Adapting to climate change

Facing the consequences


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I've seldom seen a better example of "glass half empty" pessimism. If the earth experiences modest warming of about 0.3°C/decade (which hasn't happened during the last decade), it will be in winter, at night, and heavily focussed on high latitude areas which are now very cold.

Millions of hectares will become arable, CO2 will improve yields, total rainfall will increase, and the world's population will no longer be huddled in tropical and temperate zones. New species will flourish, and temperature-related deaths will plummet. It will be another golden age - like the MWP and the Roman era.

The human population - decreasing rapidly following 2050 - will use these climate gifts in adapting to the much greater challenge of the demographic transition. And they will succeed through billions of individual decisions, not by 50-year plans and giant bureaucratic projects.

Who would have expected the Economist to lose faith in the Invisible Hand?


The FUTILITY of Man-made Climate Control by limiting CO2 emissions, watch:

On average world temperature is ~+15 deg C. This is sustained by the atmospheric Greenhouse Effect ~33 deg C. Without the Greenhouse Effect the planet would be un-inhabitable at ~-18 deg C.
Running the numbers by translating the agents causing the Greenhouse Effect into degrees centigrade:
• Water Vapour accounts for about 95% of the Greenhouse Effect = ~ 31.35 deg C
• Other Greenhouse Gases GHGs account for 5% = ~1.65 deg C
• CO2 is 75% of the effect of all accounting for the enhanced effects of Methane, Nitrous Oxide and other GHGs = ~1.24 deg C
• Man-made CO2 is less than 7% of total atmospheric CO2 = ~0.087 deg C
• the USA contribution to CO2 is ~20% equals = 17.6 thousandths deg C
• UK’s contribution to World CO2 emissions is ~1.8% = 1.6 thousandths deg C

Thus closing all the carbon economies of the Whole World could only ever achieve a virtually undetectable less than -0.09 deg C. How can the Green movement and their supporting politicians think that their remedial actions and draconian taxes are able to limit warming to only + 2.00 deg C?

So if the numbers above are even close to the right ballpark, the prospect should be greeted with Unmitigated Joy:
• concern over CO2 as a man-made pollutant can be discounted.
• it is not necessary to damage the world’s economy to no purpose.
• a warmer climate, within natural variation, would provide a future of greater prosperity for human development and much more food for the growing world population. This has been well proven in the past and would now especially benefit the third world.

Isn't it about time that politician welcomed these facts staring them in the face and terminated all support for alternative energy.

Nonetheless, this is not to say that the world should not be seeking more efficient ways of generating its energy, conserving its energy use and stopping damaging its environments. It remains absolutely clear that our planet is vastly damaged by many human activities such as:
• environmental pollution.
• over fishing.
• forest clearance.
• industrial farming.
• farming for bio-fuels .
• and other habitat destruction.
And there is a real need to wean the world off the continued use of fossil fuels simply on the grounds of:
• security of supply
• increasing scarcity
• rising costs
• their use as the feedstock for industry rather than simply burning them.

The French long-term energy strategy with its massive commitment to nuclear power is impressive, (85% of electricity generation). Even if one is concerned about CO2, Nuclear Energy pays off, French electricity prices and CO2 emissions / head are the lowest in the developed world.

However in the light of the state of the current solar cycle, it seems that there is a real prospect of damaging cooling occurring in the near future for several decades. And as power stations face closure the lights may well go out in the winter 2016 if not before.

All because CO2 based Catastrophic Man-made Global Warming has become a state sponsored religion.

And now after “Splattergate” thanks to the 10:10 organisation everyone now knows exactly how they think.

Splattergate is classic NOBLE CAUSE CORRUPTION. It is probably the most egregious piece of publicity ever produced in the Man-made Global Warming cause. This short film shows doubting schoolchildren being blown up and having their entrails spread over their classmates because they may have been less than enthusiastic about the CAUSE.

So any misrepresentation is valid in the Cause and any opposition however cogent or well qualified is routinely denigrated, publically ridiculed and as we now see literally terminated.

