|  Author | Topic: The Propaganda Continues VI (Read 6,644 times) |
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|  | Re: The Propaganda Continues VI
« Reply #45 on Feb 23, 2010, 8:42pm » | |
Climate sceptics are recycled critics of controls on tobacco and acid rain
We must not be distracted from science's urgent message: we are fuelling dangerous changes in Earth's climate
o Jeffrey Sachs
o guardian.co.uk, Friday 19 February 2010 12.47 GMT
![[image]](http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/2456/planetearth0014175614.jpg "[image]")
Critics of climate change science are few in number but their attacks are aggressive. Photograph: Corbis
In the weeks before and after the Copenhagen climate change conference last December, the science of climate change came under harsh attack by critics who contend that climate scientists have deliberately suppressed evidence — and that the science itself is severely flawed. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the global group of experts charged with assessing the state of climate science, has been accused of bias.
The global public is disconcerted by these attacks. If experts cannot agree that there is a climate crisis, why should governments spend billions of dollars to address it?
The fact is that the critics — who are few in number but aggressive in their attacks — are deploying tactics that they have honed for more than 25 years. During their long campaign, they have greatly exaggerated scientific disagreements in order to stop action on climate change, with special interests like Exxon Mobil footing the bill.
Many books have recently documented the games played by the climate-change deniers. Merchants of Doubt, a new book by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway set for release in mid-2010, will be an authoritative account of their misbehaviour. The authors show that the same group of mischief-makers, given a platform by the free-market ideologues of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page, has consistently tried to confuse the public and discredit the scientists whose insights are helping to save the world from unintended environmental harm.
Today's campaigners against action on climate change are in many cases backed by the same lobbies, individuals, and organisations that sided with the tobacco industry to discredit the science linking smoking and lung cancer. Later, they fought the scientific evidence that sulphur oxides from coal-fired power plants were causing "acid rain." Then, when it was discovered that certain chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) were causing the depletion of ozone in the atmosphere, the same groups launched a nasty campaign to discredit that science, too.
Later still, the group defended the tobacco giants against charges that second-hand smoke causes cancer and other diseases. And then, starting mainly in the 1980s, this same group took on the battle against climate change.
What is amazing is that, although these attacks on science have been wrong for 30 years, they still sow doubts about established facts. The truth is that there is big money backing the climate-change deniers, whether it is companies that don't want to pay the extra costs of regulation, or free-market ideologues opposed to any government controls.
The latest round of attacks involves two episodes. The first was the hacking of a climate-change research centre in England. The emails that were stolen suggested a lack of forthrightness in the presentation of some climate data. Whatever the details of this specific case, the studies in question represent a tiny fraction of the overwhelming scientific evidence that points to the reality and urgency of man-made climate change.
The second issue was a blatant error concerning glaciers that appeared in a major IPCC report. Here it should be understood that the IPCC issues thousands of pages of text. There are, no doubt, errors in those pages. But errors in the midst of a vast and complex report by the IPCC point to the inevitability of human shortcomings, not to any fundamental flaws in climate science.
When the emails and the IPCC error were brought to light, editorial writers at The Wall Street Journal launched a vicious campaign describing climate science as a hoax and a conspiracy. They claimed that scientists were fabricating evidence in order to obtain government research grants — a ludicrous accusation, I thought at the time, given that the scientists under attack have devoted their lives to finding the truth, and have certainly not become rich relative to their peers in finance and business.
But then I recalled that this line of attack — charging a scientific conspiracy to drum up "business" for science — was almost identical to that used by The Wall Street Journal and others in the past, when they fought controls on tobacco, acid rain, ozone depletion, second-hand smoke, and other dangerous pollutants. In other words, their arguments were systematic and contrived, not at all original to the circumstances.
We are witnessing a predictable process by ideologues and right-wing think tanks and publications to discredit the scientific process. Their arguments have been repeatedly disproved for 30 years — time after time — but their aggressive methods of public propaganda succeed in causing delay and confusion.
Climate change science is a wondrous intellectual activity. Great scientific minds have learned over the course of many decades to "read" the Earth's history, in order to understand how the climate system works. They have deployed brilliant physics, biology, and instrumentation (such as satellites reading detailed features of the Earth's systems) in order to advance our understanding.
And the message is clear: large-scale use of oil, coal, and gas is threatening the biology and chemistry of the planet. We are fuelling dangerous changes in Earth's climate and ocean chemistry, giving rise to extreme storms, droughts, and other hazards that will damage the food supply and the quality of life of the planet.
The IPCC and the climate scientists are telling us a crucial message. We need urgently to transform our energy, transport, food, industrial, and construction systems to reduce the dangerous human impact on the climate. It is our responsibility to listen, to understand the message, and then to act.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/ci....ceptics-science
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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 #46 on Feb 23, 2010, 9:04pm » | |
Putting a value on nature could set scene for true green economy
Much environmental damage has been caused by the way we do business. Is there a way of changing our economic models from being part of the problem into part of the solution?
* Pavan Sukhdev
* guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 10 February 2010 07.00 GMT
![[image]](http://img638.imageshack.us/img638/3928/slashandburnforest00164.jpg "[image]")
We are not using the right economic models to measure the cost of natural losses. Photograph: Marcus Lyon/Getty Images
The living fabric of this planet - its ecosystems and biodiversity - are in rapid decline worldwide. This is visible and palpable and is variously due to commercial over-exploitation, or population pressures, or a raft of unhelpful policies, or some combination. At a very fundamental human level, however, it is due to the lack of awareness that there is a problem with human society being disconnected from nature.
Economics is blamed for much of our woes these days and credited with little so two questions need to be asked: is economics part of the problem of ecosystem degradation and biodiversity loss? And is it part of the solution?
The answer to the first question is a fairly obvious "yes". The economic invisibility of nature in our dominant economic model is both a symptom and a root cause of this problem. We value what we price, but nature's services - providing clean air, fresh water, soil fertility, flood prevention, drought control, climate stability, etc - are, mostly, not traded in any markets and not priced. These so-called "ecosystem services" are all "public goods" provided free. Our tendency to value private wealth creation over improving public wealth - creating a healthier natural world, for example - doesn't help.
We cannot manage what we do not measure and we are not measuring either the value of nature's benefits or the costs of their loss. We seem to be navigating the new and unfamiliar waters of ecological scarcities and climate risks with faulty instruments. Replacing our obsolete economic compass could help economics become part of the solution to reverse our declining ecosystems and biodiversity loss.
We need a new compass to set different policy directions, change incentive structures, reduce or phase out perverse subsidies, and engage business leaders in a vision for a new economy. Holistic economics – or economics that recognise the value of nature's services and the costs of their loss – is needed to set the stage for a new "green economy".
The crisis of biodiversity loss can only begin to be addressed in earnest if the values of biodiversity and ecosystem services are fully recognised and represented in decision-making. This may reveal the true nature of the trade-offs being made: between different ecosystem services (food provision or carbon storage), between different beneficiaries (private gain by some, public loss to many), at different scales (local costs, global benefits) and across different time horizons. When the value of ecosystem services are understood and included, what may have looked like an "acceptable" trade-off may appear quite unacceptable.
