Warm Words: the difference between ‘facts' and facts.

Posted by TonyN on 04/02/2008 at 3:20 pm The Climate 2 Responses »
Feb 042008

Here is an excerpt from a report published in 2006 by the Institute for Public Policy Research, one of the government’s favourite think tanks. It is called Warm Words: How are we telling the climate story and can we tell it better?

Many of the existing approaches to climate change communications clearly seem unproductive. And it is not enough simply to produce yet more messages, based on rational argument and top-down persuasion, aimed at convincing people of the reality of climate change and urging them to act. Instead, we need to work in a more shrewd and contemporary way, using subtle techniques of engagement.

To help address the chaotic nature of the climate change discourse in the UK today, interested agencies now need to treat the argument as having been won, at least for popular communications. This means simply behaving as if climate change exists and is real, and that individual actions are effective. The ‘facts’ need to be treated as being so taken-for-granted that they need not be spoken.

The disparity of scale between the enormity of climate change and small individual actions should be dealt with by actually harnessing this disparity. Myth (which can reconcile seemingly irreconcilable cultural truths) can be used to inject the discourse with the energy it currently lacks.

Opposing the enormous forces of climate change requires an effort that is superhuman or heroic. The cultural norms (what we normally expect to be true) are that heroes – the ones who act, are powerful and carry out great deeds – are extraordinary, while ordinary mortals either do nothing or do bad things. The mythical position – the one that occupies the seemingly impossible space – is that of ‘ordinary hero’. The ‘ordinary heroism’ myth is potentially powerful because it feels rooted in British culture – from the Dunkirk spirit to Live Aid.

(my emphasis)

The first paragraph provides a clear admission that rational arguments have failed to convince the public that anthropogenic global warming is happening. This will surprise few people who have taken an interest in the scientific evidence and the political froth with which it is presented. The IPPR suggest that simulated conviction will be much more effective than being frank with the public; a very ‘shrewd and contemporary way’ of misleading people. All this is chillingly reminiscent of Tony Blair’s claim in parliament that evidence for Iraqi WMD was ‘extensive, detailed and authoritative’, when the Joint Intellect Committee had already warned him that it was ‘sporadic and patchy’. Continue reading »

News: Met Office global temperature forecasts

Posted by TonyN on 22/01/2008 at 12:27 pm The Climate No Responses »
Jan 222008

I posted (here) about the rather strange way that the Met Office uses reference periods when it announces record breaking weather events. As New Year is the time when they make their annual global temperature forecast for the next twelve months, I thought that it would be worth looking at what they predicted for 2007, and then what they are predicting for 2008.

Here’s the Met Office’s first press release of 2007 issued last January:

4 January 2007

2007 – forecast to be the warmest year yet

2007 is likely to be the warmest year on record globally, beating the current record set in 1998, say climate-change experts at the Met Office.

Each January the Met Office, in conjunction with the University of East Anglia, issues a forecast of the global surface temperature for the coming year. The forecast takes into account known contributing factors, such as solar effects, El Niño, greenhouse gases concentrations and other multi-decadal influences. Over the previous seven years, the Met Office forecast of annual global temperature has proved remarkably accurate, with a mean forecast error size of just 0.06 °C.

Met Office global forecast for 2007

  • Global temperature for 2007 is expected to be 0.54 °C above the long-term (1961-1990) average of 14.0 °C;
  • There is a 60% probability that 2007 will be as warm or warmer than the current warmest year (1998 was +0.52 °C above the long-term 1961-1990 average).

The potential for a record 2007 arises partly from a moderate-strength El Niño already established in the Pacific, which is expected to persist through the first few months of 2007. The lag between El Niño and the full global surface temperature response means that the warming effect of El Niño is extended and therefore has a greater influence the global temperatures during the year.

Katie Hopkins from Met Office Consulting said: “This new information represents another warning that climate change is happening around the world. Our work in the climate change consultancy team applies Met Office research to help businesses mitigate against risk and adapt at a strategic level for success in the new environment.”

