Arab News editorializes on the recently concluded Copenhagen Climate talks finding that all that was accomplished was to kick the ball down the road. It says that delegates seemed more than willing to simply sign an anodyne agreement and get out of Denmark, though what little that was achieved seems to have annoyed developing countries to no end.
AFTER 12 days of wrangling, the UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen effectively ended with an agreement to agree at some later date. It, therefore, was not simply all the hot air generated in hours of often-furious argument that has damaged the climate change issue. The way in which realpolitik asserted itself to the detriment of the vast majority of the 192 countries that turned up to have their say, left many very unhappy delegates heading for home Saturday night.
In the end it all came down to US President Barack Obama. He flew in aboard Air Force One, lectured the summiteers about the need to reaching an agreement but offered no further concessions on behalf of a wary United States. Then he went into private conclave with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, which meeting was later extended to include three other key countries, India, Brazil and South Africa and within hours there emerged the Copenhagen Accord. A shell-shocked summit, less a few delegates who had already flown home in disgust, wearily endorsed the deal Saturday night and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon lauded the breakthrough.
But how real is a deal that has no reference to legally binding targets, plumps for a 2 degree Celsius limit when many countries claimed 1.5 degrees was the maximum that should be allowed, promises $100 billion a year to developing countries without saying who is going to pay these immense sums, fails to agree on any firm monitoring process and gives no firm framework on the much-touted carbon-trading markets?
…
The editorial points out that the science of global warming was pushed to the background in favor of the politics of global warming. It notes that support for major actions to combat it is plunging among Americans on the heels of the ‘Climategate’ reports. The Rasmussen polling organization finds that American attitudes are shifting significantly, with 50% now believing that global warming is the result of ‘long term planetary trends’. If that is the case, then there’s nothing much a treaty is going to do to stop it; massive restructuring of economies around the world won’t either.
A Wall St. Journal blog reports that the OPEC countries, led by Saudi Arabia, had raised a ruckus before the conference on the issue of being made whole for any losses to income that resulted from political decisions which would harm their economies. As it turned out, OPEC was largely silent because nothing from the conference ended up in the least threatening.
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December:20:2009 - 10:18
Rasmussen has questionable polling technique when it comes to “issues polling.” It did a good job predicting Obama’s victory because in that the question was pretty direct. But when it comes to issues polling, it’s off the scale wrong. Part of it is the way they frame questions, like asking if Democrats should seek a “reasonable” amount of GOP support for health care reform, or clumping “somewhat opposed” with “strongly opposed” and calling it “opposed.”
And more important: most pollsters say automated phone calling is not a very accurate polling technique, especially when you ask questions with subjective determinants like “reasonable.” The way the question is framed and uttered by a robot will play a role in whether the person stays on the line to push a button and answer or not. (I’d be curious to know how many hang-ups Rasmussen gets with this ridiculous automated polling technology.)
Proof of Rasmussen questionable results can be monitored day by day by looking at realclearpoltics.com presidential approval index of all polls.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_obama_job_approval-1044.html#polls
Rasmussen is always, ALWAYS, the outlier. Outlier polls are to be dismissed, period. That’s a fact of polling: drop the outliers at either end because their techniques are flawed. Indexing the rest will give you a good idea of public approval, as RCP does.
Citing Rasmussen is to conservative what citing Michael Moore is to liberals. As soon as I hear either name, I dismiss the person’s argument as selectively biased.
PS: We all know where Fox stands on issues. That Rasmussen is a regular (probably paid) contributor to Fox should raise a red flag that no matter what the truth is, using his research as evidence is bollocks.
December:20:2009 - 10:32
Okay, here’s one from Washington Post/ABC.
December:20:2009 - 12:02
There’s considerable difference between:
“50% think global warming is caused primarily by long-term planetary trends” (what does “primarily” mean?)
and
“four in 10 Americans now saying that they place little or no trust in what scientists have to say about the environment.”
The WaPo/ABC poll also suggest most Americans support doing something to reduce emissions, which suggests that while they may not trust science they’re at least morally aware of our need to do something, even if they don’t know exactly what the repercussion of not doing anything is.
December:20:2009 - 12:15
In this context, ‘primarily’ means that human activity has little or nothing to do with global warming.
If that is so, then what is there to suggest that human activity (or changes in it) will have anything to do with reversing global warming?
