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|  | Re: The Propaganda Continues VI
« Reply #15 on Jan 23, 2010, 10:57pm » | |
Alaskan senator seeks to block EPA's power to regulate greenhouse gases
Lisa Murkowski pledges to use obscure measure in attempt to strip powers from the Environmental Protection Agency
* Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
* guardian.co.uk, Thursday 21 January 2010 22.39 GMT
![[image]](http://img638.imageshack.us/img638/4412/alaskansenatorlisamurk0.jpg "[image]")
Republican Alaskan senator Lisa Murkowski is seeking to strip the EPA of its powers to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Photograph: Win McNamee/Getty
Barack Obama faced a direct challenge to his government's powers to curb global warming pollution today, just 48 hours after an election upset put the rest of his agenda at risk.
In a speech to Congress, a Republican senator from Alaska announced she would use an obscure and rarely used measure to try to strip the Environmental Protection Agency of its powers to regulate greenhouse gas emissions as a dangerous pollutant.
"We cannot turn a blind eye to the EPA's efforts to impose back-door climate regulations," Lisa Murkowski told the Senate in prepared remarks. Murkowski's motion of disapproval, though unlikely to become law, is widely seen as a barometer for the chances of getting a climate change bill through the Senate this year.
In an ominous sign for supporters of a climate law, she had the support of three Democratic Senators, further underscoring the unease in Obama's own party in enacting legislation to tackle global warming.
Delivering new laws to tackle global warming was not just a key pledge of Obama's, but is being closely watched around the world as global climate change negotiations struggle to recover from the disappointment of the UN summit in Copenhagen. An environment official in the European Union said: "It's clearly a setback."
Murkowski's move, brought under the Congressional Review Act, would remove the Obama administration's "Plan B" for dealing with climate change, resorting to the EPA to curb greenhouse gas emissions if Congress fails to act.
The motion of disapproval, called the "nuclear option" by environmentalists, would also ban the administration from drafting any new regulation that would be substantially the same. That would make it even more difficult for any US government to regulate power plants and other big emitters.
Environmentalists say the proposal is unlikely to pass, but ensuring its defeat could require a new round of partisan warfare that could be damaging for Democrats and Obama's agenda.
In her speech, Murkowski argued that giving the EPA the authority to act on global warming would cost jobs and hurt the economy: "Under the guise of protecting the environment, it's set to unleash a wave of damaging new regulations that will wash over and further submerge our struggling economy."
She said she supported efforts to get a climate change law, but said: "This command-and-control approach is our worst option for reducing the emissions."
Murkowski has tried to cast herself as a moderate Republican who would be prepared to act on climate change. But she has voted against such legislation in the past, and has been criticised this week by environmentalists for her links to the energy industry.
According to the Centre for Responsive Politics, Murkowski, from the oil-rich state of Alaska, has received $244,000 (£151,205) in campaign funds from oil and gas companies since 2005, and consulted two energy industry lobbyists before launching today's proposal.
Even before the upset in Massachusetts, Democrats in the industrial heartland and from oil and coal states were wary - or in some cases flatly opposed - to action on climate change.
Murkowski was joined today by Mary Landrieu, a Democratic Senator from Louisiana who has repeatedly expressed concern for her state's oil refining business; Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas; and Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska. Murkowski also claimed support from governors of her home state of Alaska, Mississippi and West Virginia as well as business organisations. Jim Webb, a Democrat from Virginia, has also expressed support for Murkowski.
But there has also been a strong push back against Murkowski from environmental organisations and other business groups. A coalition of 80 companies from Virgin America to eBay wrote to Obama today urging action on climate change.
The Alaskan's resolution would overturn the EPA's finding last month that greenhouse gas emissions were a public health threat. The so-called endangerment finding compelled the agency under the Clean Air Act to introduce regulations for the pollutant.
Murkowski's strategy hinges on using the Congressional Review Act, a law used for the first time in the early days of the George Bush era to throw out new ergonomic standards for workplaces passed under Bill Clinton. The measure would require only 51 votes for passage and the Senator is confident of signing up all 40 Republicans as well as some Democrats.
The White House, the EPA, and even the Democratic leadership in Congress have all said they would prefer to have climate change legislation from Congress rather than resorting to the agency's regulatory powers. But the prospect of EPA regulation had been seen as an important nudge to get the Senate to act.
The House of Representatives passed a climate change bill last June, but progress in the Senate has stalled. An effort led by Democrat John Kerry to craft a bill that could pull in Republican support has yet to produce a draft proposal.
The move by Murkowski brought a furious response from Democratic leaders and a coalition of environmental, business and religious organisations. Barbara Boxer, the California Democrat said blocking the EPA was a radical move that would expose Americans to public health risks from global warming. The Union of Concerned Scientists said it was an assault on science, and California's governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, wrote a letter asking his fellow Republicans to let the EPA do its work.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/20....reenhouse-gases
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: The Propaganda Continues VI
« Reply #16 on Jan 23, 2010, 11:34pm » | |
Glaciergate was a blunder, but it's the sceptics who dissemble
Inaccurate claims predicting Himalayan meltdown have handed gainsayers a big victory. But nothing material has changed
* Robin McKie
* The Observer, Sunday 24 January 2010
It was a strange moment that linked the fates of some of the world's poorest farmers to the interests of an increasingly powerful set of western lobby groups. Last week, UN climate researchers admitted they had grossly overestimated the chances that the Himalayas' glaciers would soon disappear as a result of global warming.
For millions of Indian and Chinese families who till land washed by rivers that pour from the Himalayas, this was good news. The prospects of major droughts, loss of farmland and food shortages could be postponed (though not indefinitely, please note.)
And then there were the sceptics, that regiment of angry lobbyists who say our planet cannot possibly be affected by mankind's profligate burning of fossil fuel. For years, they have waited for an admission of an error by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN body that has promoted the idea of manmade global warming.
Last week, they got it. On Wednesday, the panel's chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, apologised for including, in the organisation's fourth assessment report of 2007, the claim that Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035. In fact, it will take at least 300 years for global warming to take its toll.
Given that the IPCC's 2007 report had won the panel a Nobel peace prize that year (shared with Al Gore), the error looks egregious, particularly to those who reject the idea that the billions of tonnes of carbon we pump into the atmosphere could possibly have an impact on our climate. Now, every word and line of IPCC's work is being scrutinised by these sceptics in their search for further climate calumnies. If they are lucky, they may even stumble on one or two.
The prospect, not surprisingly, causes many climate change scientists to squirm. Indeed, such is their discomfort that many now argue it is time for a total reorganisation of the IPCC, an organisation that is now more than two decades old and whose operations are beginning to creak suspiciously.
Certainly, Glaciergate, as the incident has inevitably been dubbed, is an embarrassment for climate science and can be traced to a study by the environmental lobby group WWF which, in turn, was based on a single remark about the perilous state of Himalayan glaciers that had been made by Indian scientist Syed Hasnain.
How the claim ended up in a report whose authors are supposed to scrutinise "every statement in every sentence" is a mystery. Worse was the IPCC's reaction to the geologists who first questioned the panel's glacier claim last year. IPCC chairman Pachauri dismissed this work as "voodoo science" and argued it was not peer-reviewed. In fact, it was his own panel's report that had not been properly peer-reviewed. "At that point, the glacier claim ceased to be an appalling cock-up and looked more like a systematic failure on the IPCC's part," says Fred Pearce, the New Scientist journalist who first reported the glacier story. A seasoned climate change writer, he adds: "Deniers will now be on a hunt to find more errors like these and if they get them, Pachauri will be in real trouble."
