open Democracy News Analysis - Climate change: a window to act , Paul Rogers - Comments

richard on "Climate change: a window to act "

richard — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 16:31:27 +0000

Steven, I doubt that the Bush administration will agree to anything useful on global warming, but just as Howard has been kicked out of government in Australia, and his successor's first action is to sign up to Kyoto, so Bush's successor also will hopefully overturn Bush's irrational approach to global warming. By that time, however, China may have taken over global economic leadership, and - who knows? - China may then have become a democracy. Anything can happen. It could even be that Jesus could come down from the sky and make everything all right, or you and Iron Mike could turn out to be right all along, or the Easter Bunny could sort it all out for us, but in the meantime, our job is to keep thinking of what needs to be done from a rational point of view.

steven_12 on "Climate change: a window to act "

steven_12 — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 10:16:39 +0000

So you honestly believe the US will buy carbon quota?

richard on "Climate change: a window to act "

richard — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 21:31:18 +0000

Steve_12 worries that taking action to correct global warming. With Contraction and Convergence, the opposite of Steve's worry is true. With C&C, a target for a safe level of global CO2 is set, countries are allocated CO2 on a per capita basis, and trading of the quota is allowed. The US will have to buy CO2 quotas from poor African countries, so there is an intrinsic tendency to economic convergence in the system. Also, with the transfer of solar technology to developing countries, they will become energy rich, and Somalia may find itself exporting hydrogen to Europe. Given help with water conservation and management, green economics can really help to make poverty history. Finally, it is poor countries that will suffer worst from global warming, because of the drought/flood aspect. Richard

richard on "Climate change: a window to act "

richard — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 15:13:24 +0000

Steveatpub, I will put a brief answer on the Climate Denialists Sand Pit thread, so that we can keep this thread for discussion of how to respond to global warming. Richard

steveapub on "Climate change: a window to act "

steveapub — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 04:23:06 +0000

Skeptics could just as easily say that debating AGW with an alarmist is like trying to convince a zealous cardiologist that his patient, suffering from bad indigestion, does not need bypass surgery. Alarmists are famous for claiming a consensus as a means of avoiding addressing confounding data and alternate theories. Richard's comment above is a perfect example of this. Cooperation, not condescension, is the hallmark of scientific progress. But if cooperation impedes political progress, then condescension is a means that justifies the ends. Al Gore and the IPCC are perfect examples of this. Alarmists are so afraid of skeptics impeding their political progress that they have threatened them with job loss, funding loss, certification loss, and falsely accused them of working for Big Oil. These are the clear signals of a movement that fears scrutiny. I will say it again, scientific theories are not proven by a show of hands (i.e. consensus). Only experimental results that agree with the theory, that effectively account for all influencing factors, that are reviewed and accepted by ALL interested parties, and that survive ALL questioning can give us reason to believe the theory is sound. If you believe the preceding statement to be true, then the theory of AGW has yet to be proven. If you do not believe that statement, then you are not debating science.

steven_12 on "Climate change: a window to act "

steven_12 — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 20:21:55 +0000

Again from the Royal society site: "[...] we cannot explain the temperature rises that we have seen over the last 100 years both on land and in the oceans - for example, eleven of the last twelve years have been the hottest since records started in 1850." What about temperature records before thermometer readings started? Has Earth's temperature never been warmer than today?

steven_12 on "Climate change: a window to act "

steven_12 — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 20:12:12 +0000

From the Royal Society site: "Even these tiny quantities have resulted in an increase in global temperatures of 0.75ºC (see misleading argument 1)." This is disproven by the fact that there is no correlation. The current warming trend has started about 100 years before 90% of man-made CO2 emissions were created.

steven_12 on "Climate change: a window to act "

steven_12 — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 19:47:44 +0000

Global warming is a fact but it's completely benign. Man-made CO2 emissions have no significant (as in detectable) impact on the environment. The more urgent issue is how to deal with the carbon fuel crunch. You seem to mix climate change with this issue. As long as people will confuse depleting carbon fuel reserves with global warming there is no chance of ever finding a solution. Don't forget: gay marriages killed the dinosaurs.