Conversely, benefits that were unrecognised become visible, and worth preserving. In Costa Rica, payments to farmers who conserve forests on their land rather than destroy them for low-earning pasture have become almost a national environment programme. Soil and water benefits flow to farmlands all around them. And this was funded by a small 3% tax on transport.
In India, ecological restoration and water harvesting is paid for by a national rural employment guarantee scheme, employing millions. In San Francisco and New York, ecological infrastructure is the reality: reservoirs and lake watersheds surrounded by well-managed forests provide cities with a freshwater supply. Meanwhile, biomimicry - using nature's methods to solve human problems, such as Velcro which was inspired by dog hair and burrs - is offering opportunities for innovative businesses across both developing and developed nations.
These are all examples of new economic models for government and business in which both private opportunity and "public goods" are being created and rewarded by a new partnership between business, citizens, and their government.
Teeb (The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity) has assembled a library of suggestions for policy-makers on how to use good economics to conserve wild nature (TEEB for Policy-Makers, November 2009). In June, TEEB will publish a parallel document on what role business can play in changing the rules of the game and herald a society that profits and progresses yet lives in harmony with nature.
• Pavan Sukhdev is a special adviser to the United Nations environment programme's green economy initiative and study leader for Teeb. He is speaking at the annual Earthwatch Oxford lecture tonight, co-hosted by environmental charity Earthwatch and strategy consultancy and thinktank SustainAbility
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/....-economic-model
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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 #47 on Feb 23, 2010, 9:07pm » | |
The price of environmental destruction? There is none
Putting a price on nature becomes meaningless if we treat the ecosystems upon which we depend as mere commodities with a price for trading
o Andrew Simms
o guardian.co.uk, Thursday 18 February 2010 18.15 GMT
![[image]](http://img713.imageshack.us/img713/3219/factorypollution0016441j.jpg "[image]")
'There is no wealth but life' ... smoke issues from a factory in Anfeh, Lebanon. Photograph: Joseph Eid/AFP/Getty Images
The economy is no stranger to creating its own fantasy world with little or no relation to the real one. We witnessed the damage that can cause when the banks thought they had stumbled on financial alchemy and could transform bad debt into good – economic base metal into gold.
Now it's possible that a much bigger error is coming to light. The rise and rise of global corporations lifted on a wave of apparent productivity gains may have been little more than a mask for the reckless liquidation of natural capital. It's as if we've been so distracted by our impressive speed of economic travel that we forgot to look at the fuel gauge or the cloud of smog left in our wake.
A new UN report estimates that accounting for the environmental damage of the world's 3,000 biggest companies would wipe out one-third of their profits. Any precise figure, however, is a matter of how risk is quantified and of where you draw the line. In 2006, for example, the New Economics Foundation (NEF), of which I am the policy director, looked at the oil companies BP and Shell, who together had recently reported profits of £25bn. By applying the Treasury's own estimates of the social and environmental cost of carbon emissions, we calculated that the total bill for those costs would reach £46.5bn, massively outweighing profits and plunging the companies into the red.
Yet in exercises like this, we quickly hit the paradox of environmental economics. By putting a price on nature, hopefully it makes it less likely that we will treat the world, and its natural resources, as if it were a business in liquidation. Yet there is a point when it becomes meaningless to treat the ecosystems upon which we depend as mere commodities with a price for trading. For example, what price would you put on the additional tonne of carbon which, when burned, triggers irreversible, catastrophic climate change? Who would have the right to even consider selling off the climate upon which civilisation depends? The avoidance of such damage is literally priceless.
If that sounds dramatic, consider that last September a large, international group of scientists published a paper in the journal Nature which identified nine key planetary boundaries for key biological systems upon which we depend. They found that we had already transgressed three of those, and were on the cusp of several others. All are potential points of no return as such complex systems begin interacting.
The huge advantage of the UN work is that it attempts to improve the feedback system between the economy and its ultimate parent company, the biosphere. Better risk assessment and value measurement is essential to help prevent what happened to banks happening to the planet.
The concept of a balanced budget, so loved by conservatives in relation to finance and spending, seems to be an alien concept when the consumption of natural resources and the production of waste is concerned. Yet it is far more important to achieve a balanced environmental budget than an economic one. You can always print more money, but you can't print more planet. As John Ruskin put it, "There is no wealth but life."
• Andrew Simms is policy director of the New Economics Foundation (NEF) and author of Ecological Debt
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/20....tal-destruction
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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 #48 on Feb 23, 2010, 9:16pm » | |
World's top firms cause $2.2tn of environmental damage, report estimates
Report for the UN into the activities of the world's 3,000 biggest companies estimates one-third of profits would be lost if firms were forced to pay for use, loss and damage of environment
* Juliette Jowit
* guardian.co.uk, Thursday 18 February 2010 18.19 GMT
![[image]](http://img694.imageshack.us/img694/5319/cop15blackcloudshover00.jpg "[image]")
Black clouds over the central business district, Jakarta. The report into the activities of the world's 3,000 biggest public companies has estimated the cost of use, loss and damage of the environment. Photograph: Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images
The cost of pollution and other damage to the natural environment caused by the world's biggest companies would wipe out more than one-third of their profits if they were held financially accountable, a major unpublished study for the United Nations has found.
The report comes amid growing concern that no one is made to pay for most of the use, loss and damage of the environment, which is reaching crisis proportions in the form of pollution and the rapid loss of freshwater, fisheries and fertile soils.
Later this year, another huge UN study - dubbed the "Stern for nature" after the influential report on the economics of climate change by Sir Nicholas Stern - will attempt to put a price on such global environmental damage, and suggest ways to prevent it. The report, led by economist Pavan Sukhdev, is likely to argue for abolition of billions of dollars of subsidies to harmful industries like agriculture, energy and transport, tougher regulations and more taxes on companies that cause the damage.
Ahead of changes which would have a profound effect - not just on companies' profits but also their customers and pension funds and other investors - the UN-backed Principles for Responsible Investment initiative and the United Nations Environment Programme jointly ordered a report into the activities of the 3,000 biggest public companies in the world, which includes household names from the UK's FTSE 100 and other major stockmarkets.
The study, conducted by London-based consultancy Trucost and due to be published this summer, found the estimated combined damage was worth US$2.2 trillion (£1.4tn) in 2008 - a figure bigger than the national economies of all but seven countries in the world that year.
The figure equates to 6-7% of the companies' combined turnover, or an average of one-third of their profits, though some businesses would be much harder hit than others.
"What we're talking about is a completely new paradigm," said Richard Mattison, Trucost's chief operating officer and leader of the report team. "Externalities of this scale and nature pose a major risk to the global economy and markets are not fully aware of these risks, nor do they know how to deal with them."
The biggest single impact on the $2.2tn estimate, accounting for more than half of the total, was emissions of greenhouse gases blamed for climate change. Other major "costs" were local air pollution such as particulates, and the damage caused by the over-use and pollution of freshwater.
The true figure is likely to be even higher because the $2.2tn does not include damage caused by household and government consumption of goods and services, such as energy used to power appliances or waste; the "social impacts" such as the migration of people driven out of affected areas, or the long-term effects of any damage other than that from climate change. The final report will also include a higher total estimate which includes those long-term effects of problems such as toxic waste.
