I was interested to read the publicity blurb for Gordon Brown's as yet untitled book, which is due to be published in November. He says...We now live in a world of global trade, global financial flows, global movements of people and instant global communications. Our economies are connected as never before, and I believe that global economic problems require global solutions and global institutions. In writing my analysis of the financial crisis, I wanted to help explain how we got here, but more importantly to offer some recommendations as to how the next stage of globalisation can be managed so that the economy works for people and not the other way around.In case you were wondering, this book's going, er, global.I do hope Gordon owns a copy of Roget's Thesaurus...PS It started...

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has cut its global wheat production forecast for 2010 due to the impact of poor weather on crops in recent weeks, but allayed fears of a new food crisis, noting that current stocks should be adequate. The global wheat production forecast is now expected to be 651 million tonnes, down from the 676 million tonnes reported in June, the Rome-based agency said in a news release.Fears about the availability of world wheat supply are attributed to an ongoing, devastating drought affecting crops in Russia, combined with anticipated lower outputs in Kazakhstan and Ukraine. Global wheat prices have jumped by over 50 per cent since June, prompting concerns about a repeat of the food crisis of 2007/2008. FAO noted that the recent turmoil in...

As its 35th 'birthday' approaches, is it now time to drop the politically charged and scientifically limited term 'global warming' for something else?Anniversaries are always a fairly arbitrary (yet media friendly) reason for discussing any subject. But given the fact that some people, such as the folk at RealClimate, are already "celebrating" the 35th anniversary of the coining of the term "global warming", which is marked this Sunday, it seems as good a time as any to assess whether the term is still fit for purpose.Names are important (just witness the "sceptic" vs "denier" hoo-ha), so it does seem a valid question to ask. I strongly doubt whether Wally Broecker realised that when his 1975 Science paper was titled "Are we on the brink of a pronounced global warming?" he knew that the...

As the Earth warms, we expect changes in rainfall and associated alterations in the frequency and strength of droughts and flooding. These will be difficult to predict, so understanding how rainfall responds to different aspects of climate change – such as increases in greenhouse gases and surface-temperature changes – will help us to identify uncertainties in climate-change projections. In turn, this will help climate scientists give better advice to policymakers. Scientists now know that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels warm the climate. Changes in global surface temperature induce many secondary modifications, such as changes in clouds, moisture in the atmosphere and temperature distribution. All of these influence the processes that control rain and...

Global warming sounds quite cosy but how about “global wetting”? Not so appealing, unless you are a duck perhaps. Climate change is having a major impact on the water cycle, and for some of us the future looks rather damp. Chris Milly, a hydrologist working for the US Geological Survey and based at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton University, US, is using climate and hydrological models to assess how global water availability will change in the years to come. His findings suggest that changes in global water distribution will create serious problems by the middle of this century. Warmer air can hold more water and hence produce more rain, which is why global warming is likely to bring wetter...

Nasa analysis showing record global warming undermines the sceptics - Times Online The global temperature has risen to a record for a 12-month period, according to Nasa. The analysis undermines the case made by climate sceptics, who have used the slight cooling trend in recent years to argue that man-made emissions are not causing global warming. The Met Office said its own analysis of temperature records suggested that the global temperature remained just below the 12-month record achieved in 1998. However, Vicky Pope, head of climate advice, said it was possible that Nasa was correct because the Met Office had underestimated recent warming detected in the Arctic. There are very few weather stations in the Arctic and the Met Office, unlike Nasa, does not extrapolate where there are no...

The amount of moisture that the atmosphere can hold varies strongly with temperature. For each degree of global warming, the amount of moisture that is stored in the atmosphere increases by about 7%. This higher moisture content does not imply a corresponding increase in rainfall, however, and climate models instead predict that global-mean precipitation will increase at a much slower rate of only 1–3% per degree of global warming. The reason for this is that changes in global rainfall are controlled, not by the change in atmospheric moisture with temperature, but by changes in atmospheric, radiative-energy loss with temperature. As the atmosphere warms, it emits more long-wave energy, according to the Stefan–Boltzmann law of blackbody radiation. Because the heat capacity of the...

