CLIMATE CHANGE AND GLOBAL WARMING

[Tripps]

I am not confused.

[Stanley]

I am! But leaving that aside.... I asked my mate Martha in Minnesota if she had been bothered by the tornadoes and she tells me that they have all passed to the South which is unusual in Northfield. The jet stream winds have shifted south and taken the cells with them....

[Tizer]

Energy secretary Ed Davey agreed that there is no evidence climate change has resulted in an increase of tropical storms.

All depends what you mean by "an increase of tropical storms". The Independent's story says:
"Mr Davey said on the same programme that climate change had increased the intensity of the damage caused by typhoons, but there was no evidence that they had increased in frequency. Mr Davey said: `Sea levels are rising, that’s a fact. And that’s happening because of climate change. The higher sea-level islands that they have in the Philippines are far more vulnerable to these typhoons than they used to be. That’s the danger of climate change. It’s making these areas far more vulnerable which is why these disasters are on a scale we’ve never seen before.' "

As for Lawson, he just cherry picks and says whatever he wants, b*gger the evidence.

[Stanley]

Meanwhile the severity of events increases no matter what the pros and cons are.....

[hartley353]

This week in 1935, The british isles became very wet in the middle as well as around the edges, practically every low-lying place in the country was under water. Amateur Photographer saw this as an opportunity for its readers to find Photo opportunities. No one mentioned climate change.

[Stanley]

I'll bet they didn't mention Hitler either. So what?

[hartley353]

No they didn't mention Hitler in this particular topic. Each week they print a snippet from past issues, it struck me that folks looked at things differently in those days, a bit of bad weather didn't become a doomsday scenario at the keyboard of a blnkered scientist.

[Bruff]

Interestingly, 'blinkered' scientists (albeit not at keyboards) developed nylon and the first plastics in 1935. Quite a landmark as it allows folk 70-odd years later to traduce the discipline on plastic keyboards.

Richard Broughton

[Stanley]

And allowed plastic intra-ocular replacement lens to be made like the ones that have restored my vision. Quite the opposite of blinkered! I suppose some people might have the courage of their convictions, refuse the products of blinkered science and have the bottle-bottom glasses that used to be the 'natural' consequence of cataract removal.... Not for me thanks, I'll go with the wonderful advance that has given me fighter pilot vision again!

[hartley353]

By the word blinkered I mean that these are not free thinkers they are clones formed by an education system that produces many of the same thing, when they do have successes it is usualy by accident rather than intent. They operate as monkeys and type writers, if there are enough of them one may do something useful. Bruff makes an anology with the computer keyboard coming from the development of plastics, from this development came the saying, that if you put rubbish into a computer rubbish will come out, this is self evident in the products of our universities.

[Stanley]

"They operate as monkeys and type writers, if there are enough of them one may do something useful. "
I was reading James Watt's account of how he got the idea of the outside condenser which revolutionised the efficient use of steam in reciprocating engines and turbines. He was walking on Glasgow Green and the idea occurred to him, by the time he had got back from his walk he had the whole scheme worked out in his head and the rest is history. Serendipity has always had a part in discovery but should not be confused with random chance, there is a basis of experience and dare I say it; education. The thought or observation may be random but the extrapolation of the principle is definitely not.

[hartley353]

Forgive my late reply Stanley. Having just returned from three weeks in Scotland, it is catchup time. James watt is a man to be admired. He was fortunate to be born of a father who had engineering workshops, and a workforce that could explain things to him. He was also fortunate in his Grammar school education. This was a man of many talents and steam was not his main forte. James I would say was a free thinker, and a man who could turn thoughts to practical use. Definitely not one of our University clones, though I do accept he had access to men of science and was awarded fellowships. As a footnote a short letter from my cousin on the Wirrel Included with a Christmas card, says he was made a professor, and had a paper puplished in Nature magazine. Now we have these pesky scientists in the family.

[chinatyke]

Now we have these pesky scientists in the family.

