still winter

Glorious morning with icing and surreal light. Then the battery ran out.

Went to a very interesting talk on COP21, climate change and all that by Roy Thompson. He used a statistical model to derive climate sensitivity, ie how temperature depends on climate forcing. The model is all data driven and takes green house gases, aerosols, volcanic activities and ENSO (else nino and large nina activity) as inputs and predicts temperature. He finds a climate sensitivity of 4 degree Centigrade for a doubling of green house gases. Assuming a business as usual scenario this will lead to 8 degree temperature rise by the end of the century. What has been agreed in Paris barely scratches the surface and makes a difference of a fraction of a degree. In short nowhere near enough.

So we have all this knowledge, technology and yet we cannot agree on how to proceed. We rather bomb other countries, exploit the poor and screw up the future. The turkeys are still voting for Christmas.

What we need is a different approach to how we organise ourselves with different priorities. We have plenty of understanding and technology. Optimising short term monetary gain for the few will lead to disaster.

Anyway rambled enough. Check the uni's press release for Roy's work with link to his paper.