It's a rare day - I just read something by Michael Walzer with which I don't agree. It concerns his attitude to world citizenship. Michael writes:One of the questions that we posed for the forum on intellectuals and their America in this issue [of Dissent] has preoccupied me for many years, and I will seize this occasion to respond... "Do you consider yourself a patriot, a world citizen, or do you have some other allegiance that helps shape your political opinions?" I consider myself a left internationalist, but definitely not a world citizen. The difference is important. Internationalism connects me to leftists in other countries, who are or should be working for the well-being of the poorest and most vulnerable of their fellow citizens. I am engaged with them in what I think of as a...

Sometimes we get over excited about our global reach in the Foreign Office. We do have global reach. We have offices in 260 places around the world, in 150 different countries. We run 250 websites in 50 languages. And we work on issues like climate change and counter terrorism, which are truly global issues affecting millions of people around the world.But that doesn't mean we run digital diplomacy campaigns that reach people every country in the world. We're more likely to have success targeting particular audiences with lots of small campaigns, than aiming for very large audiences with massive campaigns.In fact, most our digital successes in the last couple of years have worked because we have been very clear about which particular niche audience we were targeting. Dominic...

EVEN if the sun were to quieten down appreciably for the rest of this century, it would still be business as usual for global warming. The sun goes through an 11-year solar cycle during which its luminosity varies according to the number of sunspots appearing on its face. The normal cycle has a small effect on Earth’s weather. But sometimes lulls in sunspot activity can last several decades, driving down the sun’s luminosity to a “grand minimum”. The Maunder minimum lasted from 1645 to 1715 and may have contributed to the little ice age. Stefan Rahmstorf and Georg Feulner of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany modelled what would happen to temperatures on Earth if a grand minimum started now and lasted until 2100. They found that while...

Actually, it's been with us for about a week – light falls, just enough to whiten the ground but not enough to cause any problems. But, this morning, we got at least three inches dumped on the city. Now with clear skies, it is freezing hard.The local paper picked it up but, contrary to the assertions of that idiot David Viner about snow becoming "a very rare and exciting event", it is so common that it has become routine.What has also changed is the terminology. It has undergone a paradigm shift. Quite routinely, people refer to the white stuff as "global warming". It has become part of the everyday language that needs no explanation. It no longer even raises a smile: "global warming" means snow.Needless to say, the paper hypes it up telling us that the weather "created havoc" with...

BBC News - Q&A;: Professor Phil Jones Q. Do you agree that according to the global temperature record used by the IPCC, the rates of global warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 were identical? A... in answer to the question, the warming rates for all 4 periods are similar and not statistically significantly different from each other. Q. Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming A. Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level... Q. There is a debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was global or not. If it were to be conclusively shown that it was a global phenomenon, would you...

Timex has a large range of watches that include everything that an athlete needs to track their progress and measure their performance. Recently, the watch company plans to release a new watch called the Ironman Global Trainer. The Ironman Global Trainer wristwatch will be lightweight, comfortable and is designed to give a person a better workout. Even though the watch is created for fitness and health, it is slim enough to be worn on an everyday basis. The Ironman Global Trainer wristwatch will be one of the slimmest watches released by Timex. It will have features such as pace, distance, altitude and real time speed data. The watch also has a heart rate monitor and a customizable display. The wristwatch is water resistant of up to fifty meters. The biggest feature of the watch is...

The Population Institute is pleased to announce that the 2010 Global Population Speak Out (GPSO) will commence on February 1st and run through the whole month. GPSO is designed to promote a new and responsible global discussion — one that recognizes a healthy and stable population is a prerequisite of global sustainability. Endorsed by high profile scientists and celebrities such as Paul Ehrlich, Dennis Meadows and Alexandra Paul, the Global Population Speak Out specifically challenges the taboo against discussing population. I strongly encourage you to make a pledge to participate, which you can do by clicking through the following secure link: http://tiny.cc/GPSO_2010_Pledge When February arrives, you can write a blog post, submit an LTE or Op-Ed, create a poster, give a speech...

In the wake of my piece yesterday on the power of the internet, we see a laborious op-ed in The Daily Telegraph on precisely that theme. This one is from Jeremy Hunt, shadow culture secretary, who argues that: " ... the internet allows the rebirth of communities and the strengthening of society in a way that its founders never envisaged. Understanding that simple fact has the power to transform the relationship between politicians and the people who give them their jobs.This is the sort of lame waffle that you expect of politicians, who vaguely realise that there is a thing out there called the internet, but don't really understand it or begin to appreciate its power.He does not, for instance, mention the storm of activity over the recent Climategate episode, the most recent and...

