Discussing climate change

In Flooded UK, Guardian Warns ‘Climate Change Is Here Now’

Joe Romm

Think Progress,

14 February, 2014

The Guardian has run an unprecedented banner headline in response to the record-smashing deluges that have inundated the UK: “Climate change is here now. It could lead to global conflict. Yet the politicians squabble.”

The Guardian turned over much of their front-page to Lord Nicholas Stern, author of the famous 2006 report on the economics of climate change. He opens bluntly:

The record rainfall and storm surges that have brought flooding across the UK are a clear sign that we are already experiencing the impacts of climate change.

Stern says there are “powerful grounds for arguing that this [unprecedented extreme weather] is part of a trend.” Not only was the last decade the hottest on record, but “four of the five wettest years recorded in the UK have occurred from the year 2000 onwards.”

The UK Met[eorological] Office’s chief scientist, Dame Julia Slingo said earlier this week the country was experiencing the “most exceptional period of rainfall in 248 years.” She explained that “all the evidence suggests there is a link to climate change,” and “there is no evidence to counter the basic premise that a warmer world will lead to more intense daily and hourly rain events.”

As Stern notes, “A warmer atmosphere holds more water. Add to this the increase in sea level, particularly along the English Channel, which is making storm surges bigger, and it is clear why the risk of flooding in the UK is rising.”

This UK Guardian banner headline and story is eerily reminiscent of Bloomberg’s famous post-Sandy cover, “It’s Global Warming, Stupid.” Again, sea level rise is worsening storm surges hitting the United States, and if don’t slash carbon pollution soon, we’ll be seeing Sandy-level storm surges every yearin a half century.

The literature on the climate-deluge link couldn’t be stronger (see review article here). In 2011, the journal Nature published two seminal studies on the connection. The first, “Human contribution to more-intense precipitation extremes” (subs. req’d), found that “human-induced increases in greenhouse gases have contributed to the observed intensification of heavy precipitation events” over most of the Northern Hemisphere. More worrisome, it also found that “the impacts of future changes in extreme precipitation, may be underestimated because models seem to underestimate the observed increase in heavy precipitation with warming.”

The second study looked at “the wettest autumn in England and Wales since records began in 1766.” This study concluded, “it is very likely that global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions substantially increased the risk of flood occurrence in England and Wales in autumn 2000.” In fact, the study found “in nine out of ten cases our model results indicate that twentieth-century anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions increased the risk of floods occurring in England and Wales in autumn 2000 by more than 20%, and in two out of three cases by more than 90%.”

Tragically, climate science makes clear that the world’s wet areas are going to get much wetter, while the dry areas are going to get much drier. Lord Stern explains what will inevitably happen if we continue our inaction and allow global temperatures to rise 7°F or more by century’s end:

The shift to such a world could cause mass migrations of hundreds of millions of people away from the worst-affected areas. That would lead to conflict and war, not peace and prosperity.

Stern recommends the UK “implement a strong price on greenhouse gas pollution across the economy … It is essential that the government seizes this opportunity to foster the wave of low-carbon technological development and innovation that will drive economic growth and avoid the enormous risks of unmanaged climate change.” The time to act is now.

UK floods making climate sceptics hot under the collar

Bid by Lord Lawson to question the link between global warming and extreme weather is undermined by irrefutable evidence

the Guardian,

 14 February, 2014

The UK floods are not just causing misery for thousands of people around the country whose lives and livelihoods have been disrupted. They are also making a few climate change sceptics hot beneath the collar.

No doubt they are finding it an uncomfortable experience to realise that their misleading attempts to inform the public into believing that climate change poses no threat to the UK are now being undermined by the irrefutable evidence provided by the record rainfall and storm surges.

First, Peter Lilley, who juggles his responsibilities as MP for Hitchin and Harpenden with his role as vice-chairman of Tethys Petroleum, had a meltdown earlier this week when he was stopped from badgering a witness at the hopeless mock trial for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that is being held by the House of Commons select committee on energy and climate change.

Lilley's tantrum was followed by a remarkable display of male chauvinistic indignation from Lord Lawson, who set up the Global Warming Policy Foundation to campaign against the government's climate change policies.

Lord Lawson was questioned about a new report published by the Met Office and Centre for Ecology and Hydrology about the link between climate change and the recent storms and floods.

