Sustainable Security: Global Ideas for a Greater Britain

For the Rethinking Security group the priorities to be addressed follow on from earlier studies, not least by Oxford Research Group’s seminal 2006 paper, , with its emphasis on inequality and progressive marginalisation, climate disruption and militarism, the latter so often leading to the early recourse to military intervention.

Instead of the current security paradigm, what should instead be proposed is a progressive change to far greater concentration in addressing these underlying drivers of conflict. However, this leads on to the key question: is it actually possible to address such a radical change in policy within the confines of a short and intense period such as a general election campaign or change of leadership?

https://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk/sustainable-security-global-ideas-for-a-greater-britain

Jet stream changes take rap for Britain's icy weather Save

Britain's weather is excelling itself.

It produced an Easter Sunday that was the coldest on record in the UK.

Temperatures stuck below zero in many regions, freezing conditions continued to disrupt transport and experts warned of increasing threats to animals and birds already struggling to survive loss of habitat and climate change.

The start of British Summer Time was marked in Braemar, Scotland, by temperatures that fell to minus 11C. For good measure, an unappetising April for the UK looks likely to follow.

The persistence of the northern spring's grim weather is striking, for it comes after a series of other extreme meteorological events in recent years. Last winter, a severe drought triggered stern warnings by the UK's Environment Agency that water rationing and hosepipe bans would soon have to be introduced - until several months of torrential rain produced widespread flooding.

Britain's weather is now fluctuating on a grand scale.

"There is no doubt that the recent weather has been highly changeable - on both sides of the Atlantic," said meteorologist Nicholas Klingaman, of Reading University.

The problem lies with the jet stream, a narrow band of strong winds that sweep around the planet between the tropics and the Arctic.

"Its behaviour has changed dramatically in the past few years and has produced these lengthy bouts of extreme weather.

"The real question, of course, is an obvious one: why has the jet stream changed its behaviour?"

The jet stream gets its name because it circulates at an altitude of around 10km to 15km, the height at which most jets fly. It runs from west to east, which can give aircraft significant boosts on eastbound flights across the Atlantic and Pacific.

However, this giant river of air has begun to meander and to slow down, trapping regions of high or low pressure over the same part of the globe, including the freezing air that has hung over Britain for the past six weeks. As to the reason for this change, more meteorologists point to global warming. In particular, they pinpoint the warming of the Arctic as the most likely culprit for the destabilising weather patterns.

"The Arctic is warming faster than any other place on Earth," said meteorologist Jennifer Francis, of Rutgers University, New Jersey.

"Arctic temperatures have increased at more than twice the global rate. You can see this in the sea ice in summer there. In just the three decades, it has declined by 40 per cent. More to the point, that warming is now changing weather patterns across the Northern Hemisphere."

How the warming of the Arctic affects our weather has much to do with the origins of the jet stream.

Air in the tropics is warmer than the Arctic and it rises. As a result, the atmosphere there is higher than it is over the Arctic. "A gradient is created and air slides down this atmospheric hill towards the Arctic," said Francis.

"This flow of air, high up in the atmosphere, from the tropics to the Arctic, is the crucial ingredient in the creation of the jet stream.

"The world rotates from west to east, however, and that rotation whips up this northward flow of air that descends over higher latitudes and sends it flying east round the globe as the jet stream.

"Earth rotates from west to east and that is what drives the jet stream in the same direction."

Until recently, this air flew around the planet in a slightly wavy path, between 30 and 60 degrees north.

"The trouble is that the gradient between the atmosphere in the lower latitudes and in the Arctic is being disrupted by global warming," said Francis. "It is becoming less of a stream and is behaving more like a sluggish estuary that is meandering across the upper atmosphere at middle latitudes." More

 

Pakistan and UK Invite Climate scientist Schellnhuber to brief UN Security Council

02/15/2013 - As climate change starts being recognized as a security issue on the highest international levels, Pakistan and the United Kingdom have asked Hans Joachim Schellnhuber of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) to speak at an in-depth discussion event for the UN Security Council members. The meeting aims at addressing “potential threats posed by possible adverse effects of climate change to the maintenance of international peace and security”. It will take place on February 15th at the UN headquarters in New York City. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon plans to attend.

UN HQ

“With unabated greenhouse-gas emissions, humankind would venture into an uncertain future that is much hotter than ever before in its history – so from a scientist’s perspective, climate change is a global risk multiplier,” says Schellnhuber, director of PIK and chair of the Scientific Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU) for the German government. Many millions of people could be affected by severe climate change impacts. They range from sea-level rise that increases the frequency of severe coastal flooding, to changes in atmospheric circulation patterns that could trigger, e.g., monsoon failures.

“Most remarkably, Pakistan and the UK together have called this meeting – illustrating, by action, that climate change is an issue for both developing and industrialized countries,” Schellnhuber says.