As a result, many researchers now believe it is time for a change at the IPCC, a point backed by Mike Hulme, professor of climate change at the University of East Anglia. "The panel was set up in 1988, in a previous century," he argues. "There was no internet then, yet emails have transformed climate science. They get hacked and uploaded on to servers for all the world to read. People can follow the trail of an idea or argument in a way that was impossible 10 years ago. Climate science – like science in general – is being democratised and the IPCC needs to reflect that."
Instead of producing huge, voluminous reports every six or seven years, in which the results of tens of thousands of climate studies are each distilled into a few paragraphs, a much lighter touch needs to be taken, argue critics like Hulme. The panel needs to produce briefer reports on particular climate topics every year and be able to respond quickly to new studies and critiques.
Similarly, the intergovernmental nature of the panel needs re-examining. National academic bodies, like Britain's Royal Society, should take over controlling roles at the IPCC instead of governments, it is argued. In this way, a future IPCC would be better able to keep itself free from political pressure.
Not every scientist agrees. We should not be blinded by a single error, on one page of one volume of a mammoth three-volume report, they argue. And don't forget that this mistake was highlighted not by deniers but by scientists themselves. Glaciergate actually shows we can police ourselves, say researchers. And while the glacier claims exaggerate the impact of climate change, other parts of the 2007 IPCC report clearly underplay the risks. "We should also remember the overwhelming evidence still shows global warming is real and manmade," adds Bob Ward, policy director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change. "Arctic ice sheets are shrinking and droughts are spreading while nine of the last 10 years have been the hottest on record. Only rising emissions of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can explain that."
In any case, there is more to this issue than making sure the IPCC is fit for purpose in the 21st century. We should also be concerned about the sharing of the burden of proof when debating global warming. At present, scientists are being asked, often in the most offensive terms by hostile, ideologically motivated groups, some funded by rich industrial lobbyists, to justify every conclusion they make about our overheating world.
And why not? you might ask. Our lives will change dramatically if we quit our dependence on fossil fuel. We will have to fly less, guzzle less petrol in our cars, live in better designed homes and ensure that we stop wasting heat, water and electricity. Hence the pressure on scientists to justify their work.
But this process has to proceed in both directions. Deniers say there is no connection between rising carbon levels and global warming. But how confident are they? If they persuade us to do nothing but are wrong, then the consequences will be terrible. Temperatures could rise by up to 5C. Earth will become hotter than it has been at any time over the past 30 million years. Coastal cities will drown, deserts will spread, crops will wither and billions will be left homeless.
Deniers insist this scenario is unrealistic. But how unrealistic? Can they demonstrate – with the same confidence and transparency employed by scientists working for the IPCC – that the danger of doing nothing is negligible and that greenhouse gases pose no risk to the planet? Could their arguments withstand the same rigorous examination that took place during Glaciergate? The answer to these questions is a straightforward "no". At no time have deniers ever put together a case – that inaction poses no threat to civilisation – that could withstand proper scientific peer review.
This is crucial, adds Ward. "Unless climate sceptics can demonstrate there is a negligible danger, then most sensible people will insist we should take careful, cost-effective measures now to avoid the possibility of disaster in future." That point was valid before Glaciergate – and remains true in its aftermath.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/....aciergate-mckie
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: The Propaganda Continues VI
« Reply #17 on Jan 23, 2010, 11:36pm » | |
Winner of climate change denial's premier award revealed
John Tomlinson, the Michigan Mauler, wins the one and only Christopher Booker prize for falsehoods about global warming
* George Monbiot
* guardian.co.uk, Thursday 21 January 2010 13.13 GMT
![[image]](http://img710.imageshack.us/img710/615/christopherbookerprize0.jpg "[image]")
Christopher Booker prize 2009 offered for producing clap-trap about climate change Photograph: George Monbiot/Guardian
So now ladies and gentlemen, the moment you have all been waiting for. I am about to unveil the winner of one of the 300 most prestigious awards in environmental journalism: the Christopher Booker prize, awarded for falsehoods about climate change.
The winner will receive this stylish trophy, lovingly fashioned by master craftsmen in mid-Wales, which, believe it or not, is made entirely of recycled materials!
Even more exciting is the super soaraway holiday of a lifetime (possibly the final holiday of a lifetime) which the winner will be encouraged to take, and which the Guardian is assisting with a fabulous THREE bars of Kendal mint cake. The intention is to help persuade the lucky recipient to take a one-way solo kayak trip to the north pole, to see for him or herself the full extent of the Arctic ice melt.
The rules of the competition are simple: the award goes to whoever in my opinion — assisted by climate scientists and specialists — managed in the course of 2009 to cram as many misrepresentations, distortions and falsehoods into a single online article, statement, lecture, film or interview about climate change.
The first contestant was the man after which this beautiful trophy was named, the famous strangler of facts, the Telegraph Terror, Christopher Booker. In just one short column in the Sunday Telegraph, he managed to drop six and a half clangers. I thought that would set a high bar for the other contestants. How wrong I was.
From total obscurity a new challenger rode out. In his very first attempt John Tomlinson, a columnist for the Flint Journal in Michigan, almost tripled Booker's score: knocking out a fantastic 18 errors in an article of just 486 words. In doing so he set what might have been a world record hit rate: one misleading statement every 26 words. Not that it was to last for long.
I cast around in vain for someone who could match the Michigan Mauler's extraordinary performance. But even the likes of Melanie Phillips, James Delingpole and George Will couldn't take him on. David Bellamy, the Bearded Bungler, soon weighed in, and for a while his challenge looked promising, as he knocked out eight barmy statements in the first two minutes and 20 seconds of a video interview with the Daily Express. But then the fight just seemed to go out of him, and he tailed off with some quite sensible statements about other forms of pollution.
By now it seemed to me that only one contender could take on the Mauler: the Discount Viscount, Lord Monckton. In fact there's a fair chance that Viscount Monckhausen could have come out in front with one of his online lectures, which are riddled with crazy assertions and shocking misrepresentations, but the thought of spending a day inside his mind made me feel physically sick.
Then Tomlinson, the Michigan Mauler, made what turned out to be a definitive move. In response to my exposure of his howlers, he wrote another column in which, amazingly, he more than doubled his previous score, with a stunning 38 howlers. He even beat his own putative world record for error-density, with a score of one per 21 words.
No one now had a hope of beating him. Or, to be more accurate, I wasn't prepared to go through all that again. Recording and rebutting 38 falsehoods was so time-consuming and soul-destroying that I didn't want to find another challenger. I'd had no idea what I was letting myself in for.
How did he manage it? By cobbling together just about every well-trodden climate change myth he could find on the web and compressing them into the smallest possible space; rather like those people who try to write a book on a postage stamp.
So the winner, ladies and gentlemen, of the 2009 Christopher Booker prize is ……….
John Tomlinson!!!!
This week I will be sending him the stunning trophy and the three bars of Kendal mint cake which will hopefully encourage him to embark on the holiday of his lifetime. With the help of this amazing prize, a fabulous career of even greater obscurity awaits him.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is that. There won't be a 2010 Christopher Booker prize, because I can't face the thought of wading through all that rubbish again.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/ge....ange-scepticism
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
|
Big Bunny
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| | Re: The Propaganda Continues VI
« Reply #18 on Jan 24, 2010, 12:11am » | |
UN drops deadline for countries to state climate change targets
Copenhagen deal falters as just 20 countries of 192 sign up to declare their global warming strategies
* John Vidal, environment editor
* guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 20 January 2010 18.14 GMT
![[image]](http://img251.imageshack.us/img251/1605/executivesecretaryofth0.jpg "[image]")
Yvo de Boer lets his frustration show on the final day of the December 2009 summit. Photograph: Olivier Morin/AFP/Getty Images
The UN has dropped the 31 January deadline by which time all countries were expected to officially state their emission reduction targets or list the actions they planned to take to counter climate change.
