Parties in the UK election with the exception of the Greens and to a lesser extent the SNP have avoided any significant mention of climate change. Now we are actually voting it is a pity that NOOA didn’t release its latest CO2 count earlier. The press release issued late on Wednesday showed that for the first time in recorded time we have had a full month with greenhouse gas concentrations above the benchmark 400PPM. This is not good news.
By itself 400PPM is not a particularly important threshold or milestone there was a degree of inevitability about it. However Dr Ed Hawkins a climate scientist at Reading University told the Guardian newspaper “This event is a milestone on a road to unprecedented climate change for the human race. The last time the Earth had this much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was more than a million years ago, when modern humans hadn’t even evolved yet.”
Politicians from around the world will sit down in Paris (CoP21) later this year to hammer out another carbon reduction programme.
Let us hope they are more successful this time.
My work background is in operational meteorology and in my career I have been involved in forecasting for everything from bananas to jumbo jets.I joined the Met Office 1974 as an observer at Glasgow Airport. After training as a forecaster, I worked as an Operational aviation forecaster at various defence sites and airports. In 1982, I moved to Glasgow Weather Centre as a forecaster and STV broadcaster till 1988. He then took up a post as Senior Forecaster London Weather Centre, then Senior Forecaster ITV where I qualified as a trainer in presentation techniques for the ITV Association. After being diagnosed with MS, he moved into management and became Head of London Weather Centre in 1997 followed by a period of front-line management for Southern England and Europe covering London and Cardiff Weather Centres and the Met Offices on defence stations from Akrotiri in Cyprus to St Mawgan in Cornwall. He took up the post of Met Office Chief Advisor for Scotland & Northern Ireland in March 2008 and moved to Edinburgh. I retired in September 2014. My one claim to fame is once performed a comedy sketch on TV with Manuel (Andrew Sachs) from Fawlty Towers in support of Comic Relief.
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