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Copenhagen Climate Conference Opens to Dire Warnings
COPENHAGEN - A landmark conference on climate change opened in Copenhagen on Monday, with grim warnings of the apocalyptic dangers for mankind if world leaders fail to agree a way to stave off global warming.
A Danish policeman stands next to an art installation located near the exit of the Bella Center in Copenhagen December 6, 2009. The largest-ever climate talks formally opened on Monday in Denmark aiming to agree the outlines of global deal to stave off dangerous climate change, such as rising seas and more intense storms.
(REUTERS/Bob Strong) The impact on humanity of man-made drought, flood,
storms and rising seas were spelt out at the start of the 12-day
meeting, which will climax with more than 110 heads of state or
government in attendance.
Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen warned that the world was looking to Copenhagen to safeguard the generations of tomorrow.
"For the next two weeks, Copenhagen will be Hopenhagen. By the end, we must be able to deliver back to the world what was granted us here today: hope for a better future," he said.
Opening ceremonies began with a short sci-fi film featuring children of the future facing an apocalypse of tempests and desert landscapes if world leaders failed to act today.
"Please help save the world," said a terrified little girl at the end of the film. Poll: Public want action
A choir of Danish youngsters then sang a plaintive song to delegates, accompanied by a brass ensemble.
The negotiation marathon gathers members of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the fruit of the 1992 Rio summit.
Its rollcall of 192 nations was joined this year by Iraq and Somalia, the conference heard.
Delegates must craft a blueprint for tackling manmade "greenhouse" gases blamed for trapping solar heat and disrupting Earth's fragile climate system. Reducing carbon emissions: the options
They must also put together a funding mechanism able to channel hundreds of billions of dollars to poor nations most exposed to the effects of climate change.
If all goes well, world leaders on December 18 will agree a political deal that sets down the course of action, including a roster of national pledges.
Further negotiations are expected to take place in 2010 to fill in the details. A legally-binding treaty would take effect from the end of 2012.
Analysts, though, stress the deep gap between the demands of developing countries and the willingness of rich countries to dig both into their pockets and into their carbon emissions.
Connie Hedegaard, a Danish politician elected to chair the talks, said political will "will never be stronger."
"This is our chance. If we miss it, it could take years before we get a new and better one -- if ever."
US President Barack Obama is hoping to push through a new deal after the United States -- the world's biggest economy -- rejected the Kyoto Protocol under his predecessor, George W. Bush.
But the US Congress is still hammering out legislation to cut emissions, and Obama's opponents have been emboldened by a scandal over hacked emails from British academics that they say raises questions on the science behind climate change.
The head of the UN's Nobel-winning panel of climate experts on Monday said he suspected the hack was an attempt to undermine his organisation.
"Given the wide-ranging nature of (climate) change that is likely to be taken in hand, some naturally find it inconvenient to accept its inevitability," Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), told the conference.
"The recent incident of stealing the emails of scientists at the University of East Anglia shows that some would go to the extent of carrying out illegal acts, perhaps in an attempt to discredit the IPCC."
Saudi Arabia's top climate negotiator told the conference that trust in climate science had been "shaken" by the leaked emails.
"The level of trust is definitely shaken, especially now that we are about to conclude an agreement that ... is going to mean sacrifices for our economies," Mohammed al-Sabban told delegates.
Sabban, whose country is oil cartel OPEC's leading producer and exporter, called for an "independent" international investigation, adding that the UN climate science body was unqualified to carry it out.
But Pachauri proudly defended the IPCC's reputation as an arena for weighing evidence fairly and said: "Warming of the climate system is unequivocal."
The Copenhagen conference venue has been declared UN territory, with about 15,000 delegates, journalists and observers attending.
More than half of all of Denmark's police force has been deployed to the capital and police warned they would act swiftly to quell any violent protests.
Across the globe, 56 newspapers published the same editorial telling their leaders to agree on action to limit temperature rises to 2.0 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) or risk seeing climate change "ravage our planet".
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22 Comments so far
Show All"COPENHAGEN - A landmark conference on climate change opened in Copenhagen on Monday, with grim warnings of the apocalyptic dangers for mankind if world leaders fail to agree a way to stave off global warming."
Perhaps they could start with the extremely worying report from the IPCC, that "The UN panel on climate change warning that Himalayan glaciers could melt to a fifth of current levels by 2035" ......... except that it turns out that this was the result of misreading 2350 for 2035 from another paper!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/8387737.stm
What sort of scholarship is that - didn't they do even rudimentary order of magnitude calculations before publishing this? Perhaps this is what Rajendra Pachauri calls "weighing evidence fairly".
