Is this the point at which we start taking the whole thing a bit more seriously? There seems to be floods every year now, and this year has been particularly bad. Also just seen this article , looks like the retreat from the coast has begun.

It sometimes seems that:

Weather = any weather we are happy with

Climate change = the earth warming up / getting colder / cold winters / dry springs / wet summers / dry summers / wet winters / *

* E and OE, answers subject to change at a moments notice

cranberry are you saying that climate change is just the latest in a long line of moany horse poop, a bit like the millennium bug (remember that?!!)

Climate change is just like the boogie man, Bigfoot and Santa, just something made up to scare children

A common question in A level geography exams – Discuss the relative importance of physical and human factors in causing flooding

We continue to remove vegetation, restrict river channels and increase the area of impermeable surfaces. This, along with the increased energy in the atmosphere brought by human induced acceleration of global warming guaratees that flooding will continue to increase and governments need to take ‘managed retreat’ seriously. The expansion of the warming oceans raises sea levels faster than melting ice – another less well understood fact.

Climate change is just like the boogie man, Bigfoot and Santa, just something made up to scare children

and me! 😉 I have to admit I’m starting to feel a bit ‘edgy’ about he whole thing. Am I being a bit daft? My logic goes like this: Scientists know more about this stuff than me. The overwelming concensus of scientific opinion is that things are going waaay wrong and we are doing far too little about it. Therefore shermer75 gets all ‘the end is nigh!’ and ‘run for the hills’ on the internet. Hmmmmm….

We should have been taking it seriously decades ago, even just solely on the grounds of improving sustainability.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-02-11/adelaide-sets-summer-record-for-extreme-heat/5252482

Nothing to see here

The climate never stops changing.

The climate never stops changing.

We are just hurrying it along

The climate never stops changing.

ah the eric pickles approach, “we take man made climate change seriously”.

No we’re not Piggie. I read it in the Telegraph.

And confusing ‘weather’ with ‘climate’

It’s not that long since the Thames used to freeze up every winter and there was a ‘mini ice age’ a few hundred years ago. In Saxon times the British climate was closer to that of Southern France. It happens.

We may hear a lot more about it, now that the Londoners are starting to be affected!

Climate change denial is just a made up comfort blanket for the hard of thinking.

The climate never stops changing

If you go to Orkney there are the remains of a 4500 yr old settlement. Now it seems to be widely agreed that the climate in that region at that time was a lot warmer and generally much more pleasant.

So what caused the change? It was hardly the greenhouse gas emissions of neolithic man was it?

We may hear a lot more about it, now that the Londoners are starting to be affected!

The Somerset floods have been headlines for a couple of weeks!

Datchet isn’t really London either. Geography fail!

Meanwhile in Canada we’re digging up thousands of square KM’s of bitumen laced sand and using vast quantities of natural gas, via fracking, to ‘upgrade’ the tarsands bitumen to ship to China for deregulated burning of the stuff.

However, even if the worlds largest energy project was shelved tomorrow it would make little difference. The climate is already in runaway mode.

It needs a celebrity endorsed ‘i believe in Climate Change’ ad campaign. Clooney, Chris Martin, Paltrow et al all holding hands emotionally declaring ‘we believe in Climate Change’. If that doesn’t get even the most hardened cynic on side, nothing will.

Oh dear god are people really still debating this?

Yes the climate changes naturally but the scientific consensus is that man is contributing significantly to it – which is the best informed view available at the moment.

I am fully aware of where London is Mr Winston.

The news yesterday was plastered with reports of the Thames flooding, perhaps you missed it?

It’s all black magic and witch craft. Mother earth will do what she wants.

Now, flooding – well that’s all our fault but not due to greenhouse gases and all that other scare mongering.

Over years a river will silt up
Over years a river will try and get wider
A river usually is protected by flood plains, nice big bits of grassy goodness to soak up and regulate the water flow.

Restrict the width, concrete over the grassy goodness and still let the silt build up – you get a problem. It’s not difficult!

we talk bollocks

The news yesterday was plastered with reports of the Thames flooding, perhaps you missed it?

