Discussion > What do the GWPF think about the ASC 'Managing Climate Risks to Well-Being and the Economy' report?
Not DECC, Environment Agency probably in the coastal erosion thing
rhoda
Richard, I'm very confused by what your telling us. Not the content of course it's basically that the weather will get worse in some undefined way, more rain, more wind, more very bad things, but NO good things, oh no we can't have anything good happening because of climate change else the hoi polloi won't do as we tell them.
I'm trying to look at this thing realistically and for the life of me cannot envisage a situation where the the weather would change rapidly enough for us to not have time to put in place infrastructure projects to protect us from it. To me it's not clear what weather events your envisaging, other than storm surges that might overwhelm sea defences as they did in Norfolk in the early 50s (nothing new under the sun). Maybe more severe winters, global warming causes them I'm told, or hot dry summers, although with all that water in the air causing positive feedbacks that's hard to envisage.
I guess my question is what sort of weather events are going to occur over a timescale that will surprise us, will we not see a gradual change in our weather as things get "worse" and hence be able to adapt?
Adaptation and mitigation both involve a huge amount of money, taken from the public, with the poorest contributing a higher percentage of their income. We are seeing this already where people with a spare £15000 can put solar panels on their roof and collect 43p/kwh from their FITS which the electricity companies then get back from those who can't afford solar panels. We've seen a continual rise in energy costs caused by ludicrously expensive, and useless, wind and solar farms, again hitting the poor hardest, and now you're suggesting that it would be a "good thing" to divert £bns to protect ourselves from dangers that can't actually be defined other than by saying there will be some, of some sort.
To me that doesn't make sense.
geronimo
The predictions of the climate industry now are in King Lear territory:
I will do such things—
What they are yet I know not, but they shall be
The terrors of the earth.
rhoda
rhoda: +100. Again.
geronimo
From the Today program interview
Lord Krebs: That's correct. Of course, over the next few years the impacts of climate change will only be minimal, but if you look in the longer term - and the projections that come from the Met Office scientists - we would expect extreme rainfall events to become more common, over the decades ahead.
Projections that come from the Met Office scientists. The policy is being set up from your advice Richard, what's the uncertainty, do they understand what you have told them?
Lord Krebs: Well, the pause in climate change is much debated, but I think there's no doubt amongst the vast majority of climate experts - the people that we seek advice from, including the Met Office but many others - that climate change is real, it's man-made and it's going to affect this country, not just in terms of increased temperature but in terms of increased rainfall, sea-level rise and very likely increased extreme events such as heatwaves and storms and droughts.
Lord Beaverbrook
As an addendum to my comment last night.
Mrs J and I tend to cause a certain degree of unease locally by taking regular brisk walks wearing (at this time of year) shorts and short-sleeved shirts. This is not because the French have any problem with such apparel but because they are still going around in cardigans (and vests, for all I know) and can't work out whether these Scots people are as mad as the English supposedly are for dressing like that in temperatures in the low 20s.
I suppose it's partly "adaptation" but it's also, presumably, a question of what sort of climate you were brought up in. The difference I find in Burgundy is that I'm still wearing vest and fairly thick shirt in the winter but rarely wearing a pullover round the house and often only a fleece to go out. (Sorry for the personal history of my wardrobe but I hope it illustrates the point).
Richard, I hear what you are saying about the climatic effects but I disagree, even though I don't have the science to back me up.
We are talking about a couple of degrees even though the climate groupies are still trying to bang on about four or five or six (any advance? did I hear 10 from some idiot?). But as someone (Nullius in Verba, I think, but I can't pin down the exact posting) commented the other day there is no such thing as a "world climate" just lots of local ones. Temperatures can vary where I live by about 15 degrees during the course of a week and 40 degrees in the course of a year. I take weekly min and max figures and for the three full years we have been here the average max for the year has been 21.5, 21.2, 19.2 and the average min 5.2, 5.1, 4.1.
