Climate change rises to the top of the political agenda as floods continue
News
Ed Miliband: ‘Britain is sleepwalking to a climate
crisis’
Climate and energy news:
Climate change is an issue of national security,
warns Ed Miliband
Ed Miliband tells the Observer the recent floods show
climate change is no longer only an international issue which
carries the threat of global conflict, but a domestic issue
affecting millions of British people. The story appeared on the
front page of Sunday’s paper. The Financial Timesalso has the
story.
Wavier jet stream ‘may drive weather
shift’
The BBC talks to an author of a new paper showing the jet
stream is increasingly taking a longer, meandering path – meaning
weather stays the same for prolonged periods. Professor Francis
tells the BBC that while it is too soon to tell whether climate
change is responsible for the recent extreme weather in the UK, US
and Australia, she adds that “The Arctic has been warming rapidly
only for the past 15 years … Our data to look at this effect is
very short and so it is hard to get a very clear signal … But as
we have more data I do think we will start to see the influence of
climate change.”
Climate and energy comment:
The sceptics are right. Don’t scapegoat
them
Matt Ridley argues that climate skeptics shouldn’t be blamed
for the recent floods as they’ve been arguing for building
resilience against just such extreme weather – instead of spending
funds on decarbonising the economy – for years. He claims
scientists have acknowledged the floods cannot be attributed to
climate change in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s
latest report.
In blame-game Britain, even the weather causes a
political storm
An ex-Telegraph editor says those who blame climate change
for the recent floods – such as Lord Stern – are making people
“with electric light, petrol-driven cars and the desire to be
better-off than the previous generation” feel needlessly guilty.
Charles Moore says such arguments are a product of “a political
mode of thought, rather than a scientific one. The idea is that the
industrialised West is essentially bad – greedy, dirty, unequal,
violent, crude, domineering, racist, exploitative. Its attitude to
the environment is like that of a rapist to a woman: it gratifies
its immediate urges while showing hatred or at best indifference to
its victim”.
UK weather: it’s not as weird as our warmists
claim
Christopher Booker says the Met Office’s claims that the
recent UK floods could be linked to climate change are the dying
throes of an organisation desperate to extend its government
funding. “For proper evidence-based science these days one has to
step outside the hermetically sealed bubble of warmist group-think
and look to that array of expert blogs and websites that provide
the data necessary to thinking straight”, he says.
Ed Miliband’s climate lectures ring
hollow
A Telegraph editorial argues that Ed Miliband’s calls for a
restoration of a political consensus on the need to act on climate
change are self serving and ultimately harmful. It says Miliband
“backs hopelessly ambitious emissions targets and the expansion of
wind power, which, ironically, is so inefficient that it can often
require the use of polluting backup. It has also been financed by
subsidies that come straight out of the consumers’ pockets. Making
our power supplies costlier and less reliable will do little to
curb global warming, but it will make life more miserable”.
Furthermore, it says “[p]roclaiming moral support while delivering
politicised lectures on climate science rings hollow”.
If there is global warming, this is what it could
look like in Britain
Geoffrey Lean says a Conservative minister has told him the
recent floods are like a “trailer for a film called Global
Warming”. Lean argues that while it is hard to draw firm conclusion
from climate science about the causes of the floods, it’s time
politicians “do more than talk about it”.
Get used to flooding, climate change will bring
more of it
Professor of climate change science at the University of
Reading, Nigel Arnell, says “climate change is loading the dice” in
favour of more extreme weather in the future.
UK floods making climate sceptics hot under the
collar
The Grantham Institute’s communications director, Bob Ward,
rebuts comments made by climate skeptic, Lord Lawson, on the Today
programme last week. Ward says Lord Lawson selected a particular
phrase from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest
report to support his arguments, ignoring the wider body of
scientific evidence which suggests “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”.
The government has to act now on climate
change
The chair of the government’s official climate change
advisor, the Committee on Climate Change, criticises what he sees
as a knee-jerk reaction to the UK’s recent floods. He says climate
change is likely to make such events worse, and the government must
“have a programme of long-term adaptation that enables the UK to
cope with these fundamental and irreversible changes”.
Climate change: time for the sceptics to put up or
shut up
Henry Porter argues that the onus should be shifted onto
climate skeptics to provide evidence for their theories, rather
than promoting views which question the existing body of climate
science.
No, global warming did NOT cause the storms, says
one of the Met Office’s most senior
experts
David Rose quotes a Met Office scientist as saying the
current UK storms are not caused by climate change. He juxtaposes
the comments with those made by the Met Office’s chief scientist,
Dame Professor Julio Slingo, last weekend. Speaking at the launch
of a Met Office report, Slingo said “all the evidence suggests that
climate change has a role to play” in the recent exceptional
weather.
Storms whip up policy debate on climate
change
The Financial Times looks at the politcisation of climate
science around the issue of the UK’s current floods. The article
juxtaposes comments made on the climate skeptic blog,
Wattsupwiththat, and by former chancellor, Lord Lawson, with those
made by the energy and climate secretary and prime minister. It
looks at how divisive forces within the Conservative party might
have forced David Cameron to show “deft footwork” when commenting
on how climate change interacts with flooding.
New climate science:
Communicating adaptation to climate change: the
art and science of public engagement when climate change comes
home
A new literature review collecting together all that is
known about communicating climate change adaptation. The paper
explores the language used to discuss adaptation in policy,
practice, and the media – finding that sometimes ‘adaptation’
language is often not used at all.
The sensitivity of global wildfires to simulated
past, present and future lightning
frequency
Journal of Geophysical Research:
Biogeosciences
Scientists explore how lightning induced by climate change
could alter alter wildfire activity. The scientists find lightning
activity could increase by up to 21.3 per cent by at the end of the
century, if emissions stay high, increasing the risk of
wildfire.
Archaeologists lend long-term perspective to food
security and climate shock
A new review of how pre-existing vulnerabilities – such as
poverty, food shortages and social inequalities – exacerbate the
effects of climate change. The researchers, speaking at the annual
meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science,
look particularly at the factors that affect resilience when it
comes to food security.