Trucost did not want to comment before the final report on which sectors incurred the highest "costs" of environmental damage, but they are likely to include power companies and heavy energy users like aluminium producers because of the greenhouse gases that result from burning fossil fuels. Heavy water users like food, drink and clothing companies are also likely to feature high up on the list.
Sukhdev said the heads of the major companies at this year's annual economic summit in Davos, Switzerland, were increasingly concerned about the impact on their business if they were stopped or forced to pay for the damage.
"It can make the difference between profit and loss," Sukhdev told the annual Earthwatch Oxford lecture last week. "That sense of foreboding is there with many, many [chief executives], and that potential is a good thing because it leads to solutions."
The aim of the study is to encourage and help investors lobby companies to reduce their environmental impact before concerned governments act to restrict them through taxes or regulations, said Mattison.
"It's going to be a significant proportion of a lot of companies' profit margins," Mattison told the Guardian. "Whether they actually have to pay for these costs will be determined by the appetite for policy makers to enforce the 'polluter pays' principle. We should be seeking ways to fix the system, rather than waiting for the economy to adapt. Continued inefficient use of natural resources will cause significant impacts on [national economies] overall, and a massive problem for governments to fix."
Another major concern is the risk that companies simply run out of resources they need to operate, said Andrea Moffat, of the US-based investor lobby group Ceres, whose members include more than 80 funds with assets worth more than US$8tn. An example was the estimated loss of 20,000 jobs and $1bn last year for agricultural companies because of water shortages in California, said Moffat.
![[image]](http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/5716/environmentcosts1902.jpg "[image]")
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/20....onmental-damage
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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 #49 on Feb 23, 2010, 10:05pm » | |
U.N. says emissions vows not enough to avoid rise of 2 degrees C
By Sunanda Creagh
Posted 2010/02/23 at 8:13 am EST
NUSA DUA, Indonesia, Feb. 23, 2010 (Reuters) — Emission cuts pledges made by 60 countries will not be enough to keep the average global temperature rise at 2 degrees Celsius or less, modeling released on Tuesday by the United Nations says.
![[image]](http://img682.imageshack.us/img682/6213/20100223t131344z01btre6.jpg "[image]")
Argentina's Perito Moreno glacier calves blocks of ice near the city of El Calafate, in the Patagonian province of Santa Cruz, December 15, 2009. REUTERS/Marcos Brindicci
Scientists say temperatures should be limited to a rise of no more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 F) above pre-industrial times if devastating climate change is to be avoided.
Yearly greenhouse gas emissions should not be more than 40 and 48.3 gigatonnes of CO2-equivalent in 2020 and should peak between 2015 and 2021, according to new modeling released on Tuesday by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
Keeping within that range and cutting global emissions by between 48 percent and 72 percent between 2020 and 2050 will give the planet a "medium" or 50-50 chance of staying within the 2 degree limit, said the report, which was based on modeling by nine research centres.
However, the same study found that the world is likely to go over those targets. The pledges were made by nations that signed up to the Copenhagen Accord.
"The expected emissions for 2020 range between 48.8 to 51.2 gigatonnes of CO2-equivalent, based on whether high or low pledges will be fulfilled," the report said.
In other words, even in a best-case scenario where all countries implement their promised cuts, the total amount of emissions produced would still be between 0.5 and 8.8 gigatonnes over what scientists see as tolerable.
Greenhouse gas levels are rising, particularly for carbon dioxide, because more is remaining in the atmosphere than natural processes can deal with.
Carbon dioxide is naturally taken up and released by plants and the oceans but mankind's burning of fossil fuels such as coal for power and destruction of forests means the planet's annual "carbon budget" is being exceeded.
OTHER OPTIONS
UNEP's executive director Achim Steiner said the bleak prediction should motivate countries to make more ambitious cuts.
"The message is not to sit back and resign and say we will never make it," he told reporters in Nusa Dua on the Indonesian island of Bali, which is hosting a major U.N. environment meeting.
"But it's not enough at the moment and there are other options that can be mobilised."
Steiner said one such option was more investment in a scheme called reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD), in which poor countries are paid to preserve and enhance their forests.
A state of the environment assessment released by UNEP on Tuesday, the UNEP Year Book 2010, also advocated more investment in REDD.
"It has been estimated that putting $22 billion to $29 billion into REDD would cut global deforestation by 25 percent by 2015," the report said.
Forests soak up large amounts of planet-warming carbon dioxide. Cutting them down and burning the remains releases vast amounts of the gas, exacerbating global warming, scientists say.
REDD is not yet part of a broader climate pact that the U.N. hopes to seal by the end of year at major climate talks in Mexico.
Steiner told reporters a day earlier he expected talks this year to be a tough slog. The Copenhagen climate summit last December ended with a political accord that was not formally adopted and no clarity on the shape of a new climate pact to succeed the current Kyoto Protocol.
"A deal has become more difficult than in Copenhagen. Let's be very frank. The world has moved away, rather than closer, to a deal," he told reporters. "The politics of international negotiation and the economics, the momentum that built up toward Copenhagen will not be there for Mexico."
http://www.newsdaily.com/stories/tre61m23g-us-climate-emissions-study/
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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 #50 on Feb 24, 2010, 7:57pm » | |
Climate wars damage the scientists but we all stand to lose in the battle
It is open season on climate scientists, but such hand-wringing has allowed the creeping rehabilitation of climate scepticism
o David Adam
o guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 23 February 2010 08.00 GMT
![[image]](http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/3633/iceberg8729314.jpg "[image]")
An iceberg melts in Greeland in 2007. Climate change. Environment. Global warming. Photograph: John McConnico/AP
So the case is closed. The release of private emails between climate scientists at the University of East Anglia that show malpractice and conspiracy have had their effect. Public acceptance of the reality of global warming has dipped, politicians are retreating and changes to how science is done and scientists behave are required.
I do not accept this. I believe this seductively simple narrative is based on ignorance, scientific illiteracy and hypocrisy. Worse, it is dangerous and will erode the very public confidence it seeks to restore.
This is perhaps not a common view right now. In newsrooms up and down the country, scandal and hand-wringing are afoot and it is open season on climate science and climate scientists.
Inquiries are under way and if scientists are found guilty of misconduct they should be sacked. If scientific results change as a result, then the corresponding academic papers should be corrected or withdrawn. But if this sorry affair is remembered in a year or so for anything other than yet another attempt to smear the people involved, only then will I accept its significance.
Take the influence on public opinion. A recent BBC poll revealed the number of Britons who believe in climate change has dropped from 44% to 31% since November. A Guardian editorial blamed this on events at East Anglia, a link that was reinforced in a news story. But the poll results do not show this. In fact, they show the opposite. Yes, the decline in overall acceptance is clear, but the pollsters also asked whether respondents had seen media reports of flaws and weaknesses in climate science. Some 57% said yes, and these people were questioned further: have these reports made you more or less convinced of the risks of climate change. Almost three-quarters, 73%, said it made no difference. And while 11% said, yes, the controversies had made them less concerned about the risks, 16% said the reports of flaws and weaknesses had made them even more concerned.
