Mike,
So, as long as everyone can move to Southern France we'll all be fine? Spent any time in Morocco? I was there 2 years ago. It was 49.6oC.

I'm not really quite sure what we are supposed to be getting our knickers in a twist about.

Jul 9, 2014 at 6:53 PM | rhoda

This part of rural, The Limousin, also has a wonderful device the volet. This can be closed or partially closed on the warmest days, which combined with the thick stone walls of the old houses means the inside remains relatively cool on the warmest of days. Temperatures reach low thirties fairly frequently most summers. The other benefit is that they can be closed at night which combined with heavy curtains can retain heat in winter. In late autumn and early spring the temperature in our living room can rise by 3-4'C in the coarse of an evening. This is quite useful as winters here tend to be colder than central England.

My brother in Perthshire has had internal shutters fitted as a result of our experience over here. This was primarily for winter warmth as a heatwave in Perthshire is an average summer's day in Limousin. Should they be lucky enough to experience a bit of global warming I'm sure he is clever enough to shut them and keep the summer heat at bay.

Wow ATTP has found her way to this site and is now crossing swords with rhoda. Good luck with that ATTP.

rhoda you are going to confuse ATTP by sticking to reality. We're supposed to be frightened of climate change and here are you dragging reality into the forebodings by comparing our current climate with that that already exists south of us. And guess what? It's not frightening. She's probably consulting SkS now to get a response so watch this space.

BTW I agree 100%, I've used the temporal issue to emphasise that even if there were problems in the future we'd have enough time to adapt given our technological process. So as ATTP condescendingly said,"It's about whether or not we'll start to experience extreme events more often in the future than we have in the past." which is the message du jour. So by applying experience to this statement let's examine how many extreme events we have now. Well, none this year I know of, and none last year. Frightening.

You could follow it up on her site, but here invisible friend Rebecca would delete you. Try it though.

And Then There's Physics

and a climate never before experienced by the human species.

Are you absolutely sure about that statement?
From Wiki
The earliest documented members of the genus Homo are Homo habilis which evolved around 2.3 million years ago. Archaic Homo sapiens, the forerunner of anatomically modern humans, evolved between 400,000 and 250,000 years ago.

Then look at this wiki chart http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#mediaviewer/File:Five_Myr_Climate_Change.png

Geronimo,
It's Rachel, not Rebecca, and I don't know why you think she's invisible, she has her own blog. It's not hard to find. I think it's on my blogroll.

We're supposed to be frightened of climate change

"A planet with more people at any one time than in all of human history..."

Now how many seconds in the last 5 billion years would that statement not have been true. You really ought to consider what you're saying. "...and a climate never before experienced by the human species."

"...and a climate never before experienced by the human species."

What on earth does that mean? Are Inuit and Africans, Thais, Indonesians Europeans experiencing a different climate. I'm not, what do you believe has changed in countries throughout the globe?

Sorry ATTP, but although there's no censorship on this site, it isn't an echo chamber and if you turn up with slogans instead of arguments you're going to be challenged.

So do tell, when was the population of humans a constant? And what sort of climate change has occurred to make the current climate unique in history.

Geronimo,
Do you really dispute that there are more human beings alive today than at any time in human history? I believe that that is a defensible statement. (you do also realise that homo sapiens have only been on the planet for about 10^5 years, despite the planet being almost 5 Gyr old).

You do realise that when I used the term "climate" I meant global climate, not local climate. I know you may not like it but there is evidence to suggest that we are moving into a state where the globally averaged temperature of the planet is higher than it has been for all of human history.

Sorry ATTP, but although there's no censorship on this site, it isn't an echo chamber and if you turn up with slogans instead of arguments you're going to be challenged.

it isn't an echo chamber

Harry,
I believe I did define it. The global average temperature being higher than it's been in all of human history.

Sandy,
Whether obvious or not, I did mean Homo Sapiens.

Well, everyone, this has been fun, but the football is about to start and there's only so much time I can spend talking with people who's view on this issue is "I'll be allright Jack". You probably will be, but that is rather beside the point.

And Then There's Physics
From Wiki (my bold)

Archaic Homo sapiens, the forerunner of anatomically modern humans, evolved between 400,000 and 250,000 years ago.[10][11] Recent DNA evidence suggests that several haplotypes of Neanderthal origin are present among all non-African populations, and Neanderthals and other hominids, such as Denisova hominin may have contributed up to 6% of their genome to present-day humans, suggestive of a limited inter-breeding between these species.[12][13][14] Anatomically modern humans evolved from archaic Homo sapiens in the Middle Paleolithic, about 200,000 years ago.[15] The transition to behavioral modernity with the development of symbolic culture, language, and specialized lithic technology happened around 50,000 years ago according to many anthropologists[16] although some suggest a gradual change in behavior over a longer time span.[17]

Then check the original chart again, I would suggest you got that wrong too, despite the weasel words. For confirmation of your error you could look at the second chart here, beware of the Years Before Present
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/last_400k_yrs.html

Adaptation should be to an expected future event, not to speculation. When the climate community talk about increased uncertainty they mean there has been a divergence between their expectations based on climate models and actual outturn. There should have been more high temperature events like in Europe 2003, and in Britain, less extreme cold events. Sea level rise should have accelerated due to peer-reviewed estimates of accelerating polar ice melt. It has not. In the US, predicted increases in hurricanes post Katrina have been wrong, as has a disappearance of Arctic sea ice in the summer of 2013. There is also a built-in bias towards false positives, whereas a more objective viewpoint would look at all the rich variety of potential climate wierding, and look at the trends.
As an ex-beancounter, I think that adaptation measures should look at expected net benefits. The expected cost of a future event is dependent on the magnitude and the likelihood. In the case of temperature change and sea level rise the rate of change over time is also important. The quality of the predictions is important. Given the track record of the climate community and the inability to learn from the past failures, current predictions of climate extremes should be discounted . The net benefits are maximised by looking at low-cost adaptive measures and with insurance.
We should learn from the experience of other fields. In finance you get better decisions by challenging assumptions and projections, not trying to bat from the same wicket. Also, by adjusting projections in the light of experience, rather than thinking up clever excuses after the event.