View from Trefonen

  Reading in The Guardian that the need for minerals to use in the production of electric cars is driving undersea mining, and that this mining is likely to be disruptive to an already threatened marine environment, prompted me to offer an alternative theory. Unfortunately it does not offer any easy solutions to global pollution and climate change, but if I am correct it means that we are diving off down a dead end route which will not actually solve any of the problems. First of all, I continue to be slightly sceptical that the current upward trends in global temperatures are totally anthropogenic in nature. Warming periods have come and gone throughout Earth’s long and turbulent history, and historically we are overdue for the next ice age, a phenomenon which seems from the available paleontology evidence to have been preceded on each occasion by a very warm period. (Think, for example, of the evidence that there were wild hippopotamuses in London 125,000 years ago.)   Su...

  The whole subject of climate change is not only topical and emotive, but also contested, as anyone who has read anything about it over the last ten years or so will know. Over the last 30 years scientists taking the Global Warming view have gradually won the argument in the scientific community, and therefore in the public domain too. The IPCC has become very powerful, intellectually, and the near-hysteria over the COP26 recently confirmed that the whole topic is now at the forefront of public consciousness. I have, as readers of this blog will know, been very impressed with Prince William's Earthshot prize, and with his and David Attenborough’s excellent series of TV documentaries on the five areas we need to address in order to save the planet from environmental destruction. Only one of these five areas concerned climate change, the others ranging from re-wilding and dealing with waste to cleaning up the oceans. All are connected, and all need to be addressed. I do not have a...

 I’m writing this third post partly because I am concerned at the level of what is called ‘climate anxiety’ in the general population, and particularly among young people. This has clearly been caused by the media heavily emphasizing every possible negative climate story, as well as talking up the disaster theories, not least because these headlines ‘sell newspapers’, as we used to say (!). Our current climate mania seems still to be stuck in the ‘hockey stick’ era, with every new piece of research seized upon by the media and stacked up with all the rest to create terror; and the scientists have - understandably but I think without fully considering the effects of all the media hype - allowed this to happen because it captures public attention and increases the likelihood that policy makers will actually address the issues. However, this global anxiety is, in my view, largely misplaced and may actually be dangerous, not only to individuals who are being made anxious, but also beca...

 In the last few days I have seen various mentions in the news of a report on the state of the system of currents that form the Gulf Stream, which keeps northern Europe warmer than its latitude would normally allow. As I understand it, when a lot of fresh water pours into the North Atlantic, usually as a result of the melting of ice sheets in North America, the salinity of the ocean is reduced and the currents drop lower, rather than staying near the surface. As a result of global warming, there has been a lot of quite rapid melting of glaciers in Canada, and the current system is becoming unstable. If it collapses completely the warming effect of the Gulf Stream would stop, bringing about (fairly swiftly, probably over a couple of decades) abrupt cooling of north-western Europe. A New York Times news item this morning explains: ‘… a crucial ocean circulation system in the Atlantic Ocean, which helps stabilize the climate in Europe, is now starting to slow down. While the [IPCC...