« Glacier Melting Continues To Accelerate | Main | Today's Bush Joke »

February 05, 2007

45 Nations Unite To Fight Global Warming — Not US

Environment

Good news, bad news. Boston Globe:

Forty-five nations answered France's call yesterday for a new environmental body to slow inevitable global warming and protect the planet, perhaps with policing powers to punish violators.

Absent were the world's heavyweight polluter, the United States, and booming nations on the same path as the United States — China and India.

The charge led by President Jacques Chirac of France came a day after the release of an authoritative — and disturbingly grim — scientific report in Paris that said global warming is "very likely" caused by mankind and that climate change will continue for centuries even if heat-trapping gases are reduced.

It was the strongest language ever used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose last report was issued in 2001.

The document, a collaboration of hundreds of scientists and government officials, was approved by 113 nations, including the United States. [...]

Without naming the United States, producer of about one-quarter of the world's greenhouse gases, Chirac expressed frustration that "some large, rich countries still must be convinced." [...]

So far, it is mostly European nations that agreed to pursue plans for the new organization, and to hold their first meeting in Morocco this spring. [...]

Former Vice President Al Gore, whose Oscar-nominated documentary on the perils of global warming has garnered worldwide attention, cheered Chirac's efforts.

"We are at a tipping point," Gore told the conference by videophone. "We must act, and act swiftly. ... Such action requires international cooperation."

The world's scientists and other international leaders also said now that the science is so well documented, action is clearly the next step.

"It is time now to hear from the world's policy makers," Tim Wirth, president of the United Nations Foundation, said Friday. "The so-called and long-overstated 'debate' about global warming is now over." [Emphasis added]

Decision-makers in politics and business operate in such short time frames that they tend to be ill-equipped to react to long-term threats like global warming. There are hopeful signs, though, that many of the world's leaders are waking up. Imagine how inspiring it would be if the US were to act as a leader on this issue, instead of the world's biggest laggard.

Posted by Jonathan at February 5, 2007 05:46 PM  

Comments

>Imagine how inspiring it would be if the US were >to act as a leader on this issue, instead of the >world's biggest laggard.

Come now...when there is a US DOllar to be made, why would the elected ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H selected leadership choose any other path?

Posted by: at February 5, 2007 08:00 PM

Wall Street Journal - Feb 5

Last week's headlines about the United Nation's latest report on global warming were typically breathless, predicting doom and human damnation like the most fervent religious evangelical. Yet the real news in the fourth assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) may be how far it is backpedaling on some key issues. Beware claims that the science of global warming is settled.

The document that caused such a stir was only a short policy report, a summary of the full scientific report due in May. Written mainly by policymakers (not scientists) who have a stake in the issue, the summary was long on dire predictions. The press reported the bullet points, noting that this latest summary pronounced with more than "90% confidence" that humans have been the main drivers of warming since the 1950s, and that higher temperatures and rising sea levels would result.

More pertinent is the underlying scientific report. And according to people who have seen that draft, it contains startling revisions of previous U.N. predictions. For example, the Center for Science and Public Policy has just released an illuminating analysis written by Lord Christopher Monckton, a one-time adviser to Margaret Thatcher who has become a voice of sanity on global warming.

Take rising sea levels. In its 2001 report, the U.N.'s best high-end estimate of the rise in sea levels by 2100 was three feet. Lord Monckton notes that the upcoming report's high-end best estimate is 17 inches, or half the previous prediction. Similarly, the new report shows that the 2001 assessment had overestimated the human influence on climate change since the Industrial Revolution by at least one-third.

Such reversals (and there are more) are remarkable, given that the IPCC's previous reports, in 1990, 1995 and 2001, have been steadily more urgent in their scientific claims and political tone. It's worth noting that many of the policymakers who tinker with the IPCC reports work for governments that have promoted climate fears as a way of justifying carbon-restriction policies. More skeptical scientists are routinely vetoed from contributing to the panel's work. The Pasteur Institute's Paul Reiter, a malaria expert who thinks global warming would have little impact on the spread of that disease, is one example.

U.N. scientists have relied heavily on computer models to predict future climate change, and these crystal balls are notoriously inaccurate. According to the models, for instance, global temperatures were supposed to have risen in recent years. Yet according to the U.S. National Climate Data Center, the world in 2006 was only 0.03 degrees Celsius warmer than it was in 2001 -- in the range of measurement error and thus not statistically significant.