richard on "Climate change: a window to act "

richard — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 18:44:11 +0000

Paul Rogers' case it that we have to work in a democratic framework to tackle climate change, rather that the "post-democratic" framework (whatever that is) that David Shearman suggested here: http://preview.tinyurl.com/24s4wv. As usual, meaningful discussion of how democratic politicians should respond to the modulated scientific advice that they are getting from the IPCC, as well as the more urgent advice coming from individual scientists, attracts th attention of man-caused climate change denialists. There is oD a special Forum here http://tinyurl.com/2x54n3 for climate change denialists to paste and write. It gives links to several sites which have FAQs. The main site is the Royal Society, the oldest and arguably the most dependable group of scientists on the planet, and there are other helpful sites. Denialists will complain that this approach is stifling debate. On the contrary, the debate is there, on the links. I had an extensive debate with a denialist by the name of ILJAY here on oD about 18 months ago. The fact is that to debate with denialists is like discussing the treatment of cardiac failure with someone who does not understand the significance of William Harvey's experiments.The effect is to stifle progress and to delay treatment with the result that and the patient suffers and eventually dies. Is it the responsibility of the physician always to debate the circulation with the blood with someone who thinks it just vibrates up and down the arteries? No - it is up to the blood circulation skeptic to go and read the books. So the question is - what do we do about global warming? Richard D North insists that the remedy should be "cheap and convenient". Well, he must know that the Stern Review concluded that to come off the fossil fuel economy would take perhaps 1% of the world's GDP, but do do nothing would cost 5-20% of the GDP. That seems a reasonably cheap and convenient remedy. Stern has been criticised for using a high discount rate, but since in this case discount rate is an economists' way of saying "blow you grandchildren, I'm all right", Stern's figures can be accepted. As with all economic changes, there will be winners and losers. Fossil fuel corporations will be the losers, which is why ExxonMobil has invested so heavily into climate denialism ( http://tinyurl.com/3782lx ). Even so, wise oil companies can have a think, realise that their core business is energy , and then diversify (using their huge wealth) into renewable energy technology, which is, when all is said and done, the future. On the other hand, there will be many winners. The Green economy ( http://www.greenhealth.org.uk/GreenEconom.htm ) is essentially labour intensive, so that unemployment can become a thing of the past. Interestingly, Green Keynesianism could steer us out of a global recession, since this seems to be where we are headed economically. http://www.greenhealth.org.uk/EconBigEnd.htm Finally, Pascal's Wager applies to the Global Warming response. This is set out in a YouTube video : http://tinyurl.com/2w3fc9 . Worth a look. Apologies to any frustrated denialists, but you have to accept that the consensus has moved away from you. You are free to think and believe whatever you want, but for the rest of us, the question is - how are we to meet the economic challenge posed by climate change? http://tinyurl.com/ytdxn3

steveapub on "Climate change: a window to act "

