Time to blame climate change for extreme

[Still Waters]

IT IS time to start asking the hard questions. Countless people in flood-stricken Pakistan have lost families and livelihoods. Who can they hold responsible and turn to for reparations?

Less than a decade ago, these questions would have been dismissed outright."Many scientists at the time said that you can never blame an individual weather event on climate change," says Myles Allen of the University of Oxford. But a small meeting of scientists in Colorado last week - organised by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the UK Met Office's Hadley Centre, among others - suggests the tide is turning.

The aim of the Attribution of Climate-Related Events workshop was to discuss what information is needed to determine the extent to which human-induced climate change can be blamed for extreme weather events - possibly even straight after they have happened.

Assigning blame in this way is not without precedent. In 2004, Allen and his colleagues showed to a high level of confidence that human greenhouse gas emissions had at least doubled the risk of the European heatwave of 2003 occurring.

Read more...

[+OverSword]

Last night I was watching a BBC report about efforts to drain a lake under a glacier on Mont Blanc. The reason is that the last time it broke through the glacier (1850's I think) it flooded a town in the valley below it and drowned several hundred people, and the conditions of the glacier are now nearing what they were at that time. I guess what I'm saying is that yes you could blame climate change for the floods, but climate change is an ongoing fact of our planet and always has been, sometimes more violently than others. Even scientist who many of us feel are alarmists will admit that for the past several thousand years the planet has been experiencing an unusually long period of mild climate. We may be nearing the end of that time. If so floods, storms, droughts, basically all the bad weather in the bible can be expected for many generations.

[redhen]

Katrina victims tried to sue U.S. Oil companies because of climate change? That was their first choice? Why not sue China, they're still opening a new coal fired plant every week.

I guess it's politically correct to blame the U.S.A. first, for any grievance.

[redhen]

I guess what I'm saying is that yes you could blame climate change for the floods, but climate change is an ongoing fact of our planet and always has been, sometimes more violently than others. Even scientist who many of us feel are alarmists will admit that for the past several thousand years the planet has been experiencing an unusually long period of mild climate. We may be nearing the end of that time. If so floods, storms, droughts, basically all the bad weather in the bible can be expected for many generations.

Right, some of these changes are natural cycles, but humanity has effected these patterns through technology and behaviour. The Ozone hole is one example,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_depletion

[Still Waters]

Last night I was watching a BBC report about efforts to drain a lake under a glacier on Mont Blanc. The reason is that the last time it broke through the glacier (1850's I think) it flooded a town in the valley below it and drowned several hundred people, and the conditions of the glacier are now nearing what they were at that time. I guess what I'm saying is that yes you could blame climate change for the floods, but climate change is an ongoing fact of our planet and always has been, sometimes more violently than others. Even scientist who many of us feel are alarmists will admit that for the past several thousand years the planet has been experiencing an unusually long period of mild climate. We may be nearing the end of that time. If so floods, storms, droughts, basically all the bad weather in the bible can be expected for many generations.

There's a thread about that here -

France drains lake under Mont Blanc glacier

http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=188936