An Honest Climate Debate

Disaster damage well down in 2009 December 29, 2009

Disaster damage well down in 2009

The Local.de, December 29, 2009

Munich Re, a leading global re-insurance group based in Germany, said Tuesday that natural catastrophes took many fewer lives and caused much less damage on average in 2009 than in the previous decade.

But the group nonetheless pointed to a higher total number of destructive events, around 850, than the long-term average since 1950, and deplored failure to achieve a breakthrough at the Copenhagen climate summit.

In its annual look at the cost of natural catastrophes, Munich Re said, “Losses were far lower in 2009 than in 2008 due to the absence on the whole of major catastrophes and a very benign North Atlantic hurricane season.”

It put the death toll this year at “around 10,000,” which was well below the average of 75,000 in each of the past 10 years.

In monetary terms too, losses in 2009 were much lower than the levels in previous years, the re-insurance giant said. It estimated total economic losses this year at $50 billion (€35 billion) and insured losses at $22 billion.

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The Unbearable Complexity of Climate December 28, 2009

The Unbearable Complexity of Climate

Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Via Watts Up With That, 27 December 2009

Figure 1. The Experimental Setup

I keep reading statements in various places about how it is indisputable “simple physics” that if we increase amount of atmospheric CO2, it will inevitably warm the planet. Here’s a typical example:

In the hyperbolic language that has infested the debate, researchers have been accused of everything from ditching the scientific method to participating in a vast conspiracy. But the basic concepts of the greenhouse effect is a matter of simple physics and chemistry, and have been part of the scientific dialog for roughly a century.

Here’s another:

The important thing is that we know how greenhouse gases affect climate. It has even been predicted hundred years ago by Arrhenius. It is simple physics.

Unfortunately, while the physics is simple, the climate is far from simple. It is one of the more complex systems that we have ever studied. The climate is a tera-watt scale planetary sized heat engine. It is driven by both terrestrial and extra-terrestrial forcings, a number of which are unknown, and many of which are poorly understood and/or difficult to measure. It is inherently chaotic and turbulent, two conditions for which we have few mathematical tools.

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‘Scaremongering’ only increases public skepticism about global warming: Expert December 25, 2009

‘Scaremongering’ only increases public skepticism about global warming: Expert

TopNews.in, December 25, 2009

London, Dec 25 : A leading global warming researcher has claimed that British Government’s ‘scaremongering’ tactics to convey environmental messages are not effective, and it is only increasing public skepticism about global warming.

Dr Lorraine Whitmarsh, who has carried out extensive research into public mistrust on the issue, said that the Government should rather incentivised low carbon lifestyles, which can save people money and have long term health benefits as well as helping slow climate change.

“The Government have tried to communicate climate change, but they haven””t done it well. Using scare tactics such as in the latest campaign with a drowning dog helps to raise the issue, but it also suggests we are all doomed and there is nothing else we can do,” The Express quoted Dr. Whitmarsh, as saying.

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