One of these days you Luddites will accept progress!

Happy Christmas.

[hartley353]

There is little sign of progress in our modern world which holds any great attraction to myself, just a continual out pouring of devices to satisfy the puerile minds of what the human race has become. A chance remark by a friend who had joined me on holiday gave a perfect example, my coffeepot requires that i put water in the bottom add coffee to a container then the top half is screwed on, all I need do then is stand it on the stove and I have the perfect brew. It would seem he and his wife had recently spent £400.00 on a coffee maker, the latest in a long line of machines the previous three still in his garage, he was kind enough to offer me one of these, which I politely declined. No I am not a luddite, I just wish no part of this servile commercialism which can reduce a person to a panic stricken state because they can't find their mobile phone.

[Tizer]

After the last IPCC meeting and report in September the news media complained that the IPCC didn't provide a sufficiently concise and understandable summary of the conclusions. What the media seems to have missed was the two-page `Headline Statements from the Summary for Policymakers' which is now available as a PDF file:
http://www.ipcc.ch/news_and_events/docs ... dlines.pdf
For anyone who wants to get much more detailed information there are business briefings here:
http://www.cpsl.cam.ac.uk/ipcc

[Whyperion]

Given that parts of N America are having amongst the Coldest Winters on record , and Argentina is having some of the hottest, something certainly appears to be up. Though how a Russian Ice Breaker Ship in Antarctica has managed to get stuck in ice in 'Summer' I don't quite get.

[Tizer]

I guess the great floating masses of sea ice are continually breaking up and then reforming and a ship could simply be in the wrong place at the wrong time. When massive slabs of ice come together the pressure will be sufficient to `weld' them together, no matter whether it's summer or winter. You've probably seen the demonstration of placing a block of ice as a bridge between two chairs and then hanging a weight from it by a metal wire - the wire cuts through the ice like a cheesecutter but the ice reforms behind it and the bridge remains intact.

[Stanley]

I'm thinking about you this morning Tiz. We are told there is no such thing as climate change but I'll bet, like me, you look at this extreme weather and wonder who is right! Hope it isn't as bad as the reports suggest.....

[Tizer]

It has been that bad for a lot of people, although we're OK thank goodness. We're used to floods on the Somerset Levels, it's an annual event, but this is the worst we've seen in our 18 years here and the natives say they've never seen the water level so high and the flooding so extensive. We had three roads out of the village all flooded and impassable but now down to two. The rivers here have raised banks (bunds, levees) but the water has simply continued rising until it's gone right over the top. With the very flat landscape the rivers are tidal for a long way upstream and although they're not big rivers they are deep and a tidal surge shoves masses of water way out into the countryside, probably for about 20 miles. That meets all the water draining into the levels from the surrounding hills and you end up with more lakes than the Lake District. From our front windows we see a lake two miles across with trees jutting out of the water surface. And there's more to come!

[Bodger]

Tizer, is anything to do with "global Warming" or just mother earth just proving a point, i remember 1947, 6 /8 weeks of school but we accepted it as part of living, we didn't go looking for goverment warnings. we lived on top off the Yorks Pennines, if you choose to live on river banks & shore sides accept that nature will bite back for your choice of "nice" location, and why should people be looking for goverment / hand outs etc. people mainly make a choice where the live , our ancestors had more sense, they chose sites above water levels, with shelter, facing the sun, but of course they were simple peasants not motivated by commercial values of what there site was worth in its location.
ps. in 50 yrs. of marriage,& several houses, ive never bought a house on low lying ground
the odd slate has left home, but we have always kept wam and dry

[Stanley]

Glad you're OK Tiz. Rang twice yesterday.... I was getting worried!
I don't think it matters whether it's global warming or natural cycles. The fact is that right or wrong we are getting the perception that there are more frequent severe events now than there were in the past. In the case of flooding more people are affected as we build more and cover the country with non-permeable surfaces speeding up surface water run-off into low lying areas that have been used for building which previously were unused or even flood relieving assets. Then we have the media.... I was wondering yesterday what the incidence of flooded houses was compared to house fires.... I talked to friends in Monmouth yesterday and they said that the best flood warning was the TV crews waiting in one street in the town for the first house to be flooded. By the way, talked to a mate in Minnesota yesterday and he said they aren't too bad for snow but have a temperature of -25F. Wouldn't the media love that over here!

