Readers may be interesting in this report of the proceedings of a climate change conference in Rotterdam back in September. One of the sessions was chaired by a familiar face
BBC correspondent and conference moderator Roger Harrabin took a moment between speeches to remind all those gathered that “politics is creeping along, whereas scientists say, we need to be racing forward in order to adapt to and mitigate climate change.”
And there was a fairly vacuous contribution from Chris Rapley:
Chris Rapley of University College of London spoke about bridging the gap between organising on the one hand and, on the other, communicating climate resilience. “We are facing the challenge of explaining as complex a system as climate change in the simplest possible way, but no simpler than is necessary! And we are failing to bring the message across, to the public and politicians alike.” The only way to tell the story of climate change is through dialogue, he insisted: “There has to be a genuine effort to communicate climate science in ways similar to how people communicate in their daily lives, in order to get the story across.”
But the fun bit was where Myles Allen picked up on Harrabin's concern with the lack of pace on the policy front:
Harrabin’s point was underscored by Myles Allen, Head of the Climate Dynamics Group at the University of Oxford’s Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics Department: “We are seeing impacts on all continents in natural and social systems, in ecosystems, and in human health. Coastal systems and low-lying areas will increasingly experience adverse impacts. Bad weather will get worse. Or, as a Californian firefighter once said: Climate change makes a bad day worse.”
Allen made impassioned pleas for investment in carbon storage, and for the inclusion of developing countries. “It is plain and simple: the more carbon you emit into the atmosphere, the warmer it gets. Now we need to get to zero by the end of the century – but we cannot ask people in India or China to simply stop using their coal. So the only option is to offset these effects by investing heavily in carbon storage. The Netherlands could take a major lead on this score, since it is already doing this in the Rotterdam harbour area, for instance."
Look out also for a picture of Roger Harrabin speaking with a snorkel and mask in hand.