptical about the nightmare. Please be more careful in future. It takes a lot of time and costs a lot of brain-ache to verify such claims. It would be more efficient in every way (including CO2 emissions) if proper checks were done by the people who make claims about climate change rather than by those of us who read them.
Regards
MW
*There’s more but I want to keep this as brief as possible, so I won’t go into the AFP article’s misrepresentation of the report it reported on, or the misrepresented report’s own misrepresentations of itself, the Copenhagen conference and the current science. Details on request. Also why the MIT study mentioned in the AFP article is irrelevant. And UKCP09. And recent rainfall in Shropshire. And another thing … I shouldn’t have to say this but: I’m not a ‘denier’.
The disturbing thing about all the information available on Climate Change is that there are still far too many people not taking the facts seriously however they are interpreted (and thanks to MW for adding to the discussion.) You only have to look at the number of newly registered gas guzzling cars on our streets emitting over 300 grammes of CO2 per Km. Have the owners even given a thought to the kind of message that gives.
Thankfully increasing numbers of residents in the Strettons are beginning to THINK about the consequences of their actions are are striving to live a lower carbon lifestyle. It’s not us who will suffer but future generations. Well done to St. Lawrence’s church for organising a family awareness raising afternoon and playing the Carbon Counting game.
Keep up the good work Stretton Climate Care - you are making a difference.