Ahh, the longest river in England that starts in Gloucestershire.

great summing up Grum, but still if you can go 0-60 in 4s who cares.
When you look at the future wouldn’t it be good to be the ones who didn’t need carbon fuel first….

I am fully aware of where London is Mr Winston.

The news yesterday was plastered with reports of the Thames flooding, perhaps you missed it?

You might know where London is but you obviously don’t know the path of the Thames.

Grum – maybe change that bubble to “what if it is just a big hoax and we tie ourselves up in pointless regulation, destroy all our industry and export all of our jobs to china for nothing?”

My point was not the path of the Thames but how the media go into more of a frenzy when it affects London directly.

I have canoed quit a bit of the Thames on my side if the country.

Grum sums it up well, there is enough evidence to say that man is causing the climate to change beyond natural variability and the rate of change is faster than ever before. The counter argument seems to be to say ‘no it’s not’.

Skeptical Science has a credible section on climate change evidence and myths, worth a read before posting up that it’s the sun or volcanos – http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php

Grum – maybe change that bubble to “what if it is just a big hoax and we tie ourselves up in pointless regulation, destroy all our industry and export all of our jobs to china for nothing?”

So with a finite amount of coal, oil and gas in the world do you think we should keep burning it all till it’s gone or come up with a plan b. Energy is not the biggest reason jobs are exporting it’s the fact there are people in the world who will work for a fraction of the cost that you will. That and with no real concern for how many of them make it off shift alive or how many of their families are poisoned or how much of the irreplaceable parts of the world are turned into something that looks like Birmingham on a bad day.

I’m not sure there’s any signal strong enough to get people doing something different, just doesn’t appear to be in our nature.

I like Birmingham!

but how the media go into more of a frenzy when it affects London directly.

It hasn’t affected London directly.

I don’t think anyone with half a brain thinks there’s “no such thing as climate change.” The argument is as to whether it’s man-made. Far as I can gather, the climate’s changing anyway, but we’re making it worse rather than trying hard enough to mitigate it.

Climates (and weather) change constantly
Seas erode and deposit constantly (ditto rivers, glaciers etc)
The coastline changes – rises and falls over time

Man’s activities are one of a host of factors that affect the above
We can (and have over time) attempted to manage this process
We have only be partially successful

Nothing really new in any of this…….

My brother is a soil scientist and does some work in the field. He’s a bit sick of the bandwagon as he feels the debate is about the wrong questions giving the worng answers. So in trying to be “better” we end up making things “worse”.

Examples might be where for environmental reasons we penalise the running of old cars when it makes more sense to maximise the life of them. Or where manufacturing moves out of one country because of environmental rules, only to have the polution created in a less enlightened country and then extra transport involved in transporting goods to market.

Examples might be where for environmental reasons we penalise the running of old cars when it makes more sense to maximise the life of them.

Good point….. I’m doing my bit!!

Mars…. now that’s climate change 🙂

He’s a bit sick of the bandwagon as he feels the debate is about the wrong questions giving the worng answers. So in trying to be “better” we end up making things “worse”.

Not much new in any of this either old bloke! 😉

Climate change couldn’t have been much fun for the Broze Age farmers on Dartmoor, and I doubt they cared too much why it happened.

These “theres always been climate change so get used to it” arguments are a smug rich westerners point of view. We’ve got lots of money, so it won’t affect us will it?

Well if your half million pound house in Staines is about to go under it will affect you.

Just less so than if you were a subsistence farmer in Bangladesh.

cranberry are you saying that climate change is just the latest in a long line of moany horse poop, a bit like the millennium bug (remember that?!!)

What? That WAS a problem, but WE FIXED IT which is why there wasn’t a problem in the end. Had we done nothing there would certainly have been a problem. Unlike climate change we were able to test with certainty if a system would be affected by putting its clock forward and testing it. And we did, and they crashed, so we sorted it. Absolutley gigantic top quality logic fail in assuming that because nothing went wrong there was no problem in the first place!

Anyway.. yes the climate has changed a lot in the past, on its own. How many people died because of it? Do you even know? How many should die with this current climate swing, caused by our pollution?