The indirect effects of climate change

You will be given many climate heating projections between now and December, when the nations of the world will meet in Copenhagen to try to deal with climate change. Each nation will have its own projection as scientists will use their own computer modelling in order to show us how serious the problem of climate change will be in our lifetimes. In fact there may be so many projections and so many warnings that people will become climate change weary, reacting like the people to the boy who cried wolf so many times.

Flooding in Manila caused by climate change

In the Philippines a tropical storm Ketsana, also called Ondoy has been ravaging Manila and the surrounding areas. Nearly three hundred thousand people have been displaced by the storm; many of them have lost all their possessions. About eighty people have lost their lives through drowning, landslides and other effects of the storm.

Using up our resources

I suppose that most of us have at one time or another overspent our wages. If you get paid monthly it might have happened that a few days before the end of the month there was no money left in your account. You only had two choices then – borrow some money from the bank or go without for a few days, resolving not to overspend next month. Well, we act in this way in the use of the ecological resources of our planet, overspending each year, but more drastically than an employee can overspend his or her wages.

the tck tck tck campaign

 Politicians and celebrities have started a movement – a campaign by “top” people, to demand a fair and wide ranging climate change treaty at Copenhagen in a few months time. Such luminaries as Peter Mandelson,  Ed Milliband and a host of UK companies have joined the tck tck tck organisation which is promoting the campaign.

Glaciers are getting thinner and moving faster

Some people are using the annual variation is polar ice covering the sea as evidence that climate change and global warming is not actually taking place. This is misguided as the annual variations are not evidence of anything but annual variations. What is happening is indicated by trends. One thing is clear both in terms of an annual event and a trend. If you look beyond the polar sea ice and see what is happening to glaciers in Greenland and in Antarctica there are some very worrying trends.

The Emissions Trading Scheme (or Cap and Trade) will never work

Civil servants administer the policies of politicians. They break the policies down into what they regard to be a correct series of tasks and then work through the tasks, ticking boxes from their task check list. This way they   achieve their objective through a series of small tasks and the series of tasks are a path that must be followed. If the path is faulty the policy fails.

The delta lands are sinking

When a river flows it picks up all kind of debris from the act of running water over rock, subsoil and soil. Generally rivers deposit this debris, known as sediment, at their moths where they often form large deltas, like the Nile delta or the Delta of the Mississippi. Deltas are made up of many islands formed by the constant deposit of sediment, and they are kept in check by the natural action of the river which washes some of the delta land into the sea.

The world’s leaders speak about climate change

I am sitting in my hotel room very early on a dark Californian morning, after a cramped flight and a sleepless night. The Orange County skyline is littered lights that no one needs. On the freeway from the airport the High Occupancy Vehicle lanes (two or more people per car) were empty but the other lanes were full. Mr Obama is about to address the United Nations in New York on climate change so I have my television tuned to listen to what he has to say.

Why energy prices will rise in a temporarily falling wholesale energy market

In the United Kingdom there are only six large suppliers of gas and electricity who count their customers in the millions. There are a handful of other suppliers who count their customers in the tens of thousands but the biggest six have a dominant position in the energy market. Do they abuse this market dominance?

The Legal Sector Alliance Communiqué on Climate Change

If you have an area of expertise you will first turn to that expertise to solve any problem, even problems that are not directly related to your area of expertise. So it is with lawyers and climate change. The Legal Sector Alliance (LSA) is a group of 124 law firms and legal services organisations who are trying to help tackle climate change from a legal perspective.