to think climete change is a pile of bollocks?

[moogy1a]

Summers in Britain to get colder and wetter

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-20758780

earlier this year," oh no, they're going to get hotter and drier"
www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/9038988/Climate-change-will-make-UK-new-holiday-destination.html

climate change scients cherry pick the data they need to fit whatever political agenda they need it to fit.
If you start looking into reports, they are a huge mess of completely contradictory results.
I also like the way the term"global warming" has been quietly ditched in favour of climate change as it became increasingly obvious the world wasn't hotting up.

the site is a climate change sceptic, but the report linked on the site has been confirmed as the genuine IPCC report, that is what i linked to, not his comments on it.
Also disagree with the use of the word denial, not used elsewhere where there is disagreement on something, except one special case

No moogy the glaciers retreating film was not fucking filmed in spring! It was a longitudinal study over years. obviously. What the hell makes you think that a glaciologist who devotes their life to trying to understand glaciers would be stupid enough to not understand the very basics of how they behave on a yearly cycle and that you know better? That is just so bloody insulting!

the site is a climate change sceptic, but the report linked on the site has been confirmed as the genuine IPCC report, that is what i linked to, not his comments on it.
Also disagree with the use of the word denial, not used elsewhere where there is disagreement on something, except one special case

So which parts of the report suggest we don't need to be concerned about climate change? Quoting from the actual report not WUWT.

I'm kind of curious to know - and these are questions, not digs - whether equal amounts of money, political will & effort are being put into mitigation of the effects of climate change (wrt human populations) as into supposedly reducing the change itself.

Carbon trading provides opportunities for massive international financial scamming, but offers dubious benefits (to put it mildly) to the Earth's gas mantle. Giant alternative power projects have already proven to be a giant waste of money but funding continues to flood in. There've been no convincing answers to criticism of the Desertec project, which among other things could threaten the sub-Saharan aquifer and cause increased desertification. Trying to stop climate change is sexy, expensive and (I maintain) plays into the hands of global enterprises wishing to secure control of power & water.

Building floating cities, transport and food production is just as expensive but affords comparatively less opportunity for global control. I'm only aware of small-scale charitable projects creating schools & hospitals on ships in Bangladesh, for example, yet the technologies developed through such projects could be used for large-scale solutions to flooding. Some previous posters have referred to inequalities in food distribution. Given that humans are confident of conducting oil, gas, electricity and water across continents & oceans, how come these abilities aren't being used to ensure efficient food distribution? Why are we under such pressure to adopt 'smart metering' for power - which will hand over control of our homes to global corporations - but hear nothing about any smart resource balancing for drinking water and food?

It's all about money, surely.

Yay! A real flat earther.

So which parts of the report suggest we don't need to be concerned about climate change?

The below is a quote from page 17 of the summary for policy makers.

Global mean sea level rise will very likely continue beyond 2100, with ocean thermosteric sea level rise to continue for centuries to millennia, unless global temperatures decline. The few available model results indicate global mean sea level rise by 2300 likely to be less than 1 m for greenhouse gas concentrations below 500 ppm CO2-equivalent scenario but rise as much as 1?3 m for concentrations above 700 ppm CO2-equivalent{13.5.2, Figure 13.10, Figure 13.11}.

Below is a map of areas inundated in a 3 metre scenario (ie max expected by 2300 at high CO2 concentrations)

map

This doesn't seem worth the money the government are aiming to spend.

The trouble with trying to take a risk based approach is the level of uncertainty is very significant and the time scales unknown (NB I am a risk manager, so generally hugely in favour of risk based approaches). Plus the costs are huge. As an example, an event like Superstorm Sandy was predicted as a possibility well in advance. Scientists have been discussing the impact of this type of combination of weather plus increases in sea level on the New York area for many years. But the cost of mitigating the anticipated flooding was in the billions. So very little was done (apart from commissioning further research). The damage caused (just in NYC) is expected to be in excess of $40bn, and there is still a need to spend further billions on flood protection because the likelihood of another storm with similar or greater impact is gradually increasing over time.

I get news services from a couple of insurance brokers and the number of weather events, and the costs entailed are seriously increasing. The amount of money being invested in either attempting to reduce pollutants or address the anticipated effects is very small (certainly nothing in comparison with the amount of money/time/resources being spent on finding new sources of oil or even developing new consumer goods). The trouble is that in general our political systems are not designed to look at the long term, especially where there is a short term cost.

agree the level of uncertainty is huge, so why spend huge amounts? the IPCC report suggests no increase in hurricanes.
The cost of reducing CO2 in Europe is huge with no great benefit, as the worst case scenarios do not appear too bad and the rest of the world is not joining in, so no reduction in worldwide production - why beggar ourselves for no benefit?

alivsol I didn't ask for it to be deleted. in fact, I was just wondering how a reply could have been deleted on what is a pretty uncontroversial thread!

Hi Garlic -

In the language of climate change finance, "mitigation" is the label given to investment to reduce emission growth (through renewables, energy efficiency, tropical forest conservation etc..), investment to prepare countries and industries for higher temperatures, rising sea levels and more extreme weather events is called "adaptation", and there is now also talk of money needed to deal with "loss and damage".

Overall best estimates are that around 98 billion dollars worldwide went into mitigation and adaptation in 2011 (or around 1/6 of the US millitary budget) - and you are right more money went into mitigation than adaptation.

Both money for mitigation and adaptation are needed - and it is cheaper to avoid problems than to deal with them down the line.

If you want to avoid "human arrogance" I would avoid fondly thinking that humans will be able to smoothly adapt to climate change unprecedented in our history by building floating cities and food production systems. More likely are huge numbers of climate refugees, resource wars and extinctions.