Yvo de Boer, UN climate change chief, today changed the original date set at last month's fractious Copenhagen climate summit, saying that it was now a "soft" deadline, which countries could sign up to when they chose. "I do not expect everyone to meet the deadline. Countries are not being asked if they want to adhere… but to indicate if they want to be associated [with the Copenhagen accord].
"I see the accord as a living document that tracks actions that countries want to take," he told journalists in Bonn.
"It's a soft deadline. Countries are not being asked to sign the accord to take on legally binding targets, only to indicate their intention," he said.
The deadline was intended to be the first test of the "Copenhagen accord", the weak, three-page document that emerged at the end of the summit, and which fell far short of original expectations. It seeks to bind all countries to a goal of limiting warming to no more than 2C above pre-industrial times and proposes that $100bn a year be provided for poor countries to reduce emissions and adapt to climate change after 2020.
But with just 10 days to go, only 20 countries out of 192 have signed up, with many clearly unready or unwilling to put their name to the document. Countries which have signed so far include India, Russia, Mexico, Australia, France and Norway.
De Boer also endorsed the controversial idea of short-circuiting the traditional UN negotiating process of reaching agreement between all countries by consensus. Instead, he argued that a smaller group of countries could negotiate a climate agreement on behalf of the many.
"You cannot have 192 countries involved in discussing all the details. You cannot have all countries all of the time in one room. You do have to safeguard transparency by allowing countries to decide if they want to be represented by others, and that if a debate is advanced then the conclusion is brought back to the larger community", he said.
However, this more exclusive method of reaching agreement was criticised by some in Copenhagen after the host government, Denmark, convened a meeting of 26 world leaders in the last two days of the conference to try to reach agreement on behalf of everyone.
Critics argued that this was not only illegal, but undermined negotiations already taking place among the 192 countries and threatened the UN's multilateral and democratic process.
"The selected leaders were given a draft document that mainly represented the developed countries' positions, thereby marginalising the developing countries' views tabled at the two-year negotiations. The attempt by the Danish presidency to override the legitimate multilateral process was the reason why Copenhagen will be considered a disaster," said Martin Khor, director of the South Centre, an intergovernmental think tank for developing countries based in Geneva.
The US and Britain have argued since the conference that climate negotiations are best served by meetings of the world's largest polluters, such as China, the US, India, Brazil and South Africa. These countries, which emit more than 80% of global emissions, signed up to a deal in the final hours of the summit.
Brazil, India, China and South Africa, known as the "BASIC" group, meet next week in Delhi to agree a common position ahead of further UN climate talks.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/20....-climate-change
|
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
|
Big Bunny
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| | Re: The Propaganda Continues VI
« Reply #19 on Jan 24, 2010, 12:46am » | |
Biodiversity nears 'point of no return'
VIEWPOINT
Hilary Benn
The decline in the world's biodiversity is approaching a point of no return, warns Hilary Benn. In this week's Green Room, the UK's environment secretary urges the international community to seize the chance to act before it is too late.
![[image]](http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/4274/47119879slashburn300pa1.jpg "[image]")
“ Much greater concerted effort is needed to stop the plunder of our ecosystems ”
In 2002, the world's governments made a commitment to significantly reduce the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010.
Although it is hard to measure how much biodiversity we have, we do know these targets have not been met.
Our ecological footprint - what we take out of the planet - is now 1.3 times the biological capacity of the Earth.
In the words of Professor Bob Watson, Defra's chief scientific adviser and former chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), we are in danger of approaching "a point of no return".
So the action we take in the next couple of decades will determine whether the stable environment on which human civilisation has depended since the last Ice Age 10,000 years ago will continue.
To do this, we need to widen the nature of the debate about biodiversity. Flora and fauna matter for their own sake; they lift our spirits and nurture our souls.
But our ecosystems also sustain us and our economies - purifying our drinking water, producing our food and regulating our climate.
Climate change and biodiversity are inextricably linked. We ignore natural capital at our peril.
Interdependence
The UK and Brazil are hosting a workshop in preparation for the next UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
Representatives from more than 60 countries - from the Maldives to China - will attend the three-day event to discuss how we can ensure that the post-2010 targets stand a better chance of being met than those set in 2002.
The majority of those attending are from developing countries, including those with the rarest and greatest biodiversity. They need to be listened to.
It is easy to have principles when you can afford then - economics and ecology are interdependent.
So when it comes to biodiversity, we desperately need to start restoring links between science and policy, between taking action and evaluating it and between economies and ecosystems.
The big challenge will be for the real benefits of biodiversity and the hard costs of its loss to be included in our economic systems and markets.
Perverse subsidies and the lack of value attached to the services provided by ecosystems have been factors contributing to their loss. What we cannot cost, we don't value - until it has gone.
Investing in the future
Much greater concerted effort is needed to stop the plunder of our ecosystems.
Overfishing has reduced blue fin tuna numbers to 18% of what they were in the mid-1970s.
The burning of Indonesia's peat lands and forests for palm oil plantations generates 1.8bn tonnes of greenhouse gases a year, and demand is predicted to double by 2020 compared to 2000.
More than seven million hectares are lost worldwide to deforestation every single year.
The restoration of our ecosystems must be seen as a sensible and cost-effective investment in this planet's economic survival and growth.
I am optimistic. Talking about the danger of climate change has brought with it opportunities to tackle the biodiversity crisis.
While the 2010 targets have not been met, more than 160 countries now have national biodiversity action plans.
Mechanisms now exist for research, monitoring and scientific assessment of biodiversity, although we now need an Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services to oversee progress in the same way the IPCC does for climate change.
One example of progress is the Brazilian Government's new target, which requires illegal deforestation to be cut by 80% by 2020.
Last year, deforestation rates in Brazil dropped by 45% against those of 2008, the largest fall since records began.
Other examples, closer to home, are the UK's Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs) - 89% are in a good or recovering condition.
Our ninth National Park, in the South Downs, was created last year and agri-environmental schemes are producing significant improvements in biodiversity.
2010 is the International Year of Biodiversity and later this year - in Nagoya, Japan - we will have the chance to halt the decline of our planet's biodiversity.
It is up to us to seize it.
Hilary Benn is the UK Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/8461727.stm
Published: 2010/01/17 23:02:24 GMT
|
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
|
Big Bunny
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| | Re: The Propaganda Continues VI
« Reply #20 on Jan 24, 2010, 1:30am » | |
Emissions targets set for delay
By Roger Harrabin
Environment analyst, BBC News
The future of the EU's Low Carbon Revolution hangs in the balance as it becomes likely its emissions targets will be delayed again.
The ongoing uncertainty is rooted in the EU's offer to the Copenhagen climate summit of a 30% emissions cut.
But this was dependent on "comparable effort" from other big polluters.
Observers say there is a world of difference between the upper and lower targets - but Europe still hasn't decided how high to aim.
The EU's figure of 30% translates to 42% in the UK.
Along with other countries that signed the "Copenhagen Accord" it faces a deadline of 31 January to come up with final numbers and plans for reducing emissions.