The two state positions are contradictory, logically speaking. But people are illogical all the time. Here, I suspect it means, “We’ll cover our bets, just in case.”
I’m much happier to approach the issue in the way Bjorn Lindstrom suggested: Spend the money, when and as needed, in mitigation not prevention. That covers all bases, whether you believe in AGW or not.
Germane to this, there’s a volcano in the Philippines–Mayon—that’s about to erupt. The last volcanic eruption from the Philippines, 1991′s Mt. Pinatubo, threw more greenhouse gases into the air than, according to some experts, 100 years of human activity. (Here’s a USGS report.) At present, mankind lacks volcano-sized corks to stop thing like this.
It strikes me as manifest hubris to think that human activity plays such a critical role in global environment.
We won’t get into the issues of Climategate, as for instance, whether man-made global warming is the result of man-made tinkering with the data…
December:20:2009 - 13:44
I think you come to a good point. I’m not a scientist and I’m not going to take a stand on something I don’t fully understand.
However I do know that there are anthropogenic causes for air pollution, destruction of ecosystems, deforestation, desertification, water contamination, extinction of species, birth defects, starvation and myriad other problems that are directly caused by a economic philosophy based on perpetual growth by ever increasing consumption.
Also. I didn’t look at the whole USGS survey you linked, but I did read this sentence:
“The Pinatubo climate forcing was stronger than the opposite, warming effects of either the El Niño event or anthropogenic greenhouse gases in the period 1991-93.”
That sounds like 3 years not 100 years.
But to me it’s moot. There are enough asthmatic kids in the Bronx to suggest we probably should be doing something about our crass consumption of resources that results in pollution that affects us more directly than the prospect of polar bears going extinct (at least in the wild) in our lifetime.
December:20:2009 - 13:52
I think both – geological factors as well as human activity are responsible. We should acknowledge and try to build better technology. But easier said than done.
December:20:2009 - 16:20
All the things you cite are true enough. But it is faulty logic to go: “A is bad”, “B is bad”, “C is bad”: therefore “N is bad”. N might be bad, but its badness must be established on its own grounds. Yes, mankind can make a mess of the climate/environment/biosphere. It’s been doing that since there were thousands of humans in any one place. Mankind changes them to work for him. All of Europe was once heavily forested. Those forests were mostly gone (except in the east) by the 15th C., which is why companies like the Baltic Exchange got started. It’s part of what pushed Europe to expand like mad into the New World.
Man’s actions can also undo damage. Forests in Massachusetts, for example, now cover more area than they have since 1800.
Man’s actions can also rectify what it considers to be nature’s mistake–e.g., the way the Netherlands has pushed back the seas.
But it can only do what is within its means to do, physically, psychologically, financially. If global warming is the result of something going on with the sun–a serious argument made by serious scientists–just what can the UN (or the US, or China, or Europe) do about that? If it’s the result of some yet-unknown physical process–we do know that the earth was significantly warmer at periods in the past; we know that there have been periods when the density of CO2 was hundreds of times higher in the past; we know that the two don’t always go together and often a rise in temperature precedes, not follows, CO2 rises–how can we smartly try to reverse it?
The actions being pressed by those who see dire danger in anthropogenic global warming don’t come free. At the least, they will call for spending trillions of dollars on things that may or may not work. They will turn the industrial bases of most nations upside down. That’s not a decision to be made after sleeping on it for a couple of nights. I won’t argue about those who think that there are simply too many humans on the planet and a massive die-off is the solution.
The USGS survey was the first one I had at hand; I’ve seen others finding the 100-year result. I’ll look for a link for you.
But still, let’s accept the three years How many active volcanoes are there in the world? Most estimates put the number around 1,500, not counting under-sea volcanoes. About a dozen of those are considered to be in danger of erupting like Pinatubo, that is, massively and at any time. This doesn’t include huge volcanoes, like Mt. Tambora, whose 1815 eruption led to the 1816 ‘Year without a Summer’. Is there anything that man does on this scale?
As the UN’s earlier IPPC reports come under greater scrutiny, it’s beginning to look as though it’s not ’25,000 of the world’s top climatologists’ who are the ‘consensus’, but rather only 50-60 who propose the theory of AGW. How they came by their data is coming into question, as are their motives for obscuring or losing original data and finding ways to evade Freedom of Information document requests. That provides a very shaky foundation on which to engineer a massive restructuring of the global economy and industry.