The evidence shows that the battle for hearts and minds in the fight against climate change has been strengthened, not weakened, by the East Anglia affair. It is a bizarre finding and I make no attempt to explain it, only to point out the dangers of rushing to see desired results in a series of data, or a simple narrative in a complicated picture. There is a process that society has developed to avoid such confirmation bias. It is called science.
The headline reduction in acceptance of global warming, incidentally, seems more likely down to the record-breaking cold winter, which 83% of people said they were aware of. The other 17% are clearly made of strong stuff.
When news of the East Anglia emails broke in November, it was a phrase that climate scientists had used a "trick" to "hide the decline" that got most people excited. Media reports, including in this newspaper, reported that climate sceptics believed they had found a smoking gun that proved scientists who worked on global warming were up to no good, and by extension that the problem was exaggerated or a falsehood. This was the "WMD-in-45 minutes" claim that drove the email story around the world and earned it the drearily predictable "climategate" tag. It was also total nonsense. The decline was not in recorded global temperatures, as was sometimes said, but in temperatures inferred from a series of tree rings over the last few decades. The trick is to ignore the obviously faulty information. This statistical technique has its critics, and it raises questions about why the decline occurs and whether earlier data can be relied on, but these questions have been openly addressed by scientists for years. The issue appears in text books and even has its own, rather more pedestrian, name — the divergence problem.
The misrepresentation and lies spread over the divergence problem (and see how the controversy drains from the issue when we call it that) is now widely understood, but the stink it created lingers. Even its collapse was problematic, for it created a vacuum into which a string of other accusations rushed.
To their credit, many discussions of these other issues now try to make clear they do nothing to question the basic science of global warming. But, to many people who do not follow this closely, how can accusations of poor behaviour by climate scientists do anything but?
Chief among these is a claim that a 1990 paper on land surface temperature rise is flawed. Worse, the scientist involved, Phil Jones, the head of the university's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) concealed these flaws. The climate science community has responded to the allegations with a barely concerned shrug of the shoulders. Are they complacent? Closing ranks?
At the heart of the issue are the locations of weather stations in developing China, which provided data for the study. Jones and his colleague Wei-Chyung Wang cannot produce records to verify some locations, and this rightly raises questions. Jones admits it is not best practice. Wang has already been investigated and cleared of misconduct by his university.
Why is this important? Because critics say if the stations have been moved then this invalidates statements in the 1990 paper, and raises questions about subsequent studies that base their conclusions on its findings.
What have they done about it? Nature, the journal that published the 1990 paper, says it has looked into the issue and is happy with the explanation offered by the scientists, but will look again and correct if necessary, it just needs someone to send them specific evidence of a problem. Almost three years after Jones published all the location data he had for the stations on the internet, Nature has yet to receive any such complaint.
Peer review is also under the spotlight. The process by which scientists judge each others work as fit for publication has always been where objective science dashes on the rocks of subjective human opinion, but the emails are alleged to show much worse — censorship, exclusion of critics and deliberate attempts to steer the process to keep away unfavourable results.
Take the last first. Keith Briffa, deputy head of the CRU, is accused of initiating an attempt to have a paper rejected because of an email to a scientist who was reviewing the paper that said: "Confidentially I now need a hard and if required extensive case for rejecting [an unnamed paper] – to support Dave Stahle's and really as soon as you can. Please." Briffa says there was no such attempt, and that he was reminding an overdue referee that he needed the report urgently, which the referee had already indicated would be negative.
In another example, Jones supposedly unfairly rejected a paper that questioned his own results, despite the censored paper offering no supporting method, data or analysis. The peer review system is far from perfect, but it has always been pretty good at keeping out papers that offer no method, data or analysis to support their conclusions.
To view peer review, and the behaviour of working scientists, only through the prism of these private emails, and then diagnose fault and demand change is naive and misguided. It brings to mind the people of the planet Krikkit in Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers Guide series, who, on penetrating a dust cloud shielding their world and witnessing the extent of the universe for the first time, immediately declare war on it, muttering that "it will have to go".
For if peer review is flawed, and it is, then scientists know there is enough slack in the system that such flaws rarely matter. Good papers may bounce from journal to journal, but generally find a home. Bad papers, even those published in good journals, wither on the vine. Fraudulent, or just plain wrong, papers get caught, often when competitors cannot reproduce the reported results.
And if there is bias in peer review, which there is, then it affects all sides. Last year, the high-profile journal Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) published a paper co-authored by Richard Lindzen, a climate expert at MIT and possibly the world's last climate sceptic with serious credentials in the field. The study claimed to show climate models underestimate the amount of heat that escapes from the Earth but, after publication, was taken to pieces by other climate scientists. Some have criticised GRL for even publishing the paper, and claim it got an easy ride because its publisher, the American Geophysical Union, allows authors to suggest a list of friendly reviewers. The AGU, rightly, has not revealed the referees or their comments — and the wheels of science grind on.
It is true the East Anglia emails suggest that Jones and other scientists did not enter the brave new world of open data and Freedom of Information requests with gusto. In fact, they fought it tooth and nail. Any failure to comply with the regulations should be punished, but equally we should not forget the context in which many of these emails were sent. This is a saga that goes back years, to a time before the current widespread political and media concern about climate change. Back to when Al Gore was not a Nobel prize winning campaigner, but a politician blamed for wrecking the Kyoto protocol, and to a time when well-funded climate sceptics faked scientific papers, hijacked debate and routinely spread disinformation about scientists and their work, in far greater numbers than we see now. Climate scientists, left to fight this pretty much alone, were seriously angry with those who they saw as engaged in a systematic effort to undermine their profession.
Yes, some emails are intemperate and unprofessional even. But what exactly are we accusing those involved of? An instruction to delete emails, which were not deleted. A boast, which was not followed through, to keep shoddy papers from the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. A desire to hide behind, apparently legitimate in many cases, technical excuses not to hand over their data to people who they perceived as opponents who refused to play by the rules.
Just as every journalist was squirming in their seat and grateful it was Andrew Gilligan's and not their notebook under such scrutiny in the Hutton review of the David Kelly affair, so biologists, physicists, civil servants, doctors, in fact those in every profession should consider how their reputation would survive if years of private correspondence were filleted for dirt and handed over to critics. This is the broad illumination with which we must judge the behaviour of those involved in the East Anglia affair, not the narrow spotlight of spite and double standards.
It is clear that "climategate" has been a public relations disaster for science and scientists. That is unfair in my view, but things could get worse, and this is where the flawed simple narrative takes a dangerous turn.
A common response to scrutiny of the emails has been to praise the fairness of the scrutineers, an eagerness to see the scientists, so long the good guys, get a kicking in the name of open debate. But it has also encouraged a creeping rehabilitation of climate scepticism. False balance has been restored to the force.
