This summary of research in the USA is another example of the need to re-evaluate all activities in the light of the changing climate: ‘Back to nature’ cuts flood risks. The authors of the research make the comment, “Control infrastructure [flood management systems, such as levees] prevents high flows from entering flood-plains, thus diminishing both natural flood storage capacity and the processes that sustain healthy riverside forests and wetlands … As a result, flood-plains are among the planet’s most threatened ecosystems” – the flood-plain is not merely a space for water to overflow into, it is a vibrant ecosystem in its own right. This is the view we need as against the view that sees the environment as just something for our convenience that we manage for short term interest.

A good message is that land in the flood-plain that may get flooded may still be used in the non-flooding seasons for agriculture. We, that is most of us, get multiple benefits from working with natural systems. Only a few get benefits from working in competition to natural systems.

I have just finished reading Climate Cover-Up by James Hoggan (with Richard Littlemore). James runs a public relations company James Hoggan & Associates based in Vancouver where I once lived. He chairs the David Suzuki Foundation, a Canadian environmental organization. The book catalogues in a readable manner some of the techniques used to hide the reality of global warming as a man-made threat to the current living world. The current common method is to suggest that there is uncertainty in the science and a lack of consensus among climate scientists. I see this in all the comments I read to articles explaining the CO2 problem.

One of my meta-complaints about the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was that having said that if the WMD were given up there would be no invasion. That an invasion happened and no WMD were discovered means that countries being told to give up WMD programs or face consequences know that they had better get the WMD as fast as they can because the threats are really going to become an excuse to try regime-change regardless. Diplomacy is devalued.

Hoggan makes a similar point towards the end of the book. That companies and politicians have worked with public relations companies to spin their way out of problems for which they should be culpable means that those groups are no longer trusted; credibility has been degraded. Hoggan commissioned polls of public opinion and found just that in Canada. One disjointed statistic in one of the polls is that 5% of people said that they were not concerned about the problems of climate change, but people thought that 50% of others were not concerned about climate change: people are unsure of each other. No individual want to take a lead and start to address something in their own lifestyle. This is what must change; we need to do things individually to reduce our carbon footprint and let others see that we are doing so. We have to join together to push politicians and industrialists to work for our common good.

It seems that evading the evidence is not enough for some: Hacked email climate scientists receive death threats. The most useful information in this comment is a statement by Tom Wrigley, previous Director of the UEA CRU, “We did not destroy any primary records  …..  All these data came from National Meteorological Services, and the originals are still there for anyone to access. Indeed other groups such as GISS and NOAA have independently accessed these data and independently reproduced our results.”

Here is a dilemma: Antarctica may heat up dramatically as ozone hole repairs. It seems that the ozone hole above Antarctica has changed air flows so as to keep Antarctica colder than it would have been without the ozone hole.

Should we return to using products that use CFCs in order to keep the ozone hole above Antarctica for now in order to stop rapid temperature rise there? This does illustrate that some geo-engineering is possible even if other side-effects are undesirable.

It seems to me that there is a big battle on ‘global warming’ and a lot of energy and time can go into commenting and explaining. I am not best placed to do that, but I should put my money where my mouth is. There is no argument for me on this issue for a long time yet I have not done as much as I could personally. How can I expect people who are sceptical or little informed to make changes? I intend to research insulation and heating solutions for my own house and invest in those solutions that I can cope with. I hope to help by example. The investigations and any implementation details and problems will appear on pages here over the next year. First I am looking into solid-wall insulation and loft insulation.