Floods show why we should worry (From York Press)
Get in touch: send your photos, videos, news & views by texting YORK to 80360 or send an email»
Floods show why we should worry
11:21am Thursday 29th November 2012 in Letters By Reader's letter
IT IS hard to avoid concluding that someone is trying to tell us something.
Just as the latest talks aimed at combating climate change begin in Qatar, the heavens open and once more, only three months after the last period of intense rainfall and extensive flooding.
Clearly these are no longer freak events, something we can expect to happen once in a blue moon. On the contrary, this is the new normal.
Unfortunately the danger is that this won’t be normal for long, for with the emission of greenhouse gasses world-wide still rising and current projections suggesting that the world is heading for 6C degrees of warming when the scientist say that nothing above 2C is safe, prolonged periods of rainfall leading to widespread flooding (together with other extreme weather events) may be even more frequent in the future.
Only a firm commitment from the representatives of the world’s leading polluting countries to ambitious and legally binding emission targets can prevent such a frightening scenario becoming reality.
If anything less than this is the outcome of the UN Climate Change Conference in Doha, then what we have experienced over the past three months could be merely a taster of what’s to come.
Colin Campbell Fulford, York.
Comments(10)
Von_Dutch
says...
1:34pm Thu 29 Nov 12
*Groan* - Here's another naive person who thinks that it's in the power of mankind to do anything about the climate changing. It has and always will. So perhaps we are having a miniscule influence on speeding up this change, but it is happening anyway whether you like it or not. If all CO2 emissions were eradicated tomorrow, it would still happen.
If they're going to spend tax-payers money, spend it on ways to mitigate the effects of any change.
capt spaulding
says...
6:26pm Thu 29 Nov 12
3 Volcanoes go off next week and there goes your theory about Co2 emmissions.
Ice ages come and go, proven fact. We have to adapt to how things are and resist any attempt by the climate change zealots to TAX us lots to cover their ideas.
PinzaC55
says...
10:58pm Thu 29 Nov 12
capt spaulding
says...
11:20pm Thu 29 Nov 12
PinzaC55 wrote:None of them are. They cant see the wood for the trees.
There are several interesting facts about climate change. One of them is that in his movie "An Inconvenient Truth" Al Gore showed the clear correlation between CO2 levels and global temperatures. What Gore omitted to mention was that global temperature rises PRECEDED CO2 levels ie temperature rises CAUSED increased CO2 levels. This is because the oceans absorb CO2 when it is cold and then release it (like lemonade) when it is warm. But the oceans are so vast that they have a "memory" of 800 years. In other words the oceans release CO2 800 years after the warmth which caused the release. I doubt that Colin is interested in this fact though.
Mankind will and must adapt to whatever is thrown its way. That or go the way of the Dinosaurs.
When mount St helens erupted they calculated that Co2 belching out was more than the entire english industrial revolution.
Its just another excuse to tax us more and big themselves up in the public arena.
ColdAsChristmas
says...
2:09am Fri 30 Nov 12
With regard to PinzaC55: Professor Bob Carter remarked that the idea of CO2 causing warming was the equivalent of 'Cancer causing smoking.'
Algore in his PowerPoint slide show suggested Global Warming would cause sea levels to rise 20 feet! That contrasts with the IPPC and Indian Railway engineer Pachauri that sea levels by 2100 might rise to 7-24 inches. A two foot rise is exaggerated enough but good ol Algore put a zero on the end to get that Oscar!
A few weeks ago on BBC Question Time, Union Leader Bob Crow was concerned that he didn't want his Grand Children choking on CO2. This is just one example about how misinformation and propaganda has spread even to people who should be challenging this rubbish, raising the cost of living for all including his members. The total amount of trace gas CO2 represents only 0.04% of the atmosphere. The man made element, which is claimed to be catastrophic is only 4% of that minute amount, and that includes agriculture.
The BBC in January 2006 changed policy and went Green following a secret meeting of a panel of experts. It turns out that 25 of these 28 so called experts were not even scientists but activists from Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, WWF etc. No wonder they fought to keep the names secret. Another scam from the BBC.
