CLIMATE CHANGE AND GLOBAL WARMING

[plaques]

I used the shuttle bus for visiting when Mrs P was in. I would spend all day there including having dinner in the canteen. Caught the bus back after the evening visiting totally exhausted. Just sat back and closed my eyes for 30 minutes.

My next appointment is this coming Monday 9-20. To be safe it would mean catching the 7-15 bus. Much easier to drive all the way there. Parking charges are reasonable for this type of visit.

Last visit two weeks ago was on a Sunday. Closed the M65 just prior the Blackburn turn off. Down into the dive you go. No diversion signs it was a best guess job. I can do without this sort of stress.

[Stanley]

Yes, If ever I need to go again I shall choose Burnley for that reason.

[Stanley]

Have a look at THIS BBC report which gives the clearest warning yet that we are in the last chance saloon.
A series of climate records on temperature, ocean heat, and Antarctic sea ice have alarmed some scientists who say their speed and timing is "unprecedented". Dangerous heatwaves sweeping Europe could break further records, according to the UN. It is hard to immediately link these events to climate change because weather - and the Earth's oceans - are so complex. Studies are underway, but scientists already fear some worst-case scenarios are unfolding. "I'm not aware of a similar period when all parts of the climate system were in record-breaking or abnormal territory," Thomas Smith, an environmental geographer at London School of Economics, says. "The Earth is in uncharted territory" now due to global warming from burning fossil fuels, as well as heat from the first El Niño - a warming natural weather system - since 2018, says Imperial College London climate science lecturer Dr Paulo Ceppi.
How long can wed keep trying to maintain 'business as usual' when all the signs are that we are sliding rapidly into previously unknown territory.

[plaques]

It is hard to immediately link these events to climate change because weather - and oceans - are so complex.

AI to the rescue. A butterfly flaps its wings etc: With complex calculations being done at lightening speed the 'futures markets' will be able to predict the next crop failures and make a killing. The gravy train will rumble on Lloyds of London will make a fortune. Private armies will make sure that the 0.1% are well protected taking them back to the good old feudal days of Lords and peasants.

[Tizer]

It is hard to immediately link these events to climate change because weather - and oceans - are so complex.

The BBC has been resorting to this out of date comment for years now ever since the climate deniers pounced on the broadcaster about 20 years ago. It doesn't require expert knowledge or sophisticated computer modelling, all that's needed is simple physics: by analogy with the atmosphere a rise in ocean temperatures means greater ocean turbulence and higher energy content. That raises the baseline for other events such as storms, hurricanes and El Nino, so these all become more damaging and dangerous.

[Stanley]

We're seeing a good example of what Peter refers to at the moment. One component of the present situation is that the ocean temperature in the North Atlantic is up by 5C. This has implications for the Arctic Ice Pack and eventually the Gulf Stream. It will also have a bearing on the unusual depth of the Atlantic low that is giving us the current autumnal weather. Preferable to a heat event such as the one in S Europe but still abnormal weather.
Yes Ken, I suspect you are right about the use of AI to analyse complex weather pictures and as always the knowledge gained will have both good and bad consequences. Twas ever thus. But ordinary joined up thinking without AI can help us understand many aspects of what is happening. A good example of that is what the Welcome Foundation was drawing our attention to earlier this week. The eventual effect of the present heat stress in S Europe on food imports.
What a pity our leaders aren't using joined up thinking on the matter of food supply.......

[plaques]

The most pressing problem at the moment isn't fires in southern Europe or the oceans warming at unprecedented speeds or even the mass movements of people trying to escape starvation. No its something that's staring us in the face. Should the UK drop its green credentials to get the Conservatives voted into government again. Kicking the can down the road is a favorite move of all political parties. Make loads of promises but let someone else pick up the tab is a tipical ploy. The easiest thing is to hang back on international agreements hoping to gain some financial advantage from a do nothing approach. The UK's contribution to climate change is small beer compared to the big polluters like America or China but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't play our part and suffer some of the pain. Lets hope that the Conservatives see the light and give climate change the priority it deserves and take local politics out of the equation.