"The recent incident of stealing the emails of scientists at the University of East Anglia shows that some would go to the extent of carrying out illegal acts, perhaps in an attempt to discredit the IPCC." ........ Well, Rajendra Pachauri, perhaps you didn't want the rest of us to learn how 'climate science' is really done. The hack may have been illegal, Rajendra, but surely you wanted others to see the raw data and the computer code that processed it! I am sure you wanted us all to feel confidence in the robustness of the analysis, as evidenced in remarks such as:
"However *sigh* this led me to examine the detection of 'non-standard longitudes' - a
small section of code that converts PJ-style reversed longitudes, or 0-360 ones....... Just another thing I cannot understand, and another reason why this should all
have been rewritten from scratch a year ago!
OK - I am angry by now. By all means lets reorganise the worlds energy production if that is what it takes to save the planet, but surely this should be based on some quality research?
The very best thing to come out of the leaked e-mails and code is that the research will now be open. The cartel of doom shall be cast aside and replaced with open, honest, and frank discussion.
Think of its this way: CRU made a souffle. They published a peer-reviewed recipe that said, 'here is how to make our souffle'.
So, other scientific teams said, 'cool, I want to make a souffle.' So, they used CRU's recipe and made their OWN souffle.
Now, along comes the GW deniers. They are suspicious of the souffle. It has too many ingredients, too many measurements. Is that a 1/4 tsp of nutmeg, or 1/8th?! Inquiring minds want to know. Lets take a look at your refrigerator. Mondeau!!! You didn't use THOSE eggs in your souffle, did you? (and, oh my, you're a bit of an alcoholic, aren't you?)
I think you get it. There is a recipe for souffle, and no one in the denier community wants to use it because THEY WOULD END UP WITH A SOUFFLE. And THAT is not their purpose. Their purpose is to prevent ANYONE from making souffle. No souffle anywhere, and burn or discredit the souffle thats already been made.
And the reason they want to destroy all souffle, is because souffle is one step away from communism.
Now, the truth is: souffle is about as close to communism as a surface temperature record. But you can't tell the GW deniers this, cuz then you're part of the souffle/communist aliance.
Perhaps you could provide some information about "quality research" that proves that climate change is nothing to worry about?
The U.S will surely curtail and reasoned approach and will fail the world community as it is with justice and freedom and human rights violations! What can one expect of a criminally insane leadership?
David, before you declare climate change to be a fraud, check out your various denier claims and their scientific debunking here:
skepticalscience.com/argument.php
Maybe you can funnel some of your anger into finding errors in the science on that site?
You know, I am not exactly saying it is a fraud, just that there seems to be a disturbing accumulation of evidence that a fair bit of the research has been sloppy.
Although I don't work in science as such any more, I used to do, and I know that not all research is done well. The fact that a programmer had to infer the layout of the data files he was working with, rings warning bells in my head. It tells me the project was very badly managed, and perhaps nobody there can be sure of the results they have put out. I suspect they are simply shy about all that coming out.
It is very hard to dig down enough into the facts without becoming a climate scientist oneself, but let's just take point 11 of skepticalscience.com/argument.php
Gore certainly presented the graphs of CO2 concentration and temperature as if they were coincident - they were presented as part of the proof that CO2 drives temperature change. The response doesn't exactly reinstate that proof - it asserts that CO2 causes a temperature rise, and that then the two quantities are coupled by feedback mechanisms (which they surely must be one way or another). That lag still means that something else (dare one suggest solar sunspots generating magnetic fields that deflect cosmic radiation) moves the temperature, and the CO2 follows. Put simply, you can't blame the second World War on George W Bush because he came later!
OK - lets take point 1 and point 18 together - because one alternative theory is that sunspots generate more magnetic storms which deflect cosmic rays from the earth, fewer cosmic rays mean less seeding of clouds. Svensmark had great difficulty getting his experiments on cosmic ray cloud seeding published - even though the graph displayed in relation to point 18 shows a good correlation prior to 1970. Those graphs do diverge after 1970, but the entire result could have been easily buried by being refused publication!
The very structure of the argument in http://skepticalscience.com/argument.php is part of the problem. Each skeptical argument is presented in the barest possible way, and no amplification is provided - as if no skeptical scientist was available to comment! Why not show a fair argument between the two sides?
But we probably CAN blame WWII for George Bush and the false sense of global 'entitlement' that was created from it. This is the very foundation of the neo-con ideology.
Since you seem to know so very much about the situation, why don't you stand up and present the "FAIR AND ACCURATE SIDE" of the controversy?
The point is that I don't - at least not in the first hand sense that someone who had worked in the area would do. On the other hand, I DO know that figuring out the layout of raw data in files by guesswork, rather than the format being properly documented, is absurd! I also know that misreading 2350 as 2035 should not get anywhere near published work because of peer review, order of magnitude checks, etc.