[Cathy]

On the news today they said that since weather records began Australia is experiencing it's hottest weather ever, the east coast of America is experiencing it's coldest and harshest weather ever, and south east England it's wettest and harshest weather ever.

[Tizer]

Bodger, the Government Chief Scientist for 2008 to 2013, Sir John Beddington, summed it up a couple of days ago. "At present it's impossible to blame any single extreme weather event on global warming but the increased frequency of such events is almost certainly due to global warming". The extreme events also fit in with what would be expected from global warming, following the increased turbulence in the oceans and atmosphere as they become destabilised by the changes. I agree that if you buy a house in a vulnerable situation you should accept the risks but here in the Somerset Levels most of the existing houses were built in villages on the higher ground where it never flooded. In the old days there were some farm labourers' cottages built too low down but they were abandoned by the 1950s. There are a few farmhouses still too low but they're usually owned by people whose families have lived here for centuries and they're used to dealing with flooding and don't complain. What's happening now is that the flooding is getting so much worse that the Environment Agency is sacrificing the moors to try to save Taunton and Bridgwater from flooding and this means that houses in the Levels which haven't ever been flooded before are now endangered. The Taunton and Bridgwater town council planners and the developers have gone ahead with building thousands of houses on low lying ground on the edges of the towns in the last 20 years and the Agency hasn't stopped them. So we could argue that the people who bought those thousands of houses on the new estates are the ones who made the mistake and not those who bought houses in the Levels that were originally above the floodwaters. You have to remember that flooding in the Somerset Levels is controlled by the Agency, they play god and make the choice about who gets flooded.

Latest news...Yeovil (population 40,000) is now cut off with all roads out of the town flooded.

Cathy, it's ironic that Australia is feeling the heat when it's Australian coal that's fuelling the furnaces of China's expanding industry and adding so much more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere!

Stanley, we were sorting my Dad yesterday in Bridgwater - at least that's one place we can get to at the moment.

[Stanley]

Sorting Dad would be a major task!
I agree with you about apportioning blame and the fact that the people who control the sluices are making choices which to them are logical but to sensible people like you and me are grossly unfair. I remember the floods in Carlisle which were caused quite simply by the fact that they had built without upgrading the drainage to cope. If they are going to use your area for flood relief lower down they should pay you. I seem to remember that it used to be an offence in law to interfere with the natural drainage of an existing land holding, same principle as Ancient Lights. Perhaps we need a class action court case.

[Tizer]

Yes, and another issue came to mind after I wrote my last post...and I think it's going to blow up into a row, sometime, somewhere. Put simply, a lot of flooding of properties and land is now caused by other parties failing to carry out their duty to keep drains and ditches clear. You can buy a house that is outside the official Env Agency flood areas, that has never been flooded in living memory (or even in written archives) and that you `know' should never be flooded. And then find a year later that the house is full of muddy, contaminated water and your belongings ruined, all because the council, or a landowner, or even the Env Agency itself has failed to keep the drainage runs clear or has `developed' the area in such a way that water has been directed onto your property. In this case you can't say that the owner shouldn't have bought that house - any house and owner could fall victim to this type of flooding, in any part of the UK and any landscape. To cap it all, if that happens your insurance company will then probably bump up your premiums even though the flooding should never have happened...and the Env Agency might even include you in the Flood Danger area on its maps, thus making your house less easy to sell and reinforcing the action of the insurance company. You could even end up with your house flooded because the Env Agency failed to keep the ditches clear or the river dredged and then have the Agency alter their map to show your house as a flood risk!