So in this little bit of rural France we're not seeing any warming at all, at the moment at least, but the range of temperatures has been from 34.9 to -11.5. I am going to take a lot of convincing that a putative increase in the world temperature, even assuming it is possible to measure such a thing, of between one and two degrees could be discerned in the noise.
[Incidentally, to carry on digging into my stats for everyone's edification, the average minimum for the first 6 months of 2014 is a full three degrees higher than for the same period 2013 .... and I could go on but won't.]
None of this proves anything, of course, since somebody at the other end of the village with proper professional equipment would almost certainly get different figures but I think it puts the "My God, the temperature is 0.02 degrees higher than the long-term average*; we're all doomed" scenario in some sort of perspective.
*After we've "smoothed" and interpolated and adjusted the figures, of course!
Mike Jackson
Oh, a Carrington event. We should plan for that and prioritise it way ahead of any climate measures. But not bother with a meteor strike, that is too difficult. An epidemic or pandemic? We ought to spend some money and time thinking about that, although what to do immediately is not clear.
When the ice age comes, I predict the met office will be the last to admit it.
rhoda
rhoda,
The onset of an ice age cannot be considered climate change as the average temperature will be going in the wrong direction!
The MO may not be the last to admit it is happening but it will certainly be at least thirty years after the onset when the statement is released.
Lord Beaverbrook
Lord Beaverbrook
Maybe your fellow peer, Lord Krebs, should be a little more precise in where he is getting his advice and projections from. Whilst he is technically correct in stating Met Office, in fact it comes from the "Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research".
A research unit only opened in 1990, less than 25 years ago. Using the "Met Office" invokes in people thoughts of a long established, soundly based, reputable organisation, shipping forecast, D Day etc...
I think it would be more informative to the general public for Lord Krebs to state accurately where his advice is coming from and just how long and how good the track record of the establishment is.
I will now await the inevitable correction/explanation of the Met Office structure:-)
Green Sand
Lord Beaverbrook
The current period is not Climate Change either. Nothing, not even the rate of change is outside the previously experienced range. Therefore the climate is behaving normally and cannot said to be changing. Until recently could have been said to be warming within normal limits but since the pause began not even that is no longer true.
Haven't the bones from what are regarded as sub-tropical/tropical animals (lions and elephants) been found in the Thames Valley, Ebsfleet from about 400K years ago? As Rhoda says any return to those conditions is hardly worth losing sleep over.
SandyS
Greensand and SandyS
But,but,but according to the Guardian:
To try to answer the question the Met Office is hosting an unprecedented meeting of climate scientists and meteorologists next week to debate the possible causes of the UK's "disappointing" weather over recent years, the Guardian has learned.Tuesday's meeting at the forecaster's HQ in Exeter is being convened in response to this year's cool spring, which, according to official records, was the coldest in 50 years.
The one-day gathering will be led by Stephen Belcher, head of the Met Office Hadley Centre and professor of meteorology at the University of Reading, and will include up to 20 experts from the UK's leading climate research institutions.
The "roundtable workshop" will attempt to outline the "dynamical drivers of the cold spring of 2013", but attendees are expected also to debate the "disappointing summers of the last seven years".
Official records show that above-average temperatures in summer last occurred in 2006, a season that had above-average sunshine hours, and below-average rainfall. The only summer since then to give us average conditions nationally was in 2010.
The meeting will also discuss the washout summer of 2012 and the freezing winter of 2010-11.
The Met Office said it had never held a formal meeting in this way to discuss possible causes behind the UK's unusual weather of recent years.
Scientists are normally reluctant to attribute anomalous weather to climate change because climate is typically defined as a regional average pattern of weather witnessed over a period of 30 or more years.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jun/13/met-office-uk-bad-weather-cause
And yet Lord Krebs is given a different picture we are led to believe. Strange how this communicating climate science thingymebob works!
Lord Beaverbrook
Strange how this communicating climate science thingymebob works!Or doesn't!
