Braying ninny - Rowan Williams
You may remember the name, he used to be the Archbishop of Canterbury.
From the UK
Telegraph:
The rich West is ruining our planet
The storms that have battered parts of the UK this year and left hundreds of people facing the misery of flooded homes and ruined land have again brought questions about the impact of climate change to the forefront of the public consciousness. And this week the whole question has been put into still sharper focus, as the world�s leading climate scientists publish a report on the subject putting our local problems into a deeply disturbing global context.
Actually, you are wrong. The number and intensity of large storms has been declining for the last 15-20 years. The damage costs have been rising but there are two factors in play:
#1) - inflation -- the costs to rebuild are going up because the cost of labor and building materials are going up and
#2) - people are building more in dangerous areas. They want the nice view but do not accept that they are building in the path of major storms.
More:
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world�s leading body of scientists in this area, will be pointing out that, appalling as the experiences of recent months have been here, we have in fact got off relatively lightly in comparison with others. It is those living in the typhoon-prone Philippines or in drought-ravaged Malawi who are being forced not only to deal with the miseries of flooded homes and prolonged disruption, but to make fundamental changes in their way of life.
Actually, draft copies of the IPCC Working Group II report have been released and that is not what it says at all. Read Matt Ridley's article at the
Wall Street Journal for more. The IPCC is seriously backpedaling.
More:
We have heard for years the predictions that the uncontrolled burning of fossil fuels and the consequent pouring of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere will lead to an accelerated warming of the Earth. What is now happening strongly indicates that these predictions are coming true; our actions have indeed had consequences, consequences that are deeply threatening for many of the poorest communities in the world.
Carbon Dioxide is the
Gas of Life. Without it we would have no plant life and no algae in the ocean. No corals either. Recent studies put the optimal level at around 700ppm and the Earth has had as high as 9,000ppm. This produced the abundance of vegetation that became our great coal beds. The US Navy runs our submarines with about 8,000ppm CO2 with zero adverse effects (page 6 of
this document) and indeed, tests on volunteers have shown that deleterious effects only
start showing up around 250,000ppm.
More:
The waves that destroyed railway lines in the South West and the record-breaking rainfall that flooded homes and led to the Severn and the Thames bursting their banks show what we can expect as average temperatures increase worldwide.
What Dr. Williams fails to bring to the table is that what flooded were canals that had been used for transportation during the industrial revolution. They were dredged on a regular basis but this dredging has not been maintained. England established a large system of channels to carry water and did not -- in recent times -- keep them maintained to their capacity. Now they scratch their heads over the flooding. (
here,
here,
here and
here)
The rest of Dr. Williams' piece is equally clueless so I'm going to stop here. Why he considers himself to be an authority on this subject is beyond me. Classic
Dunning�Kruger effect. He should be loudly mocked and driven into the river...
Posted by DaveH at March 30, 2014 11:57 AM