The reference to El Niño is important. These periodic and unpredictable convulsions in the Pacific Ocean’s surface temperatures can have a dramatic effect on climate across much of the world. A major El Niño event was partly responsible for the very high global temperatures of 1998. In fact about a third of the temperature anomaly that made that year the warmest recorded for the 20th century can be attributed to this effect. So the Met Office is relying on a perfectly natural, but unpredictable event to boost global temperatures towards a new record. But the problems with predictions, particularly if you base them on phenomena that are not well understood, is that things can go very badly wrong. Continue reading »

5 High Wind in a Small Island

Posted by TonyN on 15/01/2008 at 10:51 am The Wind 3 Responses »
Jan 152008

An old friend, a successful sculptor who lives in British Columbia on the west coast of Canada, has commented on a post (here) that I wrote as an introduction to this blog:

I’ll keep this brief – I’m a hunt-and-pecker. I have no concerns with ‘environmentalists’ as long as they live as they would like the environment to be – many don’t realise though just how much they’re impacting the environment by just living. However, they’re trying which the majority are not.

Regarding windpower, in the 80’s & 90’s, I remember a single wind turbine visible from my parents’ place in Ilfracombe, N. Devon and I though it quite a fascinating piece of kinetic sculpture just as does Jim Lishman of ultralight and whooping crane fame. However, when some years ago I saw a mass of these in S. California, I saw them as a visual blight on the landscape not to mention the damage they were inflicting on migrating raptors. This is the problem though – too many people wanting too much power so they seem the lesser evil to me at present. We have yet to have a windfarm in BC though an off-shore one is planned for off the Queen Charlotte islands – 90% of our generating capacity (BCHydro claim) is from hydro power with the rest imported as needed.

These are all good points made by someone whose views I respect, and yet I see things quite differently, so here is what I want to say in reply: Continue reading »

4 Landscape and History, Churchill and Halifax

Posted by TonyN on 10/01/2008 at 12:30 pm The Landscape No Responses »
Jan 102008

According to the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, four fifths of the UK population now live in urban areas (here).

valeofyork.jpg
Looking across the Vale of York to theYorkshire Dales courtesy of DocsPics


For most of us, the rural landscape that surrounds the settlements in which we live and work is something to be enjoyed during moments of leisure. We do not depend on it either for sustenance or income, but value it as a place for relaxation, exercise and enjoyment.

The fields, woods and moorland that form by far the largest part of the British landscape still have a significant role in the national economy, but this is no longer an essential element of our prosperity or an essential means of feeding the population. Tourism rather than agriculture is becoming the main business of the countryside. A vast network of country lanes and footpaths provide access to even the most remote areas for anyone who wishes to reach them and the desire to enjoy the beauty, peace and tranquillity that they may offer. This is of unquestionable value to the life and spiritual well being of our crowded homeland, but it is no longer a vital means of sustaining life. In a sense, and for the vast majority, the countryside, and enjoyment of all that it has to offer, is becoming little more than a lifestyle option, to be enjoyed or ignored at will.

Here is a story that throws a very different light on the role of the countryside in our recent past, and illustrates the way that attitudes have changed within living memory. Continue reading »

News: 2007 second warmest year since when?

Posted by TonyN on 04/01/2008 at 2:10 pm The Climate No Responses »
Jan 042008

A Happy New Year to everyone.

The BBC’s Today progamme celebrated New Year’s Day, in spite of a little confusion about what year we are in, by introducing a news item with the following words:

Now this year [2007] is likely to be the second warmest for England and Wales on record. Figures released by the Met Office show that average temperatures reached 9.6° C, that’s just over 49° F, and overall the last six years have been the warmest since records began in 1914.

