Tuesday, July 24, 2007

UK Flooded...

...with pundits desperate to pin the latest floods on to 'man made climate change' (anyone else notice that the phrase 'global warming' is being rapidly replaced with the phrase 'climate change' - you can bet your life that when it gets hot again they'll revert to talking about warming again).

There's been frequent mention that these floods are the worst since 1947, but the obvious question of what caused the floods in 1947 is never asked. Given that 1947 was in a cooling period and that that man-made CO2 emissions were lower it's easy to see why the obvious questions aren't asked. Instead we're treated to 'we told you so' comments along the lines of 'more rain is precisely what the climate models predict' - again conveniently forgetting that the predictions are for wetter winters, not summers.

The epitome of this was one anonymous listener emailing Radio 4's Today program to comment that no wonder we're suffering such disasters when people are complaining that the 8 litres a day of clean water being distributed to victims is not enough. I've tried to parse the logic (I'm being generous here...), and the best I can come up with is along these lines... We demand so much (i.e. more than 8 litres of water a day) and that these demands are met by industries that pump CO2 into the atmosphere and that this is causing the floods.

How can one even counter that kind of thinking?

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

True Confessions

There's a great little article by Dr David Evans, who used to work for the Australian Greenhouse Office. He was, as he admits, doing a well-paid scientific job modelling the effects of man-made CO2. It's the sort of thing that Kyoto, and other future schemes, would depend on implicitly. However, as Evans explains, once he had a chance to look at the science he's had a change of heart. Where is the observational evidence, he asks? After 20 years (and billions of dollars) of intense investigation why is the evidence so scant?

Read his article, as true confessions go it, it's a good one.

Thursday, July 05, 2007

It's not all bad...

Good to see that much of the British population retains a healthy dose of skepticism when it comes to climate change. While there's a predictable wringing of hands from environmentalists, for those who've still got some sense of perspective the news is something of a relief.

No doubt that this sort of news is going to push some environmentalists towards ever more authoritarian policies in an effort to get us to change our ways in spite the lack of evidence or a credible theory that CO2 emissions cause global warming.