steveapub — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 05:05:38 +0000

Since the pro-AGW folks on this site has seen fit to lower the level of rhetoric and present what they believe to be fact, I will also lower my tone and present some of the more poignant skeptical arguments. I think we can all agree (even if we have to shrug our shoulders) that the temperature over the past 100 or so years has increased about 0.8 degrees and that CO2 delays the release of heat to space. Further, proxy data provides an overwhelming majority of the data we use to debate this issue. We should all be skeptical of ANY proxy data until it has been reviewed by anyone and everyone who requests it. If we had done this, the “hockey stick” would never have entered the scientific literature, much less the public arena. I will even go so far as to say that the theory forwarded by AGW supporters is plausible: that increased concentrations of CO2 heat the planet a small amount thereby releasing more H2O into the atmosphere which then increases the temperature even more. Here are the major problems I see with this theory: 1 If the concentration of H2O in the atmosphere has increased, no one is quoting it. And even if it has increased, said increase has not been EXPERIMENTALLY linked to CO2. With the tens of billions of dollars already thrown into this theory, one would have thought that this major point would have some experimental proof. 2 If H2O in the atmosphere has increased then a proportional increase in cloud cover and precipitation would be expected. Both of these are planetary cooling agents. From the literature I have read, neither have had statistically signifcant increases. Further, they are not well handled even in the most sophisticated of models making the model projections questionable. 3 As best we can tell, while atmospheric CO2 increased from 1940 – 1970, the planet actually cooled. I fully understand that correlation does not guarantee causation. But you have to have correlation to even be considered a candidate. 4 As best we can tell, the CO2 concentration of the planet has been generally decreasing since its birth. The best data to date shows that the planet once had a CO2 concentration 18x what it is today. That did not lead to runaway temperature increases using the planet in the experiment. A runaway scenario is simply not plausible. 5 Increases in CO2 creates logarithmic, not linear increases in temperature. That is, if it is believed that the 100ppm increase in CO2 levels through the 20th century were responsible for a 0.8 degree C increase, then the next 100ppm may produce only 0.4 degrees C and the next 100ppm, only 0.2 degrees C. Now, there is substantial debate as to where on the logarithmic curve we are presently. But at least it is open debate. 6 Even though the sun has been more active over the last century than it has been in a very long time (and correlates much better to 20th century temperatures), it has been dismissed as contributing significantly to the 20th century warming because it would require a feedback factor of about 2.0 to account for the 0.8 degree C rise. What has not been readily reported is that the feedback factor for CO2 in present day climate models is about 2.5. If one REALLY wants to know ALL of the current info on climate change, one cannot simply read RealClimate. One must also read what the opposition is posting. A very good review (skeptical, of course) of the latest literature can be found at: http://www.oism.org/pproject/GWReview_OISM150.pdf Bottom line – I have been reading about this issue voraciously for the past 14 months and I continue to be a skeptic. In that time, I have seen pro-AGW researchers refuse to share data and computer code with their skeptical counterparts. I have also seen the IPCC ignore the input of scientists who did not support their political position. This is anathema to the scientific method and good reason to be skeptical. I have also seen email exchanges between opposing scientists that are truly uncivil and put major hurdles into the path of discovering the truth. If Al Gore had put his personal agenda aside and convened the 2 sides in a truly scientific exchange when I began my investigation, there is a good chance that the truth about this whole subject would be much clearer and we could be in a much better position to move forward with CO2 mitigation or spend our research money elsewhere. Unfortunately, his lack of leadership has allowed this subject to devolve from a scientific endeavor into a political morass.

steven_12 on "Climate change: a window to act "

steven_12 — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 21:17:28 +0000

"At the moment the planet is not moving closer to the sun and therefore should not be warming." Are you saying changes in temperature on earth is a function of changes in distance between the earth and the sun?

steven_12 on "Climate change: a window to act "

steven_12 — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 21:11:21 +0000

"If anyone seriously wants to understand the science of climate change http://www.realclimate.org/ is I think the best site that I have found written and maintained by climate scientists nearly all convinced of the theory but a few doubters do challenge their beliefs." Because you were so kind to actually point to what's supposed to be scientific evidence I went through the trouble of reading what's available on realclimate.org. I was immediately attracted to a series of article titled "How to talk to a climate skeptic". I found this stunning rebuttal to the statement: "There is no proof that CO2 is causing global warming" http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/12/22/224450/84 Ha. What a laugh did I have indeed. The rebuttal does not even make an attempt to lay a foundation of evidence to support there is a link between CO2 levels and rising temperature. The rebuttal basically says there are strong indications temperature is rising and I completely concur with that. I however refuse to accept this rise in temperature is man-made and this rebuttal does nothing to prove me wrong. In fact, realclimate.org has no trouble to link to sites that are utterly non-scientific. The rebuttal ends with this stunner: "Aside: It is usually interesting to ask just what observations or evidence your skeptic would consider "proof" that global warming is caused by rising CO2 levels. Don't be surprised if you get no answer!" As far as I'm concerned I found a good indicator that there is no actual scientific proof of man-made global warming. Show me the scientific evidence people!

steven_12 on "Climate change: a window to act "

steven_12 — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 20:57:16 +0000

"To the climate skeptics out there; Under your climate model, what happens if the scientists are right?" I for one don't have a climate model. I turn for that to people studying the climate using the scientific method. Just show me a list of climate studies grouped by hypothesis or theory. Just show it.