There are big business interests on all sides - it is not like power and water are cottage industries!. There is much more investment tied up in extracting and burning fossil fuels than in finding low-carbon solutions.

As for your last question about why we can't have better food distribution systems - it's a good question - but you seem to be confusing efficiency and equity (fairness). Yes we can confidently transport oil, gas, electricity and food long distances, but still many people have no electricity, not enough food etc....

Below is a map of areas inundated in a 3 metre scenario (ie max expected by 2300 at high CO2 concentrations)

Thanks for providing the links. The map only tells part of the story IMO. I dread to think of the effect on the UK of rises in the ocean of 1M or more coupled with more frequent storms of greater intensity than we have had in the past. We can already getting more extreme weather than in the past. We are having unprecedented rainfall at the moment with no sign of it ending. Almost certainly caused by a shift in the jet stream and higher ocean temperatures.

agree the level of uncertainty is huge, so why spend huge amounts? the IPCC report suggests no increase in hurricanes.
The cost of reducing CO2 in Europe is huge with no great benefit, as the worst case scenarios do not appear too bad and the rest of the world is not joining in, so no reduction in worldwide production - why beggar ourselves for no benefit?

Well we don't actually get many hurricanes in the UK but we are already experiencing extreme weather. Anyway the way I read it they are saying that they have less confidence in saying there will be an increase in hurricanes than they have in predicting other extreme weather events. This is only part of the story anyway. Temperate increases of the magnitude expected are likely to have a devastating effect on agriculture or instance.

can=are in the third sentence.

Great storm of 1703, great storm of 1874.
recent storms are no different and no more or less severe than storms and flooding which have occurred periodically since man has been on the planet! ( actually, they may have been worse a few thousand years ago for all I know, but since we began making a note of such things).
And yes, there were other incidents between these dates, and before / after I'm just choosing 2 at random as examples.

This year is England's wettest year since records began in spite of us being in drought for the first three months. Six of the 10 wettest years in the UK have now occurred since 1998. Storms are likely to increase in intensity and frequency as the oceans warm.

What would save us is a great plague (or what would save the earth) . Something that wipes out half the population then our fuel demands would half and we could get back to a more balanced demand on the earth's products.

I'm rubbish at geography, but given that many of the world's major cities are on the coast, couldn't that map still mean a pretty hefty impact in terms of upheaval, disease etc and money needed to re-build/relocate?

Youngermother -

I think the map is quite alarming. As Binkybix says many major population centres are in costal regions.

The top ten cities at risk by value include New York, Miami, Calcutta, Dhaka, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Bangkok.

Each of the little red dots means multiple Huricaine Sandy, Catrina type events, gradually making large parts of cities uninsurable and unlivable, subsidence and landslides disrupting transport, power and water systems, lives lost, homes and businesses destroyed, millions of people becoming climate refugees. Not to mention drought and extreme heat events that won't just take place in low lying coasts.

I really don't know how you can shrug and say it is just too expensive to do anything to prevent these things happening.

I'd just like to thank Himalaya, Youngermother and nooka for your recent posts. I'm quietly reading now as it makes a pleasant change to witness a rational, informed discussion of this problem from various points of view :)

You're right about 'extreme' weather events, afaik, moogy. I'm old enough to recall many surprise weather onslaughts, occurring before climate change was blamed for them all! At school we were told extreme weather tends to happen in 30-year cycles, meaning each generation thinks it's the first! I've no idea whether there's any truth in it.

I have spent time in the Amazon, which floods by approx 10m every year. Was fascinated by the adaptations (sorry for using the wrong word, Himalaya) routinely employed - a combination of high builds and pontoons, mostly.There are floating petrol stations on the rivers. Floating gardens are commonplace (for veg & chickens.) I understand deep, adaptable flood barriers - bunds? - are also used for things like oil and water storage.

Himalaya, are there no potentials for adapting to change rather than preventing change? Isn't adaptability supposed to be our species' strength? Would the costs of moving or changing New York, Tokyo, etc, be significantly greater than trying to stop the events, and/or less likely to work?

It's not just rich countries and cities like New York and Tokyo that will be affected. Nor is it just flooding. Africa for instance is expected to experience more droughts, more famines and increased exposure to diseases like malaria.

i've often thought that africa should just relocate - how many of its problems might be solved this way. just put it on a pontoon and float it to safety

If you think my questions are stupid, chibi, would you mind explaining the issues instead of being facetious?

Garlic - yes we can and must adapt. Even the level of climate change which we are already committed to by current emissions (around 2 degrees) will mean some serious adaptation will have to take place.

But we shouldn't think that it will be cheaper/easier to adapt to 4 or 6 degrees than it will be to shift from fossil fuels and last century technology to renewables and smart systems. The Stern report lays out the dry economics of it. The Mark Lynas book 6 degrees is a bit more vivid about what the impacts of climate change in practice will mean. It isnt pretty.

Avoiding catastrophic climate change and beconing more resilient in the face of weather extremes requires a new industrial revolution - new industries and technologies replacing old, new ways of doing things, organising cities and food systems etc...human adaptability and creativity are all important!

For the UK the question I think, is will it become "yesterday's country"; clinging onto declining industries while others invent radically more efficient approaches , or will it be able to be a leader in green innovation.

i don't know how to explain why relocating cities, especially meagcities like tokyo (20 million or something like that) is not a realistic or possibly even feasible option - where are these people going to go? what about the infrastuctures that currently support them?

to me, saying 'let's just move tokyo' is just one step short of saying 'let's just colonise the moon'

i suppose that might seem like a viable option to some as well

Excellent post Himalaya. I still wonder how poorer nations are going to cope though. They haven't got the money to put into place the changes needed. How does Africa cope with the extremes of temperature they are likely to experience? Or the flooding that highly populated countries like Bangladesh will have to deal with?