CLIMATE CHANGE AND GLOBAL WARMING

[Tizer]

`COP28 ‘moment of truth’ for oil industry, says energy boss' LINK
`...Dr Fatih Birol, head of energy watchdog the International Energy Agency, was speaking as the IEA published a new report on the future of fossil fuels. He said the sector must choose between contributing to the climate crisis or "becoming part of the solution". Last year fossil fuel companies were responsible for just 1% of global investment in renewable energy...Dr Birol said that meeting the world's climate goals "means letting go of the illusion that implausibly large amounts of carbon capture are the solution".'

[Stanley]

From his mouth to God's ear! But will he be heard above the clamour to make more and more profit?
Nest thing you hear will be someone arguing that oil profits are essential as they are such a large part of the income of the Pension Funds. This is the go-to defence in these matters. Greed is the bottom line....

[Tizer]

An illustration of how people easily get locked into an `echo chamber' and cut off from the wider view...
`'I thought climate change was a hoax. Now I've changed my mind'' BBC

[Tripps]

Beware of relying on the BBC for information, I'd say. Cast your net wider perhaps?

Just had a quick look, but they are scraping the barrel to go to the Southern States (Bible Belt ?) of the USA here for such an article.

It says the UEA experts were investigated and cleared of 'fiddling' their results. That's not how I see it.

The BBC do have an agenda, you know?

[Stanley]

"The BBC do have an agenda, you know?"
But so does everyone else and I thought we allowed for that? We do stand a fair chance of understanding what the BBC agenda might be, I think it's often governed by licence fee management!
Downgrading a report from the Bible Belt could also be seen as the product of an agenda. Like you David I have my suspicions but try not to let them skew my opinion.
I can see how someone could have some healthy and well-founded suspicions about the veracity of claims about the climate and them becoming harder and harder to sustain as the weight of evidence in favour increases. The current reports of 2023 temperatures must be hard for the deniers to refute.....

[Stanley]

I was thinking about the way our 'winter' weather has changed since |I responded to Peter's birth year of 1947 and the fact we had record snowfalls. The there was the winter of 1963 - the coldest for more than 200 years Bringing blizzards, snow drifts, blocks of ice, and temperatures lower than -20 °C, it was colder than the winter of 1947, and the coldest since 1740. It began abruptly just before Christmas in 1962.
I remember it so well because I was on the tramp that year and spent some nights sleeping in the cab. It was miserable.
Contrast that with this winter, we have hardly seen any snow and ice, in fact some places have almost reached 20C. Is this what we can expect from now on?

[Tizer]

I'm glad to see this news but why didn't we do it earlier like France, Spain and Germany did?...
`UK quits treaty that lets oil firms sue government' [url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-68369916]LINK[/
url]

[Stanley]

Because we don't do anything to annoy the big capital holders..... They might stop funding our political parties and giving sinecures to retiring politicians.... !

[Stanley]

I note that the forecasters have stopped talking about the wettest February since records began but it has still been a very wet month with higher temperatures than normal.
Is this the reason why my stone and concrete flags are all turning bright green?

[Stanley]

An in-depth investigation of the effect of climate change on the economy of ski resorts in Europe has come to the conclusion that they are no longer viable as the amount of snow is decreasing. The verdict is that they will have to find a different way of attracting visitors.

[Stanley]

Can you remember how we used to speculate on how climate change would affect the Isles? See THIS rep[ort on February this year, we may be getting a glimpse of the future.
England and Wales had their warmest February on record this year, the Met Office said on Friday. The average temperature for England was 7.5C, with an average of 6.9C in Wales. The UK as a whole saw its second warmest recorded February. Farmers say they are losing crops to floods while less frost hurts the growth of trees like apples and pears. The provisional statistics are in line with long-term projections of warmer, wetter winters due to climate change. Average temperatures for the UK as a whole in February were 6.3C. That's still below February 1998's figure of 6.8C. But in a clear indicator of the recent impact of climate change, four of the UK's 10 warmest Februarys since 1884 have all come in the last six years - 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2019.

[Stanley]

See THIS report from Copernicus, the European climate monitoring organisation.
February 2024 was the warmest February on record globally, with an average surface air temperature of 13.54°C, 0.81°C above the 1991-2020 average for February and 0.12°C above the temperature of the previous warmest February, in 2016. his is the ninth month in a row that was the warmest on record for the respective month of the year.
There is much more if you care to read the article.

[Stanley]

See THIS report that this winter is the warmest on record in the US.
his winter was the warmest ever recorded in the mainland United States, data showed Friday — the latest sign the world is moving toward an unprecedented era because of the climate crisis. The average temperature in the lower 48 U.S. states from December 2023 to February 2024 was 3.1 degrees Celsius, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said, the highest in a record that goes back to the 1890s. It was 3 C above the 20th-century average for the world's second-biggest greenhouse gas emitter behind China. The second-warmest winter came in 2016, which averaged 2.7 C, while the coldest on record came in 1979, a frigid -3 C. Eight states across the Upper Midwest, Great Lakes and Northeast saw their warmest winters on record, boosted in part by the El Niño weather pattern.