The problem is - and it is understandable - everyone has been assuming there is only one side to this argument, and that scientists giving another point of view were in the pay of the oil companies etc. There are lots of scientists working in this field who do not agree that anthropogenic global warming is happening significantly, the trouble is that they get demonised as 'deniers' - so it doesn't matter how sound their arguments are.
It isn't hard to find carefully argued alternative scientific points of view on the internet, e.g.
http://www.john-daly.com/hockey/hockey.htm
The problem is, without taking years of study, should we believe them. Well, I must say, I used to be a bit on the fence about the subject of AGW, but the revelations from the CRU (remember the U of East Anglia says there were obtained illegally, but does not claim that any of the files have been altered), plus revelations about the statical errors made in constructing the 'Hockey Stick' graph, plus the Himalayan Glaciation goof, makes me feel that 'science' is in a sorry mess here. The truth is just no longer clear.
At first it seemed as though carbon cuts might involve a less wasteful way of life for everyone, more efficient cars, curbs on flight numbers, goods being produced locally wherever possible to save on transportation, stopping the destruction of the rain forests, etc. These all seemed very desirable in themselves from a green point of view, and I felt comfortable to go along with them. However, recently it seems that there has been a shift towards:
New nuclear power stations, which involve serious hazards of their own (remember Chernobyl).
Biofuels, which displace crops or rain forests.
Wind turbines, which sound good, but which have serious problems caused by the fact that the wind strength is so variable - basically, other power stations have to be idling (i.e. using up fuel) just in case the wind drops!
If you want a good book revealing the alternative point of view, you might try Christopher Booker's "The Real Global Warming Disaster", which is well written, and full of references to specific papers, scientists, theories, etc. In other words, it is not just one man's rant!
David Bailey,
I asked you to point to some credible "quality research" disproving the theory of AGW, which you, understandably, ignored. Instead, you admit that you are clueless about the science, and bring up bits and pieces of flawed research, mistakes, errors, manufactured "scandals", dump it all into one basket, mix it all up, and voila - you conclude that the science is suspect, one-sided, and it's all a mess.
The greenhouse effect was discovered in 1824, and the role of CO2 in the atmosphere was thoroughly researched by Svante Arrhenius as early as the end of 19th century - that's over 100 years ago! The basic mechanism is well understood. What scientists don't always agree on, is the details.
So you ignore almost 200 years of scientific research, and focus on a handful of errors? How ingenious is that?
" . . . everyone has been assuming there is only one side to this argument, and that scientists giving another point of view were in the pay of the oil companies etc." - It's not true. Nobody is just "assuming" that the scientists in question are sponsored by the oil industry. It's well documented. You can check it here :
http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/campaigns/global-warming-and-energy/exxon-secrets
"There are lots of scientists working in this field who do not agree that anthropogenic global warming is happening significantly, the trouble is that they get demonised as 'deniers' - so it doesn't matter how sound their arguments are." - It's simply not true that scientists are demonised as "deniers". Can you name any names? Any research they have done? I don't think anybody's research is excluded. But if you hold onto a theory in spite of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, than what does it make you? If you don't like the term "denier", come up with a better one.
Finally, Christopher Booker's book. As a person with no background in climate science, before you recommend "The Real Global Warming Disaster", you may want to read this review:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/nov/15/real-global-warming-christopher-booker
This excerpt deserves to be highlighted:
"Suppose you are genuinely undecided on climate change and determined not to be guided simply by what you'd like to believe. If unpicking the real story demands so much effort and insider knowledge, how can you possibly make up your mind? Here's an unscientific suggestion. Booker's position would require that you accept something like the following: 1) Most of the world's climate scientists, for reasons unspecified, decided to create a myth about human-induced global warming and have managed to twist endless measurements and computer models to fit their case, without the rest of the scientific community noticing. George W Bush and certain oil companies have, however, seen through the deception. 2) Most of the world's climate scientists are incompetent and have grossly misinterpreted their data and models, yet their faulty conclusions are not, as you might imagine, a random chaos of assertions, but all point in the same direction.
There's a third option: the world's climate system is hugely complex, hard to predict and constantly surprising; yet in the long term the world is getting warmer, for reasons we basically understand, and there is good reason to believe that humans are mostly responsible for it."
Old saying: "A stitch in time, saves nine"
What's the likelihood that, despite Copenhagen, humanity is going to have to learn this truism anew in a few years?
Maybe it isn't happening. But if it is, prepare to spend NINE times what you would have spent, if you just acted today.
I'm a little confused by all of this. Not too long ago, we were told how dangrous a 2 degree rise would be, now that's become our hoped for goal.
This is from the Independent in 2007:
+2.4°: Coral reefs almost extinct
In North America, a new dust-bowl brings deserts to life in the high plains states, centered on Nebraska, but also wipes out agriculture and cattle ranching as sand dunes appear across five US states, from Texas in the south to Montana in the north.