The final decision will affect the whole economy of the EU, from business investment strategies to households' fuel bills - and many major firms are demanding clarity on the steepness of the path ahead.
But the UN climate body, the UNFCCC, has acknowledged the uncertainty by re-categorising January 31st as a "soft" deadline not a "firm" deadline.
Three factors are likely to be influencing the EU's hesitant position:
* Some European nations don't want to expose their industries to higher energy prices if competitors are unaffected - Poland and Italy have been vocal on this
* There's an argument for the EU continuing to hold a bargaining chip until the US has passed its Climate Bill (if, indeed it manages to pass a bill).
* The EU deliberately didn't define what "comparable effort" by other big polluters might mean, in order to allow negotiating space… and in several ways the negotiations over Copenhagen have not properly finished.
Greens are pushing for the EU to adopt the 30% target immediately. They believe it will lead to a profitable low-carbon economy, creating jobs and encouraging new technologies in Europe.
Impossible demands?
The climate economist Lord Stern supports this view, along with the governments in the UK and France. The UK Environmental Audit Committee went further this week and urged the government to adopt a 42% target irrespective of EU action.
The CBI fears that an EU unilateral 30% cut may be premature - opening opportunities for low-carbon firms but having a detrimental impact on energy-intensive manufacturers. The Institute of Directors is totally against a unilateral cut. Other sectors of European industry are also very nervous about competitiveness.
The German government said in Copenhagen that other big polluters should offer more, but confirmed that Germany itself would adopt a unilateral 40% target.
A source in the European Commission told me they were not yet convinced that conditions for the 30% mark had been reached.
The UK government fears that any conditions demanded by the EU on the US and Russia may prove impossible to meet - leaving the world with emissions cuts much lower than the safety threshold demanded by official science advisers.
Japan's offer of a 25% cut by 2020 at Copenhagen was also conditional but following that meeting a government spokesman told reporters the offer would stand.
But Australian policy is severely challenged following the defeat of climate legislation in their upper house, so their promises on climate may be hard to meet.
Global problem
The EU is really looking towards the US, where the climate bill is under fire in the Senate and has become even more difficult following the loss of the Massachusetts Democratic seat.
Commentators in the US say the bill will realistically need to be passed by June in some form as America moves towards mid-term elections.
If the US fails to pass a bill, will the EU shrug its shoulders and go ahead with its 30% cut? We can't yet say.
In the meantime, many of the world's businesses are looking on in frustration at this multinational game of climate poker. Business wants to be told exactly where it stands on climate policy. But it looks as if clarity will be hard to find.
It's precisely the lack of clarity that drives the UK government to continue to push for a legally-binding global deal in Mexico in December.
Sceptics point out that big developing countries have already offered their climate policies voluntarily and wonder what is the point of pursuing a legally-binding deal when there are no real sanctions for deal-breakers.
The British government believes a deal would help ensure that countries stick by their targets, adhere to the rules and subscribe to the firmest possible contract to tackle a quintessentially global problem.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/8471450.stm
Published: 2010/01/20 21:45:35 GMT
|
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
|
Big Bunny
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| | Re: The Propaganda Continues VI
« Reply #21 on Jan 24, 2010, 8:51pm » | |
United Nations caught out again on climate claims
* Jonathan Leake
* From: The Australian
* January 25, 2010 12:00AM
THE UN climate science panel faces new controversy for wrongly linking global warming to a rise in natural disasters such as hurricanes and floods.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change based the claims on an unpublished report that had not been subjected to routine scientific scrutiny - and ignored warnings from scientific advisers. The report's author later withdrew the claim because the evidence was too weak.
The link was central to demands at last month's Copenhagen climate summit by African nations for compensation of $US100 billion from the rich nations.
However, the IPCC knew in 2008 that the link could not be proved but did not alert world leaders, who have used weather extremes to bolster the case for action on climate change.
Kevin Rudd last November linked weather extremes to the debate over the government's emissions trading scheme.
"We will feel the effects of climate change fastest and hardest, and therefore we must act this week, and the government will be doing everything possible to make sure that can occur," the Prime Minister said at the time.
British Climate Change Minister Ed Miliband has suggested floods - such as those in Bangladesh in 2007 - could be linked to global warming.
US President Barack Obama said last year: "More powerful storms and floods threaten every continent."
Last month British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told parliament that the financial agreement at Copenhagen "must address the great injustice that . . . those hit first and hardest by climate change are those that have done least harm".
The IPCC has now been forced to reassess its report linking extreme weather to climate change.
The UN body's about-face comes less than a week after it was forced to retract claims that the Himalayan glaciers would be largely melted by 2035. The claim was sourced to an environmental group's report of an interview in New Scientist magazine.
The Indian glaciologist who made the quote said a week ago the claim was "speculation" and had not been used in a peer-reviewed scientific paper.
It also comes as the British parliament launches an inquiry into leaked emails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit that raised questions about the legitimacy of some data published by the IPCC about global warming.
The latest controversy goes back to the IPCC's benchmark 2007 report on climate change, which warned that the world had "suffered rapidly rising costs due to extreme weather-related events since the 1970s". It suggested part of the increase was because of global warming.
However, the scientific paper on which the IPCC based its claim had not been peer reviewed, nor published, by the time the climate body issued its report. When the paper was published, in 2008, it had a new caveat. It said: "We find insufficient evidence to claim a statistical relationship between global temperature increase and catastrophic losses."
The IPCC failed to issue a clarification before the Copenhagen climate summit last month. Two scientific reviewers who checked drafts of the IPCC report urged greater caution in proposing a link between climate change and disaster impacts, but were ignored.
Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, a climatologist at the Universite Catholique de Louvain in Belgium, who is vice-chairman of the IPCC, said the UN body was now "reassessing the evidence" and it would publish a report on natural disasters and extreme weather with the latest findings.
The opposition used the latest revelations to savage Mr Rudd over his handling of climate change. Tony Abbott pointed to Mr Rudd's reluctance to mention climate change in the series of speeches he had delivered around the nation in the lead-up to Australia Day.
"This is yet another case of the Prime Minister raising expectations and not acting on them," the Opposition Leader said. "The challenge for the Prime Minister is to say now whether he really will reintroduce the ETS given the failure of Copenhagen."
Opposition climate change spokesman Greg Hunt backed the British parliamentary inquiry into the so-called Climategate emails, established on Friday. "The key to community consensus on climate change is confidence in the science," he said.
Climate Change Minister Penny Wong last week endorsed the IPCC report that contained the glacier claim. "It has been intensely scrutinised with very few errors being identified, and none that challenge the central conclusions of the report," she said. "The Fourth Assessment Report represents the international consensus on climate change science. All reports of the IPCC are subjected to extensive expert and government review."
The paper at the centre of the latest questions was written in 2006 by Robert Muir-Wood, head of research at Risk Management Solutions, a London consultancy, who became a contributing author on the IPCC report on climate change impacts.
He wanted to find out if the eight year-on-year increase in losses caused by weather-related disasters since the 1960s was larger than could be explained by the impact of social changes such as growth in population. Such an increase, coinciding with rising temperatures, would suggest global warming was to blame.
In the research, Mr Muir-Wood looked at a range of hazards, including tropical cyclones, floods and hurricanes. He found from 1950 to 2005 there was no increase in the impact of disasters once growth was accounted for. For 1970 to 2005 he found a 2 per cent annual increase that "corresponded with a period of rising global temperatures", but said almost all of it was because of strong hurricane seasons in 2004 and 2005. Despite such caveats, the IPCC report cited only the 1970-2005 results.
