Sea Change at Copenhagen

Anyone who has run a committee knows how difficult it is to get consensus on anything. And anyone who has been involved with the debate on global warming will know how particularly difficult it is to get consensus on reductions in CO emissions..

The reason for this is understandable. Whatever action we take will affect some people more than others. Plus there is no perfect action on the power point presentation yet. Some of the schemes over the past few years have been shown to be completely ineffectual— not stopped rising emissions anyway.

But when sixteen and half thousand people converge on the city of Copenhagen this week—sceptics, alarmists and fence sitters alike—they will all have something in common. And that is an unease for the welfare of the planet we inhabit.

Whatever your views on whether we’re responsible or not for disrupting the balance of atmospheric gases which has provided us to date with the necessary living conditions to survive and develop as a species, the fact is that something like a change in ocean current could reverse that irrevocably.

We do have access to technologies which can provide cleaner energy, we do have the will to replant and restore the rainforests and we can cut down drastically on unnecessary landfill waste with just small changes in our consumption.

Whether the US, China, India can yet agree to work together or not, I believe next week will mark the beginning of at least one welcome sea change. And that is the profound transformation of attitude towards the environment. We now know that we should be extremely grateful to be here at all.

Are you going to Copenhagen?

The trickiest issue to address in global warming is that of burden sharing. We know we all have to address our carbon emissions but which countries must make the biggest cuts is always the sticking point in all discussions. Who should it be? The already developed countries - the US being a prime example - who have profited by using up so much of the world's resources already or the new economies who are just getting going on a modernisation programme. What is fair? Who should cut back first? It's a toughie. And this is where Denmark comes in.

On the 6th December around 15,000 people are expected to arrive in Copenhagen for a climate conference In 2012 the Kyoto Protocol is set to expire and it is at this two week meeting in Denmark that some of the world's leading figures in climate change will get together to discuss just this sort of thing. Copenhagen 2009 is all about getting the momentum up - or keeping the momentum up - driving forward on this vital pact which we all hope can save the planet or rather save the planet from what we are doing to it.

So this lively city with its jazz bands and easy atmosphere has become the centre for anyone wanting to discuss Kyoto global warming and of course all it entails. As far as the Danes are concerned this meeting in December that they are hosting is all about our future.

A wind turbine will generate all the energy or the delegates. That will avoid some of the expected criticism about the large number of people flying in from all over the world to discuss this burning question. We are heating up and we are responsible. What are we going to do about it? And until we arrive at that decision even in Copenhagen it’s just business as usual!

Prince Charles and the Frog

If you are campaigning to the public to get them to help save the planet what are the best ways to do it?

Well there are several different approaches you can take. You can go the scary route like the Prince of Wales did in Brazil recently saying in a speech we only have 100 months left to change our ways or else! Then he went down the comic route....lashings of humour whether intentional or not with his You Tube 'Save the Forest' video featuring amongst other celebrities Prince William and Prince Harry and a digitalised South American frog.

Another completely different approach - an unusually positive one - has been taken by a rural campaigning group here in the UK ....they are showing pictures of beautiful countryside ....a bit like this one but nicer.... saying that this is how we will be in fifteen years time because we are going green and we all will have gone back to living how we used to do a hundred years or so ago as model citizens. A very different approach...

But with a survey by the US Pew Research conducted in 2006 showing how little we cared about global warming at all across the world - the Japanese came out on top of that with 66 per cent of them concerned; the Chinese scored 20 out of 100 and the US came out bottom with just 19 per cent of Americans giving any damn about it at all it is obvious that we desperately need our awareness raising campaigns to hit home.

Since then, however, attitudes have begun to change. Maybe the global recession does have something to do with the downturn in sales of luxury goods ..particularly gas guzzling items but just maybe - hopefully - it is also a growing awareness that whatever approach we have used on our campaigning the message is out there that we must act together to save our planet and we must do so quickly.

