Green stuff

From the BBC:
“Photos taken by a mountaineer on Everest from the same spot where similar pictures were taken in 1921 have revealed an “alarming” ice loss.
The Asia Society (AS) arranged for the pictures to be taken in exactly the same place where British climber George Mallory took photos in 1921.
“The photographs reveal a startling truth: [...]

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Michael Tobis exposes 3 real scandals and 1 false one

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“Imagine a gigantic, colossal banquet. Hundreds of millions of people come to eat. They eat and drink to their hearts’ content, eating food that is better and more abundant than at the finest tables in ancient Athens, or Rome or even in the palaces of medieval Europe. Then one day a man arrives wearing a [...]

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Climate change was hardly spoken of during the election campaign, but it remains a vital issue. So I’m grateful to Michael Tobis for sharing this letter recently published in Science. Hope he’ll forgive me for reproducing it
We are deeply disturbed by the recent escalation of political assaults on scientists in general and on climate scientists [...]

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Hope in God’s Future is a draft Methodist Conference statement on climate change. You might remember that this report caused some little controversy in Methodist blogdom when it came out last year.
A process of consultation on the report has now begun to take the mind of the church.
If you are a Methodist (member or regular [...]

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Despite what you might have read since the ‘climategate’ thing (why do journalists have to stick -gate after everything?), the evidence that the world is warming and that human activity is responsible hasn’t gone away.
Quite the reverse. It just keeps getting stronger.
A review from the UK Met Office says it is becoming clearer that human [...]

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Michael Tobis confronts some uncomfortable facts about the debate over climate change: Childhood’s end
Windmills may or may not be pretty, but our situation is not pretty at all. We need to come to grips with it. And our frantic lives with their narrowing margins of sanity and declining capacities for contemplation make it very difficult [...]

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This letter appeared in my newspaper on Friday. I reckon it’s worth repeating here. The linked article is also worth your time.
I liked Ben Chu’s article on why climate naysayers are failing (24 December). What many people tend to forget is that the warming story is not simply based on the air-temperature records of the [...]

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George Monbiot claims victory over arch-’skeptic’ Ian Plimer.
But you can watch the debate and make your own mind up.
My money’s on Monbiot. But you knew that.

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From the Methodist Church
Over half of people in Britain have taken steps to reduce the amount of energy they use at home in the last year.
As governments prepare to meet in Copenhagen to discuss climate change, a new YouGov survey, on behalf of the Methodist Church, found that 55% of people have cut their home [...]

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As participants gather in Copenhagen for the Climate conference, the BBC presents some of the skeptics’ arguments side-by-side with typical responses.

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I see that Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, has stepped aside following the controversy over the hacking of the unit’s email
Professor Jones said: “What is most important is that CRU continues its world-leading research with as little interruption and diversion as possible.
“After a good deal of [...]

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The leaders of the Baptist, Methodist and United Reformed churches have called on the government to put pressure on the world’s richest countries to reach a binding agreement at next week’s climate change conference in Copenhagen.
The churches argue that since developed countries such as the UK and US owe their wealth to activities producing high [...]

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Irony alert.
Pajamas Media on ‘Climategate’
So what does this all mean? It does not mean that there is no warming trend or that mankind has not been responsible for at least some of the warming. To claim that as result of these documents is clearly a step too far. However, it is clear that at [...]

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In advance of the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference, a group of 26 scientists have issued The Copenhagen Diagnosis: Climate Science Report, which aims to highlight the main issues for the negotiations.
The most significant recent climate change findings are:
Surging greenhouse gas emissions: Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels in 2008 were nearly 40% higher than [...]

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Ben Bradley is cycling to Copenhagen
I’m a pragmatic kind-of fellow and having understood a little about advocacy and campaigning as part of my time working at an international relief and development charity, I thought it was right to offer my time and enjoyment of cycling to the cause.
I think we can all see that I [...]

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“… for Christian theology ’spirituality’ is really just another name for Christian life because Christian life is simply life in the Spirit.
“If this is right, however, then there are various consequences. In the first place, it makes no sense to think that ’spirituality’ could be a distinct part of Christian life, something one might [...]

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Energy Secretary Ed Miliband MP will host a public rally tonight in East London, to give an update, and take questions, on the current state of negotiations in the lead to Copenhagen.
The rally comes in the midst of a number of important meetings - such as the UK hosted Major Economies Forum, the EU Council [...]

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Richard Vautrey, Vice President of the Methodist Conference, attended the Archbishop’s climate change lecture yesterday. He offers a most helpful summary.
The cathedral was packed to hear him speak, and he took as his theme “The Climate Crisis: A Christian Response”.
He reflected on the story of Noah and the creation stories, and observed that humanity [...]

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