A team of researchers have published a study that shows human greenhouse gas emissions significantly contributed to devestating floods in England and Wales in 2000. The floods damaged 10,000 properties and cost £1.3bn in insurance loses.

From the New Scientist:

Allen and his team found that human greenhouse gas emissions "significantly increased" the likelihood of the 2000 floods. They can say, with a 66 per cent confidence level, that emissions nearly doubled the risk of the 2000 floods.

Conversely, says Allen, there is only a 10 per cent chance that the increase in flood risk rose by just 20 per cent as a result of human contributions to climate.

Their methods seem very robust and combine a number of models to account for the difficulty of predicting rainfall and flooding events.

Their work also employed distributed citizen-science through Climateprediction.net, where idle computing time is donated by nearly 55,000 contributors and used run climate models. 

The authors have launched a new project, called Weatherathome, that will use distributed computing to model weather -- rather than climate -- events.

A group of researchers from Canadian universities simulated the long-term effects of C02-induced climate change after a full cessation of emissions in 2100.

The results should prompt more urgent action on adaptation and mitigation responses.

The study confirms other findings that C02-induced climate change is "largely irreversible" in human timescales, with changes to continue for centuries after emissions cease. Global mean temperatures would remain roughly constant after a full cessation of emissions in 2100, but regional changes in temperature and precipitation will continue.

The simulation shows a collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet by the year 3000, leading to a global sea level rise of 3 to 4 metres.

Other findings reinforce data projecting a cooling of the Northern Hemisphere, a warming of the Southern Hemisphere, and delayed and ongoing ocean warming despite no further carbon emissions.

They conclude, grimly,

Geoengineering by stratospheric aerosol injection has been proposed as a response measure in the event of a rapid melting of the West Antarctic ice sheet. Our results indicate that if such a melting were driven by ocean warming at intermediate depths, as is thought likely, a geoengineering response would be ineffective for several centuries owing to the long delay associated with subsurface ocean warming.

Full article: (2010) Gillett, Nathan P., and Zickfeld, K. "Ongoing climate change following a complete cessation of carbon dioxide emissions" in Nature Geoscience.

Access to Information requests by the Climate Action Network have revealed that elements within the governments of Canada and Alberta attempted to undermined clean energy and climate policy in California, the United States and Europe. 

Much of the information compiles existing public statements, speeches and policies by federal and provincial politicians and civil servants in a way that identifies a pattern of deliberate and coordinated disruption of climate and energy policy agendas in friendly, foreign jurisdictions. 

“We have proof that the Harper government is aggressively intervening in Europe and the United States to kill clean energy policies in the name of promoting the tar sands,” says Graham Saul of Climate Action Network Canada. “Canada is not just exporting dirty oil anymore - we're also exporting dirty policies.”

The report documents extensive evidence of federal and Alberta government lobbying efforts against clean energy policies proposed in three jurisdictions: California, the United States and Europe. Documents obtained through Access to Information also point to a broad-based and secretive “Oil Sands Advocacy Strategy” led by the Department of Foreign Affairs. 

The press release also notes that Greenpeace has set up a tip line for federal civil servants -- essentially, a  "Climate Crime Stoppers" line. Keith Stewart of Greenpeace Canada says it has been set up for "federal civil servants who are frustrated with the oil industry calling the shots on Canada's energy and climate policy and want to help us separate oil and state.”

The line is being advertised in the national political elite newspaper The Hill Times and will be promoted throughout 2011. 

The release continues: 

“A friendly neighbor does not secretly try to undermine your clean energy jobs and efforts to fight climate change,” says Susan Casey-Lefkowitz of the Washington D.C.-based Natural Resources Defense Council. “The greed for tar sands oil is not only harming the Boreal forest - it is harming the North American clean energy future.”

“We are calling on the governments of Canada and Alberta to stop all efforts to kill clean energy and climate policy in other countries,” says Steven Guilbeault of Équiterre. “This is an outrage, it is a reckless approach to energy policy that needs to be brought to an end.

The full report, in PDF, is available here.

(h/t via joelaf, citing CBC)

Andrew Knox presents on the Transition Movement at Climate Change Conference 2010, on August 13, 2010.

A quick summary in a Canadian context, emphasizing the positive attitude and psychology of the Transition Movement.

Knox is a founding member of Transition Toronto and worked with Transition Town Totnes.

Climate Progress directs our attention to a recent speech by the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, given at a Pentagon energy security conference. While politicians, media, and the public dither and procrastinate over de-carbonizing, US armed forces are making focused changes today and preparing for an operating environment disrupted by particular climate and resource predicaments.

[...] we are in fact seeing evidence of climate change’s potential impacts on our security. Near the polar cap, waterways are opening that we couldn’t have imagined it a few years ago – opening trade routes, presenting both opportunity and vulnerability and rewriting the geopolitical map of the world...

We in the Defense Department have a role to play here. Not solely because we should – should be good stewards of our environment and our scarce resources but also because there is a strategic imperative for us to reduce risk, improve efficiencies and preserve our freedom of action wherever we can...

When we consider the estimates of a fully burdened cost of diesel fuel approached $400 a gallon and required 1.3 gallons of fuel to use per gallon delivered at some forward-operating locations, these benefits start to really add up. This translates to fewer Marines maintaining fuel storage and distribution systems, fewer Marines dedicating their lives to protect the convoys in the routes used to deliver the fuel, or as this conference theme tells us: Saving energy saves lives.

In a similar systems approach, the Army out of Fort Irwin employed insulating foam on the roofs of its overseas deployment structures to save millions per month in air conditioning costs.  And they are now working on a shower-water recycling system for their forward operating bases...

Simply put, we cannot think about energy after we get there – wherever there may be. Energy security needs to be one the first things we think about before we deploy another soldier, before we build another ship or plane and before we buy or fill another rucksack… And the demand for energy is not going to ease anytime soon.

This is no small matter. In addition to the newly developing waterways near the polar ice caps in 2008, the National Intelligence Council identified 20 of our bases that are physically at risk as a result of a rising level of the ocean.

 

Full text of the speech is available here.