Leading article: A deal on climate change must not be postponed
There needs to be top-level political engagement in Copenhagen
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Independent Minds
So near and yet – apparently – so far. All governments now accept the science of man-made climate change. They agree too on the urgency of stemming the rise of carbon dioxide emissions. There is also broad consensus on the means of doing that. The need for equitable emission cuts, an international system of carbon trading and aid transfers from the rich world to developing nations to help them bear the cost of greening their economies is widely understood.
And yet we are told that the deal at the United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen that would set all this in stone might not actually happen. Some British government officials have suggested that Copenhagen might only produce a "political" agreement, rather than a legally binding replacement for the Kyoto protocol. In other words, warm words rather than action.
That would be a disastrous failure. Copenhagen has long been presented as a crucial moment in the battle against runaway climate change. If it is not seized, it would be severely damaging for the credibility of the UN forum. The danger is that a failure to agree in Copenhagen will result in a deal being repeatedly kicked further down the road, or languishing in a state of permanent stasis like global trade liberalisation negotiations.
The situation is too urgent for such prevarication. Kyoto is due to expire in 2012. The world's governments need to be locked into a replacement long before that date comes. The stakes are also too high. Unless global emissions peak by the end of the next decade, the chances of avoiding catastrophic climate change are virtually extinguished.
So what is holding things up? Developing countries feel that too little money has been pledged in technology transfer payments by the rich world. And they complain of too little evidence of serious intent by industrialised states to take measures to reduce their own emissions.
A particular problem is the fact that a US cap-and-trade bill is still stuck in Congress and looking very unlikely to be law by the end of the year. The failure of the EU to put forward a solid figure for aid transfers to developing nations at its summit last week has also undermined the confidence of some poor states. In short, what is blocking agreement is a lack of faith from developing countries in the willingness of industrialised countries to accept the upfront costs that making a transition to a low-carbon global economy will require.
The only thing likely to restore missing confidence at this late hour is top-level political engagement. Global leaders should commit to attending Copenhagen in person to negotiate a deal. President Lula of Brazil, a nation destined to be one of the most significant economies this century, this week urged such a commitment, saying that he is willing to attend if his counterparts from the US, China and India also do so. This is an overture that needs a response. The US delegation in Copenhagen has indicated that Barack Obama will attend if a deal seems likely. That is not good enough. This conference is simply too important for the leader of the last remaining superpower (and the largest per capita carbon emitter) to be absent.
If world leaders start talking up the likelihood of failure at Copenhagen now, it risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Now is the time for reinforced signals of commitment from all involved, not retreat.
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Comments
Any government, anywhere, stating anything, does not make their statements valid, 100% correct.
Postman Alan Johnson has just dismissed a leading scientific adviser (Prof Nutt) for apparently "campaigning" (actually just speaking as a scientist at a conference) against his government's policy , which is in stark contrast to Nutt's report. So govenment's can cherry pick which piece of expert, scientific research they go along with?
The power behind the fakeumentary, "The Convenient Lie" (now there's an ironic name!), is on his way to becoming a billionaire out of this unproven AGW claim. Yet many of the film's claims have already been proven to be incorrect or misleading - mainly, just plain false.
Most countries have senior scientists disputing the claims, not just the odd "flat-earther", "climate change denier". "Global Warming" became "Climate Change" after the data originally used was shown to be incorrect - there's now been a decade of cooling. A leading climate modeller at the recent Geneva conference said that there might be another decade of cooling to come.
In recent decades we had forecasts of a coming Ice Age, then other "modellers" started producing global warming predictions - and that's all there is... a predicted warming based on what some scientists have called inadequate computer simulations.
The climate nazis have taken over the issue. They scrupulously avoid all data which disproves their fad-of-the-month hypothesis and have hoodwinked gullible political parties, who are too scared and too stupid to argue.
Emeritus Professor Philip Stott, Biogeographer thinks it is the Atlantic Multi Decadal Oscillation.