The genuine issues raised by the emails, such as Freedom of Information requests and data sharing, should be debated in public. But such debates are unlikely to stay on these legitimate grounds. There is a reason why the fight between East Anglia and critics over data access rumbled in the specialist press for years without troubling the bulletins or newstands. It's pretty dull. The reasons why the data were not shared? Now there is a story, as long as it involves conspiracy and dodgy dealings, and that it raises doubts about the science of global warming. What do you mean it doesn't? Didn't you hear, they used a trick to hide the decline.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/ci....m-hacked-emails
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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 #51 on Feb 24, 2010, 8:09pm » | |
Reject sceptics' attempts to derail global climate deal, UN chief urges
Ban Ki-moon urges environment ministers to reject attempts by sceptics to undermine negotiations by exaggerating shortcomings in Himalayan glaciers report
* Associated Press
* guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 24 February 2010 10.20 GMT
![[image]](http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/6171/unsecretarygeneralban00.jpg "[image]")
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon (C), on a fact-finding mission for climate change, listens to scientists before boarding a helicopter in Puerto Natales, Patagonia, Chile 10 November 2007. Photograph: Rodrigo Arangua/AFP/Getty Images
The UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, today urged environment ministers to reject attempts by sceptics to undermine efforts to forge a climate change deal, stressing that global warming poses "a clear and present danger."
In a message read by a UN official, Ban referred to the controversy over mistakes made in a 2007 report issued by the UN-affiliated Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which have been criticised by climate sceptics.
Despite the failure to forge a binding deal on curbing heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions at a UN conference in Copenhagen last December, Ban said the meeting made an important step forward by setting a target to keep global temperature from rising and establishing a program of climate aid to poorer nations.
"To maintain the momentum, I urge you to reject last-ditch attempts by climate sceptics to derail your negotiations by exaggerating shortcomings in the ... report," Ban said in the statement read at the start of an annual UN meeting of environmental officials from 130 countries on the Indonesian resort island of Bali.
"Tell the world that you unanimously agree that climate change is a clear and present danger," Ban said. A British poll yesterday showed public conviction about the threat of climate change has declined sharply in the last year.
The Indonesian president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, said time was running out, but expressed confidence that a binding climate change deal could be forged at the next climate change summit later this year in Cancun, Mexico.
"I'm convinced that we're still not too late," he said at the Bali conference.
Indonesian foreign minister, Marty Natalegawa, said Indonesia will hold an informal meeting of all environmental ministers and officials from 130 countries Friday in Bali to discuss ways of ensuring that a binding treaty on greenhouse gas cutbacks could be forged in Cancun.
"No sealed deal happened in Copenhagen, so it's now more urgent than ever for us to work diligently between now and Mexico," Natalegawa told The Associated Press in an interview.
"It should have been urgent last year, but we didn't live up to that urgency," he said.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/24/ban-ki-moon-un-reject-sceptics
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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 #52 on Feb 27, 2010, 1:41am » | |
Tough love in a troubled climate
Richard Black | 14:05 UK time, Friday, 26 February 2010
Forget the Norfolk police's criminal investigation, reviews commissioned by universities in the UK and US, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) internal deliberations.
Governments have now demanded - and will get - an independent review into how the IPCC conducts its work and how well its conclusions stand up to scrutiny.
The precise terms of reference are being decided even now.
But the decision - taken at the governing council meeting of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in Bali - potentially offers everyone a way out of the mire currently engulfing climate science, from top-name researchers to the Joe and Joanna Public whose taxes fund them and who expect them to get things right.
The review should be finished within about six months, and the results discussed - and changes instituted - at the IPCC's meeting in October.
This would allow the organisation to re-shape itself prior to major work beginning on the next big global assessment, due out in 2013.
In some quarters this is being touted as an investigation of IPCC chair Rajendra Pachauri, who certainly annoyed some (not least in the Indian government) when he initially rebutted criticism of the Himalayan glacier date error in a manner lacking much diplomacy.
In fact, though, it is envisaged as a process that will be thorough and rigorous, but constructive; what you might summarise as "tough love".
There is no point in governments either soft-soaping or lambasting the organisation to the extent that it loses all its credibility. After all, its conclusions should in principle have a major role in determining what policy options those self-same governments pursue in the arenas of disaster preparedness and energy supply.
So yes, it is possible that Dr Pachauri will not survive the process; and indeed it is possible that he will not want to, if the job description gets so heavily amended that continuing would result in him having to give up all his other interests.
But there are more important questions to be addressed.
To what extent do conclusions of the IPCC's fourth assessment report (AR4) from 2007 stand up to scrutiny?
Should its processes for gathering and sifting information be amended - and in particular, is there a case for excluding "grey literature" (anything other than peer-reviewed science)?
Does it select its major contributors as objectively as it should? Does it communicate its conclusions effectively to policymakers and the public?
"Climate-sceptical" organisations may already be in ecstasy about a process that - they will argue - may bring down the IPCC, and by extension block political moves towards regulating greenhouse gas emissions.
And this, in turn, may prompt some people involved with the IPCC to put their heads in their hands and complain that the last thing they need is another process that will see lances levelled at the edifice of anthropogenic climate change.
That, I suggest, would be a mistake. Many commentators sympathetic to the organisation have insisted in recent months that it could do with a dose of reform; so why not have reforms recommended by a review that aims for a constructive outcome, rather than by a host of unsympathetic and unaccountable bloggers whose scientific or pseudo-scientific utterings are sometimes impelled by political theologies?
As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, reform ideas for the IPCC produced by sympathetic academics so far include producing shorter, more focused and more intelligible reports; setting itself up as a wiki-form web-based platform; and farming out parts of its function to regional organisations or national science academies.
There are some who've argued that because the actual number of mistakes in the AR4 was triflingly small, there is no need for review or reform.
But in significant parts of politics, the media and the public, that argument has already been lost, and now it has been lost in reality as well; the review will happen.
What we can expect from it depends on its precise terms of reference. But conclusions we might expect, I suggest, would include:
* unequivocal backing for the overall conclusion that anthropogenic greenhouse warming is happening and does present real dangers to some societies
*
* "professionalisation" of the IPCC - ie having full-time staff dominating the process rather than a disparate grouping of academics, many of whom give their services gratis
*
* tightening of rules for using "grey literature" - abandoning it entirely is not really feasible given that the IPCC's remit includes areas such as economics where data has to be drawn from government agencies
*
* streamlining the process of disseminating conclusions. A partial example of how that might be done emerged last week with the publication of a "consensus" study into climate change and hurricanes, which observers with long memories will note saw academics previously opposed, Kerry Emanuel and Chris Landsea, joined in academic embrace. And the World Meteorological Organization has just signalled a push for much greater transparency and clarity in providing data.
Tantalising questions remain. Will long-time critics be invited on board, either for the review or during the compilation of future reports?
Is there a way to involve the Roger Pielkes and the Steve McIntyres more constructively, making use of their expertise while also ensuring that the conclusions of self-appointed climate auditors are subject to audit themselves?
Do we need all major scientific papers on climate to be available to all, rather than hidden from most behind the subscription-only business plans of journals such as Nature and Science?
Another reason for getting such a review up and running now is that in June, governments are due to decide whether they will establish an organisation loosely modelled on the IPCC that will collate and sift scientific evidence on biodiversity loss.
Proper assessment of the IPCC's qualities and faults should help build a strong foundation for that organisation, if it comes into existence. Continued doubts over the IPCC could, on the other hand, make governments less likely to sanction investment in a parallel body.