Meme Mine

Considering the Bush family and their criminal wars, is it so unreasonable with voter support gone, to suggest that the likes of Al Gore, the criminal lab coat consultants, pandering politicians, lazy teachers, criminal PR firms and most of all, the irresponsible NEWS EDITORS, all be round up and arrested and charged with treason for leading us to a false war of climate change? They condemned billions of people to death by CO2 for 24 years and we are supposed to just let them walk away now? Twenty-five years wasted on climate control instead of population control. Email your authorities in your particular part of the world and maybe, just maybe, history will not mock us all for this modern day witch burning of climate change. Meanwhile, the UN had allowed carbon trading to trump 3rd world fresh water relief, starvation rescue and 3rd world education. NOW tell us climate change wasn’t a crime!


Mankind is doomed to fail because climatic changes go faster than
Man's ability to adapt.


Thank you for you general summary and information about what's coming. May I refer you to BBC video reports in Q4-2006 and ?Oct-2010? about melting permafrost in Russia? What everyone seems to be missing is that methane release is dramatically accelerating from melting permafrost [Russia, Canada, Arctic]. This is NOT in IPCC's climate models because no one knows how to model how fast methane release is accelerating. The recent video report by BBC showed a journalist knew deep in shallow lakes that had been frozen permafrost for million(s) of years, and he was SURROUNDED BY MOSQUITOES! Methane has SEVENTY times the thermal holding capacity of C02, when considered over a 100 year period. Everything is happening faster than anyone predicted, and this will continue to accelerate. The UK is most sensitive to this, for a lot of good and varied reasons, with BBC doing a better job than most any other video based news media. The Economist has addressed these issues before. I encourage you to assign a science journalist with an open mind to look into this methane release acceleration problem. It leads me to the strategic hypothesis that the IPCC's projected worst case scenario could logically become the best case scenario. As a master change agent for the past 30 years, I and others know that we need a "burning platform" to awaken the middle management and working masses from their slumber so they may then participate in a change process for any given organization. Consider that we are a 6+ billion people hive, and there are just a relative few doing a dance for the survival of our species. Methane is the PROBLEM because it is not incorporated into the statistic/scientific models forecasting different scenario's. PLEASE examine this carefully, and consider how, you the Economist, BBC and others might join together in a collaborative effort to awaken decision makers, funding sources and organizational leaders to the utter disaster toward which we are headed. Faced with the threat of your children's and grandchildren's survival, recognizing that money will NOT make a difference in a 4 degree world that goes to a six degree world, please recognize that we need a global strategy cascaded down to national, regional and city levels that will focus a huge amount of resources on adaptation and the development of strategic resilience. Dig up Mark Lynas's book "Six Degrees to Hell", a summary of which can be found through google, reported by The Guardian. As you read what happens at 3 and 4 degrees warming and consider that your article mentions 3.5 deg C increase by the end of the century. If you compress the time line for that increase by half, say, to ~2050, because of accelerating methane release from melting permafrost, and you compare that with Mark Lynas's ?paleo-geologic? summary of what the world is like at various degrees of warming, and to that you ADD the UK Met Ofc's projections of regional temperature increases at 4 deg avg warming, which includes a 10 -15 deg warming in Russia/Canada/Arctic which is where all the permafrost is melting NOW, it doesn't take a climatologist to realize that we are absolutely COOKED. This is so, unless there is a widespread awakening to the risks, among strategically positioned decision makers, policy wonks, funding sources and technologists. see for a strategy execution methodology that can organize the necessary actions for change. this is not a commercial. this is for the future of humanity, and my 8 year old daughter, as well as her children to be, and YOUR children. Our children are what bind us together in this historic journey to save humanity from disaster.

Sense Seeker

Yes, Australis, even The Economist recognises that markets can fail, and that Invisible Hands systematically overlook externalities such as pollution if left to their own devices.

Most people recognise that unfettered markets can bring unfettered misery, even among economists, especially after the recent economic crisis.

Isn't it about time you caught up?

Sense Seeker

When I see the list of that needs to be done because we are failing to stop our green house emissions and move into sustainability mode, I feel more for taking the advice of the Stern Report.

