jethro

Organically grown produce, therefore no nitrate based fertiliser to release CO2. Grown in a deep bed system, no soil turnover to release captured CO2 to the atmosphere. Re-cycled glass containers, again an energy saving and green option. No transportation from pitch to table, making it a zero carbon miles product. No extra energy used in the production as it is made using an existing heat source (Aga oven). No additional flavourings or preservatives. All in all, a healthy eco option, which when viewed from a climate change perspective, if you're looking for jam, it's the way to go if you want to live a sustainable lifestyle. It's all these little, simple steps that we can all make, which make the difference between having a high or low impact upon the planet

Not even started, it's taken all evening to top and tail the damn things. Jam, chutney and pickled Gooseberries tomorrow, that's if I can remember where the stock piles of jam jars are.

They introduced the one child policy back in 1978, and they have at least 9 years of compulsory education. Aspire to a Western style economy? Really? Can't see that it's a fine example of a flourishing, prosperous thing to either follow or aspire to.

China may be using a great deal more fuel than before but they're also leading the way in developing greener alternatives. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14201939

I think I'll stick with the latest offering from the METO, released just 5 days ago so I think it's safe to assume this is the latest info available: If low levels of Arctic sea ice were found to be affecting the track of the jet stream, for example, this could be seen as linked to the warming of our climate – but this is currently an unknown. http://metofficenews.wordpress.com/2012/07/12/the-uks-wet-summer-the-jet-stream-and-climate-change/

A question for all you melt watchers.....it's a genuine one, from a puzzled mind.... The hot weather in the UK summer of 2006 was said to be as a result of the dramatic ice melt; a few years later and the wash out of this summer is also said to be as a result of the dramatic ice loss. How can ice melt be responsible for both hot, dry summers and cold, wet ones when the reason for both those extreme summers seems to have been the Jet Stream in an unusual position? Does ice loss cause it to move South or North?

About time too, that's great news.

There's also quite a lot of info on the impact of the Solar cycle upon weather patterns and the jet stream. It appears that during quiet Solar cycles the jet stream is affected by the change in ultra violet; although we are approaching Solar max, this cycle has been very quiet, much lower than expected and much lower than recent cycles. http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/2012/05/weakest-solar-cycle-in-100yrs.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15199065 http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627564.800-quiet-sun-puts-europe-on-ice.html?full=true

Came across this and thought some may find it interesting. Previous research concluded that large volcanic eruptions were needed to have an impact upon weather/climate, new research shows that smaller eruptions can have an impact too. Dust from the Nabro volcano, being slightly heavier, settled out, but the monsoon lofted volcanic gas and the lighter liquid droplets into the stratosphere where they were detected by the Canadian Space Agency’s OSIRIS instrument aboard the Swedish satellite Odin. The Nabro volcano caused the largest stratospheric aerosol load ever recorded by OSIRIS in its more than 10 years of flight. http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1112651244/smaller-volcanoes-could-cool-climate-according-to-satellite-research/

Strange though it may seem, GW and I actually agree on one aspect of all this - we both concluded long ago that the hike in temperatures coinciding with the Clean Air act was too much of a coincidence to not be linked. Although it's too soon to get too excited (this is only one model), I think the role of both aerosols and clouds will take a few people by surprise when we come closer to unravelling a fuller picture. This snippet from the report highlights one of the issues of Arctic ice loss that we were discussing the other day. Early results from the new models suggest that the addition of the more complex clouds and aerosols to simulations could help to provide an explanation. NCAR's new atmospheric model produced more warming and sea-ice loss than the previous iteration3, and the culprit seems to be clouds — a result that caught researchers by surprise. “I'm a cloud girl, but I didn't go into this thinking that clouds were going to play the lead role,†says Jennifer Kay, an atmospheric scientist at NCAR. Also of interest is a new study on volcanic eruptions. Previous research concluded that large eruptions were needed in order to influence weather/climate, new research shows that smaller eruptions can have an impact too. http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1112651244/smaller-volcanoes-could-cool-climate-according-to-satellite-research/

Climate forecasting: A break in the clouds Clouds and aerosol particles have bedevilled climate modellers for decades. Now researchers are starting to gain the upper hand. http://www.nature.co...-clouds-1.10593

Turn your attention elsewhere for five minutes and you miss all the action... Just trying to keep your poll running as a poll and not let it descend into a bickering match.

Is there really no topic in this section that cannot run smoothly without descending to bickering? Either get a grip or take a break.

You could only skew the results if you had more than one vote.

I can offer you the official RHS view: Changing outlook The average effect of climate change will be that summers will be hotter and drier. Lawns will turn brown, bedding plants and vegetables will require more water, trees may scorch and lose their leaves prematurely, hosepipe bans may be more widespread. Gardeners themselves will need to retreat into the shade and drink more water. Winters will be increasingly mild: less frost, much less snow, but more rain, and in heavier downpours. Spring will come earlier (currently, it is arriving two to six days sooner per decade) and summer will extend longer into what would have been autumn (currently, two days later per decade). Clear autumn skies should result in brighter autumn colours – if the leaves have not already crisped and fallen due to water stress.These changes will be even more marked in the wider landscape than in gardens. In simplistic terms, a 1°C temperature rise is equivalent to moving 100 miles further south.Assuming a 3°C temperature rise in the UK by the end of the 21st century (which already seems a significant underestimate), Britain will ‘move south’ – actually, the climate will move north – by the equivalent of 300 miles. Effectively, this is 3 miles per year or 12 metres a day.To visualise what seem like small rises in temperature in terms of a threatening cloud (or warming rays,for the optimists) spreading across the land at this speed helps put the phenomenon into perspective. What can we do? Other contributors will answer this question in more detail in the following pages, but in general terms there are many things that we can do in our gardens (see opposite).There are signs that the world is beginning to wake up to the reality of climate change; indeed,the UK Government has committed itself to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 60 percent by 2050 – but it is yet to spell out how it plans to achieve this. Of equal concern is how the emissions of developing economies, particularly of China and India, will affect global greenhouse gas emissions. Gardeners cannot save the world by installing another water butt, but they can be exemplars of the good practices needed to adapt to, mitigate and eventually help to halt global warming. http://www.rhs.org.uk/Gardening/Sustainable-gardening/Gardening-in-a-changing-climate/Current-Situation http://www.rhs.org.uk/Media/PDFs/Climate/Jan08-Bisgrove-intro