Although governments have decided the IPCC needs a review, they have also decided that the world needs an IPCC. And that should come as welcome news to those who feared that a tide of "denialism" was about to swamp the world's body politic.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/....olices_cri.html
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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 #53 on Feb 27, 2010, 8:41pm » | |
Is the climate change movement splintering?
Climate change activists are regrouping post-Copenhagen – and some are reasserting their radical roots
![[image]](http://img715.imageshack.us/img715/1498/ecoactivistsreflectedi0.jpg "[image]")
Activists reflected in a police riot shield at the Climate Camp near Kingsnorth power station in Kent, August 4, 2008. Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA
The climate change movement is dead, long live the climate change movement! was the proclamation made last week by Rising Tide North America, as green campaigners around the world begin coming to terms with the switchback ride of the last three months.
"A particular model of dealing with climate change is dying. It is revealing itself before the world as nothing more than a final scramble for the remaining resources of a planet in peril," states a quote from Naomi Klein at the beginning of the document, before stating:
Many in the climate movement have grown all too cosy with the status quo. The 'bold' action they call for will result in the privatisation of the air, to be divided up by mega-polluters. Their demands for carbon neutrality seek to offset our problems onto poor countries while the rich keep burning and consuming. Those who still cling to the old climate movement have committed themselves to a sinking ship.
It comes out against a backdrop of restlessness, as activists take stock of where they have been and where they are going. Now that the climate talks in Copenhagen have failed, the activists who campaigned inside and outside the Bella Centre are subsiding naturally into two groups – those who didn't want a deal in the first place, and those who did.
People in the latter group, which includes campaign groups such as UK Youth Climate Coalition and the umbrella group tck tck tck, are devastated. As Gemma Bone, one of UKYCC's members puts it; "I didn't expect that there would be a final agreement, but I did think that we would make some kind of progress, and that this year would be all about finalising details. Now it's not clear how the UN process will even go forward. It's absolutely knocked me for six."
But activists in the former group – including Climate Camp, Rising Tide and Climate Justice Network – are more positive. A spokesman for Rising Tide said: "To be honest we never expected a deal at Copenhagen. We don't want an international agreement." Like many activists he is profoundly sceptical about the ability of a carbon trading market – one of the central mechanism of any international agreement – to deliver real reductions in emissions of carbon dioxide.
In fact Copenhagen and the failure of the meeting has in some ways liberated activists. Climate Campers, for example, have been discussing being more upfront about their anarchist and anti-capitalist roots. In the Climate Camp reader which was circulated in January, writers suggested that the camp had been "hijacked by a hardcore of liberals" and asked if it might be time to be more open about the anarchist, anti-capitalist core to the camp.
In many cases the focus is shifting from global action to local issues, such as fossil-fuel power plants or mines. Rising Tide North America's document calls for "an asymmetrical assault on the fossil fuel industry" while in the UK and in Europe campaigners are also planning to focus more on local grassroots campaigns, "to start from the bottom" as the Rising Tide spokesman put it.
The global network that was formed in Copenhagen, as activist groups from around the world worked together to organise the giant march and the Step Up the Resistance demonstration outside the Bella Centre, will also be in correspondence. Nicola Bullard of Focus on the Global South and Climate Justice Network, will be attending the People's World Conference on Climate Change in Bolivia this Easter, along with representatives from Climate Camp, Via Campesina and Jubilee South.
But there is no plan to return to the old summit-hopping ways of the anti-capitalist movement, following the G20 and the WTO from conference to conference. "We need to carry on building on the simple principles that we've established, which held us together in Copenhagen," says Bullard. She agrees that the main focus now has to be getting on with what is already happening. "Sometimes the issue is just too big, too contingent on everything else going on around you. Sometimes, to be honest, you just have to start to do the work."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/feb/25/climate-change-movement
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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 #54 on Feb 27, 2010, 8:43pm » | |
Yvo de Boer reveals KPMG job was lined up before Copenhagen summit
Outgoing UN climate chief says he met with accountancy firm in November, believing he did not have the 'stamina' to continue overseeing efforts to reach a new global climate deal
* David Adam, environment correspondent
* guardian.co.uk, Thursday 25 February 2010 16.00 GMT
The UN's top climate change official had already lined up a new job before the ill-fated Copenhagen summit that left international talks on global warming in limbo, he said today.
Yvo de Boer said he met with KPMG in November to discuss a new role with the accountancy firm, and that he did not have the "stamina" to continue overseeing efforts to reach a new global climate deal.
De Boer announced his resignation as executive secretary of the UN climate convention last week, prompting speculation he was forced out by politicians unhappy with the Copenhagen outcome.
"This isn't the sort of job you get in six weeks after Copenhagen," said de Boer of his new position. "When Copenhagen failed to deliver what I had hoped, I thought maybe I should put it on ice and stick around for a while to see it through. But it could take another two years ... and I don't think I've got the stamina."
He said the job had put his personal life under strain. "This is the best job in the world but you shouldn't try to do it for too long, especially if you are married and you want your wife and children to recognise you."
His replacement should perhaps be drawn from a developing nation, he said.
De Boer insisted that the Copenhagen meeting marked "very significant" political progress, but conceded that there was "absolutely miles to go" before a new deal could be finalised. "I don't think we will get a legally binding treaty in 2010," he said.
The best that can be achieved is an "operational architecture" that could be turned into a deal, though he raised questions about its eventual legal status. "Legally binding is a term that means many things to many people. I've never heard of a prime minister being arrested for not meeting a target."
He said a major stumbling block to an agreement remained the mistrust between the developing and developed countries over climate finance. Rich countries had offered "recycled contributions from the past" he said, while the build-up to the Copenhagen meeting had focused too much on the issue of binding emission reduction targets.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/25/yvo-de-boer-kpmg
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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 #55 on Feb 27, 2010, 8:47pm » | |
The US Chamber of Commerce: A record of obstruction on climate action
In 1883, New York faced an environmental crisis, but intervention from the city's Chamber of Commerce led to the creation of the Adirondack Park - a move that is a far cry from the US Chamber of Commerce today.
* Shaun Goho for Yale Environment 360, part of the Guardian Environment Network
* guardian.co.uk, Friday 26 February 2010 11.25 GMT
![[image]](http://img46.imageshack.us/img46/1605/canoeingonpondinadiro00.jpg "[image]")
The New York Chamber of Commerce was the unlikely champion of environmental protection of the Adirondacks in 1883. Photograph: Amos; James L.
In 1883, New York faced an environmental crisis. Water levels were falling in the state's rivers and canals, impeding travel and shipping. Scientists and editorial writers placed the blame on the logging and burning of the Adirondacks, which prevented the forests from exercising their usual moderating influence on stream flows. With the loss of the forests, it was feared, the steady release of water would be replaced by a cycle of floods and low water.
To make matters worse, these impacts were the result of logging only on the fringes of the Adirondack region. But in 1883, the Adirondack Railroad Company proposed to build a line through the heart of the forest. The inevitable expansion of logging into the interior would, in the words of a New York Tribune article, result in "disastrous climatic changes, ... wasting freshets and parching drou[ghts]."