steven_12 on "Climate change: a window to act "

steven_12 — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 20:52:36 +0000

"The temperatures we now have are the highest average world temperatures ever recorded, higher than the medieval period etc. and are climbing at a unprecedented rate as far as we know." This must surely make you feel like a fool: http://www.clearlight.com/~mhieb/WVFossils/PageMill_Images/image277.gif

spamlet on "Climate change: a window to act "

spamlet — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 16:24:42 +0000

I have to admire the gall of Richard 'D', He and his mates have been been raking in the cash and milking the public's ignorance for all it is worth for as long as I can remember. In my opinion, they should be on trial for crimes against humanity: not STILL being allowed to continue sowing seeds of doubt with every breath. It makes not one jot of difference whether this bout of climate change is man made or not. THIS current batch of humanity will have to live - and probably a large proportion die - before a new balance is reached. The sooner they realise this the better. Perhaps, when the political parties have been deposed, and the 'economists' have gone to the wall with them, and their sceptic allies and mouthpieces, there might be some chance of a new world order emerging from the ruins. History, however, dictates, more of the same... Who needs to imagine any worse hell than life on earth? S

Climate change: a window to act , Paul Rogers

Thu, 22 Nov 2007 16:09:48 +0000

The thirteenth United Nations Climate Change conference in Bali on 3-14 December 2007 will conclude a year when climate change has moved towards the top of the international political agenda. A series of reports, meetings and plans since the publication of the Stern review in November 2006 (as well as the award of the Nobel peace prize to Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC] in October 2007) has kept the issue at the forefront of public discussion. But perhaps even more important in sustaining momentum has been clear evidence from around the world of the environmental impact of climate change itself, and the urgency of taking steps to address it.

Paul Rogers is professor of peace studies at Bradford University, northern England. He has been writing a weekly column on global security on openDemocracy since 26 September 2001

The gap between evidence and policy still remains wide, however. There is a long way to go to implant the sense among political leaders of just how important and shaping the challenge of climate change is for human society in the 21st century. It might be worth, then, summarising the broad understandings of climate change's further likely consequences in the coming decades, so that the responsibility facing the IPCC and the world's governments and international agencies can be put in context.

The big heat

In assessing how current climate-change trends will develop, three aspects are especially worthy of note (see "Climate change: threat and promise", 2 November 2006).

First, there is the risk that positive feedback systems will speed up the whole process. A vivid example is the melting of Arctic sea-ice; this leaves darker ocean surfaces to absorb more solar radiation, thus speeding up the melting process. This process could in turn be exceeded by another feedback mechanism: the progressive melting of the Arctic permafrost, which would release huge amounts of methane (a particularly potent climate-change gas) from rotting vegetation. This would further increase temperatures, melting more permafrost and releasing even more methane.

Second, the tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world could be far more severely affected than has previously been thought. Until the mid-1990s, most climate-change models predicted that the main effects would be felt in temperate latitudes whose relatively wealthy societies might be able to cope best. The more sophisticated models that came later have suggested otherwise; they predict that the most heavily populated and poorest regions of the world likely to experience more severe storms, inundation of low-lying coastal areas and, most important of all, a progressive drying out of the land masses as rainfall distribution tends to move from the tropics to the polar regions and from the land to the oceans.

Since these massive changes would affect poorer societies that were hugely dependent on local food production, the consequences in terms of malnutrition, starvation, migratory pressures and social disruption could be catastrophic.

Third, the fact that the official estimates of climate change are necessarily consensus documents - agreed among thousands of scientists and a hundred-plus national delegations - is both a striking indicator of international cooperation and a problem. It is a problem because inevitably, the process of achieving such consensus is enveloped by a persistent air of caution. This is made worse by the need to study and agree the often voluminous data arising from the very welcome increase in research into climate change. The end result was that the most recent research is often not be incorporated into the overall conclusions of the IPCC.

The reality is worse

The IPCC's publication of its new "synthesis report" on 17 November 2007 is an effort to collate the relevant current data, as a prelude to the new round of international negotiations on the control of carbon emissions which the Bali gathering will inaugurate. The report's opening is a stark illustration of the immediacy of the problem: it provides evidence that eleven of the last twelve years are among the twelve warmest years worldwide since accurate instrumental measurements started over 150 years ago.

The report also reveals that the IPCC has repeatedly had to revise its estimates of the impact of climate change upwards, a clear indication of the amount of new evidence tending in the same direction. At the same time, many leading climate scientists argue that the synthesis report does not go far enough; that it still has the limitations of a consensus document that avoids saying how dangerous current global-warming tendencies are (see Elisabeth Rosenthal & James Kanter, "Alarming UN report on climate change too rosy, many say", International Herald Tribune, 18 November 2007).