Roger Pielke, professor of environmental studies at Colorado University, who commissioned Mr Muir-Wood's paper, has told the IPCC that citing one section in preference to the rest was wrong.
"The idea that catastrophes are rising in cost because of climate change is completely misleading," Mr Muir-Wood said.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/uni....6-1225823075213
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: The Propaganda Continues VI
« Reply #22 on Jan 25, 2010, 8:48am » | |
Copenhagen dampens banks' green commitment
Banks are pulling out of the carbon-offsetting market after Copenhagen failed to reach agreement on emissions targets
* Tim Webb
* guardian.co.uk, Sunday 24 January 2010 20.06 GMT
![[image]](http://img63.imageshack.us/img63/5870/greencopenhagencarbone0.jpg "[image]")
The lack of progress at Copenhagen has meant some banks are stalling on lending to carbon emissions-offsetting projects. Photograph: Joe Klamar/AFP/Getty Images
Banks and investors are pulling out of the carbon market after the failure to make progress at Copenhagen on reaching new emissions targets after 2012.
Carbon financiers have already begun leaving banks in London because of the lack of activity and the drop-off in investment demand. The Guardian has been told that backers have this month pulled out of a large planned clean-energy project in the developing world because of the expected fall in emissions credits after 2012.
Anthony Hobley, partner and global head of climate change and carbon finance at law firm Norton Rose, said: "People will gradually start to leave carbon desks, we are beginning to see that already. We are seeing a freeze in banks' recruitment plans for the carbon market. It's not clear at what point this will turn into a cull or a rout."
Paul Kelly, chief executive of EcoSecurities, which develops clean energy projects, said that while markets had not expected a definitive post-Kyoto Protocol deal at Copenhagen, they had expected some progress.
"The lack of regulatory certainty in the post 2012 world affects the market's view of what CERs [carbon credits from clean energy projects] will be worth and subsequently will constrain financing for projects. If you had an agreement at Copenhagen with a bit more detail, people would be more willing to take risk."
After two weeks of extenuating talks, world leaders delivered an agreement in Copenhagen that left campaigners disappointed as it failed to commit rich and poor countries to any greenhouse gas emission reductions.
Banks had been scaling back their plans to invest in carbon markets before Copenhagen. Fewer new clean energy projects need to be financed as, because of the recession, there are fewer global emissions to offset. The price of carbon credits has also fallen, while plans to introduce national trading schemes, particularly in the US and Australia, remain uncertain.
Two sources said that Australian bank Westpac had scaled back plans to increase its carbon desk in London. A bank spokeswoman denied there were plans to recruit more staff in London, adding: "We have always said that we would look to grow this business organically as carbon markets develop and that remains the case."
Carbon markets were central to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012 and obliged developed countries that exceed their targets to purchase credits from clean energy projects in the developing world. Policymakers will meet again in Mexico in November in an attempt to revive the climate change talks.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/20....openhagen-banks
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: The Propaganda Continues VI
« Reply #23 on Jan 25, 2010, 8:51am » | |
I can't imagine why, can you:
Climate change: Chinese adviser calls for open mind on causes
China's most senior negotiator on climate change says more research needed to establish whether warming is man-made
* Gethin Chamberlain in Delhi
* guardian.co.uk, Sunday 24 January 2010 17.58 GMT
![[image]](http://img687.imageshack.us/img687/1429/jairamrameshandxiezhe00.jpg "[image]")
Indian environment minister Jairam Ramesh, left, and China's senior climate change adviser, Xie Zhenhua, centre left, with South African and Brazilian representatives in Delhi. Photograph: Mustafa Quraishi/AP
China's most senior negotiator on climate change said today he was keeping an open mind on whether global warming was man-made or the result of natural cycles.
Xie Zhenhua said there was no doubt that warming was taking place, but more and better scientific research was needed to establish the causes.
Xie, Premier Wen Jiabao's special representative on climate change, was speaking in Delhi at the end of a two-day meeting of ministers from four of the most powerful emerging economies – China, India, Brazil and South Africa.
The four countries, known as the Basic group, called on rich nations to ensure that $10bn pledged to combat climate change was handed over before the end of the year. South Africa's environment minister accused the US of lagging behind at Copenhagen and said it had a moral obligation to take a lead on the issue.
The group pledged to pass on details of their own voluntary actions on the environment to the UN framework convention on climate change by 31 January.
Xie's comments caused consternation at the end of the post-meeting press conference, with his host, the Indian environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, attempting to play down any suggestions of dissent over the science of climate change.
Ramesh refused to accept China had stepped out of line, although he conceded: "We still need more science to understand whether global warming is causing glacial melt or whether it is the natural cycles."
Responding to a question about the controversy over the melting of Himalayan glaciers and to fresh doubts cast on the link between global warming and extreme weather events, Xie said there were still "disputes" in the scientific community over the causes.
"Now the mainstream view is according to the review reports by the IPCC," he said. "There is one starkly different view, that the climate change or climate warming issues is caused by the cyclical element of nature itself. I think we need to adopt an open attitude to the scientific research, that we need to have as inclusive as possible all kinds of views concerning this aspect, because we want our views to be more scientific and to be more consistent."
Asked later to clarify his remarks, he said: "It is already a solid fact that the climate is already warming. The scientists have already shown that te global climate is warming.
"Due to the climate change influences, the countries that have been actively impacted most are those developing countries, in particular those small island countries. And the major reason of this climate change issue is the unconstrained emissions produced by developed countries in the process of their industrialisation. That is the mainstream view and we need to make responses concerning these views. There are some uncertain views but our attitude is open, that we need to have more studies. But this shall not impede our efforts in combating the climate change."
The Basic group played a key role in drawing up the Copenhagen accord in December. Ramesh said they had agreed that rich nations should demonstrate their credentials by ensuring that the $10b pledged at Copenhagen was paid this year.
"That is the basic minimum," he said. "If $10bn as promised in the Copenhagen accord does not flow to Africa, to small island states and to the LDCs [least developed countries] we believe that frankly the developed countries are not serious. That is the first milestone that has to be achieved. You have to put money on the table, you have to identify the projects and money has to start flowing."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/24/china-climate-change-adviser
|
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: The Propaganda Continues VI
« Reply #24 on Jan 26, 2010, 10:23am » | |
As the Planet burns the PRC says it has an open mind on the cause(s) of climate change. That wouldn't be because the PRC is now the largest contributor of greenhouse emissions which are accelerating global warming, would it? Of course not - the PRC, like the rest of the clowns, simply do not understand that if they don't arrest the rate of emissions and then substantially reduce this same rate, the economies that they are so worried about now will no longer be viable within the next 30 - 40 years. The recent GFC will be less than noteworthy compared to the impact of the imminent collapse of Gaia. Meanwhile back in the real world:
China has 'open mind' on climate
China's lead climate change negotiator has said he was keeping an "open attitude" as to whether global warming was man-made or due to natural cycles.
Xie Zhenhua said climate warming was a "solid fact" and that mainstream scientific opinion held it was due to emissions of gases such as CO2.
He was speaking in Delhi at a meeting of envoys from Brazil, China, India and South Africa.
They agreed to submit their plans to cut emissions by the end of January.
The emission of carbon dioxide, from burning coal and other industrial processes, is one of the gases believed to be chiefly responsible for causing rising global temperatures.
Mr Xie's comments appeared to surprise the other environment ministers and envoys at a news conference at the end of their two-day meeting.
He said: "It is already a solid fact that the climate is warming.