December:21:2009 - 05:36
We’re not going to come up with a consensus on this, because I refuse to throw a bunch of claims into this debate. I will address on issue that I am familiar with: reforestation: the damage to old-growth ecosystems that developed over billions of years is not “undone” by turning the land into basically tree farms. Our reforestation is outsourced to the same companies that weeded out the ecosystems in the first place. Replacing those ecosystems with tree farms with no undergrowth is not “undoing the damage.”
The link you provide seems to focus on simply counting a number of tree species than and now. I’m sure there’s a very good reasons to conduct such a study, but it’s not claiming that the natural state of Massachusetts has been more than replaced, as you claim.
“a serious argument made by serious scientists”
I would love to see these claims backed with links that actually say what you claim. I’m happy to read any peer-reviewed scientific documentation that says global warming is caused solely by natural forces. The cool down and warming up periods of the last ice age took thousands of years. I don’t think this rapid process going on right now is the same phenomenon.
“The USGS survey was the first one I had at hand; I’ve seen others finding the 100-year result”
I’ve learned to scrutinize people’s links.
“only 50-60 who propose the theory of AGW”
Only 50-60 scientists in the world believe that man is contributing to a global warming process? I don’t believe that, but again I’m happy to scrutinize your source for that claim.
I think what I’m trying to say is that I’m not trying to make an argument here by throwing out a series of factual claims.
I know global warming is occurring; anyone can see that. From what I learned in college studying human evolution (I studied physical anthopology) I know the cooling down and warming up periods of the last major climactic events took MUCH longer than the pace we’re seeing right now. For example, the changes we are seeing in the Arctic: that didn’t happen last time within the span of one human’s lifetime. It took much longer. What’s going on right now is climate change on crack.
That is not explained away by saying “solar activity does it.”
But what perplexes me the most is what I alluded to before: what are the motives for dismissing this entire body of science (one that I believe is back by more than a cabal of 50-60 scientists as you claim)? Simple: money and fear. People are afraid of the economic effects of lowering consumption and pollution, and the lawmakers who are most vocally opposed get money from industries that would be most adversely affected by such evils as reducing CO2 emissions or imposing other rules and regulations. And it’s no surprise to me that the biggest opponent to doing anything is America, which is still the world largest CO2 emitter. The other big whiners: China and India, Nos. 2, and 3.
That smells more fishy to me than the claim some cabal of 50-60 scientists is imposing the global warming myth on the world?
Why woudl they do that?
According to Jim Inhofe, it’s the scientists appeasing Hollywood liberals. It’s really hard not to laugh at the people on your side of this debate.
December:21:2009 - 05:48
PS: This list of organizations that endorse the theory than human’s are likely contributing to global warming sounds like it’s more than 50-60 scientists. There are 46 scientific organizations on this list alone.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change#Statements_by_concurring_organizations
December:21:2009 - 08:23
I won’t beleaguer the issue, but will point out that forests are not fixed things. None of those forests existed during the last Ice Age, 10,000 years ago. All of the ‘primeval forest’ is the result of change, from marshes to climax forests. Fires and floods wipe them out and a new cycle starts again. Never quite the same, but similar. The forests in New England are not the result of tree farming now, but result from the abandonment of small farms.
When the farmers walk away, for whatever reason, nature takes over and starts growing trees. Usually, it’s junk trees at first, later being taken over by others with more commercial value.
‘Only 50-60′ refers to the number of climatologists upon whose work the current received wisdom depends. I am as qualified to comment on climate change as is a chemist or astronomer.
You do realize that climate change science is massively funded, don’t you? Maybe it’s not the fossil fuel companies funding the research–though pay attention to ExxonMobil and see where they spend their moneys–but CC is the growing thing. Grants galore are available and governments can’t seem to throw enough money at it: it’s the issue du jour. Tens of thousands of academics depend on it for their grants and fellowships. Why just a couple of days ago, didn’t someone make a pledge of some $100 billion? And what of all the ‘green energy’ magnates? You don’t think they’d like to see a major shit that accrues to their advantage?
I am not picking up a conspiracy theory here. I think the ‘science’ of human-driven planetary warming is far from proved. I do believe the climate is changing, but the climate is always changing, and I don’t mean the weather!
December:21:2009 - 08:23
See my remark below about how it now pays very well to endorse that theory. Plus, you get lots of publicity.