In addition to his weekly openDemocracy column, Paul Rogers writes an international security monthly briefing for the Oxford Research Group; for details, click here

Paul Rogers's latest book is Global Security and the War on Terror: Elite Power and the Illusion of Control (Routledge, July 2007). This is a collection of papers and essays written over the last twenty years, with two new essays on the current global predicament

This view is condensed by Hans Verolme, the director of the WWF global climate-change programme: "The IPPC is a five-year process, and the IPPC is struggling to keep up with the data - we are all being updated with new evidence and new science, and the new science is saying 'You thought it was bad? No, it's worse'".

A formulation of this kind might be expected from a campaigning organisation. It is striking, then, that the same perspective is shared by Rajendra Pachauri, who as chair of the IPPC is routinely diplomatic in his pronouncements. At the launch of the synthesis report in Valencia on 17 November he said "If you look at the scientific knowledge things do seem to be getting progressively worse. Maybe before we were in a state of ignorance, but also we've seen much stronger trends in climate change. So you'd better start with the interventions even earlier. Now."

The south's peril

In face of the mounting evidence of accelerating climate change, it is obvious that the Kyoto protocols - however painstakingly negotiated - have proved woefully inadequate in their attempts to control emissions. The reasons lie partly in wider political and economic realities. The Bush administration's decision to withdraw from Kyoto in 2001 did much to undermine the agreement. More fundamentally, the two largest newly industrialising countries - India and China - are making coal-fired power stations the instrument of much of their economic development. The Chinese in particular are becoming more aware of the consequences for their own environment of rapid, polluting, greenhouse-gas-emitting economic growth; but like the Indians, they are caught between the imperative of creating a dynamic economy as a way to meet the expectations of their populations and the responsibility to protect their environment.

A further challenge is becoming more visible in the world's tropical zones, which are facing a severe threat to agricultural productivity in coming decades: in tropical areas of Latin America it is predicted to decline by at least 20% over the next 70 years, across Africa by 30% downturn, and in India itself as much as 40% (see Rick Weiss, "Facing a Threat to Farming and Food Supply", Washington Post, 19 November 2007). Moreover, these are decreases on present production levels; they make no allowance for increased food demand coming from up to 4 billion more people, as well as the likelihood that much land could be used to produce biofuels.

The margin for action

The inescapable reality of climate change is at last being seen for what it is: the greatest contemporary threat to the world community, and most immediately to those in the global south who are least able to cope with its effects. Truly radical action will be required in the very near future - and that means years not decades.

To some degree this is already happening:

* strenuous efforts are being made to research new crop varieties that are more drought- and heat-resistant; some of the world's leading tropical agriculture research centres are now concentrating on this task

* there is increasing recognition of the huge potential to conserve energy across the industrialised countries in the global north

* renewable-energy resources (including wind, wave, tidal and photovoltaic systems) are all available for deployment on a far larger scale than at present; countries such as Denmark and Germany are making progress here.

Against this, there are the fundamental obstacles of political inertia and vested interests, the lack of political will, and the bureaucratic time-wasting that goes into producing multilateral agreements.

What is needed is a combination of strenuous and persistent citizen movements and some clear and unambiguous examples of political leadership. The former is already taking root, aided by unexpected events such as the Nobel peace prize award to the IPPC/Al Gore award, but there is little evidence of the latter.

The British prime minister Gordon Brown made an unexpectedly robust speech on 19 November 2007 that committed Britain to strong, ambitious action on climate change; yet full details of the new policies are not due for eighteen months and even if implemented will be far from sufficient. Furthermore, Brown's own government (surrounded already by a host of political and economic problems, including the loss of huge amounts of electronic data on citizens) is locked into its own contradictory policies: advocating a substantial increase in air traffic through London's Heathrow airport, for example, while failing in its plans to achieve a zero-carbon homes policy by 2016 (see Ashley Seager, "Labour lagging behind in plan for zero-carbon homes", Guardian, 22 November 2007).

When policies and outlooks face both ways at the same time, whether in China or western Europe, it is not simply due to the venality of governments or the powers that influence them. It may be that, even as climate change increasingly impacts on the world's most vulnerable communities, urgently needed radical action to avoid such a disaster is beyond the capacity of current political systems.

Yet there is no alternative. We need to work with what we have got, and much will depend on whether non-governmental groups and the wider civil society can force sufficient change on a decidedly reluctant polity. We will know within five years at most.

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