[Tizer]

Sadly, I think the world's politicians and all the vested business interests have left it too late. Now we're seeing the world getting more fragmented and belligerent and you can't solve climate change without all nations agreeing to work together and put a stop to the decline.

[Stanley]

I'm afraid you're right Peter. I have accepted for a long while now that all this talk of 'imminent tipping points' was nonsense. We passed that a long time ago but haven't been able to accept the fact that we are powerless to change our fate.

See THIS news report of a vain attempt to save a glacier buy installing a thermal blanket on it.
The last Venezuelan glacier, which has so far resisted melting, is on the Humboldt Peak of the Sierra Nevada National Park in Mérida. The glacier is in its final days, and in the Andean city the locals are preparing for its disappearance with protests. There are also concerns from the scientific community over the renewed aspirations of the Chavista government of trying to artificially extend the life of a sheet of ice smaller than a football field, less than five acres, from the more than 750 acres it had at the beginning of the last century.
Read the rest of the article to get the opinion of scientists that this is a vain attempt to stem the inevitable.

[Tizer]

I wouldn't rule out tipping points. I'm not thinking of one big single tipping point that would be catastrophic worldwide, that's unlikely but individual ones could cause considerable upsets. The deep ocean currents that circle the globe could be changed suddenly by loss of ice at the poles.

[Tripps]

The deep ocean currents that circle the globe could be changed suddenly by loss of ice at the poles.

The BBC warned us very recently that Will the Gulf Stream collapse by 2025?, but when the headline is a question of course, the answer is always no - so I have not lost any sleep over it.

[Tizer]

Don't confuse the little Gulf Stream with the majestic Atlantic Meridional Ocean Circulation (AMOC)!

[Tripps]

Speak to the BBC not me. . .

I'm blaming Kev, for blatantly buying a diesel car when electric ones are easily available. It'll be his fault when the sea flows backwards and Blackpool Tower gets its feet wet.

[Stanley]

See THIS explanation from NASA about how ocean currents are affected by climate change. It's on the right level for me. Simple explanations are always best!

Later.... See THIS first report from the European Environment Agency.
BRUSSELS — Act now or climate change will wreak catastrophic damage on Europe. That’s the blunt message scientists sent to the European Union’s leaders on Monday in the first-ever report on climate risks facing the bloc from the European Environment Agency (EEA). The EEA, an EU body conducting independent research to inform policymaking, warned that the bloc is unprepared for the effects of climate change even if the world manages to keep global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius, as set down in the Paris Agreement. Every extra tenth of a degree will bring more coastal floods, years long droughts and scorching heat spells, the researchers said, meaning Brussels and EU governments must quickly accelerate preparations to protect lives and livelihoods. “If decisive action is not taken now, most climate risks identified [in the assessment] could reach critical or catastrophic levels by the end of this century,” the report’s summary says. “Hundreds of thousands of people would die from heatwaves, and economic losses from coastal floods alone could exceed €1 trillion per year.” With elections on the horizon, EEA director Leena Ylä-Mononen expressed hope that the report would be “taken seriously by the next European Parliament and the Commission.”
The Agency goes on to specify five immediate areas of concern and they are worth some attention.
These adverse reports are coming thick and fast. They may well be partial and perhaps exaggerated but they demonstrate a trend that should bot be ignored.

[Tizer]

See THIS explanation from NASA about how ocean currents are affected by climate change. It's on the right level for me. Simple explanations are always best!

It's good to see simple graphics like those. The ocean currents graphic is the AMOC I referred to above. The cold water currents are very deep in the ocean and very slow. Any changes we've caused over all those decades of climate warming will likewise take decades to recover.

[Stanley]

When I was in charge of Interpretation at Pendle Heritage my constant theme was that our target audience was a reasonably intelligent 12 year old. If I was doing the same job now I suspect it would be 10 year old.....
NASA intended those graphics for children and that's why they work for adults also.

[Stanley]

See THIS latest report from Copernicus, the EU climate organisation
March 2024 is the tenth month in a row to be the hottest on record
This news is worrying some climate scientists. They suspect the warming of the planet has speeded up......

[Tizer]

`Coral bleaching: Fourth global mass stress episode underway - US scientists' LINK

[Stanley]

I read the article Peter and it's one of the most worrying things I have read for a long time. Squabbling politicians all over the world should be reading this and having a good think. This may be the year when climate change hits home, when we see what happens to the UK food harvest later in the year when shortages caused by crops not being planted in waterlogged ground hits home and combines with effects like coral bleaching..