Listen Again: item at 08.39

As someone who has become sceptical about pronouncements that add to public concern over warming, this lead-in to what promised to be a thoroughly depressing prelude to the New Year presented a happy hunting ground in which to pose awkward questions. Continue reading »

News: Sea levels of the future

Posted by TonyN on 31/12/2007 at 2:50 pm The Climate 2 Responses »
Dec 312007

A link on Planet Ark‘s website happened to catch my eye when I was looking for something else on Google recently. This is one of the oldest and most evangelical of the environmentalist websites and it has been very successful in spreading the message of global warming. Sadly Planet Ark seems to be unable to do this without straying into the realms of exaggeration and speculation.

A Featured Link from Planet Ark leads to a page on the University of Arizona website that is rather like Google Earth. There it is possible to see the extent of land areas that would be inundated if sea levels rise as a result of anthropogenic, or any other kind of climate change (here). This would seem to be a perfectly reasonable way of drawing attention to the vulnerability of low lying land, a recurrent theme of advocates of impending global catastrophe. Indeed Planet Ark’s owes its name to fear of rising sea levels; we might all end up in the same boat as Mr Noah. Continue reading »

3 Reading a temperature chart

Posted by TonyN on 24/12/2007 at 10:52 pm The Climate 7 Responses »
Dec 242007


Charts like the one below are becoming more and more common in newspapers and magazines, but not everyone understands what information they actually show. This one is based on research that was used in the recently published report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Brohan, 2006). Temperature is shown in tenths of a degree on the left-hand (Y) axis and time on the bottom (X) axis.

There are no prizes for guessing that the wavy blue line relates to the global temperature since 1850, or that it shows an overall rise in temperatures. We can also see that there was a certain amount of variation in temperatures during the 19th C, but without any particular trend either up or down. From about 1910 onwards, temperatures rose until the 1940s, when the trend reversed sharply and it got cooler. From about 1975 until the end of the century there was another upward surge comparable to the one at the beginning of the century, then the line begins to level off at the present time. It all looks pretty dramatic and, some might say, scary. Continue reading »

1 The wind, the Climate and the Media

Posted by TonyN on 17/12/2007 at 4:43 pm Introduction, The Wind 9 Responses »
Dec 172007

Most of us rely on the media to form our opinions on current affairs, but few of us would claim that newspapers, television and the radio are entirely impartial and reliable in their news coverage. This can be particularly true when the stories that they are reporting are likely to catch the public’s imagination and add a little drama to their lives.

Three years ago I started to research a book about the British landscape, and particularly the countryside. Wind farms were beginning to appear in remote and beautiful rural areas, introducing conspicuous industrial development to places that had formerly been rigorously protected — with the general support of the public, politicians and planners — from such intrusion. Although small groups of protesters were vigorously objecting to planning applications at a local level, there was no public outcry or general support for their cause. This seemed strange, because I had always thought that the unique beauty of the British countryside was a vital part of our heritage, to be enjoyed, and jealously guarded, by all.

It seemed to me that our attitude to the countryside was changing, and I wanted to understand why this was happening. Monitoring media coverage of wind energy was an obvious first step. It appeared that the merit of wind farms was being heavily promoted by government, environmental pressure groups and the British Wind Energy Association, and that many of the claims that were being made for this new panacea for pollution were, at the very least, exaggerated. Continue reading »

2 The countryside - for what it's worth

Posted by TonyN on 16/12/2007 at 5:57 pm Introduction No Responses »
Dec 162007

Earlier this year, the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution published a report entitled The Urban Environment. The official summary of this vast document begins with the following startling assertion;

For the first time in human history, more than half the world’s population lives in urban areas. Around the world, mega and super cities with tens of millions of inhabitants are rapidly expanding. In the UK, over 80% of the population already lives in urban areas, and the country is going through a new phase of urban expansion and regeneration that will affect the way we live for decades to come.

I say ‘startling’ because I doubt whether many people in the UK think of their homeland as being predominantly urban. Continue reading »

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