Black Carbon

Black carbon! It sounds like bad news...and it is and, as far as the Arctic is concerned..it is very bad news - probably responsible for half if not more of the increase in the warming in that region over the past 120 years.

Are we considering black carbon seriously enough? Well, what is it? It's a form of soot, a product of the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels or the burning of coal..wood..dung.. That sort of thing. The Arctic is particularly sensitive to it. It darkens the ice and the snow and this in turn affects the Arctic's ability to reflect light. Therefore the ice absorbs heat and this all has been contributing to the reduction in summer ice we are now seeing. As well as that black carbon in the atmosphere absorbs solar radiation and converts that to more heat. So it contributes to our changing climate in at least two ways. And it is no surprise that black carbon is the second leading cause of global warming after CO2.

Now ...unlike carbon dioxide .. black carbon remains in the atmosphere for days or weeks at the very most but with the melting of the Arctic ice much quicker than previously expected - and this melting of the ice being one of the climate "tipping points" ...and with black carbon known to be responsible for much of this damage some scientists are now suggesting that this problem should be addressed.

So… immediate reductions in black carbon could indeed be the white knight of climate change - even a rescue plan. Because...at least this would bring about a more immediate result in the Arctic . And quick responses are just what we need right now!

Antarctica Appeal

We produce around 32 billion tons of CO2 each year .Out of that about 15 actually stays in the atmosphere contributing to climate change. The oceans, forests, vegetation and soil store the rest of that CO2. So obviously if this current storage facility starts declining we are in more trouble than before. Out of these carbon sinks about a quarter of the carbon dioxide is absorbed by the oceans... and the biggest ocean for this is the Southern Ocean which surrounds Antarctica.

Recently scientists have reported that this large volume of water now only able to absorb a fraction of the CO2 it use to. CO2 needs to be stored at below 300 metres to stay there permanently. It is reckoned that the stormy seas being whipped up by higher wind speeds which are themselves a by-product of the changing climate is causing the mixing of deep water with the shallower water which absorbs less of this greenhouse gas. I

t is like some vicious circle - which we are looking desperately to address. While doing so we must galvanize ourselves and our Governments to work harder on reducing emissions.

Blown Away in UK

When we think of hurricanes or cyclones we automatically think of the tropics. But Powerful winds could threaten both UK and Europe with the potentially destructive force of a tropical category four hurricane. And all because of global warming.

Why is this happening? There have been large scale changes in the atmosphere itself for example the boundary of the troposphere – where all the weather occurs - has moved higher by 900 feet.

Also the Hadley Cells – the circulation pattern – rising near the Equator – polewards motion in higher up and then descending in the subtropics - have expanded towards the poles by one degree of latitude or 60 nautical miles over the last thirty years.
That change represents a huge volumetric increase in stored heat energy which must be recycled to the poles one way or the other’. It is as if the extra tropic cyclones are part of the planets way of redistributing it.

Last Summer the Global Warming Alliance held a conference at the Institute of Physics Our research has shown an increase in total energy of tropical cyclones of seventy percent, while wind strength itself has increased by fifteen percent. Such an increase in velocity plays out as a doubling in aeronautical force and even more in destructive damage..

The deadly storms that pounded southwest France and northeast Spain this past week end took at least 12 lives. Should these winds hit more densely populated countries and in particular those who are not accustomed to dealing with them these numbers could be greatly increased.

Over the past ten years eighteen ETCs made landfall. We are also seeing typhoon twins or two storms one following another within a day or so. Uk for example, the geographical position where polar air masses meet tropical ones coming up from the equator makes it in particular a fertile breeding ground for tornadoes.

During the half century from 1948 to 1997 thirteen windstorms hit Europe, an average of one every three point eight years.The two most catastrophic in terms of human life, the storms of 1953 and 1962, had almost identical core pressures. Now we are getting extra tropic cyclones with pressures 12 millibars lower than that.