EEA report: Impacts of Europe’s changing climate

Today I downloaded this new 241 page report. Here some comments after glancing through the executive summary.

The report relies heavily on the IPCC AR4 and the Acia report (much copy/paste of graphics). The overall tone is alarmist (what else?) and seems to push the creation of an European Clearinghouse of Climate Change.

A temperature increase of 0.8°C since pre-industrial times is mentioned with a warning undertone (did they expect falling temperatures with the end of the LIA?). “No clear tendency in the frequency and intensity of storms has yet been observed“. (Notice the word “yet”; surely this will…must  change in the near future!).

Ozone concentrations are reported to increase in central and south-western Europe, which seems to be opposite to the findings of another recent EEA report: http://www.epa.gov/airtrends/ozone.html

For the ice sheets there are no reliable predictions fro Greenland and Antarctica (Antarctica must be part of Europe?). There is an over-abundance of the words “are expected”  “scenarios”. Some positive factors as increased forest grow are mentioned, but followed on the heels by dire warnings (more fires). Social changes and economic development are told as being the main factors for economic losses by weather events.

Correctly the authors deplore that even something as trivial as a common definition for “flood” or “drought” does still not exist (when is more water a flood?). The scenarios used (which should show regional skill) are told being based mainly on global (IPCC) scenarios (which have no local skills). This is quite embarrassing!

The report has a very readable layout, nice art work but leaves a first impression of déjà vu.

Debate organized by Mensa 25th Sep. 2008

The Luxembourg Mensa section organized a discussion round on climate change with the MP Marcel Oberweis, the member of European parlement Claude Turmes and myself. The discussion were moderated by Georges Weyer from Mensa, who had a difficult job to keep the talks on the rails. As I feared, climate and energy discussions very soon become entangled in an awfull manner. I had problems just showing that the IPCC consensus should not be considered as a holy bible, and that there are many points in climate science where views are diverse. My two partners rehearsed the usual clichées (2500 scientists can not be wrong, hurricanes are increasing, glaciers are melting and the poor people from Tuvalu are drowning). They were absolutely not aware that global temperature (if we take them as a meaningful metric) are flat since at least 6 years, and were absolutely ignorant on items like the Copenhague Consensus. M. Oberweis adopts a highly moralizing point of view, Claude Turmes, a better talker in my opinion, has a strict green anti-nuclear, only-renewables-can-save-us position.

I spent the day and night before in the hospital to get a kidney stone removed, so maybe this also was a hindrance. I think in these discussions, talking time should be severely limited, and each party should expose his view on a subject, before switching to the next one.

Welcome to the meteoLCD blog

This blog started 28th September 2008 as a quick communication tool for exchanging information, comments, thoughts, admonitions, compliments etc… related to the questions of climate change, global warming, energy etc…