The recent Copenhagen Conference on global warming has led to renewed claims that we cannot effectively combat global warming without “global governance,” or perhaps even a full-fledged world government. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon recently claimed that “A [climate change] deal must include an equitable global governance structure” and many other political leaders and environmental activists have expressed similar views. Political scientist Campbell Craig summarized the standard argument for global governance to address climate change in this 2008 article: [O]ne of the most evident failures of the nation-state system in recent years has been its inability to deal successfully with problems that endanger much or most of the world’s population. As the world has become more...

Post-Copenhagen.  At bottom, the question is one of legitimacy and what it means to say that a climate change deal requires, in Secretary General Ban’s words, an “equitable global governance structure” to administer it, and the many, many, many things that apparently fall under its tent.  What is this global governance?  What makes it equitable and, therefore, legitimate?  Is it legitimate to do a deal of global proportions, on climate change or anything else, and not involve everyone?  If your issue is simply the substance of climate change policy, and not UN politics, then you don’t much care about these abstract issues of legitimacy, global governance, and the UN. Until the end of Copenhagen, in which it turns out that — given the breathtaking scope of things to be...

It has failed. All the bell-ringing on the planet could not save it. The fervent prayers of the most righteous Rev Nicky Gumbel were not heeded. Even the Messiah-President Barack Obama has fallen short of glory.There was some deal done with India, South Africa, China and Brazil because 'deep cuts in global emissions are required according to science'. And they have agreed 'to hold the increase in global temperature below 2 degrees Celsius'. But nothing is legally binding, and nothing can be scrutinised by any external agency.Global government has failed.And make no mistake, this conference was about the establishment of a world government to enforce the provisions of whatever was agreed at Copenhagen. For the first time in an international treaty, the word 'government' was used of a...

The Climategate story just got bigger – from Rionovosta, via the Ria Novosti agency, posted on Icecap and sent to us fron the IEA in Washington (ain't the internet wonderful!).Unusually for us, posted in full (our emphasis):A discussion of the November 2009 Climatic Research Unit e-mail hacking incident, referred to by some sources as "Climategate," continues against the backdrop of the abortive UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen (COP15) discussing alternative agreements to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol that aimed to combat global warming. The incident involved an e-mail server used by the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in Norwich, East England. Unknown persons stole and anonymously disseminated thousands of e-mails and other documents dealing...

Apropos the Copenhagen summit, Chris considers 'three broad ways of organizing our affairs': (1) national governments acting on their own; (2) voluntary agreements between governments; and (3) a global government with the ability to coerce national governments. Chris says politicians 'seem to think that climate change is best tackled by (2)', which he accepts is better than (1), since what they're concerned with here is a public good; but he asks why they should think (2) superior to (3):[I]f the costs of failure at Copenhagen really are so catastrophic, and are a serious risk, then perhaps mode (2) is the wrong way of addressing the problem, and we might need global government instead. And yet, AFAIK, none of the summiteers is suggesting this possibility.There is, surely, a quick answer...

From BBC: The first decade of this century is the warmest on record, a report by the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has said. The agency’s data also showed that 2009 was set to be the fifth warmest year. In a separate report, the UK’s Met Office said the current decade was “by far” the warmest since instrumental records began. Its new analysis also showed that 2009 would almost certainly be the fifth warmest in the 160-year record. The WMO said 2009 was set to be another “top 10″ year, with provisional warming of 0.44C (0.79F) above the long-term average of 14.0C (57.2F). Burgeoning El Nino conditions, adding to man-made greenhouse warming, pushed up this year’s global average temperature, it explained. “We’ve seen...

And The Guardian is proud of it – its initiative in which 56 major newspapers in 45 countries speak with a single voice (albeit in 20 different languages) through a shared editorial on "global warming". A sentence acknowledging the controversy over Climategate was "optional".Global warming – global government – global newspaper ... makes sense.CLIMATEGATE...

We were recently asked to migrate a store to our Sonassi Hosting platform, but the client did not have SSH access to his previous hosting account. So we quickly knocked up a script to take care of the backup process <?php   $db_host = ""; $db_name = ""; $db_username = ""; $db_password = "";   // Backup database shell_exec("/usr/bin/mysqldump -h ".$db_host." -u ".$db_username." -p".$db_password." > ".$db_name.".sql &");   // Backup entire site shell_exec("/usr/bin/tar cfz ".$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'].".tar.gz --exclude=./".$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'].".tar.gz...