The report states: "As yet, there is no definitive answer on the possible contribution of climate change to the recent storminess, rainfall amounts and the consequent flooding."

However, it also points out: "There is an increasing body of evidence that extreme daily rainfall rates are becoming more intense, and that the rate of increase is consistent with what is expected from fundamental physics."

In short, it is unlikely to be a coincidence that four of the five wettest years and the seven warmest years on record in the UK have occurred from 2000 onwards.

But Lord Lawson favours his own opinion over assessments of experts. When he was questioned this week about a possible connection between the floods and climate change, he replied: "You'll see the Met Office's own report denies it. It is just this Julia Slingo woman, who made this absurd statement, but their own official statement makes it clear there is no proven link whatever."

In fact, "this Julia Slingo woman" is Dame Professor Julia Slingo, the highly respected climatologist and chief scientist at the Met Office.

Prof Slingo told journalists at a briefing about the report that all of the evidence points to a link between climate change and the recent floods.

However, Lord Lawson is not one to allow his lack of scientific training and expertise to stop him from making pronouncements on climate change, even if he gets a bit testy when confronted by real scientists referring to actual evidence.

His performance on BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Thursday was another masterly display of pompous arrogance as he proceeded to lecture Professor Sir Brian Hoskins of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London about what was known and unknown about the influence of climate change on extreme weather.

Lord Lawson claimed "nobody knows" whether there is a link between climate change and the floods and said: "I don't blame the climate scientists for not knowing. Climate and weather is quite extraordinarily complex, and this is a very new form of science. All I blame them for is pretending they know when they don't."

He then went on to erroneously assert: "People who have done studies show that there has been globally no increase in extreme weather events."

In fact, the IPCC concluded from its review of thousands of scientific papers on the issue that "changes in many extreme weather and climate events have been observed since about 1950", and listed a number of examples such as a likely increase in the frequency of heatwaves in large parts of Europe, Asia and Australia, and a likely rise in the intensity or occurrence of heavy rainfall in North America and Europe.

Lord Lawson ended the interview by accusing Sir Brian of speculation when he said that measurements showed the recent slowdown in the rise of global average surface temperature over the past 15 years had been accompanied by an increase in the amount of heat absorbed by the deep oceans.

Lord Lawson had apparently not read or ignored the scientific papers that have documented the evidence to which Sir Brian was referring.

This is unlikely to be the last time that Lord Lawson is called upon by parts of the media to provide a balance between facts and fictions about the causes of the flood crisis. It remains to be seen whether he will be able to keep his cool when confronted with the mounting evidence that global warming is a major contributor.

Seriousness of climate situation has yet to sink in nationally

Opinion: We are witnessing a displaced fury against windmills and pylons rather than tackling the real threat to our future

Irish Times,

14 February, 2014

It is tempting to imagine that a sea change in Ireland’s on-again, off-again relationship with the reality of climate change has occurred in recent times, as extreme weather events have yet again battered our coastline, inundated farms and flooded urban areas, with the latest wave of damage running to more than €100 million.

Minister for Finance Michael Noonan, visiting areas of Limerick hit by flooding, commented: “I think we all now believe in climate change . . . the defences that were here, with the new climates that we are having all around the world, are no longer adequate.”

Next up was Minister for Public Expenditure Brendan Howlin. “When calm is restored I think we have to do some serious thinking about long-term flood defences because clearly climate change is a reality.”

Then Brian Hayes, Minister of State for the Office of Public Works, said the OPW had identified some 250 at-risk locations for repeated flooding. The costs of trying to defend these locations, he warned, would run into “tens of billions of euros”.

Meanwhile, Taoiseach Enda Kenny and Opposition leader Micheál Martin both agreed that climate change was indeed real. The one who doesn’t seem to have got the memo was Minister for the Environment Phil Hogan. As the storms rolled in and the flood waters rose higher, Hogan chose instead to join Minister for Agriculture Simon Coveney in celebrating securing a renewal of the environmental vandalism that will be Ireland’s latest derogation from the EU nitrates directive.

“Whether we have scientific evidence or not in relation to climate change, it looks as if we’re going to have these types of weather patterns in the future,” said Hogan. This was about as close to uttering the “c” word as he has managed in 2½ years. And yes Minister, there is evidence alright, mountains – and lakes – of it, in fact.

