Ed Miliband: 'Britain is sleepwalking to a climate crisis'

[BlasterBates]

...and what did we have before the little ice age...


Medieval Warm Period - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

...and what was the climate like in the medieval warm period?

Well blow me down with a feather, it was unusually warm:

The 2009 Mann et al. study found warmth exceeding 1961–1990 levels in Southern Greenland and parts of North America during the Medieval climate anomaly (defined for this purpose as 950 to 1250) with warmth in some regions exceeding temperatures of the 1990–2010 period.

One could be forgiven for thinking that there are natural climate cycles where it's get warm and then goes cool again, and then warms up again.

...and check this out

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_stream

La Niña[edit]
Across North America during La Niña, increased precipitation is diverted into the Pacific Northwest due to a more northerly storm track and jet stream.[46] The storm track shifts far enough northward to bring wetter than normal conditions (in the form of increased snowfall) to the Midwestern states, as well as hot and dry summers.[47][48] Snowfall is above normal across the Pacific Northwest and western Great Lakes.[42] Across the North Atlantic, the jet stream is stronger than normal, which directs stronger systems with increased precipitation towards Europe.[49]

In other words a cooler pacific (La Nina) creates more precipitation in Europe.

[original PM]

ok so they used to dredge rivers which helped keep floods down.

then an eu directive meant that to dispose of what you were dredging required a licence and would then cost x per ton

so we stopped dredging

also many many of the flooded house are erm built on flood plains

and finally why the fook is it a matter of national security - are like the commies coming up to people houses in mini submarines to subvert them


jeeesus h christ on a bike!!

[MicrosoftBob]

and finally why the fook is it a matter of national security - are like the commies coming up to people houses in mini submarines to subvert them

Doesn't that depend on whether Red Ed has paid a visit ?

[pjclarke]

Wow. Denial 101.

The recent uptick in Co2 is nothing to do with industrialisation, and AGW is a myth. Look at ALL of the data.

Uptick? it is up > 35%, outside a range it has maintained for at least 600K years (how do we know? Ice cores, Google Vostok). And there are two lines of evidence that the increase is all manmade. One is simple carbon accounting. Most fossils are burnt as part of industrial processes so we have good records of the amount burnt and the resulting CO2 emitted (remember CO2 is the major, but not the only GHG.). The emissions are substantially more than enough to account for the increase, in fact something around 50% has been absorbed by the biosphere and the oceans, decreasing their pH.

Secondly, CO2 from organic sources has a particular ratio of carbon isotopes, in effect our emissions are tagged, (Google the 'Suess effect') and the measurements of the organic fraction are entirely consistent with the increase being manmade, there is no other plausible source.

So what data should people be looking at, that the entire scientific community has missed?

On glacial/inter-glacial timescales it is true that CO2 levels lag temperature changes. On these timescales CO2 is released from the oceans as temperature rises due to gradual changes in the planet's orbit and rotation, and acts as a lagging positive feedback as the planet warms, and vice versa. This is entirely different from the modern situation where the carbon is being dug up and released into the atmosphere at the rate of several billion tonnes a year. In this scenario, the CO2 drives the temperature increase, acting as a primary forcing rather than a feedback.

Well established science.

[BlasterBates]

CO2 follows temperature not the other way round

http://http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921818112001658

i.e. as the oceans warm they emit CO2.

[EternalOptimist]

It's an interesting question , isn't it. What comes first, CO2 or temperature

There was a time that pj disagreed that in the distant past, temperature came first. I am very glad that he has come around to accept that fact.

But what about today ?
if CO2 came first, we would see CO2 levels rising, followed by a correlating rise in temps
If temps came first, we would see temps rise, then platau as co2 continues to rise


we are seeing the second. temperatures have not risen since John Major was prime minister

[Paddy]

Journey Along A River - Overflowing Rivers - River Exe - Devon Introduction



Flooding is not new.

Back in the 50s and 60s I remember the flood plains in Dorset and Hampshire being regularly flooded and with months of rainfall. Planning permission was granted to build housing on the same flood plain and the river was dredged in order to prevent flooding. However, they stopped dredging the river with the obvious consequences.

[pjclarke]

Reading comprehension failure?

Here's somebody more qualified than I explaining it ...

On historical timescales, CO2 has definitely led, not lagged, temperature. But in any case, it doesn’t really matter for the problem at hand (global warming). We know why CO2 is increasing now, and the direct radiative effects of CO2 on climate have been known for more than 100 years. In the absence of human intervention CO2 does rise and fall over time, due to exchanges of carbon among the biosphere, atmosphere, and ocean and, on the very longest timescales, the lithosphere (i.e. rocks, oil reservoirs, coal, carbonate rocks). The rates of those exchanges are now being completely overwhelmed by the rate at which we are extracting carbon from the latter set of reservoirs and converting it to atmospheric CO2. No discovery made with ice cores is going to change those basic facts.

[d000hg]

C02 levels are linked to temperature. They track one another. The AGW mob only print CO2 levels going back a century. If you go back further you can see its peaks and troughs.

The recent uptick in Co2 is nothing to do with industrialisation, and AGW is a myth. Look at ALL of the data.

That seems rather unlikely. Even if it hasn't caused any noticeable difference in climate, it seems unlikely the amount of stuff we spew into the atmosphere is too low to measure.

[pjclarke]

Global Fossil-Fuel CO2 Emissions