Climate Change – Copenhagen Day 1

The Copenhagen Climate summit starts today

and runs through to the 18th. I will be using the UK Guardian as my main source of information. This news organization has an extremely solid record on all things environmental and were largely responsible for driving the significance of the greenhouse effect and global warming to a UK and international audience. This is the link to their portal page – the depth of coverage when compared to the networks and dead tree media here is staggering – go have a look.

This is probably the best piece I’ve read regarding the push back against the criminal and the stupid otherwise known as the climate change deniers

Unlike my brief posts: here and here this piece provides a great overall summary with lots of genuinely useful supporting links.

A quick note to those of the teabag persuasion: I am more than happy to debate this subject with anyone but be warned, you’d better come armed with a little more than what Fox News has told you- at the very least I’d expect you to know the following:

What the The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is and how accurate their predictions have been to this point in time. – Fox News have already told you to hate them so you have heard of them but I’d expect you to at least know their mission.

That a one degree increase in temperature does not mean that everywhere will be exactly one degree warmer or to put it another way one area could be 30 degrees colder another the same size 31 degrees warmer – this would give an average increase of 1 degree.

That global warming can make places cooler – this is not hard if you think about it but this is the one that your Fox News and Talk Radio heroes use to convince you that climate change is a Librul plot to befuddle and rule over you, not to mention to destroy ‘Murrika.

To be able to tell me why the correlation between the start of significant increase in atmospheric CO(2) due to man’s activities and a steady increase in global temperature is so strong. The industrial revolution represents the start of this trend.

I would expect much more knowledge and understanding than this of most people prior to expressing a categorical rejection of a well supported theory but I realize that you don’t work to Enlightenment rules so allowances have been made.

For my part, I spent a few happy months poring over IPCC reports and summaries on climate change for a dissertation about the Carbon Cycle and more specifically where a big chunk of then unaccounted for carbon may be hiding out or where the measurements were faulty. My bachelor degree is environmental biology. Yup two for the price of one there teabaggers, a degree largely based on Darwinian evolution and Climate Change. You probably give that combination the same legitimacy that I would give to a degree in witchcraft.

I certainly do not regard myself as an expert by any means and much of my understanding is sketchy at best but I do have enough of a background to at least have a moderately well informed opinion unlike the vast majority of deniers.