Tipping point

Not everyone is so conflicted. The world is “perilously close” to a climate tipping point, IMF managing director Christine Lagarde warned recently.

With a culinary flourish, she added: “unless we take action, future generations

will be roasted, toasted, fried and grilled”.

RTÉ, the public service broadcaster with a budget in excess of €300 million, should have a team covering climate and environment with the depth and passion lavished on business or sports. Instead, it scrapped its solitary environment post.

Rosy future

The Marian Finucane Show on Sunday featured an economist gushing about the rosy future of improved labour market opportunities his three-year-old daughter would enjoy by the mid-2030s.

Meanwhile, the World Bank’s 2012 document Turn Down the Heat projects that global average temperatures will break the plus 2 degrees “point of no return” by the end of that decade. This locks us into a future of food and fresh water shortages, devastating and intensifying weather extremes, coastal inundation, desertification, ocean acidification and mass extinction events. This shocking reality has barely made a dent in our national discourse.

Quite how anyone imagines the global economy could survive such relentless disruption has become the question that dare not speak its name.

RTÉ’s failure on environmental reporting is a tragedy. The print media have hardly fared much better. RTÉ’s audience council is now inviting the public to comment on its communication of climate change. Submissions close next Monday.

Interestingly, Met Éireann’s head of forecasting, Dr Gerry Fleming, pointedly avoided linking the ratcheting up of extreme weather events in Ireland to climate change, stating: “it’s our grandchildren or great grandchildren who will make that call”. His British counterpart, the Met Office’s chief scientist, Dame Julia Slingo, had no such reservations. “All the evidence suggests there is a link to climate change . . . there is no evidence to counter the basic premise that a warmer world will lead to more intense daily and hourly rain events.”

The clamour for answers is gathering pace yet, oddly, the outrage is not being directed against the real enemy, an energy system utterly dependent on coal, oil and peat-burning. In our displaced fury, we are, Don Quixote-style, tilting instead at “ugly” windmills and pylons.

Amid the gloom, some positive news: An Taisce has just established a new climate change committee (disclosure: I’m a member) to take a more forceful approach to communicating this crisis and challenging Ireland’s dangerous do-nothing consensus.

Flooding and storms in UK are clear signs of climate change, says Lord Stern

Author of 2006 report says recent weather is part of international pattern and demonstrates urgent need to cut carbon emissions

The Guardian,

13 February, 2014

The devastating floods and storms sweeping Britain are clear indications of the dangers of climate change, according to Lord Stern, the author of a 2006 report on the economics of climate change.


Writing in the Guardian, the crossbench peer said the flooding and storm damage demonstrate the need for Britain and the rest of the world to continue to implement low-carbon policies to reduce the probability of greater tragedies in the future.


He said the five wettest years and the seven warmest years in the UK have happened since 2000, which is explained by a clear body of evidence showing that a warmer atmosphere contains more water and causes more intense rainfall. When this is combined with higher sea levels in the English Channel, the risk of flooding increases.


Recent UK weather is part of an international pattern of extreme weather which proves the dangers of climate change and the need to cut carbon emissions, Stern said.


"If we do not cut emissions, we face even more devastating consequences, as unchecked they could raise global average temperature to 4C or more above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century.


"The shift to such a world could cause mass migrations of hundreds of millions of people away from the worst-affected areas. That would lead to conflict and war, not peace and prosperity."


Stern, chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, noted that Australia has just had its hottest year on record, Argentina one of its worst heatwaves in late December, while parts of Brazil were struck by floods and landslides following record rainfall.


He said that delay is dangerous: "Inaction could be justified only if we could have great confidence that the risks posed by climate change are small. But that is not what 200 years of climate science is telling us. The risks are huge."


Britain must continue to implement the 2008 Climate Change Act, he said. This commits the UK to cut its emissions by at least 80% by 2050.


Stern said that the risks were greater than he anticipated in his 2006 report for the government. "Since then, annual greenhouse gas emissions have increased steeply and some of the impacts, such as the decline of Arctic sea ice, have started to happen much more quickly.


"We also underestimated the potential importance of strong feedbacks, such as the thawing of the permafrost to release methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, as well as tipping points beyond which some changes in the climate may become effectively irreversible."

The UK Response to Climate Change (UK Storms, Floods, Extreme Weather) Feb, 2014