"There is one starkly different view, that the climate change or climate warming issue is caused by the cyclical element of nature itself.
"I think we need to adopt an open attitude to the scientific research."
He said that it was important to include as many views as possible "to be more scientific and to be more consistent".
He was responding to a reporter's question about a controversy over the UN's climate science panel's 2007 assertion that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035.
A number of scientists have recently disputed the figure. The vice-chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said last week that it was an error and would be reviewed.
But the IPCC's vice-chairman Jean-Pascal van Ypersele said it did not change the broader picture of man-made climate change.
Brazil, South Africa, India and China are some of the world's fastest-developing economies. Their greenhouse gas emissions are also among the fastest rising in the world.
At their weekend gathering, the officials said they would announce by the end of the month their plans to cut emissions.
They also agreed to contribute $10bn (£6.2bn) this year to help poor nations combat the effects of climate change.
Brazil's Environment Minister Carols Minc said this would be "a slap in the face to the rich countries" who pledged at the Copenhagen climate summit in December to contribute $30bn (£18.5bn) in funding for the next three years and $100bn (£61.8bn) by 2020.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/8478643.stm
Published: 2010/01/25 13:12:08 GMT
|
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: The Propaganda Continues VI
« Reply #25 on Jan 26, 2010, 11:03am » | |
Economic growth cannot buy the planet more time
VIEWPOINT
Andrew Simms
Global economic growth - in its current form - cannot continue if nations are serious about curbing climate change, says Andrew Simms. In this week's Green Room, he warns that the consumer society cannot "have its planet and eat it".
From birth until it reaches sexual maturity at about six weeks, a hamster doubles its weight each week.
If, instead of levelling-off in maturity, it carried on growing - continuing to double its weight each week - we would be facing a nine-billion-tonne hamster on its first birthday.
If it kept eating at the same ratio of food to bodyweight, the hamster's daily intake would be greater than the total, annual amount of maize produced worldwide.
In nature, there is a reason why things do not grow indefinitely.
Yet the entire canon of mainstream contemporary economics seems to believe that economics exists independent of the laws of biology, chemistry and physics.
It assumes, without exception, that infinite economic growth on a finite planet is both desirable and possible.
'Limits to growth'
To suggest that growth might ultimately be bounded by physical constraints, of course, is not new on the very margins of economics or in other disciplines.
For example, a group of researchers in 1972 used an early computer model to compare available natural resources with rates of human consumption. Their "world model" was published as the famous Limits to Growth report.
Back then, much less data and processing power were available. As a result, for some it acted as a wake-up call, but many others mocked it and used the report to brand the wider environmental movement as alarmist.
In 2008, a physicist called Graham Turner decided to look again at the controversial report. He compared its original projections with 30 years' worth of subsequent observed trends.
Amazingly, given the available technology and data, he concluded that they "compared favourably". The authors of Limits to Growth had been broadly right all along.
We shouldn't be surprised. At what point, and on what basis, did consumer society ever truly believe that it could have its planet and eat it?
Jared Diamond's book Collapse tells the history of societies throughout history that fell by overshooting their environmental life support systems.
He charts how wealth too often comes at the expense of liquidating natural capital and how, in environmental terms, "an impressive-looking bank account may conceal a negative cash flow".
Now, standing in the shadow of the banking crisis, we have less excuse than usual to blissfully ignore how our impressive looking growth economies hide a negative ecological cash flow.
Take just one example. A new report from our team at Nef (the New Economics Foundation) looks in detail at the relationship between economic growth and the need to avert runaway climate change.
Based on the leading models for climate change and the global economy's use of fossil fuels, the report - called Growth Isn't Possible - comes to a seemingly inescapable and self-explanatory conclusion.
It asks whether global economic growth can be maintained, while keeping a good likelihood of limiting global temperature rise to 2C (3.6F) - the agreed political objective of the European Union, and widely considered the maximum rise to which humanity can adapt without serious difficulty.
'Ecological bankruptcy'
Some nations, of course, face difficulty at much lower rises, such as small island states.
None of the models studied, including the most optimistic variations of low-carbon energy and efficiency, could square the circle of endless global economic growth with climate safety.
“ The link between rising GDP and higher life satisfaction broke down decades ago ”
Over the last decade, carbon intensity has not gone down, it has generally flat-lined and, in some years, even gone up.
Professor Kevin Anderson of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at Manchester University, UK, concluded in another study that: "Economic growth in [industrialised nations] cannot be reconciled with a 2, 3 or even 4C characterisation of dangerous climate change."
There is also a growing appreciation that it has not all to do with climate change.
The latest set of accounts for humanity's ecological footprint reveal that, conservatively, it takes the Earth nearly 18 months to produce the ecological services that humanity uses in one year.
The negative cash flow is getting worse.
In a unique study, published in the science journal Nature in September 2009, a group of 29 leading international scientists identified nine processes in the biosphere for which they considered it necessary to "define planetary boundaries".
Of the nine, three boundaries had already been transgressed: climate change, interference in the nitrogen cycle, and biodiversity loss.
Assuming that humanity does not deliberately wish to destroy its own foundations, and with so much science and sophisticated monitoring available, why is this happening?
For all the promise of magic bullet technologies, continual growth drowns out energy and natural resource efficiency gains.
Even efficiency gains themselves do not necessarily reduce consumption. Counter-intuitively, greater energy efficiency tends to reduce costs and drive up overall consumption.
There is a growing awareness too that, at least where rich countries are concerned, the downside of growth comes with very little or no upside.
For most of these nations, the link between rising GDP and higher life satisfaction broke down decades ago.
Lord Adair Turner, chairman of both the UK Financial Services Authority and the UK Climate Change Committee, recently described the pursuit of endless rich country growth a "false god".
Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said GDP growth was "proving to be an extremely harmful way of measuring economic progress".
The reason is that in economic commentary, growth is always assumed to be good. But you can also have "uneconomic growth", when it is jobless, socially divisive or environmentally destructive. A parallel in nature might be growth like that in cancer.
Burden of proof
Are alternative measures of success available? Yes, many. But politicians and the business press remain uncritically spellbound by the equation "all GDP growth is good".
Here is an irony: the hard science of climate change is subjected continually to the most extraordinary degree of critical scrutiny in the media.
Given their actual number, informed sceptics are given disproportionate airtime and column inches.
But where the "dismal science" of economics is concerned, the daily reporting of its central tenet - growth is good - passes unchallenged.
The much vaunted journalistic balance is abandoned. Why? Perhaps it is because this type of economics is not science at all, but doctrine. To question doctrine makes you a heretic, and heretics get excommunicated.
The time has come to question. Now, the burden of proof lies on those who promise endless growth to demonstrate how it will be possible.
In the meantime, the pressing task for everyone else is to work out how all of us on the planet can have good lives while living within its means.
Andrew Simms is policy director of the New Economics Foundation (Nef) and co-author with Dr Victoria Johnson of Growth Isn't Possible: Why We Need a New Economic Direction, published by Nef and Schumacher College
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/8479508.stm
Published: 2010/01/26 12:14:21 GMT
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: The Propaganda Continues VI
« Reply #26 on Jan 29, 2010, 8:44am » | |
Davos: Funding switch threatens aid to developing world, campaigner warns
* Larry Elliott in Davos
* guardian.co.uk, Thursday 28 January 2010 15.58 GMT
![[image]](http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/5129/climatechangeaniceber00.jpg "[image]")
Climate change funding is threatening to reduce development budgets, One claim. Photograph: John Mcconnico/AP
Rich countries are raiding their aid budgets to bankroll a new global fund to help poor countries adapt to climate change, one of the world's leading development campaign groups warned today.