As the newspapers filled with editorials calling for the protection of the "North Woods," an unlikely champion of environmental protection responded: the New York Chamber of Commerce. A chamber committee proposed that the state purchase up to 4 million acres and "keep it for all time as a great forest preserve." This was the crucial first step toward the creation in 1892 of the Adirondack Park, which today encompasses 6 million acres and is the largest publicly protected area in the contiguous United States. Given the powerful railroad and timber interests arrayed on the other side, the birth of the park would not have been possible without the early advocacy of the chamber.
Contrast this history with the actions of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce today. The chamber, by far the largest lobbying force on Capitol Hill — having spent more than $65 million in 2009 — is actively campaigning against meaningful climate change legislation. It is also taking a lead role in challenging the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) attempts to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. More fundamentally, it continues to cast doubt on climate change science and sow fears through exaggerated claims about the economic consequences of greenhouse gas regulation.
These influential business lobbies, acting 125 years apart, took two sharply different approaches to the most pressing environmental issues of the day. Their divergent paths cast the U.S. chamber in a sorry light, and ensure that it will one day be judged harshly by history.
One major difference between the two groups is that the New York chamber sought out — and followed — the advice of scientists. That era, too, had its deniers. One member of the State Assembly suggested that "the Hudson River is an arm of the sea, subject to tides, and there will be plenty of water upon which to float the commerce of the State if not a drop of water flows into it from the Adirondack region." The chamber did not side with those views, but instead followed the advice of scientists like Charles Sprague Sargent, director of the Arnold Arboretum at Harvard. Sargent told the chamber that "no doubt could possibly exist as to the necessity of putting a stop to the work of destruction now going on in the Adirondacks."
By contrast, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has a long history of disputing the human impact on climate and of promoting the work of climate change deniers. In 2001, William Kovacs — then the Chamber's Vice President of Environmental Policy — claimed in an appearance on CNNfn that "there's no link between greenhouse gases and human activity." In a 2008 memo to the Chamber's Board of Directors, chamber President Thomas J. Donohue claimed that "scientific inquiry" into global warming "should continue... given the recent reports indicating a cooling trend." The National Chamber Foundation, the chamber's nonprofit affiliate, named books by climate change deniers among its top ten recommended books of 2008 and 2009.
Moving from words to actions, last spring the chamber formally challenged the findings underlying the EPA's decision that greenhouse gas emissions endanger the public health and welfare and should therefore be regulated. Kovacs claimed that the goal of this challenge was to create the "Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century" — a reference to the infamous prosecution of a Tennessee schoolteacher for his teaching of evolution in the 1920s. According to Kovacs, a public hearing on the endangerment finding "would be the science of climate change on trial." This month, the chamber became one of more than a dozen groups, states, and corporations filing petitions to block the EPA from regulating carbon dioxide emissions.
A second key difference between the two chambers is that the New York chamber took a broad and long view of its members' economic interests. The timber and railroad industries stood to make large profits from the destruction of the Adirondack forest. Nevertheless, the New York chamber focused not on these lost short-term profits but on the potentially devastating long-term economic impacts of Adirondack deforestation for all of its members. Declining stream flows meant, Harper's Weekly wrote, that "agriculture will suffer, manufactures will languish for want of power, and the great internal waterways of the continent will be rendered useless for commercial interchanges."
Today, the U.S. chamber appears not to recognize the economic threat posed by climate change. Instead, the chamber's leadership continues to trot out exaggerated and one-sided claims about how the regulation of greenhouse gases would eliminate jobs and "strangle the economy." While some companies in the fossil fuel and power sectors will face reductions in profits under a cap-and-trade scheme, the long-term consequences of unchecked climate change will be harmful and expensive for everyone.
In fact, as many forward-looking companies recognize, cap-and-trade legislation will be good for business. Among other things, it will provide incentives for U.S. businesses to invest in the next generation of clean energy technologies. This impetus is long overdue, as the country falls behind China and Europe in this area. In an unprecedented show of dissent, corporations such as Apple, Exelon, Johnson & Johnson, Nike, and Pacific Gas and Electric have either renounced their membership in the chamber or expressed dismay at the chamber's position. Moreover, many local chambers — including the Greater New York Chamber of Commerce, the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, and the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce — have distanced themselves from the U.S. chamber on climate change.
In recent months, the chamber, apparently stung by the series of resignations and the withering criticism in the press, appears to have softened its tone. But underneath the new rhetoric there appears to be little, if any, change in substance. The chamber's chief legal officer said the chamber was not challenging "scientific issues related to climate change." Yet despite that statement, the chamber continues to do all it can to block any regulation of planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions, clearly demonstrating that it has still not learned the lessons that the New York chamber mastered more than 125 years ago. The U.S. chamber still stubbornly refuses to acknowledge the scientific consensus that climate change is real and it continues to brush aside the serious economic risks that climate change poses.
In the words of Peter Darbee, chairman and CEO of Pacific Gas & Electric, "an intellectually honest argument over the best policy response to the challenges of climate change is one thing; disingenuous attempts to diminish or distort the reality of these challenges are quite another."
As long as the chamber adopts the latter approach, it cannot be a legitimate participant in the public debate on cap-and-trade legislation.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/20....ruction-climate
|
"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 #56 on Feb 27, 2010, 8:49pm » | |
UN climate heads call for consensus and urge attempts to rebuild trust
UN climate chiefs meet in Bali, admitting they face 'existential challenge' after failure of Copenhagen climate change talks
* Associated Press
* guardian.co.uk, Friday 26 February 2010 18.20 GMT
Environmental officials on Friday urged industrialised and developing countries to stop bickering in climate change negotiations, as a Chinese delegate accused rich nations of reneging on commitments to fight global warming.
Officials from more than 100 countries are attending an annual UN environmental meeting on Indonesia's resort island of Bali. They said trust must be restored among nations following the failure at talks in Copenhagen in December create a binding accord on cutting CO2 emissions.
"There was a very strong message from many countries that this is actually an existential challenge," Indonesian foreign minister Marty Natalegawa told a news conference.
"One overriding sentiment" expressed by many countries "was the need to rebuild confidence, to address the question of trust deficit," he said.
At Copenhagen, nations only agreed on a voluntary plan to tackle climate change. Representatives from more than 190 nations will meet in Cancún, Mexico, in November for another attempt to reach a binding agreement.
The aim is to keep the global average temperature from rising more than 2C above pre-industrial levels.
UN scientists have said any temperature rise above that figure could lead to catastrophic sea-level rises, threatening islands and coastal cities.
Despite the call for harmony, Chinese foreign ministry official Guo Zaofeng said developed countries had not lived up to their past commitments to cut greenhouse gases, nor had they provided funds and technology to poor countries grappling with climate change.
"This way, they've broken the atmosphere of trust," Guo said. "This is why we did not get quicker progress during the negotiations."
China, the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases, has already said it would cut its "carbon intensity" – a measure of CO2 emissions per unit of production – by 40-45% by 2020, from 2005 levels.
The head of the US delegation in the Bali meeting, Kerri-Ann Jones, refused to comment on Guo's remarks. She said the Copenhagen meeting had made progress, citing a plan for aid and technological support for poor countries.
"It's a very difficult challenge that we're facing," Jones said. "We have to keep working on the positive side. I think we can advance."