The models also predicted that sea levels would rise much faster than they actually have. The models didn't predict the significant cooling the oceans have undergone since 2003 -- which is the opposite of what you'd expect with global warming. Cooler oceans have also put a damper on claims that global warming is the cause of more frequent or intense hurricanes. The models also failed to predict falling concentrations of methane in the atmosphere, another surprise.

Meanwhile, new scientific evidence keeps challenging previous assumptions. The latest report, for instance, takes greater note of the role of pollutant particles, which are thought to reflect sunlight back to space, supplying a cooling effect. More scientists are also studying the effect of solar activity on climate, and some believe it alone is responsible for recent warming.

All this appears to be resulting in a more cautious scientific approach, which is largely good news. We're told that the upcoming report is also missing any reference to the infamous "hockey stick," a study by Michael Mann that purported to show 900 years of minor fluctuations in temperature, followed by a dramatic spike over the past century. The IPCC featured the graph in 2001, but it has since been widely rebutted.

While everyone concedes that the Earth is about a degree Celsius warmer than it was a century ago, the debate continues over the cause and consequences. We don't deny that carbon emissions may play a role, but we don't believe that the case is sufficiently proven to justify a revolution in global energy use. The economic dislocations of such an abrupt policy change could be far more severe than warming itself, especially if it reduces the growth and innovation that would help the world cope with, say, rising sea levels. There are also other problems -- AIDS, malaria and clean drinking water, for example -- whose claims on scarce resources are at least as urgent as climate change.

The IPCC report should be understood as one more contribution to the warming debate, not some definitive last word that justifies radical policy change. It can be hard to keep one's head when everyone else is predicting the Apocalypse, but that's all the more reason to keep cool and focus on the actual science.

Posted by: Sleepless at February 6, 2007 06:45 AM

> The charge led by President Jacques
> Chirac of France came a day after
> the release of an authoritative — and
> disturbingly grim — scientific report
> in Paris that said global warming
> is "very likely" caused by mankind

Newspapers and blogs keep repeating this, and it is wrong, wrong, wrong.

Global warming is not "caused by mankind," it has a combination of human and natural causes.

Look at the IPCC TAR v1, Technical Summary of WG1, p 58
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/026.htm#e5

There are graphs that very clearly show that only a combination of anthropogenic and natural forcings can account for the observed climate from 1860-2000.

Humans are not the sole cause of global warming, and newspapers are wrong to report, like this one, that they are.

Posted by: Kevin at February 6, 2007 11:23 AM

The WSJ piece is dishonest bullshit from start to finish.

Let's take the statement that the summary report was "Written mainly by policymakers (not scientists) who have a stake in the issue." This is a key statement, since the WSJ uses it as a pretext for ignoring what the summary report actually says. It's also a gross misrepresentation of the facts.

Here's what the climate scientists at RealClimate, who actually participated in the IPCC assessment, said in refuting a similar claim made by the so-called Fraser Institute: "The authors illuminate us with this wisdom regarding the official Summary for Policymakers: 'A further problem is that the Summary for Policy Makers [SPM] attached to the IPCC Report is produced, not by the scientific writers and reviewers, but by a process of negotiation among unnamed bureaucratic delegates from sponsoring governments.' This statement (charitably) shows that the Fraser Institute authors are profoundly ignorant of the IPCC process. In fact, the actual authors of the official SPM are virtually all scientists, and are publically acknowleged. Moreover, the lead authors of the individual chapters are represented in the writing process leading to the SPM, and their job is to defend the basic science in their chapters. As lead author Gerald Meehl remarked to one of us on his way to Paris: 'Scientists have to be ok, they have the last check. If they think the science is not represented, then they can send it back to the breakout groups.' A common accusation at the time of the Third Assessment Report [in 2001] was that the SPM didn't reflect the science in the rest of the report. A special National Academy panel was convened at the request of President GW Bush, to consider this and other issues. The Panel found no significant disconnect between the SPM and the body of the report. The procedure followed this time is not in essence any different from that which has been used for previous IPCC reports."