Jamie Drummond, executive director of the One group co-founded by the rock stars Bono and Bob Geldof, said the west was being "dishonest" about the $30bn (£18bn) of fast-track finance proposed in Copenhagen last month to persuade developing countries to agree a deal on cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
Drummond said the proposal to spend $10bn a year over the next three years involved no additional money, but was instead being diverted from existing budgets.
The impact, he said, would be to divert funds from health and education spending in Africa to infrastructure projects in Asia and Latin America.
"Development promises are under threat. There is double counting going on. The $30bn is not new money and nor is the $100bn promised for 2020 to help poor countries cope with climate change."
Speaking in Davos, Drummond said One was lobbying world leaders to "come clean" about what they were doing. Similar concerns were expressed earlier this week by Bill Gates, who has used part of his personal fortune to fund health programmes in Africa.
Drummond admitted that it was hard for rich countries to stump up more money during a tough recession, but said the solution was to explore innovative ways of raising finance – including a transaction tax, a levy on aviation travel and selling part of the International Monetary Fund's gold reserve.
Poor countries, he added, would not be prepared to sign up to a climate change deal unless there was additional money for adaptation and mitigation.
Many countries, including Britain, have pledged to raise aid budgets to 0.7% of GDP, but Drummond said that "we may need to look at new goals and proposals like Sir Nicholas Stern's proposal for 1%, incorporating both development and climate finance".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/....development-aid
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: The Propaganda Continues VI
« Reply #27 on Jan 29, 2010, 8:48am » | |
Brazilian beef barons are greenwashing to preserve their place on your plate
Ranchers claim to be going green by flattening Paraguay's traditional Indian lands and setting aside part of it for nature
o Fred Pearce
o guardian.co.uk, Thursday 28 January 2010 13.25 GMT
![[image]](http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/2170/cop15reddrainforestor00.jpg "[image]")
Brazilian beef barons claim to be protecting Paraguay's Indian lands – by turning them into ranches. Photograph: Antonio Scorza/AFP/Getty Images
Brazil is the world's biggest exporter of beef. Huge areas of semi-forested grasslands are being cleared to make way for cattle pastures to feed the global love of cattle meat. And Britain is one of the biggest importers.
Now, under greater scrutiny at home for their environmental and humanitarian sins, Brazilian beef barons are buying up land across the border in Paraguay – and bulldozing traditional Indian lands there. But, hey, it's all right, they say. Because, in among the ranches, they are creating nature reserves.
Are the ranchers going green – or engaging in flagrant greenwash to preserve their place on your plate? Now one company has been accused of invading the land of one of the few surviving tribal groups that are uncontacted by the outside world, and setting aside part of it for nature. And it has lined up the unlikely figure of Charlie Chaplin in its defence, bizarrely saying British-born "Chaplin would be turning in his grave in shame" at the accusations from his "countrymen" at Survival International, which has its headquarters in the UK.
I don't usually promote other people's greenwash awards. But this time I make an exception. For this brazen misappropriation of environmental virtue, the NGO Survival, which campaigns for tribal groups, last week gave the company Yaguarete Pora SA its 2010 Greenwash award.
Survival says the uncontacted people are from the Totobiegosode tribe, which is part of a wider family of tribes known as the Ayoreo. "Yaguarete has already destroyed thousands of hectares of the tribe's forests. The company plans to convert around two-thirds of the land to cattle ranching," according to Survival, which has released recent satellite images to prove its claims.
The reclusive forest community has asked for protection via relatives in the wider Totobiegosode tribe, who began legal action on their behalf to secure legal title to their land back in 1993. The case remains unresolved.
The disputed land is 400 kilometres north of the Paraguayan capital Asunción, in the province of Alto Paraguay, where local estimates say 90% of the land is now in the hands of Brazilian cattle ranchers. Media reports say that the government's National Environmental Council last year cancelled logging permits for Yaguarete in the area because of breaches of environmental regulations.
According to documents in support of the reserve plan (pdf) submitted to government authorities, the company has taken over 78,500 hectares, of which it now plans to set aside 27,500 hectares for the nature reserve, of which Survival estimates some 17,000 hectares will be continuous forest.
Plans for the reserve have been drawn up by the National Land Trust, a body set up by a former director of Paraguay's parks department to help landowners create conservation areas. He has won awards for this work, including the Whitley Fund for Nature Award in 2003, which was sponsored by WWF-UK.
But the Survival director, Stephen Corry, says "the nature reserve is textbook greenwashing. Bulldoze the forest and then preserve a bit for PR purposes." Survival is supporting action by a local Paraguayan NGO called GAT to reclaim the tribal lands.
Yaguarete Pora's director, Marcelo Bastos Ferraz, did not respond to questions from the Guardian this week. But the company did issue a statement after receiving the Survival award last week.
"The company decided to establish a wild protected area under private ownership, guaranteeing hunting and fishing rights for hundreds of indigenous families who live in the area," it said. "The Ayoreo-Totobiegosode will be able to use the reserve, and can freely practice their culture and customs."
Fine, but that's not what the Totobiegosode people want, says David Hill of Survival. "They have a long-running law suit claiming legal title to that land themselves."
The company also says it is investing in Paraguay, providing jobs and respecting environmental laws It accuses Survival of "xenophobia", of "profiting by lying" and of "using satire and adopting a Chaplinesque attitude, as well as trying to influence the president of a sovereign country." It points out that there is an international treaty "which guarantees that Paraguay will protect Brazilian investments" in the country. Quite so.
In recent months, the Brazilian government has promised the world it will end the destruction of Amazon rainforest to create new cattle pastures. The tragedy is that it looks as if the reclusive inhabitants of its neighbours' forests are now in the front line.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/ci....-beef-greenwash
|
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: The Propaganda Continues VI
« Reply #28 on Jan 29, 2010, 8:54am » | |
Copenhagen: what next?
It's coming up to six weeks since the end of the Copenhagen negotiations on climate change. Now that the dust has settled, there's time to stand back and take a more considered look. Here Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and Stefan Rahmstorf, professor of physics of the oceans at Potsdam University, Germany give their views on the outcome of the COP15 talks and the way forward
* Liz Kalaugher of Environmentalresearchweb, part of the Guardian Environment Network
* guardian.co.uk, Friday 29 January 2010 12.55 GMT
At a press conference last week, de Boer said that the outcome in Copenhagen made "the task to hand more urgent…the window of opportunity we have to come to grips with this issue is closing faster than it was before". But he claimed that the talks did raise climate-change issues to the highest level of government, helped to define temperature limits and financial contributions, and set 2015 as a date for reviewing whether global action needs to be more urgent.
The Copenhagen Accord, meanwhile, an agreement negotiated by China, South Africa, India, Brazil and the US, and noted by the other nations at the conference, "reflects a political consensus on the long-term global response" that is needed to climate change, according to de Boer. "We are now in a cooling off period," he added. "This gives useful time for countries to resume discussions with each other."
Climate scientist Stefan Rahmstorf thinks that the outcome of COP15 is depressing, but also tried to highlight some more upbeat aspects. "On the positive side: most of the actors in Copenhagen by far were quite willing to commit to a substantial effort to halt global warming – including many who were not willing to do this earlier, for example the US or Australia," he told environmentalresearchweb. "And some important developing countries have made very constructive pledges as well. We were closer than ever to major progress in fighting global warming."
