Paul

For some in Greenland these days, the grass is looking greener.

Article in National Geographic:

Global Warming Good for Greenland?

Rapid thawing brought on by global warming on the world’s largest island has opened up new opportunities for agriculture, commercial fishing, mining, and oil exploration. The island’s native people, though, may not be on the “winning” side of warming.

Meanwhile, Worlclimatereport.com draws on peer reviewed science to write an article entitled:

Greenland Climate: Now vs. Then, Part I. Temperatures

From the Chicago Tribune:

Reporting on global warming not clean, simple

So NBC’s “Today” show has unveiled big plans for next month to jet its stars to the far reaches of the planet — Matt Lauer in the Arctic, Al Roker at the Equator and Ann Curry in Antarctica — for live broadcasts aimed at alerting us to the effects of global warming.

You know, the phenomenon said to be exacerbated by 21st Century conveniences that spew carbons into the environment, such as, um, jet travel.

From The Times of India:

Libya joins UN Security Council after leaving US terrorist list

UNITED NATIONS: Libya won a seat on the UN Security Council, just over a year after the US removed the north African nation from the list of state sponsors of terrorism and without any opposition from US President George W Bush’s administration.

The closest race for a council seat was between Croatia and the Czech Republic.

Some diplomats said privately that the Czech Republic lost because of President Vaclav Klaus’ skeptical comments about global warming, which is a key issue for many UN members, especially small island states. In a statement last week, Klaus said he was “surprised” that former US Vice President Al Gore shared the Nobel Peace Prize “because a link between his activities and the global peace is unclear and blurred.”

Local Transport Today (LTT) is a UK local authority magazine for transport professionals. The latest issue has a 3 page interview with two prominent members of the recently re-branded anti-car/anti-roads organisation ‘Transport 2000,’ funded by the bus and rail industries, and now known as the ‘Campaign for Better Transport ‘(except car transport, of course). The interview with Jason Torrance (ex-Greenpeace) and Stephen Joseph is entitled ‘Campaigning for better transport, but who’s it better for?’

Joseph is quoted thus:

Joseph accepts there are still some people having an “upstream debate” about the science of climate change but he doesn’t think this should interfere with discussions about transport policy. “In a way the debate about whether climate change is happening or not, or is caused by humans or not is one removed [from transport] because, like it or not, the politicians have bought an argument that climate change is real, is caused by human emissions and transport’s a quarter of these in UK terms. Therefore transport’s going to be a target for emission cuts.”

George Monbiot is guest speaker at their Road Block Conference on 27th October.

Moving on, another article reports on a transport and climate change conference at the British Museum in London:

A hushed silence fell across the auditorium at last week’s transport and climate change conference in the British Museum as one delegate broke the day’s consensus by mounting a spirited defence of people’s desire and right to use their leisure time to travel to more and more faraway destinations. Soon the silence was broken by mutterings of despair, accompanied by the shaking of heads, as the delegate went on to express the view that for leisure trips in the UK the car was usually the only practical option. If the Government wanted to try and cut carbon dioxide emissions then perhaps it should concentrate on economic sectors other than transport, he added.

A couple of delegates openly challenged what they had just heard and one summed up his exasperation by making a general remark about the lack of political appetite for controlling car use: “I’ve heard so much about car bashing and yet we don’t do it enough.”

But event chairman, BBC environment analyst Roger Harrabin, detected that, though the gentleman may have sounded like a contrarian to most of the 90-strong audience, he was probably reflecting the views of quite a large section of the British public. “This guy speaks for a huge majority of the population,” suggested Harrabin.

A succession of votes showed that the vast majority of the audience (a mix of central and local government officers, consultants, transport operators, academics and NGOs) did indeed hold diametrically opposite views to this man.

On a lighter note, I enjoyed this letter to the editor:

Attacks on aviation are motivated by ideology, not science

With several correspondents attacking aviation (Letters LTT 27 Sep), once again we see atmospheric science failing to co-operate with politicised motivations on the ground.

Just as the absence of predicted warming in the troposphere starts to hit home on those who want to use tree food gas (carbon dioxide) as a green flag of convenience on the back road to localised medieval lifestyles and economic collapse, we find a recent groundbreaking publication in Nature upsetting another false consensus, that affecting the stratosphere (The troposphere and the stratosphere happen to be the two layers of the atmosphere through which aircraft fly).

Comments from the scientific community on the work (by Rex) summarise the situation well and reflect very badly on extremists claiming that the science is settled:

“Scientists will have to rethink their understanding of how ozone holes are formed and how that relates to climate change.” Quirin Schiermeier, News@Nature, 26 September 2007

“Our understanding of [atmospheric] chloride chemistry has really been blown apart.” John Crowley, Max Planck Institute of Chemistry, 26 September 2007

So, instead of jumping headlong into quality of life oblivion – or, more likely, allowing ourselves to be sleepwalked into the same nightmare – the precautionary principle actually dictates that we hold back from precipitous, costly and pointless action. Particularly when the words of Charles Secrett at a Labour Party/Greenpeace fringe meeting show that the motive behind attacks on air travel is anything but environmental – he stressed that ABC1s, the top social groups, were responsible for 70 per cent of flights. So, after taxing lifestyle on the road, dinosaur envyists want to tax lifestyle in the air and any flag of convenience will do.

Now aviation is the cause célebre for mobility hating Armageddonists, it must be sorely disappointing that 4x4s can’t fly.

From today’s Times:

China’s drive for wealth means end of our low-carbon dreams

Hu Jintao wants to make every Chinese twice as rich by 2020. He has done it once – in just five years, income per capita doubled to $2,000 (£983) – and the only obstacle in the Chinese President’s path is the fuel needed to stoke the boiler in China’s locomotive.

The president needs more copper, iron ore, zinc and natural gas. Above all, he needs more coal to keep the power stations humming nicely and more oil for Chinese cars and lorries. China accounts for more than a third of world demand for coal and the price in Australia soared this year as the People’s Republic switched from being an exporter to being an importer. If Mr Hu had a message for the world in his address to the Communist Party National Congress, it was this: we will burn our coal and, if we have to, we will burn yours, too.

Read the rest of the article.

Reported first in The Times:

The UHT route to long-life planet

It’s enough to put the nation off breakfast. Civil servants have suggested that Britons put long-life milk in tea and pour it on their cornflakes to save the planet from global warming.

Officials at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs have made a serious proposal that consumers switch to UHT (Ultra-High Temperature or Ultra-Heat Treated) milk to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Officials have calculated that by reducing chiller capacity in supermarkets, convenience stores and corner shops, carbon emissions would be significantly reduced. The move is not against the domestic use of fridges; UHT milk, once opened, must be refrigerated.

and now in Australia:

Save the world: buy UHT milk

BRITONS may be banned from drinking “traditional milk” in favour of the long-life variety in order to save the environment, according to a government strategy.