Then rather than address what actual climate scientists said in the SPM, the Journal turns to claims made by one Christopher Monckton (whom they address by his hereditary title, as if that confers scientific credibility) regarding an unpublished draft of the full report. Monckton is a journalist, not a climate scientist. If that's the best source the WSJ can come up with, that speaks volumes. It's the equivalent of GWB taking climate advice from the novelist Michael Crichton.

The further claims are also easily refuted. Take, for example, the claim, "In its 2001 report, the U.N.'s best high-end estimate of the rise in sea levels by 2100 was three feet. Lord Monckton notes that the upcoming report's high-end best estimate is 17 inches, or half the previous prediction." As RealClimate and many others have noted (and one assumes the WSJ has access to Google and therefore knows this full well), this is a case of comparing apples and oranges. The 2001 report included ice sheet flow models in their calculations of sea level rise. Since that time, observed ice sheet flows have been so much greater than what the models can accommodate that the effects of ice sheet flow are considered too uncertain, "but with the uncertainty all on the side of making things worse," (RealClimate) that their contribution has been removed from the sea level predictions in the current report. The "17 inches" then, is really 17 inches plus some unknown amount contributed by ice sheet flow, an amount that the IPCC no longer attempts to predict given current models.

Instead of confronting directly the statements made by actual climate scientists in the published summary report, the WSJ reports misrepresentations by a journalist regarding unpublished drafts. Is that an honest attempt to arrive at the truth?

Posted by: Jonathan at February 6, 2007 11:33 AM

Global warming is not "caused by mankind," it has a combination of human and natural causes.

Why not go ALL the way and say that Man is part of nature and therefore all causes are 'natural'?

Man can modify mans actions, and nudge nature. But I bet Kevin's paymasters do not wish to have such considered, if an outcome might effect their cashflow, right Kevin?

Posted by: at February 7, 2007 10:55 AM

> Why not go ALL the way and say that Man
> is part of nature and therefore all
> causes are 'natural'?

Because such a statement would be ridiculous, absurd, and especially because it would be useless.

> But I bet Kevin's paymasters do not
> wish to have such considered, if an
> outcome might effect their cashflow, right
> Kevin?

That's right--someone pays me really big bucks to read this piddling little blog and try to sway the two dozen people who read it each day. Because there are not, of course, bigger fish to fry.

Posted by: Kevin at February 7, 2007 12:58 PM

That's right--someone pays me really big bucks to read this piddling little blog and try to sway the two dozen people who read it each day. Because there are not, of course, bigger fish to fry.

Ya swim in the pond with the water you have, not in the water you want.

Posted by: at February 7, 2007 11:55 PM

at wrote:
> Ya swim in the pond with the water
> you have, not in the water you want.

If I were being paid to sway opinion, I would be focusing on the big blogs--Atrios, Daily Kos, etc.--that get hundreds of thousands of readers a day, not a blog that gets 20 readers a day.

It is a sad commentary on liberalism, and on the level of your intellectual discourse, that you think the only way someone can disagree with you is if they are paid by some higher power. Paranoid, anyone?

Posted by: Kevin at February 8, 2007 09:53 AM

If I were being paid to sway opinion,

And you are doing a poor job of 'swaying opinion' here.

You need to step up your game. If you ever intend to have arguments that can actually presuade.

Oh and you ARE being paid. Do you think your employer is giving you a paycheck so you can post poor arguments on the Internet?

It is a sad commentary on liberalism,

I thought the issue was about CONSERVING the planet so future generations could exist. What makes you think anything posted here is about 'liberalism'?

Posted by: at February 8, 2007 11:30 PM

:-)

I'm always amazed at how "conservative" came to mean utterly reckless, militaristic and prone to enormous government overspending thereby shackling future generations with an unpayable debt.

Bring back real conservatism and lock up those fascist ntiwits who stole the word I say...

Posted by: Big Gav at February 9, 2007 04:37 AM

> Oh and you ARE being paid. Do you think
> your employer is giving you a paycheck
> so you can post poor arguments on the
> Internet?

I am self-employed. My time is my own as long as I satisfy my contractors.

It's a nice way to live.

Posted by: Kevin at February 11, 2007 07:54 AM

Big Gav wrote:
> Bring back real conservatism and lock
> up those fascist ntiwits who stole
> the word I say...

Hear, hear.

But this is a militaristic world we live in. The right and privileges which you take for granted have been won at the point of a rifle, and you should not forget that.

Posted by: Kevin at February 11, 2007 07:58 AM