Rahmstorf reckons that an agreement was not reached because "the consensus-based UN process with 192 countries is very cumbersome, and it was exceptionally badly managed at this conference", because China did not play a very constructive role and because the US was not able to offer enough. "The IPCC deemed 25–40% emissions reductions below 1990 values necessary by 2020 by developed nations to limit warming to 2 °C, and what the US offered amounted to only 4%," he explained. "This is largely a result of the lost years under previous administrations, during which the US emissions increased steeply – unlike those in Europe."
During his briefing, de Boer said that he never ceases to be amazed by the vision that some people have of the UN. "To me it is a collection of countries that have created a body to facilitate negotiation among each other," he added. "If those governments were to go and negotiate in a different setting with a different secretariat I don't know if that would fundamentally change their behaviour."
Keeping on the UN track
Both de Boer and Rahmstorf would like to see the UN process continue. "Everybody I have spoken to so far doesn't want the Accord to be a third track," said de Boer.
Rahmstorf agrees. "I hope that the multilateral UN track to a global climate agreement will not die, however cumbersome it is, because the alternatives are even worse," he said, "for example, the G20 with only the biggest emitters on the table deciding alone on climate policy, without those affected, like the small island nations, having a proper voice". In the meantime, Rahmstorf says that "while we wait for our world leaders to get their act together, there is nothing to stop us as world citizens to do all we can to reduce emissions bottom-up".
The next UNFCCC negotiating session is due to take place in late May in Bonn, with the next COP meeting set for Mexico in late November. According to de Boer, many countries feel that there is a need for an intensified negotiating schedule this year – he plans to convene the COP bureau to determine whether it's possible to slot in another set of negotiations before May.
The countries that negotiated the Copenhagen Accord – China, South Africa, India, Brazil and the US – account for around 80% of carbon emissions. "It's true to say there was not final agreement on the Accord, but an overwhelming majority supported it," said de Boer. "It was not formally adopted by COP – only noted – and we should be careful not to make it more than it is."
But de Boer believes the Accord is a political tool that has broad support at a high level and that can be usefully employed in negotiations. He says the Accord is clear on a long-term goal, on how it can be measured, on financial support and on a number of new institutions that need to be established. "It can be used by us to help speed up the negotiations," he said.
Countries have until 31 January to let the UN know if they wish to be associated with the Accord in the official report of the COP15 negotiations. Industrialized countries have the option of including details of the targets they intend to commit to, while developing nations can indicate the action that they plan to take. The deadline is for administrative reasons only; the list of countries associated with the Accord will be updated on the UNFCCC secretariat website as later details come in. "It's a soft deadline, there's nothing deadly about it," said de Boer.
The climate for science
But what does this mean for the day-to-day lives of researchers? Rahmstorf believes the outcome in Copenhagen has no direct or immediate effects on climate science. "The morale of many is shaken, though," he added. "We've got an important job: since the Copenhagen Accord calls for limiting global warming to a maximum of 2 °C, possibly even 1.5 °C (this option is left open at the end of the Accord), one of the major tasks of science will be to narrow down the range of future emissions that is compatible with these policy goals."
Rahmstorf reckons that climate scientists have communicated their work quite well, particularly through the IPCC. While 2010 is the UN year of biodiversity, the biodiversity community has "not yet managed to get as much high-level attention to the biodiversity crisis; it is only now calling to set up something like the IPCC for biodiversity". On the other hand, "climate science could still do a lot better if more climate scientists get involved, take an interest in public understanding of science and educate themselves more about how to effectively work with the media". Rahmstorf reckons that "too many scientists are still stuck in the ivory tower and – for example – shrug off and ignore wrong media reports about climate science, rather than recognizing that public perception matters and that they should not leave the public debate to people with a political agenda".
The last word goes to de Boer: while the Copenhagen negotiations "didn't produce the final cake", they did leave countries "with all the key ingredients to bake a new one". Although the proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the eating.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/29/copenhagen-what-next
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: The Propaganda Continues VI
« Reply #29 on Jan 29, 2010, 9:11am » | |
IPCC denies newspaper claim that it overstated costs of natural disasters
UN body rebutts Sunday Times allegation that it exaggerated link between costs of natural disasters and climate change
* James Randerson
* guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 26 January 2010 16.48 GMT
![[image]](http://img36.imageshack.us/img36/1464/hurricaneivanaftermath0.jpg "[image]")
Destruction in the wake of hurricane Ivan in Pensacola, Florida, in 2004. Natural disasters have an increased financial impact because people have more to lose. Photograph: CHRIS GRAYTHEN/EPA
The UN body that summarises climate science for governments has condemned as "misleading and baseless" claims that it overstated the effect of global warming on natural disasters.
A newspaper report alleged a section in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 2007 report incorrectly stated that the cost of natural disasters had risen gradually since 1970 due to climate change. Yesterday, the IPCC issued a statement saying the Sunday Times report was wrong on "two key points".
The IPCC, and its head Rajendra Pachauri, are currently under fire following the inclusion in the same report erroneous of a claim that Himalayan glaciers could melt completely by 2035. The statement was not based on peer reviewed data and the true figure for Himalayan glacier melt is thought to be closer to 300 years. The IPCC has admitted the claim was incorrect, but all senior scientists emphasise that glaciers are melting at historically high rates and that the role of human activity in causing global warming remains very likely. Pachauri said yesterday: "I am not going to stand down, I am going to stand up."
Bob Ward, policy director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics, said the row over natural disasters is neither a blunder or a new criticism of the report. He said the row is the result of criticisms that date back to 2006 that are being raked over because the IPCC's procedures for reviewing scientific work is currently under the spotlight.
The controversy centres on why the cost of repairs after hurricanes, floods and other natural disasters, has risen from $75.5bn in the 1960s to $659.9bn in the 1990s. Much of the increase is because economic growth has given people more to lose, but some could be due to more destructive natural disasters as the Earth warms. The infrequency of natural disasters coupled with the short period of data also means that a small number of events in a rich region of the world could have a large impact on the figures.
The IPCC's report said that one study by Dr Robert Muir-Wood had identified a "small statistically significant trend" of annual catastrophe losses increasing by 2% a year since 1970, after economic growth had been taken into account. This claim is under attack because the original finding was presented at a scientific workshop in 2006 and was not peer-reviewed. When it was peer reviewed and subsequently published the authors reached the same conclusion but noted the statistical trend disappears when the particularly heavy 2004/05 hurricane season was omitted from the data.
In its rebuttal, the IPCC says its report made clear other studies disagreed with the Muir-Wood finding and that it provided a "balanced treatment of a complicated and important issue." The statement continues, "It clearly makes the point that one study detected an increase in economic losses, corrected for values at risk, but that other studies have not detected such a trend...In writing, reviewing, and editing this section, IPCC procedures were carefully followed to produce the policy-relevant assessment that is the IPCC mandate." The IPCC report also refers to three other studies by Professor Roger Pielke Jr of the University of Colorado and colleagues. Ward said that Pielke has criticised both the IPCC report and the Stern review - the influential report on climate change by the economist Lord Stern - several times on his blog since 2006 for citing the Muir-Wood study.
But even if the 2% a year trend is not correct, Pielke's own data suggest there is cause for alarm, said Ward. "He is right that an increase in the number of valuable properties in high-risk areas is overwhelmingly the cause of increased financial losses from extreme weather events over the past few decades," he said. "That in itself is a worrying conclusion given that climate change is expected to lead to changes in the occurrence and severity of such events."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/20....-climate-change
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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