It looks as though people are waking up.

I’m not confusing Global Warming with Climate Change but who could blame me if I did.
The media doesn’t seem to known the difference.

Nor am I confusing the natural cycle of  climate change with any man-made change.
Dispite the inability of the media to differenciate

Nor indeed am I confusingshort term with long term change.
Again something that appears to confuse media.

But look at this ‘media’ report from the BBC. Climate scepticism ‘on the rise’ (news.bbc.co.uk)
Now it looks as if both the media and the public are waking up!

Perhaps it’s because of the publication of false claims by the IPCC
(Read: The IPCC’s problems have been compounded by its imperious attitude (guardian.co.uk)

Perhaps it was the hacked emails scandal:
(Read: Leaked climate change emails scientist ‘hid’ data flaws. ) (guardian.co.uk)

Whatever the reason, it put a smile on my face!

What a dilemma for the media.  On the one hand we have the farcical Copenhagen Climate Conference struggling to establish what to believe, who to believe, who to blame, what to charge, what capital can be made and who should take the credit.

On the other hand we have ‘Extreme’ weather conditions being experienced in the UK at the moment.  Extreme my arse!

Wikipedia defines Extreme weather as: “Extreme weather includes weather phenomena that are at the extremes of the historical distribution, especially severe or unseasonal weather.”  The met office define it as: well nothing really.  It is a term they use when talking about the ‘extreme’ of any weather over a given period.  So, the extreme was 2″ of rainfall in Manchester and 0″ in Cardiff today.  It is not a measure to describe either good or bad weather.  The Met Office use the term ‘Severe’ for that.

The lowest recorded temperature in the UK was  -27.2C in 1895 Braemar (Aberdeenshire);  in England, -26.1C 1982, Newport (Shropshire).

So what have we?  It is 20th December, next week is the shortest day of the year, (does that make it an ‘extreme’ day?), The white stuff falling out of the sky is called ‘snow’ and there’s a severe weather warning which says, “Heavy snow showers may give accumulations of 2 to 5cm and there is a risk of 10 to 15cm over hills.”  For the sake of the BBC, ITV and Sky, that’s NOT extreme.

Classic quote from the ‘outside’ weather girl as I write, “There has been 20cm of snow, that’s 8 inches, and if you look behind me you can see just how deep that is!”  Actually you could. It was just about reaching the top of the kerb on the road.  Big Deal!

How do we react?  We close schools, we close airports, we cancel trains, close the channel tunnel and park up on motorways.

Then again, it did come as a complete surprise didn’t it.  I mean, who ever heard of snow at Christmas, (sorry, Winterfest)?

How appropriate that they use products of a computer’s fictitious modelling, (CGI), to illustrate the product of a computer’s fictitious modelling, (CO2).

YouTube DirektPlane Stupid...

Scepticism as an attitude is much preferable than gullibility.  Unfortunately, it is the trend these days to condemn those that push scepticism too far.  By ‘too far’ I am referring to actually seeking the facts and potentially thereby, the truth.

Deforestation in the Amazon (Click to enlarge)

A sceptical attitude towards ‘man-made global warming’ is likely to result in the sceptic being banished from any establishment he voices his doubts to and banished from the company to whom those doubt were proffered.  There is a high likelihood that he will be labelled a ‘denialist’, nasty in that it conjures up the image of a fanatic denying the holocaust.  Grossly unfair that the two should be so linked, not least because the holocaust actually happened.  The destruction of the earth by man-made global warming hasn’t happened yet.

So now, at the risk of being accused of heresy, I think it is about time that we (mankind) need to clarify a few points.  Let’s get this out of the way now; I’m not denying that climate change is happening.  Indeed, there would be something seriously wrong if it wasn’t.  It is changing constantly and has done for millions of years, hotter and colder, different atmospheres made up of changing gases and chemicals, at differing rates of change, some very slowly, some very quickly indeed and for a multitude of reasons.  It is this last bit that concerns me most.  Popular thinking has it that this latest change is a direct result of man.  It is specifically the extent of the change that is attributed that I question (note that I say question, not deny).  Furthermore, it is what it is that contributes to the change that needs full clarification.

Paving Paradise...

Before I go on, let’s understand why that is important.  It is important because if we concentrate all effort in resolving a problem that isn’t as big as we think it is, then the real cause persists and we do no good at all.  In very simplistic terms it is generally assumed that CO2 emission is a major contributing factor but we hear little of the one thing that can reverse this entropy, forestation, it ‘eats’ carbon dioxide.  So what do we do?  We produce ‘bio fuel’ to propel our vehicles.   We remove vast swathes of irreplaceable forests.  These vast storehouses of carbon are quite often burned, releasing huge amounts of stored carbon.  The land is then left to rot in preparation for the planting of bio-fuels.   Unfortunately, this rotting process further releases a noxious cocktail of other harmful gases.  We then produce plants that are then processed (more wasted energy), into fuel which is burned (releasing more carbon), to propel our vehicles.   In theory,  if you chopped down the Amazon, turned it into a car park, and burned the wood in a power plant, that would be treated as a carbon-emissions reduction strategy.  Now, who the hell thought that was a good idea?

But I digress; my issue is that we have the eye on the wrong ball.  What’s more is that there is a body that keeps our eye on the wrong ball, the IPCC, (The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change).  However, I have a lot of  with the IPPC.

Firstly, the stated aims of the IPCC are to assess scientific information relevant to:
1. Human-induced climate change,
2. The impacts of human-induced climate change,
3. Options for adaptation and mitigation.

It is NOT a primary objective of theirs to establish what the causes of Climate Change are and it is NOT their job to apportion responsibility.   Their job is to report with reference to “human-induced change”.  My first criticism therefore is precisely what I keep banging on about.  If everybody is focusing on human-induced change, then it loses focus on the wider picture and misses what I believe is more important.  That change is inevitable and not possible to avoid.  We should therefore be looking at how to deal with that.

My second criticism is as I have said earlier, that focus is always given to the effects of Carbon emission when other factors have greater impact, Water Vapour for example has a far greater impact and we are not looking at any way of offsetting the effects of that.  Furthermore, the myopic attention to man’s CO2 emissions attract far greater attention than the effects of deforestation, much more dangerous.  Read a bit about these guys who I share my scepticism with: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Petition

My third criticism is the membership makeup of the IPCC. If you look at any list, for example,  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_authors_from_Climate_Change_2007:_The_Physical_Science_Basis), following the links to individuals soon reveals a pattern that suggests that the IPCC membership is largely made up of those who support the theory that man is responsible for sufficient carbon emission to warrant the mainstream of research into climate warming.  They are NOT objective but merely supporting the theory and not challenging it.  Indeed, for many, to challenge and find fault, it would be contrary to their espoused position and would be embarrassing.  For others, it would prove a financial problem.

It’s not a good basis on which to found the largest body of scientists looking at the problem.  They are all pointing in the same direction and not necessarily the right one.  Not necessarily the wrong one either, but I and many others are not convinced that the science is sufficiently robust and it is too dangerous to ignore the other factors.