400 and rising Scientists, approx 25% Climate or Climate related are quoted on a US Senate Minority Report disagreeing in whole or part with AGW. http://epw.senate.gov/public/indec.c
http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010
http://www.tech-know.eu/uploads/Letter_
www.climatedepot.com has a copy of a Letter by 60 German Scientists to Chancellor Angela Merkel disagreeing with the use of the Models to set Policy for Germany. Anyone seen a Response?
There are many others but I do not have time to look them all up. Hope that this helps as a starting point.
It is possible that all these people are wrong but it does, at least, suggest that the consensus is not as solid as some people like Al Gore and this Editorial suggest.
We will find out over the next 5 years or so who is correct. If temps restart the rate of climb we had in the 2nd half of last Century, then CO2 is likely to be a signifcant driver. If they are flat or decline slightly then the Models have serious errors re Oceanic Currents etc.
Unfortunately, there is no such thing as human rights, and especially not as you define them. For 99.9% of humanity's existence people have frozen to death and starved to death. The only reason there has not been quite so much of that happening over the 30 years or so has the increasing use of fossil fuels for heating and food production. One commonly accepted definition of industrial agriculture is 'the convertion of oil into food' (more correctly the conversion of the chemical energy of oil into the chemical energy of food; the use of tractors, combined harvesters, application of fertilisers -some derived from natural gas, grain driers, transport systems, food processing factorries, factory farming of animals etc. all supported by a plethora of chemicals derived from oil).
Well the bad news for most of humanity is that the so-called 'Green Revolution was actually a
Black Revolution' and oil supply has now peaked and is about to go into decline. The industrial agricultural system is therefore also about to go into decline, at a time when the human population is in gross overshoot -arguably to the extent of around 5.5 billion.
Expect to see the daily death rate from starvation in poor countires to rise from 30,000 a day to a million a day over coming years. And when natural gas supplies begin to severely deplete, expect millions to freeze to death in northern latitudes.
Welcome to the real world.
Of course , it's much easier psychologically to believe the world is awash with oil and we just need to find it, than accept reality (that teh peak in discovery was in 1964). Buit even if it were true that ther is a lot of undiscovered oil (which it is not), burning that oil would simply exacerbate the global warming problem and the general worldwide pollution problem.
Humanity is caught in a 'progress trap', from which there is no escape via any orthodox thinking. However, since only about 0.1% of the populace seems willing or capable of thinking outside the box, humanity is almost certainly doomed.
None of the so-called 'solutions' you cite stand up to scientific scrutiny. But let's not allow facts to get in the way of dogma. Changing your lifestyle would obviously be unthinkable, even though that lifestyle is a mere blip in history, a stranbge aberratiohn in the grand scheme of things.
As Professor Albert Bartlett put it: Deal with reality or nature will do it for you. Dr Colin Campbell put it this way: deal with reality or reality will deal with you. Derrick Jensen put it this way: the Earth is telling us, deal with it, or I will, and you won't like it because most of you will be gone.
You could either study EROEI or remain blissfully ignorant till it's too late. My guess is you will choose the latter, which is good, becasue the system requires lots of victims, and by remaining uninformed you move towards the top of the queue, allowing somneone with a better fuctioning brain to survive.
Keep going with crude the insults: they are a clear indication of having lost the intellectual argument.
It might be your 'new age' 'religion',
but it's sure not mine -
because it is all built on:
junk exaggerated science (if any),
blatant lies plus
mindless hysteria and
is the ultimate con.
A ruse.
It is no accident that Al Gore's 'CARBON TRADING PLATFORM' is a 'RACKET' out of MAFIA RUN CHICAGO, that demands we all pay 'PROTECTION MONEY' for the very air we breathe; merrily imposing a never-ending tax by TREATY 'law(s)' that the people CANNOT VOTE ON.
GLOBAL WARMING was proven to be dead wrong - so it became CLIMATE CHANGE, which is what 'climate' does.
