Let’s see if they publish…

Thank you for your coverage of the catastrophic typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines. (“Thousand flee super typhoon danger” MEN Nov 9th 2013, page 10).  It captured the terror and damage caused by this disaster very thoroughly.
Typhoons have of course, always happened. What’s new here is the sheer scale – the wind speeds and the width of the storm.
It’s comparable to the bush fires near Sydney last month. Bush fires happen, but never so early in the year, and never with such intensity.
No individual event can be ascribed to our carbon emissions, but these sorts of events are exactly in line with what climate scientists have been expecting.  It’s like we are loading the dice and then getting surprised when we throw double-sixes, and even thirteens.
The direct effects on Manchester of climate change might sound pleasant – warmer drier summers and warmer wetter winters. I’d urge readers to think also of the indirect consequences – of food prices rocketing, of disruption to transport and communications, and the trauma of seeing members of extended families suffering from climate disasters and the wars that will follow in their wake.  What can be done?  We can all cut our emissions by flying less, eating less meat and insulating our houses.
Meanwhile, the MEN can improve its coverage of these sorts of disasters by devoting one or two of the 15 paragraphs to the underlying context of the West’s carbon emissions.  And it would be great to see the MEN really covering the slowness with which Manchester is cutting its emissions and creating the “low carbon culture” mentioned in the Manchester Climate Change Action Plan (2009).  Perhaps the City Council’s new Executive Member for the Environment, Cllr Kate Chappell, could be interviewed?

Marc Hudson
editor of Manchester Climate Monthly

Update from the BBC (thanks to Dave Bishop for forwarding this to me):

Typhoon prompts climate fast
In a highly emotional intervention, the head of the Philippines team at talks in Warsaw will fast until progress is made.
< http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/news/science-environment-24899647