Much cheaper to invest in reduced CO2 emissions and avoid the worst of the disaster. But I applaud discussion on mitigation measures, because it spells out the real-world consequences if we don't.

PS: Meme Mine, did you even read the article?!


Migration is the answer and it should be linked to the climate impact of the country concerned.

So for every ton of coal that Australia exports, they should accept 1 Bengali immigrant. That would help the Bengalis to deal with sea-level rise. And it would also fix the Aussie's disgraceful climate policies pretty damn quick!

david Wineberg

We have seen the utter chaos that flooding brought to 500,000 in New Orleans. The Economist says 8 million will be flooded out of coastal areas mid century. Inconceivable how we will deal with that, and no plans are being readied either. Personally, I think the figure is laughably low; I think tens of millions will be displaced in the Bangladesh delta alone. And where will those millions go? India? Burma? I think not. I think there will be wars - not over water, but over land. From 2050 on, low lying areas will be the centers of war, and the poorer the area, the worse the conflagration. That is a climate change result to cope with and prepare for, not even hinted at in this article.


How can I get my hands on a few billions, weapons and logistics, and an army of saboteurs?
Any ideas would be appreciated...

Oh, I almost forgot... Anyone here knows how to use the major cities' water resources to sterilize their population? Please accompany any chemical formulas with detailed plans of security...

Thanks in advance...

Mariana Trench

Australis - the climate alarmists nightmare - clearheaded, logical, evaluates evidence and reaches the obvious conclusion - the one the alarmists have invested so much effort to conceal and suppress.

United Greens

In counterbalance, we are developing the United Green Nations project, the newest system of global ecological security and sustainable development. For more information, please visit and related sites.


I have 280p in my pocket out of my savings of £1,000,000

This is 280/1000000 of a percent ie 0.000280 *100= 0.028% of my savings.

I find 110p in the street and put that in my pocket.

I now have 380p in my pocket out of my savings of £1,000,000

I have increased the amount in my pocket by 40%

I have increased my savings by 110/1,000,000 *100 = 0.00011%

Now the question is what should I report to my bank manager to get him to lend money to my business?

1. Should I say I have a total wealth of £1,000,003.80 an increase of 0.00011% ?
2. Should I say I have increased my wealth in my pocket by 40% compared to this morning when I found 110p ?

Would you trust me more if I said 1) above or 2) above

You choose...


I've often been asked by journalists and bloggers
how I came to
be "James Lovelock's Accidental Student." It's an interesting story.

Two years ago I read an
interview in the Guardian newspaper in Britain where Dr Lovelock
talked about his
vision of survivors of future global warming being
"breeding pairs in the Arctic". I pondered those words for a few
months over and over and finally, I asked
myself, where
might these "breeding pairs" live?

What kind of settlements
would they be housed in, and where would these settlements be located?
And who would govern these settlements, and who would be
allowed in, or who will get in, and will they survive the Long
Emergency that will be happening then?

I envisioned climate refugeee settlements I dubbed "polar cities" for
these "breeding pairs" in Lovelock's Arctic. That's how the term ''polar
cities'' was born. In late 2006.

This was also around the same time as an important IPCC report was
coming out -- February 2007 -- to great media fanfare, and there were
headlines every day in the newspapers. As a result, I was
obsessing with the issues of climate change and global warming for the
first time in my life -- in my late 50s. I don't have a Ph.D. in anything and am
not connected with any academic group or association. I am nobody.

It's not easy catching the attention of the news media or reporters
around the world. Although it's easy to get a mention or two about
polar cities on blogs and websites, it's almost impossible to get a
story about my work in a print publication anywhere in the world.

Just the other day, a reporter for a major wire news
service in Europe told me in an email, explaining why
he could not write about polar cities for his
agency or interview me for a story: "I appreciate the originality of
your idea of polar cities, and your enthusiasm, and
your independence. I really do. But unless you are a scientist or
engineer, or your idea has gotten some serious traction somewhere, I
cannot justify doing a piece on you and your work."

And he added: "Interesting
coincidence: I spent an hour in conversation with Dr.
Lovelock yesterday."

