Snow predicted but climate change suggests warm times ahead
Mike Childs
24 November 2010
Snow will be falling across parts of the UK over the next few days according to weather forecasts in today's papers, but warnings from UN scientists earlier this week predict warmer times ahead.
One of the more challenging parts of being a climate campaigner is convincing the public and politicians about the need for urgent action on climate change whilst they are going about their business in freezing cold weather. The newspapers last winter were full of articles questioning whether climate change is fact or fiction as the UK suffered its coldest winter in decades. Not surprisingly people's perceptions are more informed by the experiences around them than the record keeping of meteorologists. Local weather patterns shape people's views more than the strong global trend of a warmer and warmer planet.
Earlier this week the UN published their analysis of the greenhouse gas reduction commitments made in the Copenhagen Accord by the major polluting countries and some others at the international climate change talks in Copenhagen a year ago. They show clearly that, even on a very optimistic reading of the commitments, the reductions promised fall well short of the cuts needed to achieve the G8 and EU's stated desire to keep average global temperatures less than 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels.
The UN figures should spur greater action at the climate talks starting in Cancun at the end of this week. You can keep up to date with events at the Cancun talks here. Let's hope that the outcomes give us a warmer feeling that the weather is likely to.
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