Blog readers may remember Prince Charles’ previous climate rantings during his ‘eco-friendly’ trip to the West Indies involving a £280,000 per week Yacht, when he spoke about the “sheer madness” of climate scepticism.
Now Climate Charlie is back with a new pronouncement:
The Prince of Wales has warned that the world faces a series of natural disasters within 18 months unless urgent action is taken to save the rainforests.
In one of his most out-spoken interventions in the climate change debate, he said a £15 billion annual programme was required to halt deforestation or the world would have to live with the dire consequences.
“We will end up seeing more drought and starvation on a grand scale. Weather patterns will become even more terrifying and there will be less and less rainfall,” he said.
“We are asking for something pretty dreadful unless we really understand the issues now and [the] urgency of them.” The Prince said the rainforests, which provide the “air conditioning system for the entire planet”, releasing water vapour and absorbing carbon, were being lost to poor farmers desperate to make a living.
Nothing much to do? Then read the rest of the recent Telegraph article: Prince Charles: Eighteen months to stop climate change disaster
Despite recent and continuing non-warming, it appears that the climate change disaster is moving ever closer. Blair gave us the need for a climate deal in 2 years or adaptation only by 2020, Gore 5 years to an ice-free Arctic, and now we have just 18 months. Rest assured, I will be verifying these predictions on their due dates.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
The fact that the predictions won’t come true is proof of the volatile nature of climate change and the reason why we need to invest more into controlling it. In the meantime, can you find some honest and simpler work to keep your future king busy?
to global fight warming post above
Please delete this idiot’s post and block him from posting again
His link goes to a virus scanning page which attempts to download files to your PC in a malicious, if harmless, attempt to prove he’s a jerk…
worked well.
Thank goodness, after all these years of green ranting and raving, we can relax 18 months from now.
No, not actually. Someone else will say the margin of error on that 18 months is plus/minus a century. There’s too much money to be made on global warming to make the 18-month claim “stick” with the press and politicians.
Is it any wonder why the Queen hangs on to the throne? She is 82 years old.
Charle has lived all his life in the Stratosphere.
I bet he will never rule more than 18 months.
I gather he is even giving Camilla the $hits these days.
Chuckles should take this as an opportunity to liven up his life a bit and move a polar bear or two into Clarence House. It’ll help him stay focused on survival, you know, “I jolly well had a hard day at office today” kind of thing.
And, to the amazement of all and sundry, we could finally believe him.
If only for 18 months!…..
As the Drainer said to the Health Inspector, “If everyone was like me, we wouldn’t need vent pipes”.
This is the nano-man who predicted the world would turn into grey goo; he is also wrong about the deforestation trend:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6143514.stm
Someone should staple a copy of Lomborg’s Skeptical Environmentalist to his forehead. Then there is Rowan Sage’s work on the advent of agriculture which was dependent on CO2 levels rising sufficiently; from agriculture came civilisation, royalty and charlie; was it worthwhile?
It is a bit sad that an elderly lady has to run the family business forever – because her only son is a proven nitwit. The Queen should have a quiet chat to Anne, perhaps she would take the job after all.
Years ago the Yanks used to refer to Charles as Wingnut – because of his ears. It was more accurate than they ever realised.
Off topic
The new issue of USNews&World report features a hysterical global warming story, complete with the full glossy cover of a glacier, presumable soon to melt away into nothingness.
The title is endangered destinations, and one of the supposed victims of eminent demise is the Great Barrier Reef. They say it’s going to bleach away by 2050.
They have a handy comment section so I went ahead with debunking their warning about Kilimanjaro’s icy peak, and Venice Italy slipping under the waves of a rising sea. I was about to attack their Barrier Reef scare mongering when I discovered I was blocked out from posting anymore comments.
Ehhh. Leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.
Could one of you pop over and give their Great Barrier bleaching stuff a debunking?
Here’s the link: http://www.usnews.com/articles/science/environment/2008/05/15/endangered-destinations.html
Prince Charlie says 18 months. The Al Gore Doomsday Clock at http://www.rushlimbaugh.com has 7 years, 8 months, 6 days, 16 hours, 28 minutes and 37 seconds.
Perhaps the prince and Gore should synchronize their clocks.
“Rest assured, I will be verifying these predictions on their due date.”
Good idea. So many doomsday predictions have been made by prominent people, and I think we should complile a comprehensive list and check them off as the doomsdays pass us by without event. These people have to be exposed as the fear-mongering charlatans they are. I’m sure we can find plenty of doomsday predictions made already back in the 90s, and 2000s.
*Looks up IPCC report for any references to Prince Charles* Nope, nothing.
“we will end up seeing more drought and starvation on a grand scale. Weather patterns will become even more terrifying and there will be less and less rainfall” Prince Charles reported May 18, 2008.
“we are already committed to a future of huge changes and misery, it’s up to us to use our nous to manage it pro-actively and intelligently. As Luke pointed out, the trend is up, it’s been measured, not modeled, and it’s going to keep going up. That means huge changes in eco-systems, and those who depend on them. That would be us. Doing nothing is not an option” SJT at June 2, 2007 12:06 PM
Great minds think alike.
But the last word must be with HRH:
“you learn as you go along. I am going to be 60 this year. I would be a blinding idiot if I had not learnt a bit by now”.
touche. chrisgo!
that’s gotta hurt.
By my admittedly back-of-an-envelope calculation, that means we have until midnight Wednesday 18th November 2009 to save the planet.
Prince Charles mentioned an 18-month deadline earlier this year in a speech; this was about deforestation, though:
“Having been briefed by rainforest experts earlier last year, who told me that we only had some eighteen months left to find a solution to deforestation, I decided I must try and do what I could…”
Full speech here at: http://tinyurl.com/4qaf2v
(actual link is very long.)
When it comes to deforestation there are many uncertainties, Al Gore’s World Resources Institute explains:
“Uncertainties increase further for national-level figures, where estimates are uncertain on the order of ±150 percent for large fluxes, and ±180 MtCO2 per year for estimates near zero.”
A comparison of the data presented here http://pdf.wri.org/navigating_numbers_chapter17.pdf
with the official data submitted by governments to the UNFCCC helps illustrate the uncertainties. In some cases, the two sources are close in their estimate (for example, Mexico and some small countries). However, for large emitters and absorbers, the estimates are significantly different, most notably in Indonesia, Brazil, and the United States. In some cases, such as China, India, and Argentina, the data submitted by governments show a negative source (that is, a net sink) of CO2, whereas other sources report a positive emissions source.
Table 17.4 shows the UNFCCC figure for Indonesia as less than 50 MT C and Houghton estimate over 700 MT C
The Houghton figure rather than the Official UNFCCC figure has been used in the claims on deforestation. By using the official figures we can save more than 10% of the global emissions.
Note the contribution Australia can make in changing our land use practices.
“The Prince of Wales has warned that the world faces a series of natural disasters within 18 months …”
Gee, you mean stuff like tornadoes and hurricanes and earthquakes? Because that stuff is happening right now. Of course, it also happened 100 years ago. And 1000 years ago. And 10000 years ago.
Well if it will be too late after 18 months, we can all relax a year and a half from now.