[Stanley]

You're quite right Ken, Uxbridge pointed the easy way to electoral success, ditch the green levies and that includes the ones on fuel! However Gove has stated publicly that the stop dates on IC car production are immoveable. (LINK) In addition it is reported that many Tory MP's are rebelling against the lessening of pressure for green policies. It may be that pressure to retain them may win despite the fact that we know Sunak will try to please everyone in his Party. That's the only way he is holding them together!
I note THIS report.
Dr Melissa Lazenby, Lecturer in Climate Change, University of Sussex, said: “The current European Heatwave is being driven by stable atmospheric conditions from a stationary high pressures feature. This heatwave is likely driven by a combination of climate change, El Niño and a stationary high-pressure system also known as an anticyclone. Europe is not particularly affected by El Niño events directly, see diagram below from the NOAA, therefore it is likely the high-pressure system and climate change that are the main contributors to this heatwave event. It is not possible to determine all the drivers and their exact contributions to the current heatwave in Europe, only a full attribution study after the event will illustrate the exact drivers and their proportion of impact on the event.
“The UK at the moment is not experiencing the same high temperatures as the rest of Europe and that is mainly due to the placement of the current high-pressure system, which does not cover the UK and is situated further south, which provides stable atmospheric conditions for enhanced warming and resulting heatwaves. If you are in the UK today, you will notice the higher winds which are not associated with a high-pressure feature and therefore not allowing conducive heatwave conditions explaining why UK temperatures are not anomalously warm like the rest of Europe.”

[plaques]

Does anyone really believe that the UK can stop the sales of IC cars by 2030? This would also include the non plug in hybrids that are so popular at the moment. Of course the old IC cars will still be in use for the next decade or more and sales of old cars would still outstrip the new EV cars. Then there is the question of infrastructure, power generation and supply lines, charging points for those unable to charge at home. Rapid charging points are extremely expensive to install and people in rural areas may never see them. I can see the introduction of EV zones as being similar to the ULEZ zones that are the current vogue with the whole concept being one of mission creep rather than a big bang change. It looks like its going to be just one more promise to push into the long grass.

[Tizer]

The mayor now knows it's due to climate change. Why do people only believe it when it's too late?
`Italy weather: Summer storms sweep across northern regions' Short BBC video
Accompanying text: Unseasonably stormy weather moved eastwards across northern Italy as intense rain and 100km/h (62mph) winds battered the region. In some places, tennis ball-sized hailstones injured people, damaged cars and uprooted trees. A 16-year-old girl was killed when a tree fell on the tent she was sleeping in at a summer camp near the city of Brescia, while a middle-aged woman died after also being hit by a falling tree in Lissone, north of Milan. The mayor of Milan, Giuseppe Sala, said: "I have never seen anything like this... We can't deny it any longer - climate change is changing our lives."

[Stanley]

I think you are probably very close to the truth Ken. The same applies to timetables for ending gas CH boilers.....
"Why do people only believe it when it's too late?"
Peter. Unwillingness to accept inconvenient truths that are going to require action or modification of actions by all of us. If I come clean the laudable acts I have done, eschewing air transport, stopping driving and being economical with my consumption of resources, are all driven by my age and changing health. Would I be such a good lad if I was young and had plenty of money?
It's even worse for a government. How can you reduce the carbon footprint of a defence budget, a health service or an education system? The bottom line is that we are snookered! That much is becoming obvious as time goes by. We have probably passed the 'tipping point', the point of no return.

[Stanley]

See THISBBC round up of the latest climate news. I said yesterday that I had the impression that the speed of climate change has increased. These reports reinforce that impression. In particular I noted the speculation that the Gulf Stream could stall by 2025. I have always had that at the back of my mind as the point where we can be absolutely sure that the climate deniers have always been totally misguided. So far there has always been room for a scintilla of doubt but if that catastrophe comes to pass we can stop giving them that latitude.

[Pluggy]

Its way more complex than the gulf stream turning off. The gulf stream is driven by the rotation of the earth and won't stop unless the earth stops rotating. What the melting of the arctic will do is slow down or stop whats called the AMOC (Atlantic Meridianal Overturning Circulation ). Newspapers report it as the Gulf stream because everyone has heard of the gulf stream, whereas practically no-one has heard of The AMOC. The gulf stream and the AMOC do combine to bring heat to Europe but its believed the Gulf |Stream is the larger contributor. The reality is, there isn't a consensus on this as the models we use to predict climate change aren't yet good enough to properly discern the extremely complex currents that are happening on earth. We don't really know is the honest answer. On the more general issue of ,climate change, there is a consensus : Were stuffed.