It is an evil, and a devilishly brilliant, scam.
EOS.
1. Western governments see it as a way to raise revenues.
2. Big Environment see it as a way to make massives amounts of money.
3. Third world governments see it as a way to gain more western handouts.
More and more people are becoming sceptical. They clearly see they are being ripped off by eco-taxes, eco-business, eco this and that. People now realise that being green is the quickest way to becoming poor.
But it 'creates jobs' for the hard-core unemployable - especially the ones with PhD tagged on the end - chasing 'grants'!
You will see that the total USA + EU CO2 emissions between 1970 and 2006 have risen from 1.8 GT to around 2.2 GT. However the global total has risen from 4.0 GT to around 8.2 GT and shows no sign of even flattening. In other words the USA + EU emissions have gone from around one half to around a quarter. So even if we and the US accept drastic cuts it will make absolutely no real difference to the total.
So the developing countries have got to reduce their emissions by an enormous amount if global CO2 levels are to fall to the level demanded by the warmists. And this just will not happen. Luckily it will not matter because the IPCC's relationship between climate and CO2 is predicted by computer models that just do not forecast the facts as they are.
No agreement will certainly not be a trajedy but it will, hopefully, save we in the West lots of taxes and jobs.
It is senseless for the politicians and the media to attempt to keep up the hysterai about climate chnage. Two facts.
One. There is massive scientific evidence which shows that CO2 has little or no impact on the probable temperature of the earth.
Two. It is pure supposition that by reducing "emission levels" to, say X million tons, then the temperature rise in two thousand and something woll be limited to 2 degrees. This is a link which CANNOT be made. (See climatesceptics.org.uk to enter a quite extensive world of scientific and financial sense on climate)
In misplaced fervour to be seen to be "leading the world" (heard that before ?), and a very real fervour in filling their own wallets (Gore et al), these fanatics seem to wish for the entire fabric of western civilisation to be decimated by taxation. So go to Copenhagen, as if we could stop you, and discuss the unbelievable in order to promise the unachievable. Have a really good, expensive, heart warming, self righteous shindig and then come home and shut up.
If you want to get serious about anything, then get serious about safeguarding our energy and food supplies without decimating our standard of living.
Using their inadequate models, there are so many variables, so many assumptions to be made, but with some key factors being unknowable, like sunspot and other activity.
If the medical and drug experts operated like the AGW movement, they would be sued for malpractice.
The Independent has the urgency part right but the science wrong. The phrases "man-made climate change" and "runaway climate change" suggest that falls in temperature can be exacerbated by humans as well as increases. It also suggests that an increase of atmospheric CO2 can cause worse weather independent of temperature change. It's important to understand that this is a complete misrepresentation or misunderstanding of what the IPCC claims. The IPCC claims danger from warming, not from the mere presence of CO2 in the air regardless of temperature change. The IPCC human-made damage theory doesn't work if the temps stay the same or go down.
So, the move from the term human-induced "global warming" to human-induced "climate change" is a slight of hand on the part the media and politicians. The trick means you are responsible for climate change no matter what the temperature actually does. You still have to pay your carbon tax and be restricted to one child etc. no matter what.
The govt backed the wrong horse by going with warming instead of cooling as the danger. They should have stuck to the global cooling scare of the 70's especially as we are headed for another cool period now. The geological record suggests that periods of warmth were generally better and more prosperous for life on earth and that cold is the real enemy. An ice age and the advancement of glaciers is the only realistic scenario that matches the apocalypse of Al Gore's The Inconvenient Truth (and yet even that would take millennia). The melting of floating ice such as the Arctic icecap would not result in a flood.
What is proposed in Copenhagen is the reversal of the industrial revolution. Instead of building nuclear energy or some other viable emission-free energy source our numbers must be culled and the economy contracted. This is a reversal of our ideology from growth to contraction, progress to decline, capitalism to communism, and freedom to fascism. Then the eco-nuts dream of a 600 million world population can be achieved. It is our Final Solution.