The perversion of science that has been exposed by the release of the CRU emails has shocked even that high priest of the Greens, George Monbiot: …there are some messages that require no spin to make them look bad. There appears to be evidence here of attempts to prevent scientific data from being released, and even to destroy material that was subject to a freedom of information request. Worse still, some of the emails suggest efforts to prevent the publication of work by climate sceptics, or to keep it out of a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I believe that the head of the unit, Phil Jones, should now resign. Some of the data discussed in the emails should be re-analysed. What is clear is that the proponents of the man-made global warming hypothesis have...

There are now less than 40 days to go before Copenhagen. The four degree map my brother Ed and I launched last week underlines the urgent need for a deal to keep global temperature rise below 2 degrees.So far, the EU has done its bit, showing commendable leadership in driving progress towards such a deal.  The 20-20-20 deal, the conditional offer to shift to 30% emissions reduction targets, and diplomatic initiatives to encourage global action, have all contributed. And we have shown -reflecting the argument that I made in my speech on Europe at IISS on Monday - that by working through the EU, Britain can have a bigger impact than acting alone. The UK can act to address its own emissions, but as part of the EU, we can ensure others reduce theirs too.  Britain’s percentage of...

Left Foot Forward (the blog of the Fabian Society) has 'fisked' what it describes as the right wing blogs and has come to the conclusion that the authors of those blogs are sceptical about the contribution man has made to climate change ... see here.Its actually rather an interesting analysis, but it starts with the assertion that "man-made global warming is an established fact" - and to start with that assertion is, in my view, mistaken. The evidence suggests that there it is probably true, but 'a fact'? The problem is this ... looking at what is available in the press and elsewhere, there are arguments, but we do not know what makes our environment work and we do not know what makes it change over time. What we do know is that it has changed considerably even in the short time (in...

Only 57% of Americans feel that the planet's atmosphere is warming, a fall from 77% two years agoThe number of Americans who believe in global warming has plummeted, falling 20% in two years, a survey said today.Only 57% of Americans believe there is solid scientific evidence that the Earth's atmosphere is warming, said the poll of 1,500 people by the Pew Research Centre for the People & the Press.That is a fall of 77% from 2007. The number of people who believe that human activity is causing global warming also fell to just 36%.The public uncertainty about the evidence behind global warming comes as the Senate prepares to begin debate next week on climate change legislation. Yesterday, 18 scientific organisations wrote Congress to reaffirm the consensus behind global warming.Michael...

Sandwalk: Average Annual Global Temperatures and IDiots Larry Moran Professor in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Toronto. Here's a chart of the average annual global temperature change over the past 150 years. I don't know about you, but to me there seems to be a bit of a trend. The highest recorded temperature was in 1998 and last year the temperature was 0.08ｰ lower than the year before. Nobody with an IQ over 50 thinks that the temperature has to increase every single year in order to demonstrate global warming. Speaking of IQ, the BBC "climate correspondent" just wrote an article for BBC News: What happened to global warming?. .... It's actually not quite as bad an article as it sounds. There's some interesting discussion about short-term trends and how to...

Kofi Annan launches ‘Beds Are Burning’ Global Musical Petition to demand climate justice with Melanie Laurent and Havas Worldwide CEO, David Jones & The:Hours • First ever global musical petition created to mobilise people to pressure their leaders to agree a climate justice deal at the UN’s Copenhagen Climate Change Summit in December. • Produced by The:Hours, 60+ international music stars & celebrities collaborated for free to show support for climate justice deal and the ‘Tck Tck Tck: Time for Climate Justice’ campaign • Midnight Oil specially re-write lyrics to 1987 hit, ‘Beds Are Burning’ to highlight greatest humanitarian challenge facing mankind today. PARIS (1 October 2009) – Kofi A. Annan, President of the Global Humanitarian Forum, was today joined...

John Prescott meeting expectations, by showing himself up to be a large pie eating oaf with no brain: "Gordon Brown is still the guy who turned this global economy round, everybody credits him with that, except here in the UK. There are two fundamental issues we're facing, climate change and global finance. Both require global agreement, he's the best man in the field for the job." These are global problems, you need global giants, not the pygmies I hear about," he said. Er, you what lardy? Turned the global economy around how the fuck did he do that? By spending vast amounts of cash, encouraging banks to lend on a smoke an mirrors debt boom and giving us a national debt that is soaring at £6000+ a fucking second. We are paying back £30 billion a year lardboy, 30 sodding billion and...