If you want to go down the rabbit hole on this, the explanation is presented very well in this youtube video by Sabine Hossenfelder



A consequence of being a prisoner of a wheelchair (albeit an electric one) is that researching stuff is something I can still do ....

[Tripps]

Thanks for that. Interesting.

I see that Tony Blair has entered the fray. He said yesterday- and I've agreed for a long time
Britain should not obsess about cutting its carbon emissions, Sir Tony Blair said yesterday.
In a break with Labour policy, the former prime minister suggested it was futile to make big sacrifices to drive down the UK's emissions when they are dwarfed by those from countries such as China.
He said even if the UK did a 'huge amount' it was 'not really going to impact climate change'.

I watched a routine by Lee Evans yesterday and - leaving aside the bad language - he said much the same thing.
Lee Evans Small world. . . .

[Stanley]

Thanks Pluggy, a lot I didn't know there!
As for Blair, it pains me to say it but I too have been in that camp for a long time. For instance, not all the stratospheric gas prices are down to the greed of Centrica, a large chunk goes to the Treasury in the shape of Climate Change Levies. With interest rates rocketing up there is room for a bit of wriggle room for the poor taxpayer. The Treasury is sharing as well in the bonanza caused by Russia.

[Tizer]

Graphic copied from this BBC news report today...
`Ocean heat record broken, with grim implications for the planet' LINK

[Tripps]

A triumph of the statistician's art.

So the "record" has been smashed by one hundredth of a degree centigrade. Measuring a constantly varying quantity over an area of tens of thousands of miles of ocean.

Put me down as 'mildly sceptical'.

[Tizer]

Ignore the comparison with 2016. I posted it because of the difference between August this year and all the previous data for this month.

[Stanley]

The important thing in my mind is the fact that the trend is upwards.... .

[Stanley]

A significant record was broken yesterday. A gust of over 79mph at Barry Head was the highest ever recorded in Britain in August. One more small evidence that our climate is changing.

[Tripps]

Just for the record on August 8th in this time of "global boiling"

About 4.00 am having been awake for some time and already having the Autumn weight duvet on - I got up and added the single size extra one that I normally only use in the Winter. Back to sleep in no time.

[Stanley]

There is no doubt this is unseasonable weather. Yet again, I was tempted to have a blast of CH but managed to stave it off with a padded waistcoat! No problems in bed as I never change the duvet, always have the winter weight on.
I think the reason for this disturbance (And incidentally, for the high temperatures in Southern Europe) is the fact that the Jet Stream has deviated a lot further south than usual. I have no idea what can have caused that.

[Tizer]

`Antarctica’s ‘staggering’ exposure to climate change worsens global threat' FT
...In March 2022, the most extreme “heatwave” ever recorded anywhere in the world took place over the ice dome of East Antarctica where temperatures hit 38.5C above the seasonal normal. “If London experienced an anomaly like that, the temperature would be close to 60C,” he told journalists ahead of the report’s publication in Frontiers in Environmental Science...The heatwave illustrated the way extreme events can be linked in cascades, the scientists said. It was caused by an “atmospheric river” of warm wet air flowing south from Australia, which also caused the break-up of sea ice and the collapse of the Conger ice shelf covering an area the size of Rome. Today the area that has refrozen in the Antarctic winter is about 14.7mn sq km — 1.4mn sq km less than last year, which was itself a record low. The amount of sea ice missing this year compared with the average of the past five decades is 2.4mn sq km, an area 10 times greater than the UK....

[Stanley]

It all adds up to a tipping point passed to me but nobody dare admit it.

[Tripps]

Here's a valuable contribution to the battle for net zero. Windwings

I think that in the days of the Cutty Sark, the "windwings" were not named by an ad agency, and used to be called "sails"

I read yesterday that the Chinese had a battery powered cargo boat in service. It had a range of about 80 kilometers, and in perhaps the ultimate irony - was being used initially to ferry coal ("waa waa") to a power station!

Don't believe it? Look here Battery powered ship

We're saved. .' ' 'I would humbly suggest that the purpose is to flaunt it at international conferences like COP, whilst quietly getting on building coal fired generators on a colossal, and world wide scale.