CLIMATE CHANGE AND GLOBAL WARMING

[Tizer]

...and he'll probably say our Met Office is pushing fake news in this latest report:
`Climate change: UK summers could be over 5C warmer by 2070' LINK

[Stanley]

I saw that as well Tiz. What struck me was that the TV reporter was stood with the Thames Barrier in the background and he said something to the effect that London would be all right because it was protected by the barrier. I seem to remember forecasts that immediate modifications are needed to the barrier as it was not designed to cope with the sea level rise now confidently predicted......
We have seen over-complacency in the past, could we be looking at it now in this touching faith in the barrier?

[PanBiker]

What about the height of the banking on the whole approach to the barrier, water can and will go round.

[Tizer]

I didn't see the TV version but if the reporter said that he's got his facts badly wrong. The barrier getting to the end of its effective life due to rising tidal levels. Ian's right too, it's not just the barrier, all the low lying land along estuaries will be subject to flooding at high tides and eventually will be flooded permanently. Another factor about barriers is that it isn't only the risk of high tides over-topping them. As mean sea level rises the tides cause more damage to barriers, embankments, promenades etc and there will be more failures and shortened barrier lives.

On a related topic...I've often mentioned the danger from giant dams around the world and the Three Gorges Dam in China on the Yangtse River is quoted as the biggest. On reading further I find that although most searches for `largest dam' come up with the Three Gorges it all depends on what measure you use. These two Wikipedia articles ( Largest and tallest ) show that there are many dams around the world that are even bigger, for example in water capacity or in height, than the Three Gorges. What prompted me to look was that I heard on the radio that a new dam is planned which is said to be much bigger than that Chinese one but I didn't catch the location - it might have been India or Indonesia.

Meanwhile, more concerns about the climate...
`Climate change: CO2 emissions rising for first time in four years' LINK
`Strong chance of a new El Niño forming by early 2019' El Nino

[Stanley]

I saw it Tiz and he definitely said that about the barrier.
All very pertinent links there Tiz and I share your concern. There would appear to be no good news on ether climate change or the dams..... That's unless you believe Trump in which case, no worries. It's all a Cunning Chinese Plot to undermine America!

[Tizer]

This was in 2013...
`Thames Barrier engineer says second defence needed' LINK

And in this article from 2014 LINK there is this: `Finally, the existing barrier could be converted to include locks, which could open and close more flexibly and extend the life of the defences. The EA report says a decision on a new barrier will have to be made by 2050. It may turn out that there’s a more pressing reason to spend. The EA says 50 is the maximum number of times the barrier should close each year, and beyond that, the barrier could start to fail. The Environment Agency says: “Reaching this figure will mean we will need to intervene and improve the tidal defence system”. 2013/14 has seen more than 40 closures.'

[PanBiker]

Second defence, abandon London and move Government (Palace of Westminster is sinking anyway) to the centre of the country along with the financial institutions, job done.

[Tizer]

Does that mean moving them to Barlick?

[PanBiker]

600ft ASL no river nearby, it will take along time before the rise in tides gets to us.

[Stanley]

Ian, sometime back in the late 1970s there was a plan mooted to establish a national administrative centre outside London. The spot they picked was on Rocking Stones on the M62 to the East of Rochdale. The major factor in the choice of the site was the fact that more people live within a 90 minute car journey of this area than anywhere else in Britain. Then someone went 'Up North' and had a look at the site......that kiboshed it!
You're right about Barlick and flooding. The advantage is not only because we are immune to sea level rise but the fact we are on a watershed between the Aire and Ribble Basins and so don't have to deal with water coming in from anyone else, by far the greatest danger. On the contrary, we send our rainfall down to others!
Tiz had many years of this experience living on the Somerset Levels where they had exactly that problem, dealing with incoming water with no adequate fall in the watercourses.

[Tizer]

...and yet the only times we were in danger of our house being flooded where when a road drain blocked just along the lane and only slightly elevated above us, and when we had one of the EA's 1 in 100 rainfall events and I had to dig a shallow trench to divert the run-off from the field behind us, again only slightly elevated above us. We could have had the same experience at the top of a hill. You're not immune to flooding anywhere. Springs will pop out water from ground that's only a foot higher and if that ground covers a large area they can disgorge a surprisingly large amount of water.

Another example of a country raiding another country for its resources, this time India and Australia...
`Carmichael project: Visiting Australia's controversial Adani mine' Adani
Note this bit: `Those who oppose it, including climate scientists, say that if the mines are opened up, the world "better bid goodbye to the Paris Agreement commitment to hold temperature rise to 2C". But supporters say it's good for the economy and accuse protesters of being "deep-pocketed left-wing activists hell-bent on feeding lies."
That final comment is what we're up against.

