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Bishop Hill Sep 2, 2011 Climate: WG2 I did a quick follow up on that 2008 malaria prediction:
The UK is to be hit by regular malaria outbreaks, fatal heatwaves and contaminated drinking water within five years because of global warming, the Government has warned the NHS.
I checked this out in the original report, which is here. Remarkably, the authors put the malaria story thus:
Bishop Hill Sep 2, 2011 Climate: WG2 Climate: WG3 Barry Woods is doing an excellent impression of the now-silent-again Haunting the Library. Barry has been trawling back issues of the newspapers for global warming predictions and has come up with this:
The UK is to be hit by regular malaria outbreaks, fatal heatwaves and contaminated drinking water within five years because of global warming, the Government has warned the NHS.
It warns that there is a high likelihood of a major heatwave, leading to as many as 10,000 deaths, hitting the UK by 2012.
Following a major consultation with climate change scientists, the Government is issuing official advice to hospitals, care homes and institutions for dealing with rising temperatures, increased flooding, gales and other major weather events.
Bishop Hill Aug 29, 2011 Climate: WG2 This is a guest post by Matt Ridley:
Some years ago, presumably for having written books on genetics, I was elected a fellow of Britain’s Academy of Medical Sciences (AMS). This was a great honour and I was even more pleased to be invited to speak at one of their annual dinners.
Then, towards the end of 2010, there dropped through my letter box a newsletter from the AMS which included an item on the academy having signed up to an “international statement” on the “health benefits of policies to tackle climate change” together with other medical science academies around the world. The newsletter said that the health “co-benefits” of tackling climate change “show that climate change mitigation strategies need not be socially and economically demanding”. Since everything I was reading at the time about rising food and fuel prices driven partly by climate change mitigation policies was pointing to the opposite conclusion – namely that malnutrition and hypothermia were being increased by such policies, outweighing any health advantages – I went online to read the statement, to find out what I had been signed up to as a fellow
Bishop Hill Aug 17, 2011 Climate: WG2 Philipp Mueller, who is Benny Peiser's deputy at GWPF, has written an excellent short paper about the recent greening of the Sahel.
The Sahara is actually shrinking, with vegetation arising on land where there was nothing but sand and rocks before. The southern border of the Sahara has been retreating since the early 1980s, making farming viable again in what were some of the most arid parts of Africa. There has been a spectacular regeneration of vegetation in northern Burkina Faso, which was devastated by drought and advancing deserts 20 years ago. It is now growing so much greener that families who fled to wetter coastal regions are starting to come back. There are now more trees, more grassland for livestock and a 70% increase in yields of local cereals such sorghum and millet in recent years. Vegetation has also increased significantly in the past 15 years in southern Mauritania, north-western Niger, central Chad, much of Sudan and parts of Eritrea. In Burkina Faso and Mali, production of millet rose by 55 percent and 35 percent, respectively, since 1980. Satellite photos, taken between 1982 and 2002, revealed the extensive re-greening throughout the Sahel. Aerial photographs and interviews with local people have confirmed the increase in vegetation.
I wonder what the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report had to say about the Sahel?
Bishop Hill Aug 8, 2011 Climate: WG2 Duncan Green is head of research at Oxfam GB and has written an article exploring the question of whether the drought in the Horn of Africa is caused by climate change. The article is here and an edited version appears at the Guardian. I'm sure that comment will be freer at Mr Green's place.
Green presents evidence to support the idea that the drought in the Horn of Africa is global warming in action: anecdotal evidence from the locals and increases in surface temperatures. He also notes rather more importantly that the rainfall records are ambiguous.
Bishop Hill Aug 1, 2011 Beddington Climate: WG2 Sir John Beddington has responded to readers' comments on his report "Preparing for the Future", which was much criticised by BH readers for its failure to quantify any of the alleged risks with which it claimed we are beset.
The response, as expected, does little to address criticisms in a meaningful way. Here's what he has to say about the failure to quantify the risks:
It was not in its scope to provide a formal or quantitative risk assessment but to identify a range of threats and opportunities that should be considered as signposts for action by policymakers, and a basis for further, more detailed analysis and assessment.
Bishop Hill Jul 22, 2011 Climate: WG2 John Droz, writing at WUWT, has a very interesting article on a battle of wits over sea level rise. As I noted after the Cambridge Conference, I have made a mental note to pay more attention to this aspect of the global warming debate. There are some remarkable stories in this area. The conclusions of the paper Droz is writing about are startling enough
To reach the multimeter levels projected for 2100 by RV requires large positive accelerations that are one to two orders of magnitude greater than those yet observed in sea-level data.