Climate change impacts might trigger social tipping dynamics

If the international community allows global mean temperature to rise way beyond the 2-degree limit that it agreed upon, major environmental tipping points could be crossed. “The Earth system shows a nonlinear response to greenhouse-gas emissions, so elements like the Amazon rainforest could react drastically if some warming thresholds are passed. This in turn might result in tipping international relations from a situation in which an initial increase of cooperation in face of a crisis shifts into a fierce competition for scarce natural resources, like food,” argues Schellnhuber. “However, another kind of social tipping dynamics is imaginable as well – with states, and people, becoming aware of the dangers ahead, and starting the great transformation towards sustainability.” One small example for this might be the German Energiewende (a rapid decarbonization of the national energy system).

Schellnhuber is the only scientist invited to the meeting. The other eminent speakers are Tony DeBrum, Minister-in-assistance to the President of the Marshall Islands, Rachel Kyte, Vice President of Sustainable Development at the World Bank, and Gyan Acharya, Under-Secretary General and High Representative of the least developed countries. Some of the issues to be debated are climate change impacts on food security, sustaining cooperative management of freshwater supply in the face of glacial melting and reduced runoff, and possible large-scale displacements of people across borders. More

2012 was UK's second wettest year on record thanks to climate change

The past 12 months were the second wettest on record in the UK, according to data released by the Met Office.

The total rainfall for the UK during 2012 was 1,330.7mm (52.4in), just 6.6mm short of the record set in 2000.

Most areas were affected by the extreme weather, with thousands of homes flooded and farmers struggling to grow crops in the saturated soil.

The latest data comes as analysis says the frequency of extreme rainfall in the UK may be increasing.

BBC environment analyst Roger Harrabin said statistics showed that days of particularly heavy rainfall had become more common since 1960.

The study into extreme rain was based on statistics from the National Climate Information Centre, the UK's official climate record.

The Met Office said this was the wettest year on record for England, the third wettest for Wales, the 17th wettest on record for Scotland and the 40th wettest for Northern Ireland.

The records date back to 1910.

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The Met Office added that four of the top five wettest years had occurred since 2000.

"The trend towards more extreme rainfall events is one we are seeing around the world, in countries such as India and China, and now potentially here in the UK," said Met Office chief scientist Prof Julia Slingo.

"Much more research is needed to understand more about the causes and potential implications."

Most areas in the UK experienced flooding during 2012, affecting thousands of homes and businesses.

In the run-up to Christmas, South-West England was particularly badly affected, with a number of railway lines remaining closed over the entire festive period.

The Environment Agency said almost 8,000 properties in England and Wales were flooded during 2012 and it sent more than 200,000 warnings to households and businesses.

However, it added that flood defences had protected more than 200,000 properties in at-risk areas. More

 

Why I'm occupying a gas-fired power station chimney

Thirty people shut down the UK's newest gas-fired power station and 15 occupied two of its chimneys at West Burton in Nottinghamshire this morning. I am one of them. We have set up two camps, one at the top and one inside the 80-metre-high smoke-stacks. We have also carried up enough supplies to keep us up here for at least a week.

It's pretty scary hanging inside the chimney on a portaledge, but we've been rigorously trained and have some very skilled climbers as part of our group. We've made a cosy camp with tarpaulins, and we plan to share a hot meal this evening at the same time as our friends across on the other chimney. The view up here is beautiful. We can see the River Trent and green fields and woods stretching into the distance – marred only by a single gas and three coal power stations. The chimney makes weird noises which jolted everyone awake several times last night but I'm sure we'll get used to it.

Making our home on top of a power station in October may seem like a strange thing to do, but we've thought long and hard about it, and we are here for very serious reasons. We're aware that as we sit here surveying the horizon, the east coast of the US is being devastated by Hurricane Sandy. These two things are inextricably connected.

We're doing this because the gas plant, which is still being constructed by its operator, EDF, is one of the first in a new dash for gas that has to be stopped. The government and the big energy companies want to build as many as 20 new gas power stations, which would leave the UK dependent on this highly polluting and increasingly expensive fuel for decades to come.

Last week EDF hiked its energy prices by 10.8%, the highest rise of any of the big six energy companies so far this winter. These price rises were triggered by the rising wholesale cost of gas, which the UK is increasingly forced to import as North Sea supplies decline. We already rely on gas for83% of our central heating and almost 50% of electricity. Increasing this dependence will cause household energy bills to rise even further, pushing those who live the most precarious lives deeper into fuel poverty.

By occupying the site and halting construction we hope, for however short a time, to stop this dash for gas and expose the madness of a government that is totally in the thrall of the big energy companies. Intense lobbying by some of the most powerful polluters in the world is eroding even the modest gains made by democratic attempts to shape our energy policy, which culminated in the 2008 Climate Change Act. Over the past five years, direct action campaigns have played a key role in forcing government U-turns around major environmental decisions – think of thePlane Stupid campaign against Heathrow's third runway and the shift away from coal after the occupation at Kingsnorth. Now, the government's climate advisers, the independent Committee on Climate Change, arewarning that a dash for gas could be illegal, causing the UK to miss the already relatively unambitious emissions reduction targets laid out in the Climate Change Act. More