Climate Change

When confronted with extreme situations the majority of us short circuit and attempt to continue our normal routines. Even in the face of obvious and impending danger. This is classic human behaviour.

For well over a decade Breaking the Code of History (BTCH) has argued that the increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere have reached a critical point where, even if we stopped putting in anymore C02 into our atmosphere going forward, we have built in an 11-degree temperature shift in our climate which will be catastrophic.

The evidence given in BTCH demonstrates that climate change is a very real phenomenon. The future temperature levels implied by the current 400pm Co2 concentrations (up 42.8% from 280ppm before the industrial revolution) are 10 degrees above pre-industrial levels. With such a wide potential gap we should prepare ourselves for climate changes that are much more rapid than currently expected and that will be a massive impact upon our way of life accross the planet.

The answer is simple, collective delusion.

During the Christmas Holidays I spent some time reviewing the ongoing evidence for climate change and updating my climate change sector in BTCH.

The generally held perception that global warming is a linear process is one only held by non-scientists. I have repeatedly pointed out that the present apparent pause in global warming, that data suggests has occurred since 1998, does not invalidate the reality of global warming, but is caused as oceanic heat sinks absorb some of the increased energy from our atmosphere. The mechanism of this process has been recently highlighted by professor Matthew England from the University of New South Wales.

On August 29th 2005 Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and its resultant storm surge breached the neglected  flood defences in 50 places. Two days later 80% of the city was flooded and 80/90% of the population was evacuated. Sadly, the western world missed the obvious lessons. Climate change will create greater energy in our atmosphere and produce more high energy weather events so that when  they collide with population centres significant damage will result.

Put simply, the sun's radiation speads out through the solar system and then interacts with the earth's atmosphere to warm our planet's surface and oceans. While the sun's radiation output has remained relatively constant over the last 200 years, the composition of our atmosphere has changed since the onset of industrialisation to include more carbon monaxide and methane. These pollutants have become known as greenhouse gases as they increase the ability of the atmosphere to retain the sun's heat.

In Breaking the Code of History (BTCH) I dedicated a whole chapter to climate change, and presented evidence that human industrial activity was the cause of climate change. I also expressed surprise that there was so much confusion in the public domain as to the scientific evidence as to whether global warming was real or not.

The recent assault on New York by Frankenstorm is a stark and very costly reminder of the power of our planet's weather systems, even if its effects were compounded by a full moon and consequent high tides.