Following cessation of CO2 emissions, removal of atmospheric carbon dioxide decreases radiative forcing, but is largely compensated by slower loss of heat to the ocean, so that atmospheric temperatures do not drop significantly for at least 1,000 years.

Abstract for Solomon et el paper is below,  or see the Full Text (PDF)

Climate will not cool when we stop CO2 emissions

Irreversible climate change due to carbon dioxide emissions

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A 2007  paper on  Observed Poleward Expansion of the Hadley Circulation since 1979 explains why southern Australia is so dry and hot now. The  Hadley Cell is delivering its hot dry air 2.5 to 4 degrees further towards the poles  than it was in 1979, which is 275km to 440km further south.

Hadley cell- Wikipedia link.

Basically, global warming increases heat at the equator and makes more moist  air rise higher, faster than before (the water condenses as the air rises and you get lots of rain in the tropics).  The air then moves southward  toward the poles, and cools, so it falls back to ground level, recompressing as it falls – thus heating up – and delivering hot dry air to the ground. Melbourne is about 37 deg south, Sydney is about 33 degrees.

Click here for a reassuring cartoon

Similarly Blair-hating friends have scoffed at me about this latest move of his, to push climate action at the highest level. But I disagree, for various Realpolitik reasons: I think he is scared by the science; he has huge clout in the US; and he could work with China and India.

Firstly, Blair grasped the horror of the climate science a while back and took some serious measures, even in the constraints of government: he got Stern to put out a gilt-plated climate-change business case, and committed to ambitious 60%-reduction- by-2050 targets well ahead of most other governments. I believe he is scared and informed. He’s saying we have less than five years to stop a catastrophe… that is what the science says. But that also sounds like what the hairy eco-nutters have been saying for years, so it is bold for a major politician to concur.

Secondly, the US is the biggest problem; someone HAS to go there and kick their heads in on this issue. Blair, through his earlier sins in Kosovo and Iraq, has got a lot of Special Relationship brownie points to reclaim on Capitol Hill, where they all want to be him. The US public love his accent and rhetoric, and that is much more important; all the presidential candidates understand the urgency of changing policy on climate, they sort of agree with Al Gore, but the man in the street doesn’t, so Obama and McCain never mention it, and the US media never asks … I read that a survey last week showed US citizens put climate change as 26^th on their list of priorities. Those people love Blair’s accent - so if he made an intervention there before the election, it could seriously raise the commitment , the mandate, for action by the next administration, of whichever flavour.

Thirdly, we ‘know’ that China and India are also crucial. As a cluey guy, Blair would probably be repelled by the facile and emasculating ‘stop China first’ arguments that have recently been such effective antidote to western action on climate. I believe China is ready to play, and is already doing much; they read the science too. As an over-polite, smiling Brit, Blair is well placed to understand and accommodate Asian concerns about saving face in any future negotiation. With his huge profile, he would also carry a lot of clout.

So there are three good reasons to think well of such an initiative from Blair. Also, frankly, I think that the climate situation is desperate; clearly, it is time to call “all hands to the pumps” and clearly this guy with the despicable past has, nonetheless, a lot of weight to throw around. So much as I want him on trial for Iraq and don’t want to see him shine up his image with such work, I reluctantly think he might help.

But he is a war criminal snake in the grass, so I I could be wrong. I don’t know if he wants to bypass the UN post-Kyoto framework – such details are vital.

And anyway, it would be a better use of his time than his current fools mission: he is now some sort of Envoy of Peace poncing, ignorantly and impotently, around the Middle East where most people hate him -  a region he stupidly helped set on fire.

As a sinful, serious Christian looking to redeem his serious sins, or as a politician with a dirty legacy that needs improving, I can see why this would be a good move for him. I don’t wish him either of those outcomes, but he might just help on a vital job.

Rockall is the tip of a volcano, a micro-continent far out in the North Atlantic, a rock 20 metres high in an ocean that sometimes has waves that big.

In 1997 we lived there for 42 days in a climate protest; watch the slideshow, it’s worth two minutes, and/or read on for more.  Almost nobody understood climate protest then.

The British claimed Rockall in the 1970s, and so claimed any under-sea oil within 200 miles. London started selling oil exploration licences round it in the 1990s. But the UK’s legal claim to the seabed and oil was very weak, because a UN convention said uninhabitable offshore rocks could not claim such rights.

By 1997 the Carbon Logic was clear: fossil fuels were cooking the climate, and burning even half of the oil we had ALREADY discovered would cause global chaos. Therefore it was clearly stupid to ‘discover’ more oil if we could never burn it. (read more on Carbon Logic).

Greenpeace challenged the deep-sea oil developments round Rockall by living on the rock that summer, to establish a stronger ‘territorial claim’ than the UK government’s;   to stop the exploration and raise awarness of this terrible ‘Carbon Logic’.  From the Greenpeace ship, volunteers for six weeks jumped in front of seismic survey ships, pushing them offcourse for hours each time and stopping their data-gathering for weeks. Oil companies bought a ship to follow us, the government put special forces commandos on it.

The ‘Global State of Waveland’ was started with a flag-raising ceremony on Rockall, it was an online ‘virtual nation’ in the early days of the internet; 15,000 people received citizenship certificates worldwide, hundreds of passports were issued. Waveland lived on for some years external to Greenpeace, but the hosting company went under. In much diminished form, it was revived and you can still apply for citizenship at waveland.org

We installed a solar powered lighthouse the day we left Rockall, and on the way home we stumbled across an oil rig north of Scotland. The Stena Dee was a few miles from her next job – connecting the final plumbing for the first deep-water oil well in the Atlantic. People jumped into the water in front of her, and boarded her when she stopped. We hoisted up the pod and she could not move for the next week. Our captain was charged with piracy, a very serious crime with a possible life sentence. Oil rigs are not cheap – BP seized Greenpeace UK’s bank accounts in a demand for 1.4 million pounds, a foolish move that brought the story to the font pages. They soon backed down.

No New Oil was our slogan, and we called for 20% cuts of CO2, (compared to 1990 levels) by 2005. Ahh, if only people had listened – but back then most didn’t believe in climate change, didn’t see an urgency, and didn’t believe our carbon addiction was to blame.

A decade later, the fools are still wasting time and money looking for oil out there in the deep, dark, wild ocean.

See the slideshow, it’s worth two minutes