Current temperature as I write is -3C, not exactly warming.
Every winter thousands of old people die of cold, with energy prices at record high levels that situation will not get better I'm sorry to say. Think of all those State pensions saved so more wind turbines can be bought. Just what good they will do, apart from their recyclable value I don't know.
last of the mandms
says...
7:37am Fri 30 Nov 12
ColdAsChristmas
says...
10:45am Fri 30 Nov 12
Far from denial, I'm positive that we are not seeing warming, just natural variation, something Philip Jones of the CRU admits he knows little about.
The measures being taken to cure a problem we don't have will ruin us all and do no good what so ever. York has always flooded so get over it and don't use it to back what folks on a big gravy train say. (And uninformed politicians on a green agenda)
To help reduce flooding, how about stopping building in soak up areas or flood plains, dredging the rivers and water courses, building up river banks and water diversion schemes such as into a new reservoir or two so next Spring the PM doesn't need to announce a drought again. Much of it can be done for the price of a wind turbine or two and would be far more useful.
BTW, what happened to Cof YC wind turbine off James Street, it has been gone a long while now and not a word. Surely it must be accounted for somewhere.
One day you will be apologising along with Owen C for your mistaken beliefs.
Magicman!
says...
3:24am Sat 1 Dec 12
Why are we told by the media that ice levels in Antartica are shrinking when the real raw data shows ice is actually GROWING on the cap? Why are renowned scientists working on climate forced out of their profession when their data shows up man-made Climate Change as a false theory? Why did the first global warming climate models made up in the early 2000's ignore the counter effects of photosynthesis? And why do they continue to ignore the effects of when icebergs fall off their shelf into the ocean which releases billions of psytoplankton thusly absorbing countless times more CO2 than before the iceberg fell?
Let's also remember which nation invented Global Warming, which later got renamed to Climate Change because everybody in the UK wanted it to get warmer: the United States of America... the nation who's president has said America is "the only indespensable nation in the world", a nation so unbelieveably arrogant that in every big disaster movie the bad thing always hits America first and the Americans are always the ones to create something that saves the world... Climate Change is just an upscaled self-created disaster that the americans have dreamed up so they can then be seen to solve it and thus save the world - and in the process increasing their almost unbearable national arrogance even further.
The cause of bad weather is the Jet Stream... study it and its movements and you will see it gets skewed when it passes over North America - this is due to a facility in Alaska which is wreaking havoc with the weather and has nothing to do with CO2 emissions.
ColdAsChristmas
says...
7:24pm Sat 1 Dec 12
Unfortunately science is the loser and has given way to politics. Surely the worlds biggest U turn waiting in the wings.
ColdAsChristmas says...
1:02pm Thu 29 Nov 12
You talk about the UN Climate Climate Change conference in Doha for example. (COP 18) Did you know that this time, for the first time, the UN's IPCC have not been invited. Perhaps their own take on rubbish has reduced the street credibility of this roadshow.
I'll never forget the rows of private jets and limos lined up at Co2penhagen. But you appear to associate heavy rainfall with the atmospheric 16 parts per million in the atmosphere of man made CO2, simply impossible.
The recent rainfall and flooding is not unprecedented, check out the markers in the Kings Arms. We had the wettest summer in 2012 for 100 years. What happened in 1912, was that global warming too? Incidentally, 1912 was the year Capt Scott and his team failed to return to base camp in the Antarctic, the year icebergs survived in April below the 50 degree North line. (Titanic)
Coming back to September 2012, the Antarctic saw the greatest extent of ice ever recorded.
This Spring and Last Spring the Prime Minister announced drought conditions and measures were taken by the water companies to restrict water use in some areas.
This Months rainfall is not out of the normal, what has happened is that the rain fell on already sodden ground.
A simple check on rainfall statistics, so far uncorrupted by the Global Warming brigade will show that higher rainfall in November has been exceeded many times.
My message to you Colin is to suggest you stop trying to scare people with exaggerated nonsense and finally, if governments could control the worlds climate: Whose hand would be on the thermostat?