The story of the counterarguments from Profs Rahmstorf and Vermeer is rather remarkable too.
Bishop Hill Jul 21, 2011 Climate: Parliament Climate: WG2 Severe droughts are now twice as common as they were in 1970. Research suggests human action doubled the risk of the 2003 European heatwave. And climate change made the autumn 2000 floods in the UK about twice as likely....Climate change above 2 degrees is called catastrophic for a reason. Warmer air carries more water. Humidity means storms, hurricanes, flash floods.
Bishop Hill
Also this is hilarious:
This is our Munich moment. Every country must commit itself in full to meeting this common but differentiated challenge...
From today, for the first time, humankind will work together as one in defence of our most precious inheritance.
From today, we acknowledge that we are held to a higher responsibility.
One that transcends profit and loss, and peace and war, and trade and aid.
From today, we commit to work not to the prejudices of the past, but in service of a greater and more lasting good. The planet earth, and the life it sustains.
Bishop Hill Jul 13, 2011 Climate: WG2 Sir John Beddington is seeking feedback on the climate impacts report I blogged about yesterday.
Bishop Hill Jul 12, 2011 Climate: WG2 Sir John Beddington has published a new report that addresses "International Dimensions of Climate Change". The lead author team includes BH regular Richard Betts.
The headlines are going to be grabbed by the reports call for climate disasters overseas to be used as a lever for introduction of unpopular policy measures in the UK:
The onset of more severe climate impacts overseas may also open up temporary opportunities, or ‘policy windows’. These would allow legislators the licence to take specific bold actions which they ordinarily believe would not otherwise be possible or politically acceptable...
Bishop Hill Jun 30, 2011 Climate: WG2 Dr James Martin, the super-rich philanthropist, has piped up from his private island in the Caribbean to tell us that our lifestyles are going to ruin the planet.
...the dangers from future climate change are ratcheting up year after year. The world’s media have become increasingly full of images of collapsing ice shelves, stranded polar bears, raging hurricanes, lands stricken by drought, fires sweeping across southern Australia and deserts spreading. The ice caps are melting in both the Arctic and Antarctic. But all this is only an overture to trouble on a much grander scale. The runaway transformation of the Earth’s climate may become the worst crisis of human history.
Now that's funny, because I read just this morning that Antarctic Sea ice is at an all-time high. Melting means something different when you are a multimillionaire it seems.
Bishop Hill Jun 18, 2011 Climate: WG2 I've not followed the sea level rise story closely, but my interest was piqued by Morner's lecture at Cambridge a few weeks back. I don't suppose this news will surprise him very much.
The University of Colorado’s Sea Level Research Group decided in May to add 0.3 millimeters -- or about the thickness of a fingernail -- every year to its actual measurements of sea levels, sparking criticism from experts who called it an attempt to exaggerate the effects of global warming.
The story seems to be that the land is rising, increasing the carrying capacity of the oceans. This would effectively reduce the amount of sea level rise expected, and we couldn't have that - hence the "adjustment". The effect of the adjustment appears to be small when put against the projected rises, but is certainly material against the actual changes recorded (although these are, per Morner, wrong).
Bishop Hill Jun 13, 2011 Climate: MetOffice Climate: Models Climate: WG2 Climate: WG3 Economics These videos of a conference run by the Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences popped up on one of my Google alerts. There's a lot to see but it's all interesting stuff.
First up is a presentation by Tim Palmer, an Oxford climate modeller, who is particularly interesting on the large biases in climate models and the "misleading" way these are dealt with in "some reports".
Bishop Hill May 26, 2011 Climate: WG2 The Met Office has just issued its hurricane forecast for the 2011 season in the North Atlantic. At 12 storms and an ACE of 151, it's apparently going to be absolutely normal.
Bishop Hill May 24, 2011 Climate: Models Climate: Surface Climate: WG2 Climate: solar One of the interesting moments from the Cambridge conference was where Dr Eric Wolff of the British Antarctic Survey tried valiantly to find a measure of agreement between the two sides. I didn't get the details written down, but Dr Wolff has kindly recreated what he said at the time for me, for which many thanks are due.
In the table below, Dr Wolff's summary is in the left hand column and my comments are on the right. Blank implies broad agreement.
