The full IPCC Special Report on Extremes is out today, and I have just gone through the sections in Chapter 4 that deal with disasters and climate change. Kudos to the IPCC -- they have gotten the issue just about right, where "right" means that the report accurately reflects the academic literature on this topic. Over time good science will win out over the rest -- sometimes it just takes a little while. --
Roger Pielke Jr, 28 March 2012
FAQ 3.1 Is the Climate Becoming More Extreme? [...]None of the above instruments has yet been developed sufficiently as to allow us to confidently answer the question posed here. Thus we are restricted to questions about whether specific extremes are becoming more or less common, and our confidence in the answers to such questions, including the direction and magnitude of changes in specific extremes, depends on the type of extreme, as well as on the region and season, linked with the level of understanding of the underlying processes and the reliability of their simulation in models.--
IPCC Special Report on Extreme Events and Disasters
There is medium evidence and high agreement that long-term trends in normalized losses have not been attributed to natural or anthropogenic climate change... The statement about the absence of trends in impacts attributable to natural or anthropogenic climate change holds for tropical and extratropical storms and tornados... The absence of an attributable climate change signal in losses also holds for flood losses. --
IPCC Special Report on Extremes, Chapter 4
Plans to force companies to declare the size of their greenhouse gas emissions have been put on hold and could even be abolished, the environment secretary will tell parliament this week, raising fresh questions over the government’s commitment to fighting climate change. --Kiran Stacey,
Financial Times, 28 March 2012
Did you know that Poland blocked new European Union emissions targets at a recent meeting of EU environment ministers? Are you aware that there is growing support among Eastern European governments to block any new unilateral climate targets permanently? The reason you may not have heard of this growing rebellion in Brussels is simple: climate policy is no longer a big item on the EU's agenda and the climate mania is gradually coming to an end after almost 20 years. In the past, Poland's intractable hostility to green unilateralism was greeted by universal protestation in capitals around Europe. Today, it is hardly noticed by the media while green campaigners have become elderly and limp. Other and more pressing concerns are taking precedence and are completely overriding the green agenda. It looks as if a new political ice age has ascended over Brussels. --Benny Peiser,
Public Service Europe, 28 March 2012
QUEENSLAND Premier Campbell Newman has ordered Anna Bligh's husband to begin dismantling green energy programs he helped create, as the new LNP government moved to slash environmental spending to offset the federal carbon tax. The showpiece of the Gillard government's $1.5 billion Solar Flagships Program is now in jeopardy, after Mr Newman yesterday pulled the plug on $75 million in state funding pledged for the $1.2bn Solar Dawn solar thermal project near Chinchilla, west of Brisbane. --Natascha Bita
,The Australian, 29 March 2012
They are responsible for some of the [Australian] government's most important policies - but staff at the Department of Energy and Climate Change are too ashamed to admit where they work. Staff morale is so low the government has spent almost $175,000 on consultants to lift staff's flagging spirits. --
The Sunday Telegraph, 25 March 2012
Rich deposits of gas have been discovered under the rolling countryside of Melton and the Vale of Belvoir.Shale gas, a natural gas contained in rocks hundreds of millions of years old, has been found by geologists at the British Geological Survey (BGS), just over the Leicestershire border at Keyworth, in Nottinghamshire, as part of ongoing geological survey work. --
Leicester Mercury, 28 March 2012