Rising sea levels accelerate as the Greenland ice sheet tips into irreversible melt, submerging atoll nations and low-lying deltas. In Peru, disappearing Andean glaciers mean 10 million people face water shortages. Warming seas wipe out the Great Barrier Reef and make coral reefs virtually extinct throughout the tropics. Worldwide, a third of all species on the planet face extinction.
That sure sounds like "game over" to me. A 6 degree rise is now considered possible. Of course, this isn't until 2100 when all of us will be dead. But if we hit 2 degrees higher in 2050 or 2040 or 2030, then most of us will still be around.
Gee, I sure hope all the debates will be over with by then.
But from Jared Diamond's book Collasped, I now have a much better idea of what was going through that Easter Islander's mind as he chopped down the very last palm tree: "This isn't my fault."
"Adapt or Die" was the headline at MSNBC today.
Except that piece, like the rest, fail to even mention the need for us humans to start adapting ASAP. Instead, the focus is on how 'governments' need to adapt in order to 'save' us.
As many have been saying for years now - governments are not in the people-saving business. It's up to us to save ourselves, which means We have to Adapt, starting yesterday.
Survival training, farming, basic labor skills, energy production, water purification, defense - 99% of us don't know the first thing about how to live without the goodies, and those who fail to train-up won't stand a chance...
"Survival training, farming, basic labor skills, energy production, water purification, defense - 99% of us don't know the first thing about how to live without the goodies, and those who fail to train-up won't stand a chance..."
So true. It would be so easy to have this kind of training. Even if the training was available, few would attend because for far too long we've been a society of "Let the government take care of it." Many probably think they're learning real survival skills by watching the tv show "Survivor" every season.
Global warming will change the way we all live, in fact this year, to avoid the heat, I'm taking my holiday early.
Adapt or die!
But seriously, I'll bet nothing substantive comes out of all this because no government is ready to tell its electorate that growth is over and next year will provide less of everything for everybody than this year. Circumstances will force that and then the governments will be overwhelmed.
try this one:
"group promoting climate skepticism, has extensive ties to exxon-mobile"
http://rawstory.com/2009/12/climate-skeptic-group-nipcc-extensive-ties-exxonmobil/
Unless we also do something about reining in runaway population growth, all this talk about reversing climate change will get us nowhere.
And international agreements are way to cumbersome and hard to get or enforce. We should seek them to help build awareness but not hold our breath waiting for them to materialize. The true heroes and saviors will be those who proceed to take action and get started doing what they can now, rather than waiting for the whole world to agree on some watered down proposal that will satisfy everyone and accomplish nothing.
Craig Dunkerley
San Jose, CA
Finally someone gets to the point. Craig Dunkerly is right.
The planet is infested with human beings. We have to do something about it for the sake of all species on the planet. Just what that might be is the question no one wants to ask.
The fucking Saudis have a lot balls being there period. These people already live in a climate catastrophe called Saudi Arabia. What do they care if the rest of the earth is made to look like their sand pile? Its kind of ironic in a way that nothing exists in that hell hole but OIL and that they're only other export is a radical version of Islam ( Whabism) is hell bent on turning us all into their slaves.
Whatever jerked your chain?
The meeting is a UN conference and is being attended by all nations.
David...,
You of course make some good points, and if you look at the earth's temperature variations over the past million years, there is indeed cycles about every 100,000 years. But instead of peaking, as we are now at the highest point, it is staying at a higher level.
But this of course is only one reason we need to stop carbon emissions. Others include ph changes in our oceans due to carbon being acidic, and that already showing up in coral decalcification on a huge scale. Carbon also eliminates the hydrogen peroxide in our rainwater, and thereby decreasing our crops protection against the myriad of viral and fungal diseases. Being something our bodies naturally produce as a defense against infections and diseases, it is also missing in our drinking water.
The real looming thing though is that in 50 years, we've extracted more of the sun's energy, and more of it's minerals and resources, than it's taken the sun fifty million years to produce and store. In just 50 more years, and with the population tripling from 7 to 20 billion, it will be all gone. There will be chaos and much suffering, as in our greed, excessive profiteering and consumerism, and in human indifference, we continue to to accelerate the rape of our earth, and approach the depletion of our resources. Prices for plastics, fuel, food, and basic materials our lives depend on, will spiral out of control and inevidibly become unreachable for the masses. God help us all to learn to care for this earth, and for each other before it's too late. We haven't much time...
And make no mistake, ...for those of you manipulating and investing in energy grids, and green energy, to make your fantastic profits you reap from the poor. There will come a day when the finger of guilt and rage points to you, ...you that have exploited our children's future, and used it for your own cruel and insatiable gain. Sooner or later, their eyes will open as their children cry from hunger, and it's not going to be pretty when they find out what you did.