December:21:2009 - 09:11
But John, you are basically arguing that the relationship between climate change and human activity is not proven – which means that it’s an open question – they may not be related, but there is a chance that they may be related. Only future will tell. If that is the case, then why are you also implying that it may not be true and that enviromentalists are getting money and publicity out of it? I know they are getting money and publicity but there is always a possibility that these may be related after all – at this stage we can’t dismiss either of the two propositions, isn’t it? And in case in future it is proved that they are related, will we be able to reverse the effects of human activity at that stage? So isn’t it better to think of a way out, just in case?
Your archive shows a lot of interesting posts, but the comment section is closed. May be you can change the settings. Unless you want to keep the comments closed.
December:21:2009 - 09:34
I’m just pointing out that wearing a ‘green’ label doesn’t necessarily mean you’re right or that you’re without conflicting interests. It’s not a matter that proponents of AGW suddenly rise above the human condition. Thus, applying a grain of skeptical salt might be in order, particularly at the costs suggested by those who seek to undo what they think has been done.
I close comments after 30 days. This is done to stop spammers whose ‘bots’ tend to thrust junk into old comments rather than current ones. I have to deal with thousands of spammed comments as is, so I try to make things a little easier on myself. Just let me know which you’d like to comment upon and I’ll see if I can open them up.
December:21:2009 - 10:16
Of course, it can always be argued that a “green” approach is detrimental to industrial economy and vice-versa. So industrial economies of the world may not like the Green approach very much. However, since the relationship is not proven so far, I endorse your hypothesis till it gets proven. I am not really against industrial economy, so I can give you the benefit of doubt for the time being.
I think I know why you are getting so much of spam. It may have something to do with the WordPress.org version you are using. Please see the following post, where this reader shifted from the free WordPress.com to the WordPress.org version and began to get a lot of spam and he had to pay for blog-hosting as well – http://vikas-gupta.in/2009/12/12/5-reasons-why-you-should-not-shift-from-wordpress-com-blog-to-wordpress-org/
The kind of blog you are writing can easily be managed on the free WordPress version and you don’t have to pay for it, so you can consider that option, especially because free version doesn’t get that much of spam.
There are so many posts which I found intresting. May be I’ll send you the list through the contact page. But I think you can’t selectively open the comments for a few of the posts – the settings are common for all the posts, isn’t it?
December:21:2009 - 10:22
Please do send a list, or even just name the posts here.
I’ve never been on WordPress.com, always having a separate installation on my host’s servers. One of the reasons for that is the blog’s design. I don’t like being limited to the themes available from WP. Perhaps that’s vanity; perhaps it’s something that distinguishes the blog from a million others. I’m pretty happy with it as is, but spam, particularly from Eastern Europe and China is a bore to deal with. Things are much better than the were even a year ago, but still a pain.
December:21:2009 - 10:48
Thanks, will do so.
It’s not vanity, I can perfectly understand uniqueness as the basic element of diversity – in India we are always trying hard not to look like others! I just thought spams are a bigger problem than uniformity. But, WordPress.com themes can be customised. I think Carol uses the free WordPress version and she keeps on changing the look all the time. But of course everyone has his/her own preferences.
December:21:2009 - 20:31
“climate change science is massively funded”
Proponents against AGW are guided by money and special interests. Climatologists are not getting tons of money; I challenge to to prove that claim. They spend a lot of time just getting funding to continue their research. The money is in the anti-AGW camp in the form of campaign contributions by the energy concerns. To suggest that academia gets more money than private interests is absurd. Portraying academia as “massively funded” is ridiculous. There is no special interest in climate studies. The special interest is in profit-making enterprise. There is no profit motive in this research. The profits lie in “drill drill drill.” The fact that the anti-AGW camp is engrossed in perpetuating a non-sustainable process makes their stance suspect.
As I said before, we must move beyond the archaic “Baby boomer/Cold War” nonsense and find a sustainable way of life. I can’t wait until those people are out of power. That way is not going to be found by dismissing human’s effect on the environment. As far as I’m concerned the anti-AGW camp is for the status quo, which is not sustainable.
Personally, I don’t care about the fate of polar bears. What concerns me is the old world concept that development is linked to non-sustainable growth in energy and resource consumption. the anti-AGW camp is entrenched in this idea that we can continue on the path we are taking and that somehow human ingenuity will be able to sustain perpetual growth in consumption. I find this to be cynical, and old school. we cannot base our society on perpetual growth (and consumption).
