"... the evidence of change has mounted as climate records have grown longer, as our understanding of the climate system has improved and as climate models have become ever more reliable. ...

From this month's issue of Scientific American (subscription required).

http://sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&...0CB2EAAC975FE93

At home we were discussing the recent floods in the UK. My wife brought out a local newspaper special from 2004, about the history of York weather. 50 years ago there were terrible floods in York. Not to be beaten, I brought out:

Public release date: 18-Jul-2007
Contact: Colin Smith
cd.smith@imperial.ac.uk
020-759-46712
Imperial College London

Catastrophic flooding changes the course of British history

A catastrophic megaflood separated Britain from France hundreds of thousands of years ago, changing the course of British history, according to research published in the journal Nature today.

The study, led by Sanjeev Gupta and Jenny Collier from Imperial College London, has revealed spectacular images of a huge valley tens of kilometres wide and up to 50 metres deep carved into chalk bedrock on the floor of the English Channel.

Using high-resolution sonar waves the team captured images of a perfectly preserved submerged world in the channel basin. The maps highlight deep scour marks and landforms which were created by torrents of water rushing over the exposed channel basin.

To the north of the channel basin was a lake which formed in the area now known as the southern North Sea. It was fed by the Rhine and Thames, impounded to the north by glaciers and dammed to the south by the Weald-Artois chalk ridge which spanned the Dover Straits.

It is believed that a rise in the lake level eventually led to a breach in the Weald-Artois ridge, carving a massive valley along the English Channel, which was exposed during a glacial period.

At its peak, it is believed that the megaflood could have lasted several months, discharging an estimated one million cubic metres of water per second. This flow was one of the largest recorded megafloods in history and could have occurred 450,000 to 200,000 years ago.

The researchers believe the breach of the ridge, and subsequent flooding, reorganised the river drainages in north-west Europe by re-routing the combined Rhine-Thames River through the English Channel to form the Channel River.

The breach and permanent separation of the UK also affected patterns of early human occupation in Britain. Researchers speculate that the flooding induced changes in topography creating barriers to migration which led to a complete absence of humans in Britain 100,000 years ago.

Dr Sanjeev Gupta, from the Department of Earth Science & Engineering at Imperial said: “This prehistoric event rewrites the history of how the UK became an island and may explain why early human occupation of Britain came to an abrupt halt for almost 120 thousand years.�

Project collaborator, Dr Jenny Collier, also from the Department of Earth Science & Engineering, speculates on the potential for future discoveries on the continental shelves.

“The preservation of the landscape on the floor of the English Channel, which is now 30-50 m below sea-level, is far better than anyone would have expected. It opens the way to discover a host of processes that shaped the development of north-west Europe during the past million years or so,� said Dr Collier.
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We're a one (small, 1.3l) car family. We have planted hundreds of trees and bushes in the past 16 years and have three fields (1.5 acres) of grass meadow with ancient hedgerows. We have hoards of butterflies, birds (includes kestrels), bats (flying as I write), bees, etc - you know, all of the animals that are not seen nowadays (eh?). We're double glazed and cavity wall insulated. We have not flown for 5 years (broke). I'm terrified of dying, in case I should decompose and add a CO2 burden to the planet. I only burn my garden rubbish at night so I can't see the CO2. I only take coconut milk in my tea so as to reduce the numbers of cows and the CH4 they produce. As water vapour is such an important greenhouse contributer I'm thinking of building and wearing an expired air wv condensation system, and I'll cycle to the coast to empty in into the sea, hoping that the sea level rise it causes won't impact too much on Australia.

By the way, why is it that the Southern hemisphere has a different profile?

"... no warming on the Southern Hemisphere in the last 25 years even though the "global warming theory" and the corresponding models are predicting even faster rise of the tropospheric temperatures than for the surface temperatures. The decadal trend is quantitatively around 0.05 degrees which is noise whose sign can change almost instantly." http://motls.blogspot.com/2006/09/southern...res-global.html

Climate is as climate does. Yawn.

Nobody argues that climate doesn't change naturally. The point that environmentalists try to make is that avoidable human-caused climate change should be avoided out of the "precautionary principle" because we don't know the possible harm that can be done. Hence, conservatism, when it comes to human-caused climate change, is the indicated policy.

http://www.sehn.org/precaution.html

The effect of human activates hardly can be overcome so easily. It is impossible to incline such abnormal countries as India and China to regulate their industry. Besides Russians do not care to preserve Siberian forests, nobody cares to stop fires which each year clear up abnormally large areas of forests there. In the same way it is not possible to control industrial development of Africa, Arabian sector and Sought America fitting no ecological standards. If the regulations turn effective in Europe and US that hardly will contribute to the situation improvement though some critical environmental parameters in global scale increase due to US and European activities.

I guess that the best way is to adopt global program of Forests planting. Italian experience of forests planting during Mussolini period can be utilized. The global program can be integrated into secondary schools program world-wide. Kids should be educated in mode of forests planting and caring. Such new generation will be more sensitive to environmental topics in future. Thus, I am sure, that within 50 years (if program be started during the coming years), we will have significant progress on planetary scale.

The shift to Ethanol and Fuel Cells is an option as well. But it goes too slow. The oil pumping companies must be pushed to the Renewable Energy related sectors of economy. Besides, in the automobile industry the transition to hybrid cars will significantly improve the situation.

At the same time all this will help to free the Free World from oil dependence on the stupid and retarded nations.

"The sea ice of the Arctic will melt further and faster than at any time since records began nearly 30 years ago, according to the latest data collected by a satellite survey of the polar region.

"Scientists warned yesterday that the sea ice is already approaching the record minimum set in September 2005, even with a further month of the summer melting season still remaining."

From "Scientists Warn Arctic Sea Ice is Melting At Its Fastest Rate Since Records Began"

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/08/15/3187/