[Tripps]

I'd say this is worth a look Climate Change Act

[Tizer]

If the author, Harry Wilkinson, is trying to tell us that the politicians are making a poor job of countering climate change then I will agree with him. But I would be more convinced of his motivations if he had expressed a believe that climate change is really happening, we are causing it and we need to do something to stop it. Unfortunately he's unlikely to show any signs of such a belief - he is a researcher at Nigel Lawson's climate science denial campaign group, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF).

I'd say this is worth a look DeSmog

[Pluggy]

I'd say this is worth a look Climate Change Act

Sheek, makes the Daily Mail look left wing. Very reminiscent of the hardline religious right republican rags in the states. Conspiracies coming out of their ears.

[Stanley]

You're right about local flooding caused by defective drainage in high rainfall events Tiz. We have had them in Barlick.
What I have just posted in 'We Are What We Eat' on fundamentalist views is just as applicable to climate change and just as dangerous.

[Stanley]

See THIS report from the climate change conference in Poland which suggests that present estimates of CO2 in the atmosphere are perhaps optimistic. If this is true it means we have less time than we thought.

[Tizer]

`Trump's environmental rollback rolls on' LINK
`... the EPA also pressed ahead on Thursday with a plan to lift restrictions for carbon emissions from new coal plants. Only two new plants are currently expected to open over the next four years, according to Reuters news agency, but the policy changes could spur more to be built. The plan would allow new coal plants to emit up to 1,900lb (862kg) of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour of electricity, replacing the current limit of 1,400lb....The Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School is tracking the Trump administration's rollback of environmental regulations. Its running list currently has more than 100 entries. The Sabin Center notes repeated attempts by Department of the Interior and other agencies to expand onshore oil and gas drilling, including on public lands. It also points to repeated proposals to weaken regulations controlling emissions of methane - a highly potent greenhouse gas.'

`Romany Webb, senior fellow at the Sabin Center, cited three other far-reaching measures taken by this administration so far.
1. The EPA and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) unveiled a proposal in August this year to weaken greenhouse gas emission and fuel economy standards for light-duty vehicles. The proposal would increase vehicle emissions by approximately 713 million metric tons of carbon dioxide
2. Also in August, the EPA proposed to replace and water down the Clean Power Plan, a central plank of the Obama administration's Climate Action Plan, which aimed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants by 30%
3. In January this year, the Department of the Interior proposed to make over 90% of the outer continental shelf available for future oil and gas development. Some 94% of the outer continental shelf was previously off limits to drilling.'

[Stanley]

As EPA comes to mean Emissions Promotion Agency I wonder what the public servants tasked to implement the roll back think as they are following instructions? Some of them at least must be believers in the need for control and elimination, not facilitating emissions.
Time for a backlash?

[Tizer]

The US, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have refused to welcome the latest climate report...
`Climate change: COP24 fails to adopt key scientific report' LINK
It's bizarre to find the US and Russia as joint `enemy' against most of the rest of the world on something as serious as climate change. Perhaps when trump said the EU was an enemy of the US he wasn't joking; and he does have a love affair with Putin too.

[Stanley]

Can you imagine anything more short-sighted? I heard that report as well and it reinforces my (pessimistic) belief that we are all doomed!

[Stanley]

Read THIS and weep..... No such thing as climate change? Never underestimate the capacity of the human race to be totally bloody stupid! Now we are driving the Reindeer and Caribou into extinction......

[Stanley]

Have a look at THIS BBC report of a successful conclusion to the conference in Katowice. Of course there are people saying immediately that the new rule book seeking to give teeth to the Paris Agreement doesn't go far enough but that's to be expected. What is important that this is a concerted move towards doing something concrete about climate change and is as good as could be expected given the blind opposition to the very concept by such important countries. When do the miscreants wake up to the fact that they are wrong to argue against these measures?

[Tripps]

Well done the UN at Katowice - gallantly staying on for an extra day in order to agree a form of words. Two hundred nations represented ( quite a few not) - so perhaps two thousand delegates and support staff - I wouldn't have thought there were that many five star hotel rooms in the town. The conference seems to have been sponsored by the local coal industry - some good colliery bands in evidence.

Carbon Credit trading getting a rare mention - described on the BBC this morning as the 2018 equivalent of medieval papal indulgences. Some of the scams involved were briefly mentioned. I believe Chris Huhne is in the game now that he has completed his prison sentence.

I knew it was a scam when I heard a piece on the BBC a few years ago about an Indian guy who had found a new way to do Hindu funeral pyres using a lot less wood. Jolly good I thought that'll save some wood - he then said he had been to London to register his scheme for carbon offset trading.

Show me as sceptical (again).

[Tizer]

I hate carbon trading, it's just a cop out for businesses and governments to avoid doing the right thing. It's akin to saying `If I don't pollute your streets then my mate can do it instead'.

[Stanley]

Think the Irish 'Cash for Ash' scandal. There are no easy fixes!!