I can’t wait until the “Greatest Generation” and the “Baby Boomers” are gone so that people with more modern, global views can take over!
December:21:2009 - 21:29
I am concerned about excessive use of non-replenishable resources and I’m also worried about the Polar Bears.
December:22:2009 - 11:58
Good for you Daisy, unfortunately you are facing huge challenges from people willing to bet a whole lot against scientific consensus (contrary to what Mr. Burgess says, there are far more than 50-60 scientists who think man plays a role in this).
I think it’s unfortunate that the “email controversy” has emerged, because the people who deny humans play any role in global warming. It’s kind of annoying since these are the same people who have for years cited “studies” backed by energy interests, which I find far more insidious.
I will go back to my main point: the issue is moot because the same human activities that I believe play a role in climate change also cause many other problems, so we have good cause to do something about it. Cap and trade sounds silly to me, but it’s not like Exxon or the lawmakers it bribes are going to find solutions, or even give a rat’s turd about asthmatic kids in the city (an global pandemic caused by vehicular pollution concentrations) or the fact that in my lifetime I’ve noticed that now almost every major city I fly to is covered with a yellow-haze you can see from space.
And the reason, as I said before, has nothing to do with right or wrong or fact vs. fiction — it has to do with two things: money and fear — there is far more money batted about in energy, transportation and in Congress than you’ll ever see going to the secret cabal of evil, lying scientists trying to undermine our way of life. The second thing is fear: the public fears doing anything about it because our entire global economy is based on using up natural resources to make products that we all buy. Now imagine this system when the population of the planet tops 10-12 billion, which will happen in our lifetime.
I think well see in the next 20-30 years the denialists finally going away. But the probably will be so huge we may not be able to do anything except mitigate the disaster.
And you can bye-bye to polar bears in the wild. That damage is already done. (By damage I mean that even if humans have nothing to do with global warming, human development has made it impossible for the polar bears to adapt because they’re basically hemmed in at all sides by human development and have nowhere to go, and that IS man-made.)
December:22:2009 - 12:10
PS: On the bright side. I think the generations of Americans that follow Baby Boomers (and my generation, Gen X, the “in-between” generation born into the specter of MAN-MADE global nuclear annihilation and Central Americans death squads backed by the CIA that made many of us cynical about “American exceptionalism”) seem to have a much stronger values. They seem to be more aware that we cannot based our entire economy on consumption. They have stronger values with regards to recycling and doing free activities and enjoying the little things and providing solutions to the problems created by their grandparents and parents. Part of this may be the state of the economy, but I have faith that once the Baby Boomers are out of power (I can’t wait! Take your Socialist Medicare benefits and STFU already!) maybe America will be able to figure out a way to reduce its footprint on the planet an the culture will place higher values on less material things. America’s dominance is waning, and I think the younger generations isn’t all too concerned about that. Eventually I’d like to see China and India become the big, evil empires so that the world can be angry at them instead of us and we can find some kind of decent balance where we are a happy peaceful “middle country” trying to do its best for itself.
December:22:2009 - 18:23
I didn’t say only 50-60 believe it. I said that the the science is based on the work of only 50-60 people who are actually climate scientists!
December:22:2009 - 21:08
Anonymous,
I appreciate your sympathic approach very much. Only I don’t think America’s power is waning or China and India can come close to the American dominance, let alone surprass it. Both China and India have many big problems of their own to solve and with the way they function, it doesn’t look like they are capable of solving their problems in near future. Their economic prosperity is also an eyewash – yes, the middle class has become more preosperous – and more oriented towards mindless consumptions than before – old values of using only as much from Nature as is required are dying. The elite class was always elite and the poor people in these countries remain poor – there are still hundreds of millions of people starving to death. And add to that the population explosion in both the countries, which counterbalances any progress made in any field in both countries, not to mention rampant corruption and their policies in the name of social justice which keep good people out of the very few jobs they have and fill up the positions with less capable people with right connections. I know because I am an Indian.
In my opinion both China and India have already crossed over their zenith in pre-modern times and are really going downhill now. These are very ancient civilisations that are dying out now. America is a young civilisation that is on the rise and nothing can stop its growth, if only Americans act wisely, which they don’t seem to be doing and are taking the whole world towards its doom.
Yes, what will happen is that all the capable Chinese and Indians will emigrate to America and you’ll have them ruling the world from the US, not from their own countries. So, the US will still get all the criticism from the world!