Recently in environment Category

I'm reading reports that Tory MP Ann Winterton has made a complete fool of herself in today's Prime Minister's Questions. She has suggested that the government should cancel "wasteful expenditure" on wind farms as the current weather clearly demonstrates that global warming is nonsense.

Despite being complete nonsense, this is an argument that I hear on a regular basis. It's trotted out by someone every time the weather takes a turn for the worse. Here's another Tory MP, Douglas Carswell[1], making the same claim during December's snows. [Update: And here's the the front page of today's Express: Snow Chaos - And They Still Claim It's Global Warming]

I was about to write a post pointing out the obvious flaws in this argument, but there was a feeling of deja vu niggling away at the back of my head. Then I remembered what I wrote during the snow we had last February.

[1] You might want to take a look around Carswell's site. There's a lot of nonsense there. I'm planning to cover him in more detail in  the coming weeks.

(Via PZ Myers)

Richard Wilson writes:

You can help beat Trafigura’s gag on the BBC by embedding this Youtube video on your website… …and linking to this pdf!

Here’s why…

Late last week the BBC chose to delete from its website a damning Newsnight investigation into the Trafigura scandal, following legal threats from the company and its controversial lawyers, Carter-Ruck.
….
The mainstream UK media has so far assiduously avoided reporting on the BBC’s climbdown. Yet it’s an issue that raises serious questions about the state of press freedom in Britain, at a time of unprecedented attacks on the media.

via Left Outside

Weather like we've seen in the UK over the last twenty-four hours seems to effect people's cognitive facilities. There's one particular nonsense that I can almost guarantee you'll come across in the next couple of days. That's a climate change denier saying something like

Well this weather at least proves for once and for all that global warming isn't happening.

I'm sure that all of my readers are intelligent enough to punch a few holes in that logic, but here are a couple of rebuttals that leapt to mind:

• Thirty years ago, I remember weather like this happening every couple of years. We now have winters without any snow at all - which is why we are so unprepared for this weather and why it is such big news. Anyone who can remember thirty years ago can therefore see for themselves that the climate is changing, And fewer cold winters would seem to indicate that it's warming up. No-one ever said that warming would mean we never get cold weather.
• When people started talking about climate change, they made the mistake of calling it "global warming". It's true that the planet will, on average, get warmer, but that temperature rise could actually lead to cooling in some places. And the UK is a prime example of somewhere that could end up getting far colder. For our latitude, the UK is far warmer than you would expect it to be because of the warming effect that we get from the Gulf Stream. Some climate change models predict the Gulf Stream slowing down or even stopping altogether. If that happens, then the UK will become a far colder place to live.

I first became aware of the new advertising campaign for Oxfam Unwrapped in Balham tube station a few days ago. There was a picture of Helena Bonham-Carter wrapped up like a christmas present with the slogan "say no to crap christmas presents".

To be honest I was a little confused for a second or two. I couldn't for the life of me see why anyone would see Helena Bonham-Carter as a crap christmas present. Then I realised my mistake. You're supposed to think that she's just been given a crap christmas present and that she's gagged (by a christmas bow that represents politeness) into not saying what she thinks about it. And the way to avoid being seen as someone who gives crap presents to people like Helena is to buy them from Oxfam Unwrapped.

I like the idea of Oxfam Unwrapped a lot. You give Oxfam money and they buy something useful and send it to the developing world. The people who you bought the present for get a card telling them what you've bought and where it's gone. I used it a couple of years ago. I bought a goat for a couple of friends. It was much appreciated.

If you want to avoid the traditional commercialisation of christmas, then you could do much worse than buying your presents from Oxfam

Andy Lester has scanned a letter from the Arkansas Democrat Gazette

You may have noticed that March this year was particularly hot. As a matter of fact, I understand that it was the hottest March since the beginning of the last century. All of the trees were fully leafed out and legions of bugs and snakes were crawling around during a time in Arkansas when, on a normal year, we might see a snowflake or two.

This should come to no surprise to any reasonable person. As you know, Daylight Saving Time started almost a month early this year. You would think that members of Congress would have considered the warming effect that an extra hour of daylight would have on our climate. Or did they?

Perhaps this is another plot by a liberal Congress to make us believe that global warming is a real threat. Perhaps next time there should be serious studies performed before Congress passes laws with such far-reaching effects.

I'm speechless.

Update: In the comments Chris points to the Snopes page about this article which reaches the conclusion that this letter is satirical. Still funny though.

I see that some people in the US are describing the effects of Hurricane Katrina as "our tsunami". Now I don't want to minimise what has happened in New Orleans over the last few days in any way, but lets get some bloody proportion here. Look at the numbers. Current estimates of deaths caused by Katrina are running into the hundreds. The best estimate of the number of people killed by the tsunami is 150,000.

I wonder if the Bush family will be changing their opinion on the causes of the hurricane soon?