Skip to main content

More definitve confirmatiom of the dangers of climate change

There are the usual naysayers (see post) or those who are simply ignorant and ostriches, but a new study just released confirms, yet again, and from a different perspective, that we are facing dangers of severe climate change.

"New research by a team of scientists looking at the impact of cloud behavior on planetary climate change says that "the worst" and "catastrophic" predictions offered by previous studies on the rate of global warming this century are much more likely than the less severe scenarios offered by others.

According to Dr. Steven Sherwood, lead author of the study and a specialist in climate and cloud formations at the University of New South Wales in Australia, cloud patterns in an increasingly warming world are likely to exacerbate global temperature increases overall, not mitigate warming as some models have suggested.

"This study breaks new ground twice," Sherwood explained in an interview with the Guardian. "First by identifying what is controlling the cloud changes and second by strongly discounting the lowest estimates of future global warming in favor of the higher and more damaging estimates."

The research predicts that global temperatures will likely rise at least 4°C by 2100 and potentially more than 8°C by 2200 if carbon dioxide emissions are not reduced and serious actions by governments and society are not taken.

Such drastic increases, Sherwood told the Guardian would be "catastrophic rather than simply dangerous."


Meanwhile in Australia - which now has a PM who isn't a wholesale supporter of climate change - an appointee to an important committee to advise the government on business matters, and no less importantly, a friend of the Australian PM, has just publicly displayed what an ignoramus he is ("flat-earth thinking" as one critic dubbed it) in relation to climate change.

"Maurice Newman is chairman of the Prime Minister's Business Advisory Council. He must have thought that December 31 was April Fool's Day when he wrote an opinion piece in The Australian headed "Crowds go cold on climate cost".

He once again revealed his opinions on climate change science when he wrote "the scientific delusion, the religion behind the climate crusade, is crumbling" and "Australia, too, has become hostage to climate change madness".


His piece is a mix of common climate change myths, misinformation and ideology. While Mr Newman is welcome to his opinions, his writing reveals his sad misunderstanding of the facts about climate change.

As Upton Sinclair wrote, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Robert Fisk's predictions for the Middle East in 2013

There is no gain-saying that Robert Fisk, fiercely independent and feisty to boot, is the veteran journalist and author covering the Middle East. Who doesn't he know or hasn't he met over the years in reporting from Beirut - where he lives?  In his latest op-ed piece for The Independent he lays out his predictions for the Middle East for 2013. Read the piece in full, here - well worthwhile - but an extract... "Never make predictions in the Middle East. My crystal ball broke long ago. But predicting the region has an honourable pedigree. “An Arab movement, newly-risen, is looming in the distance,” a French traveller to the Gulf and Baghdad wrote in 1883, “and a race hitherto downtrodden will presently claim its due place in the destinies of Islam.” A year earlier, a British diplomat in Jeddah confided that “it is within my knowledge... that the idea of freedom does at present agitate some minds even in Mecca...” So let’s say this for 2013: the “Arab Awakening” (the t

The NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) goes on hold.....because of one non-Treaty member (Israel)

Isn't there something radically wrong here?    Israel, a non-signatory to the NPT has, evidently, been the cause for those countries that are Treaty members, notably Canada, the US and the UK, after 4 weeks of negotiation, effectively blocking off any meaningful progress in ensuring the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.    IPS reports ..... "After nearly four weeks of negotiations, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference ended in a predictable outcome: a text overwhelmingly reflecting the views and interests of the nuclear-armed states and some of their nuclear-dependent allies. “The process to develop the draft Review Conference outcome document was anti-democratic and nontransparent,” Ray Acheson, director, Reaching Critical Will, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), told IPS. “This Review Conference has demonstrated beyond any doubt that continuing to rely on the nuclear-armed states or their nuclear-dependent allies for l

#1 Prize for a bizarre story.....and lying!

No comment called for in this piece from CommonDreams: Another young black man: The strange sad case of 21-year-old Chavis Carter. Police in Jonesboro, Arkansas  stopped  him and two friends, found some marijuana, searched put Carter, then put him handcuffed  behind his back  into their patrol car, where they say he  shot himself  in the head with a gun they failed to find. The FBI is investigating. Police Chief Michael Yates, who stands behind his officers' story,  says in an interview  that the death is "definitely bizarre and defies logic at first glance." You think?