This is how it was. What’s next? Feeling lucky, punks?

Calculated from NASA’s (click for more info) “Five-Year Average Global Temperature Anomalies from 1880 to 2010” and animated. Even a trainee climate scientist has been surprised at how fast things speed up right near the last couple of decades.You need to be at least a little bit scientifically literate to realise why anomalies are way more important to show the trend rather than absolute temperatures – a distinction which many cherry picking denialists, with their “it’s really cold here, so we must be in a cooling trend” garbage thinking cannot get clear in their heads but still, even they must get it, surely?

Note how the warming anomalies are by far the greatest in the Arctic zone where all the permafrost and Northern sea ice is. This is happening far faster than the last full IPCC digest of the science delineated in 2007. Those models did not take this faster heating and consequently faster rate of shrinkage of the ice into account in their models. Neither did they consider the release of methane from the permafrost nor the entrained carbon.

To those complacent enough to comfort themselves with the belief that the models’ predictions are wrong I say – you were right! Sort of. The predictions of the models were wrong – they did not take enough into account – but they were wrong in a bad way. Things are worse than previously suspected. Read again my post of the 19th February entitled  We’re ***’ed (We’re hosed…) which is about melting permafrost. I quoted Greg Craven who spoke recently at the AGU (American Geophysical Union):

“AGU rattled me to the core because my worst-case fears were not just confirmed, but exceeded (I found four paleoclimatologists who admitted to making plans for survival retreats), and my last hope–for the scientific community to enter the public debate–was completely dashed.”

I’ve since found out directly from Greg that the full story is that, of those he spoke to, he found four who would admit to this but they also confirmed that “many” more that they knew were doing the same.

Reviews of WTWTCH?

Another review for the book - this one absolutely excellent. I really am starting to feel what I had hoped for all along - that this book could make a significant difference to the future path of the world. Yesterday, Barnes and Noble reviewed it and boy - is it good!

Barnes and Noble review

Greg Craven on TV

This is a link to a TV show with Greg Craven, author of "What's the Worst That Could Happen" explaining the basic idea behind the book (on his local TV station).

http://www.katu.com/amnw/segments/51613927.html

What’s the Worst That Could Happen?

The book that saves the earth is published tomorrow (Tuesday, July 7th). WHAT'S THE WORST THAT COULD HAPPEN by Greg Craven, assisted by the Manpollo crew (of which I am one), is launched upon an unsuspecting world. It's for non-expert ordinary people everywhere who are just a bit unsure over who to believe in the great global warming shouting match. Few trust governments fully these days so, even if they are just about all telling us the following - that climate change is happening; that it's likely to be an increasingly dangerous problem unless we do A LOT very quickly to head it off and that we need to start fixing the problem now - there's plenty of people who are still doubtful and somehow believe they are being conned. This is because the two sides in the shouting match are not evenly balanced numerically or in terms of credibility, although the way the media portrays it, you wouldn't know this.

The book allows "ordinary Joes" to make up their mind what is the best decision to make to safeguard their - and their family's - future. No-one needs to take a degree in science or be a climate expert to use this book - its basic idea is to use simple techniques of risk assessment to show what the best bet is. It sets out the simple pros and cons of believing either side of the argument and the consequences of either taking action or doing nothing. It uses a simple, but very powerful, decision grid to achieve this. As a side effect, it also shows how the same grid is a very useful way for everybody to make difficult decisions on many of life's problems, where all the facts are not clear and the answers are not obvious. I'll do another post in a couple of days, with plenty of links, but for the time being just click on this image of the front cover.

What’s the Worst That Could Happen?

Here it is! The "climate change" book, that I helped with some of the research on, is published on July 7th. Embedded below is Greg Craven's own brand new trailer for the book launch. Please watch it and pass on the links from the "more info" side bar. Then buy it!

The book shows ordinary people (non-climate experts!) how to decide what's the best bet for them to safeguard their families even if if they don't understand the claims and counterclaims in the media debate about climate change. It has the spark of genius in it.

Disclaimer: I have no financial interest in this book - just a passionate belief that it might be part of what saves everybody's bacon. Governments and climate scientists are generally pretty firm that there is a big threat. What we need is something that shows the ordinary man-in-the-street how they can make a good sensible decision about what we should do about it. I believe this book is a brilliant example of that.

Using the techniques of risk analysis Greg shows how we can make the best decisions as to what to do when we're not sure of all the facts (or even the facts themselves are not all certain!). His method works for any big decision - not just climate change stuff.



Now you've seen it, please spread the word by any means you can think of. You just might end up being a hero!

I'm sorry that the link to the book etc in this post (and in the side bar) is truncated but my HTML skills aren't up to fixing it yet!