London news: Climate change activists threaten to close Heathrow

Activists behind an annual climate change camp today threatened to close down Heathrow in an early sign of direct action aimed at stopping a controversial third runway being built.

Leaders of the annual event will meet later this month to discuss future demonstration, including some which they warned would be aimed at shutting the airport down completely.

The development came as a group calling itself the Climate Suffragettes smashed glass doors at the London offices of the Department for Transport (DfT)in protest at the Government's go-ahead for Heathrow's expansion.

More from alarmist Barry Brook

I know I’ve been pushing the energy supply bandwagon a lot recently, with relative little attention to climate science issues (and even less to the ‘pseudo-sceptics’!). I guess that in some ways reflects the ebb and flow of my perceived priorities, what I happen to be reading, and what I consider particularly urgent or crucial to communicate at the time. Anyway, as a heads up, I’ve got some interesting things (at least I think!) to say about climate sensitivity (’it’s nailed’), warming in the pipeline (lots), changes in species distributions (new modelling — a selfish promotion of my own research) and geoengineering (ranking options), among other things, which I plan to cover here on the blog in the coming weeks.

James Hansens 1988 global warming predictions vs. reality | Les Jones

A few months ago Hansen beclowned himself again when the NASA department he’s in charge of, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), claimed increased global temperatures in October despite record-shattering low temperatures. The change was caused by a seeming 10 degree year over year increase in the Russian October temperatures. In reality, the dramatic increase was a mistake. Someone had repeated Russia’s September data in October.

One day I expect historians of science will use Hansen as an example of what happens when scientists becomes politicized.