Less Ice - a letter to the Bracknell Standard

I note your correspondent in the Bracknell Standard of 13 November claims that data published by the University of Illinois shows that global warming is contrived.

I have looked at the website he gave and have not found what he claims. For example the website has a heading that your correspondent seems to have missed: "Recent dramatic loss of multi year sea ice."

The figures from 2007 and 2008 show why world scientists and the UN are so concerned. Then the Arctic ice cap was 36% and 33% less in area than the average figure for the years 1979 to 2006. (It is this earlier period covered by much of the Illinois website.)

May I point out that many miilions of temperature readings have been taken to show that there has been a worrying rise in atmospheric temperature all over the world in the last 100 years. The scientists are only stating what we all know.

In Antarctica the Larsen B ice shelf had a larger area than Somerset. During autumn 2002, it all totally melted. This has exposed all the glaciers behind it to the warmer sea. If all the Pine Island/Thwaites glaciers now melt, together with the ice they drain from the interior, then the global sea level will rise approximately 1.5 metres. Do readers care if this floods some Pacific Islands? or parts of Bangladesh? or Venice? or some of London?

The loss of ice, glaciers, snow etc also means there is less whiteness to reflect the sun. The exposed earth absorbs the sun's heat. Thus contributes to global warming. The danger is that the permafrosts of Alaska, Canada and Siberia will melt and thus release huge amounts of carbon dioxide and methane that has been hidden for millions of years.

If this awful event happens, the earth's temperature will rise so high that human life would become impossible except in the newly exposed lands near the two poles. Our great grandchildren will be lucky, or perhaps unlucky, if they are some of the few survivors.

The politicians should ensure by world agreement that in future we burn much less fossil fuel and use renewable sources of energy instead.

David Young
The Green Party General Election candidate for Bracknell.

An Idea For Housing

Every few weeks there seems to be an item in the Bracknell Standard where residents or politicians are opposing new housing locally. Nevertheless Cllr Bettison spoke last week of the housing crisis. There will soon be 5 million people in this country on local authority or housing association lists. They need homes. The requirement for more dwellings is caused by an increasing population as we live longer and the sad fact that more relationships are breaking down. The recession will also add to homelessness.

Additional housing could be built on rural land, which will probably be needed for food production as the world population still increases by one and a half million every week, or near existing properties, which can threaten local infrastructure. I propose a third way.

The Halifax has stated it knows of 290,000 private properties that have been empty for at least 6 months out of the last 12. Surely a partial solution to the housing shortage is for local authorities to purchase (under existing powers) private properties that have been empty for a long time and improve them with increased insulation and energy efficiency. That is good for the planet.

Local building firms would take on extra staff who would otherwise be unemployed. The enhanced homes could then be rented, or sold at a profit, so all residents would pay less Council Tax. We would all win; nobody would lose.

David Young
The Green Party General Election candidate for Bracknell.

Tues 9pm BBC2 Horizon

Dear bcc


This is the second and final part of a programme about the thin line between normality and mental illness. It is educational if you’ve no experience of this.



I’ve not watched reality TV programmes since the Generation Game, a very long time ago! This one has five sane people together with five people with problems. The panel of three experts in psychiatric medicine try and decide who has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), Depression, Bipolar Disorder, Anorexia, Schizophrenia, or is one of the five without a difficulty.



In part one, the panel identified the OCD person, which wasn’t difficult. They also had to pick one person who they were convinced had no psychiatric problems at all. They picked Yasmin who then said they were wrong as she had an illness.



Thus there are nine people left in the final part on Tuesday, five of whom are considered to be without a personality disorder. As I said it is all very educational and I felt more informed from watching the first programme.

North Sea Ice and Climate Change

Many scientists believe climate change has made it already too late to retain human kind as we know it on the planet. Let's hope they are wrong for the sake of our grandchildren.

From www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article5014744.ece
"The Arctic icecap is now shrinking at record rates in the winter as well as summer, adding to evidence of disastrous melting near the North Pole, according to research by British scientists. They have found that the widely reported summer shrinkage, which this year resulted in the opening of the Northwest Passage, is continuing in the winter months with the thickness of sea ice decreasing by a record 19% last winter."

Thankfully most scientists, however, believe that we do have a few months left to get world leaders to take climate change seriously. Hopefully by 2012 we can start to reduce carbon emissions. (The estimate is that from 2012 onwards, developed nations must reduce by 9% a year, providing the undeveloped world keeps to 2011 levels.)

I refer to the Stern Review (2006), Al Gore’s DVD An Inconvenient Truth (2006), the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Scientific Assessment Report (2007) and Gabrielle Walker & Sir David King’s book The Hot Topic (2008). The recent research by Dr Kevin Anderson at the UK government-funded Tyndall Centre shows, however, that global warming is happening even faster than previously thought by the four references above.

Cut anti social behaviour

My neighbour’s car was vandalised on Saturday night. I’m fed up with the all the criminal damage that we have to put up with. Most properties in our bit of the road have suffered. I blame the Council. Their liberal policy in allowing drinking at clubs and pubs well into the early hours means that police have to be on standby in case of civil disorder. Now the police have many calls on their limited resources and cannot therefore patrol our streets at nights to discourage hooligan behaviour.


I call for a review of Council policies that currently allow for extended licensing after midnight. A big reduction will release police to do their proper job. Still on anti social behaviour, I think there is a need for Council Litter Wardens empowered to give on the spot fines. And when our Dog Warden fines people who are too idle to clear up after their dogs, well there should be publicity.


David Young

The Green Party General Election candidate for Bracknell.

Wind turbines are beautiful

I note your correspondent in the Bracknell Standard of 23 October denies accelerating global warming by claiming that data published by the University of Illinois shows an increase in ice in the northern hemisphere. Please can he give us the exact scientific reference. I cannot find it and I need to check the claim.



In contrast the Stern Review (2006), Al Gore’s DVD An Inconvenient Truth (2006), the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Scientific Assessment Report (2007) and Gabrielle Walker & Sir David King’s book The Hot Topic (2008) all show that the ice is decreasing at an alarming rate as one of the many effects of climate change. The very recent research by Dr Kevin Anderson at the UK government-funded Tyndall Centre, however, shows that global warming is happening even faster than previously thought by my four references above. He says the politicians of the world have only a few months left to act or else it will be too late to prevent runaway climate change rubbing out most, or all, human life.



For the last 20 years the global scientific community has been unanimous in its pessimism. I’m sorry but I cannot help being very worried, not for myself but for my grandchildren. They are entitled to a full life, not one ruined by the lethargy of our generation over the last 10 years, continuing into the next decade. This is the most important crisis that the human race has ever faced. Yet the politicians do very little, being mainly concerned to win the next election for themselves.



To avoid runaway global warming, we need to burn much less fossil fuel and use renewable sources of energy instead. For the good that they do our planet, I think wind turbines are beautiful. After all humankind has been using nature’s windstrength for thousands of years.



David Young

The Green Party General Election candidate for Bracknell.