Mike Jackson
A question.
How many miles (or kilometres) to the South (or to the North, if you are in the Southern hemisphere) does an average temperature rise of 2°C correspond to?
And a rise of 4°C?
And a rise of 6°C?
I'd imagine that a 2°C rise would correspond (I'm just guessing) to a move from Caen to somewhere probably not as far south as Bordeaux.
Martin A
Before the IPCC (or whoever is culpable) came along with the concept, I'd spent my life believing that temperature was not a thing you could meaningfully average [except under very specific circumstances, such as the spatial temperature distribution within a homogenous piece of metal].
Otherwise, it's like talking about the average colour of the items in a room or the average race of a group of people from different countries - essentially nonsense.
Why do we entertain discussions which start with the implication that it is a meaningful concept?
Martin A
Lord Beaverbrook
"Met Office brainstorms UK bad weather" - June 2013
Only a year ago! Amazing how quickly things can change if you need them to!
Green Sand
Greensand
Yes, this climate change thingymebob seems to change like the weather!
Lord Beaverbrook
Martin A
A brief web search gets the following, I assume we're talking summer
Caen
During summer average high temperatures are 21.3°C (70.4°F) and average low temperatures are 11.3°C (52.4°F).
Bordeaux
During summer average high temperatures are 25°C (77°F) and average low temperatures are 13.3°C (56°F)
From this very useful site.
http://www.climatemps.com/
SandyS
SandyS - Many thanks.
Yes, let's forget about winter temperatures - presumably even CAGW believers would not claim that winters two degrees less cold would constitute a catastrophe.
If we overlook the nonsense of talking about averaging temperatures, then moving from Caen to Bordeaux would be the equivalent of an average (summer) temperature rise of about 3.7°C.
About 600 km by autoroute.
Martin A
OK, we've shown that a couple of degrees or even four does not present much in the way of a scary scenario. As a first pass at the proposition, the comparison here is legitimate. It is a fair basis on which to base assumptions. Now there MIGHT be unforeseen problems, but probably not.
I contend that this would not have been acceptable to the climate community had anyone presented it as a submission to 5AR. Was any such submission made? Do you think RB could have made such an assessment and got it past his own bosses never mind into the report.
rhoda
It would mean that we'd have to drink Cognac instead of Calvados.
Do you think RB could have made such an assessment and got it past his own bosses never mind into the report.
I don't think it's in the nature of successful civil servants to commit career suicide.
Martin A
(RB making such an assessment was never on the cards, so rhoda's question is of course hypothetical.)
Martin A
so rhoda's question is of course hypothetical
As is CAGW.
Lord Beaverbrook
Yes.
Years back, I was trying to make sense of this global warming thing.
Then it struck me: "It's just a theory!"
Had Entropic Man been on hand, he would have corrected me: "It's just a hypothesis!"
Martin A
Martin A
You were lucky not to have been in one of his classes (perhaps he was lucky in that respect as well).
Anyway you've given me something to chuckle over before bed.
We went to a quiz tonight but unlike Richard we didn't win, we'll have to pay more attention to sport in future but I can't face sport and Raff at the same time.
BTW that site has an awful lot of places to work out where is best to hide from whatever Richard and his mates think is going to cause us problems.
SandyS
OK, not France, somewhere maritime. Portugal. Wooooooooo, scary.
On the other hand, although I don't usually do science and probabilities, I think it is perfectly reasonable when a given temperature change is forecast to look at places where those temps already prevail as a guide, an indication, of what we might expect. That's all. France, Portugal, whatever fits best. I see nothing scary, I see no infrastructure requirements which I would not recommend anyway. Like the sea walls. The policy of DECC has been to accept coastal erosion in some places. I do not agree.
The upshot of all this is that there are sensible things for us collectively to do. They are sensible whatever comes. Let's do them. A few nuclear power stations, some coastal defence, things like that.
There, I didn't need a 202 page report or a chapter of 5AR.