Danny Bloom is a 1971 graduate of Tufts College, with a degree in
literature. He lives in Taiwan and can be reached at

Jim Bullis

Apparently, our economist reporters seem to have concluded that there is no practical way to control CO2 in the atmosphere.

True, the combination of science and economics is good at noticing problems, but a bit limited in solving problems.

Environmentalists go screaming out the door to hear about any change to the ecosystems of the world, but portend infinite destruction by climate change of those ecosystems.

However, there are some low cost solutions of potential magnitude to accomplish the needed CO2 control.

Simply stated in reaction to this economist article, it would be a lot easier to create new standing forests on previously, minimally productive land by changing the way water is distributed on a continental basis in North America, apparently in China, and perhaps in Australia. We will see about other places.

In regard to China, President Hu said, “— we will energetically increase forest carbon — we will endeavor to increase forest coverage by 40 million hectares and forest stock volume by 1.3 billion cubic meters by 2020 from 2005 levels.” ( This was reported by Joe Romm at his ‘climateprogress’ web site. See – )

In North America, there is abundant water in the North and shortage in much of the rest of the continent. In Australia, there is increased rainfall in the West and increased drought in the East, probably due to climate change itself. But in both cases there is no shortage of water; just a distribution problem. And we are well aware of how this can be fixed in general, and the difficulties seem to be serious, but not insurmountable.

Thus, it looks far easier to build forests than to build levees, locks, and such to keep back rising oceans.


Look, the case for POLAR CITIES as an adaptation strategy is never more important than NOW

Governments will go on talking, but summitry has failed. No chance of plausible global programme for keeping climate change in check. Job now is adapting to climate change, protecting people from consequences, such planning and pre-siting POLAR CITIES, as Dan Bloom suggests at


The story is about a bloke who in 2006 came across Lovelock's Guardian
interview with
Mr Jeffries, about his dire predictions for the future re climate
change and particularly where
Lovelock spoke about....."breeding pairs in the Arctic",,,, of humans
of course, breeding pairs of humans who might need to take shelter in
Arctic regions to survive the coming warming
of USA and UK and central Europe and Africa,......and this bloke, 30
years Lovelock's junior,
had an inspiration, directly from Lovelock's BREEDING PAIRS quote, and
it was this:

what kind of habitat would this human breeding pairs live in? And as
James Lovelock's accidental student, with no PHD and no academic
sponsors, he set off creating images
of what he calls POLAR CITIES, not at the poles per se, but in
northern regions, UK too,
Norway, too, Alaska too....and New Zealand also.....and these polar
cities, -- he also dubbed them LOVELOCK CITIES in honor of the great
man,,,,they would be there in the north JUST IN CASE, IN CASE OF
EMERGENCY......hopefully they won't be needed.......and this bloke
sent his archtectural drawings to Dr Lovelock in Cornwall via email
and a few weeks later
the great man replied and said "Thanks for showing me these images of
polar cities, they might happen, yes, and SOON!"

So this guy now calls himself James Lovelock's Accidental Student and
has devoted his life
to pushing the polar cities MEME up the hill, not to say the world
will END, but just to say
we must be prepared for whatever might happen, just in case, and these
polar city villages
and rural settlements might serve as LIFEBOATS, even for LIFEBOAT
NEW ZEALAND and LIFE BOAT ALASKA....... but just an thought
experiments, to wake people up using archtectural imagesa to peer
into the future.

Want me to send you his website? He has been blogged about in the New
York Times, but most print newspapers in the USA won't touch this
story with a ten foot pole, but maybe the
Guardian / Observer can do it. Fred Pearce and Mark Lynas and George
Monbiot in the UK, in addition, to Dr Lovelock, know about all this.
and have been in touch with JAMES LOVELOCK'S ACCIDENTAL STUDENT over
the past 4 years, and it's an interesting story,
a bit eccentric and off the radar, but I have a feeling it will strike
a chord with readers if a balanced piece comes out......and i think
this bloke won't mind being made fun of or criticized
because it comes with the territory of being a visionary, and he doesn't mind.

Want to see his images and the LOVELOCK quote? It's on a blog
somewhere, i can forward to think it over......



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