Climate change very real concern

11 August 2013

Our press officer Soo Chapman’s letter reads:

On page 25 of Bournemouth council’s document Go Green Bournemouth, we read that: “We have taken a positive position on the planned off-shore wind farm development...it could support the creation of new low-carbon employment opportunities in research, construction and maintenance.”

So it is puzzling that Cllr Greene, who has many times been informed of the implications of an increasingly desperate state of climatic breakdown, should sadly be attacking local campaigners who seek a bearable future for the next generation (Echo, July 26). As Dr Price observes in the Advertiser (July 25), wind farms may not be ideal but are the best, cleanest and safest solution, in the short term, to our energy and pollution problems. We really do need a co-ordinated approach to dealing with the carbon sewage imperilling the future of all the little Georges and Georginas daily joining the human family.

A recent report has warned of the severe economic consequences of a methane time-bomb being released with a catastrophic effect on crops, rising sea levels, coastal flooding and extreme weather. “The mean effects of just this one effect approaches the 70 trillion dollar value of the world economy in 2012,” said Professor Whiteman, the lead author of the study published in the journal Nature. The researchers ran the model 10,000 times and came to the average cost of 60 trillion dollars. Professor Wadhams of Cambridge University, part of the study, warned: “We are looking at a big effect … possibly catastrophic … on global climate that has been a consequence of this extremely fast sea-ice retreat we've seen in recent years.”

At a jolly family festival in Meyrick Park on July 25 many were happy to support Navitus as well as the Friends of the Earth bee campaign, where some rather large bees attracted attention to the seriousness of our pollinator problems. It would be good if we could all help each other with these and many other problems that we face in a changing world.