UN climate chief Yvo de Boer said on Thursday it was unlikely that a binding agreement could be forged in the Cancún meetings.
"It's very close to the deadline, and that's a problem," de Boer said. He said the focus should shift toward reaching an agreement at a summit in South Africa in 2011 before the Kyoto protocol, which set emissions targets for industrial countries, expires in 2012.
De Boer, who helped kickstart the climate talks in 2007 on replacing the Kyoto protocol, last week announced he would leave the job in July, but said his decision had nothing to do with the outcome of the Copenhagen meeting.
Following talks at Copenhagen, 60 nations – including China, the United States and the 27-member European Union – last month submitted non-binding pledges to the UN for cutting emissions.
Together, the countries produce 78% of the world's greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/26/un-climate-existential-crisis
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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 #57 on Mar 2, 2010, 9:33am » | |
Climate-gate head sorry for 'awful' emails
* From correspondents in London
* From: AFP
* March 02, 2010 1:20PM
A BRITISH climate researcher at the centre of a row over global warming science has admitted he wrote some "pretty awful" emails to sceptics when he was refusing their requests for data.
But Phil Jones, of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit, yesterday defended his decision not to release the data about temperatures from around the world, saying it was not "standard practice" to do so.
"I have obviously written some pretty awful emails," Prof Jones told British lawmakers in response to a question about a message he sent to a sceptic in which he refused to release data saying he believed it would be misused.
The admission from the scientist, who has stood aside as director of the climate centre while investigations take place, came at a parliamentary hearing in Britain into the scandal.
The leading research centre came under fire ahead of key climate talks in Copenhagen in December, after more than 1000 emails and 3000 other documents were hacked from the university's server and posted online.
Sceptics claimed they showed evidence scientists were manipulating climate data in a bid to exaggerate the case for manmade global warming as world leaders met to try to strike a new accord on climate change.
Prof Jones - who has said the fallout from the affair prompted him to consider suicide - had referred in one private email to a "trick" being employed to massage temperature statistics to "hide the decline".
He has since insisted the emails had been taken out of context and labelled allegations that he sought to exaggerate warming evidence as "complete rubbish".
Defending his attempts to not release some of the data requested, Prof Jones said it was publicly available in the United States, adding scientific journals which published his papers had never asked to see it.
The academic also said the unit struggled after being hit by a "deluge" of requests for data last July, made under freedom-of-information legislation.
Eighty per cent of the data used to create a series of average global temperatures showing the world was getting warmer had been released, said the scientist.
Prof Jones also insisted the scientific findings on climate change were robust and verifiable.
http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/cli....0-1225836108061
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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 #58 on Mar 6, 2010, 2:15am » | |
'Case stronger' on climate change
By Pallab Ghosh
Science correspondent, BBC News
A review from the UK Met Office says it is becoming clearer that human activities are causing climate change.
It says the evidence is stronger now than when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change carried out its last assessment in 2007.
The analysis, published in the Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews Climate Change Journal, has assessed 110 research papers on the subject.
It says the Earth is changing rapidly, probably because of greenhouse gases.
In 2007 the IPCC's report concluded that there was "unequivocal" evidence that the Earth was warming and it was likely that it was due to burning of fossil fuels.
Since then the evidence that human activities are responsible for a rise in temperatures has increased, according to this new assessment by Dr Peter Stott and colleagues at the UK Met Office.
The Met Office study comes at a time when some have questioned the entire basis of climate science following recent controversies over the handling of research findings by the IPCC and the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.
Dr Stott denies that the study has been published as part of a fight back by the climate research community.
"We started writing this paper a year ago. I think it's important to communicate to people what the science is showing and that's why I'm talking about this paper."
'Consistent picture'
The study, which looks at research published since the IPCC's report, has found that changes in Arctic sea ice, atmospheric moisture, saltiness of parts of the Atlantic Ocean and temperature changes in the Antarctic are consistent with human influence on our climate.
"What this study shows is that the evidence has strengthened for human influence on climate and we know that because we've looked at evidence across the climate system and what this shows very clearly is a consistent picture of a warming world," said Dr Stott.
The study brings together other research from a range of disciplines.
"We hadn't [until now] looked in detail at how the climate system was changing," says Dr Stott.
"[Our paper looks at] not just the temperatures but also the reducing Arctic sea ice and it includes changing rainfall patterns and it includes the fact that the atmosphere is getting more humid.
"And all these different aspects of the climate system are adding up to a picture of the effects of a human influence on our climate."
The Met Office study said that it was harder to find a firm link between climate change and individual extreme weather conditions - even though models predicted that extreme events were more likely.
According to the report: "Extremes pose a particular challenge, since rare events are by definition, poorly sampled in the historical record and many challenges remain for robustly attributing regional changes in extreme events such as droughts, floods and hurricanes."
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/8550090.stm
Published: 2010/03/05 03:19:04 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
Admin
member is offline
Joined: Apr 2003
Gender: Male
Posts: 50,822
Location: Sydney, Australia
| | Re: The Propaganda Continues VI
« Reply #59 on Mar 11, 2010, 10:55am » | |
An interesting view of the cause of Climate Change from the world's principal polluter and architect of the collapse of the Copenhagen Summit:
Climate change is a fact, says China
By China correspondent Stephen McDonell
Updated Thu Mar 11, 2010 10:13am AEDT
A deputy director of China's most powerful economic ministry has come out swinging against climate change denial.
Senior Chinese government figures have described the view that climate change is not man-made as an "extreme" stance which is out of step with mainstream thought.
The comments were made during China's annual sitting of the National People's Congress.
During the congress, a series of press conferences are held which, in many cases, are the only chance to put questions to members of China's power elite.
Last night, one such press conference was held on the subject of climate change.
The ABC asked the panel what they thought of the view that climate change had nothing to do with human activity and was in fact a natural phenomenon.
Xie Zhenhua, a deputy director at China's powerful economic ministry, the National Development and Reform Commission, answered that he believed that made-made climate change denial is, at best, a very marginal view.
"Climate change is a fact based on long-time observations by countries around the world," he said.
"There are two different views regarding the causes for global warming.
"The mainstream view is that climate change is caused by burning of fossil fuel in the course of industrialisation.
"There's a more extreme view which holds that human activity has only an imperceptible impact on the natural system."
He said the responsibility for this climate change rested squarely with the Western world, so the onus was on it to clean up the mess caused in the rush to industrialisation.
"The climate in China is warming. It's something every one of us can feel," he said.
"Climate change is having an impact on China in terms of the instability of agricultural output.
"There's now more flooding in the south of China and increasing shortages of water in the north. Forests and grasslands are being eroded and there are more typhoons and storm surges along our coast.
"So, if you look ahead to the long term, climate change may have a huge impact on China's food security and the life and property of our people."
The chairman of the Congress Environmental and Resources Protection Committee, Wang Guangtao, also spoke.
He acknowledged there were some experts who believed current statistics on climate change were not reliable enough.
But he said that merely meant more work needed to be done on the minutiae of the statistics.
He said that did not detract from the pressing need to reduce fossil fuels and expand the world's forest coverage.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/03/11/2842415.htm
|
"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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