Who's asking anyone to wait? The question of action is not ours to make. As I said, governments around the world are making those decisions. Here in the UK we can no longer buy old fashioned light bulbs, they're all now energy efficient ones. We have to re-cycle our rubbish instead of simply throwing it away. Buildings Regs now insist on incredible insulation in our buildings. Energy costs are rocketing in an effort to fund greener energy. The list goes on and on. No one is waiting, no one is being asked to wait. The fact that we're all living in a more eco friendly way than say 10 years ago is being imposed upon us. No matter how we live, the interest in the science can still remain. The questions of what we still need to learn and discover are still valid.

Feedbacks exist irrespective of man's meddling. Clouds.....we need first to discover if the feedback from CO2 is negative or positive, we still don't know. An increase in cloudiness may trap heat or it may reflect the Sun and reduce the energy received. Ice....which has the highest albedo, dirty ice or snow? We may have less ice but this in turn may generate snowier weather further south leading to a greater expanse of the earth snow covered during the winter - will this balance out the loss of albedo from less ice, be greater than the ice albedo due to the brightness of fresh snow compared to old, dirt ice? These and many more questions are still unanswered, to assume we know what's going on and can predict the future when these basics are still unknown is misguided. I'm still of the opinion that increased CO2 has the potential to alter the climate but we're a very long way from knowing how, why or what the impacts will be. Doubt and questioning is my personal stance in all this, I fail to accept the certainty which some state when a simple gardener like me can see there are huge gaps in our knowledge.

Personally speaking, it's not the methodology but the fact that it's yet another paper which claims we know what's going on. How many have there been now? Why should this study be any more accurate than the ones which said we'd all be having hot, dry summers and mild, wet winters? I don't personally care what the outcome of the results are, I'm just wary of accepting of these studies because they change the outcome as often as the wind changes, but still expect to be taken seriously. As for the rest of your post, those means and methods are used by both sides of this debate, no side can claim to be wearing a halo on that score. Only this morning my perfectly calm criticism was taken as an emotional outburst; people read what they want to read into something, in order to justify their own reaction/response - doesn't make them right and it flows from both sides of the divide.

With the utmost respect GW, that comes across as incredibly patronising. People can make their own minds up with the information available to them, it's not up to you, or I, to convince them our reality should be their reality too.

No one is proposing that we do nothing. Supporting the AGW side of this debate or supporting the sceptical side won't make a jot of difference to whether or not CO2 emissions are cut - governments around the world are in charge of that. Feedbacks.....incredibly more complicated than your example. We are not able to say whether feedbacks are negative or positive, which feedback is negative or positive, or indeed whether feedbacks will negate increased CO2, or amplify it.

But we're not talking about whether or not CO2 is a greenhouse gas capable of warming the planet, we're questioning whether it has and if so, by how much. For which, despite the endless studies and some of the best minds in the world working on this question, we do not have the answer. When the fundamental question of positive/negative feedbacks has been unravelled, we may be closer to having an accurate picture; until then, all studies, from all sides should be viewed as one possible answer. Not THE answer.

Why seek to change people's opinions on a subject where you admit there are no absolutes? If there are no definitive answers then by definition, your opinion and the science you base it upon is also open to question. Why not be happy with just expressing your opinion and leaving others to make up their own minds? This isn't a competition. Going on the above post and the many others you have made over the years, much of what you say is based upon your concern for the planet and the creatures which inhabit it. That attitude to life and lifestyle isn't the preserve of those who wholeheartedly support AGW. It is a fallacy that those who don't subscribe to AGW live a life of consumerist ignorance.

And your last sentence sums it up nicely. You attribute criticism to emotion, that is your interpretation and a reflection of your reaction, not mine. I've got a logical mind, I reserve emotional outbursts to personal issues and even then, it takes a bomb going off to shake me out of my laissez faire attitude to life.

Agreed. But when did philosophy and morals become an acceptable substitute for empirical data? At best, all the science combined can tell us with a degree of authority is that CO2 has the potential to warm the climate. Anything more than that, and we're into speculation territory. If those who adhere to the idea that we've already had a dramatic impact upon our climate were a little less adamant in their conclusions, and a little more open to the idea that we still only have vague ideas then perhaps there would be a little less dismissal of their conclusions. At the end of the day this is science we're talking about, not faith or religion. Empirical data trumps all in science.

And that for me sums up one of the fundamental problems with this debate. If you can't convince people with the science, you can dismiss them with philosophy. To have a curious, critical mind is an imperative in science; up to the point that you question something and then your curiosity is apparently a demonstration of your own personal fears. How bizarre.