open Democracy News Analysis - Global Deal - Comments

maestra222 on "Canada to world - "after you""

maestra222 — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 02:11:02 +0000

The government of Canada released on March 10 the long-awaited details on a proposed regulatory framework to achieve emission reduction of 18% by 2010.

The development is a welcome step forward that pushes us closer to the establishment of a more robust cap a trade system. In their announcement the government of Canada explicitly recognized:

The need to establish a clear market price for carbon

- The need to set up a carbon emissions trading market, including a carbon offset system, to provide incentive for Canadians to reduce their greenhouse gases.

- The government also renewed its commitment to do more in the energy sector promising to setup a taskforce to like at hydro, nuclear and renewable energy sources.

In a clear disappointment to some observers, the government shied away from committing to hard emission caps favoring instead an emission intensity approach which ties emission to quantity of units of production. Also requirement for carbon capture and storage from the oil sands will only apply to operation starting in 2012 on-wards.

Source : http://www.zeroghg.com

jamesg17 on "Was Bali a success?"

jamesg17 — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 20:42:53 +0000

Well it was at least a nice junket for some folk. Trouble is, the wrong people are discussing the wrong things. A politician will sign anything to get elected but won't actually do anything about it. That's why Kyoto was a dumb idea and that's why it failed. Agreements could have been easily made on conservation or energy research. Banning incandescent lightbulbs would knock 10% off the CO2 total (they are easily replaced by led's which use one eighth of the power). Banning deforestation would knock another 20% off the CO2 total. So theres 30% and it's not got too difficult yet. A maximum power output for cars would be good. Get countries to send more freight by rail. Get government departments to buy solar and geothermal energies. And how about talking about alternative energies? Do you think 15,000 engineers, ie the people who are going to have to solve the problems could get a nice junket to Bali? Ha, ha, that'll be the day. There's just too many non-productive people on the climate gravy train who are all being well paid for basically saying the same thing - we've got to do something now - but nobody says what we should actually do. CO2 emissions targets are just wonderful devices for avoiding talking about the real issues and hoping that somehow the tail will manage to wag the dog.

pendragon.jay on "The world and climate change: all together now"

pendragon.jay — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 17:30:11 +0000

Civilisation – The Reckoning For millennia wise men (and women), have told us that what we think creates how we live, and few would disagree. In this 21st century we still understand little about who and what we are as a species, as our technological achievements continue to outstrip our understanding of each other . . . and this is at the heart of our inability to make progress in dealing with climate change. It is our traditional beliefs that cause our ceaseless conflict with each other and have created the desperate global situation we now find ourselves in. Consequently it must follow that these beliefs are totally incapable of providing the solutions to the problems they have created. We believe it is our right to take from this planet whatever, whenever and however we choose, without any thought or responsibility for managing what we are doing – and still continues today in spite of accelerating climate change. We are seeing increasing droughts and drying up of riverbeds, as well as flooding from whatever causes and rising temperatures. All of these changes in environmental balance directly affect our water supplies and seriously hinder food production, leading to our increasing inability to feed ourselves. We are now further increasing this dangerous situation as we begin to our use our food stocks for ethanol production to propel our transport. If we now place in this equation our belief in financial management and the law of supply and demand to regulate what we use, then a growing shortage of food means ever increasing prices. This in turn will see an increasing number of people unable to feed themselves as basic life sustaining nourishment is taken beyond their financial capabilities. We are already beginning to see the price of basic foodstuffs rise to feed the growing demand for ethanol. Rising grain prices directly affect the prices of our other food sources such as meat and eggs, where up to a 20% increase in prices has occurred over just the last 12 months in China alone – and theirs is quite a large population! As this problem escalates our traditional political institutions will need to be seen to be doing something, and so we lapse into blame as one nation accuses another of hoarding. The application of “labels” begins as hatred is stirred up between supposedly differing groups, be they racial, religious or any other ethnic grouping. And so we deteriorate into conflict, further expanding the threat to our existence as a civilisation through the powerful weapons we have now developed, and our inability to manage them effectively because of the ancient beliefs we still hold about each other and our surroundings. The most powerful nation may come out on top by annihilating everyone else - but as global war escalates, who can say with any degree of certainty that they too will not blow themselves off the face of this beautiful planet, given the nature of modern terrorist warfare and the inability to determine who is the ”enemy”? I honestly do not believe I am exaggerating anything within this scenario, but simply applying the effects of our traditional and limiting beliefs to the growing problem we are creating, and which they can only fuel rather than resolve. By challenging what we believe, and in so doing changing our relationship with each other and our surroundings, I believe it is possible to create the opportunity for a huge evolutionary leap forward as a species. We are at a unique moment in time in our history and embedded within this era are the ingredients for either our destruction or survival – the choice is ours. If we do not bother to commit to fundamental changes in what we believe in, and the time comes when we seek to protect our young from rising temperatures - holding them close to us as we huddle precariously on the roofs of our houses, and with rescuers unable to get to us because of the approach of more tidal waves which will sweep over us, it’s no good saying “We’re very very sorry, we won’t do it again!” – Its not right or wrong - it just didn’t work.

pendragon.jay on "Was Bali a success?"

pendragon.jay — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 17:25:23 +0000

Brendan 2 on "Was Bali a success?"

Brendan 2 — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 20:18:28 +0000

GW Bush is a convenient scapegoat in this article. He's certainly not a nice guy, and he's an even worse leader, yet it was Clinton who signed Kyoto for the US and it is the Congress of the United States who refuse to consider bringing forward legislation to achieve it, not GWB. Whoever is elected in 2008 will probably be unable to change this much without making it a Congressional election issue.

steven_12 on "The world and climate change: all together now"

steven_12 — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 19:12:15 +0000

Another important point about computer models:

The critical point in testing them is to validate the way their output is calculated and not what the actual output is.

As such population growth or any other variable is of no importance. Computer models should be able to work out the state of the climate taking as an input as many parameters as are required to do so.

One litmus test could then be which and how many parameters are taken as input. Many other ways of looking at the design of computer models could turn out to be critical tests, even before the actual testing has started.

caspar.henderson@opendemocracy.net on "Leaving Bali for a European destination"

caspar.henderson@opendemocracy.net — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 17:56:02 +0000

Yes, but can the EU actually deliver on its own pledge of 20% cuts by 2020? To do so would probably mean actually taking some powerful vested interests back home, and committing very large amounts of public and private capital to change. What are the odds for this in Europe, and how might those odds [be] change[d]?Thanks, by the way, for outstanding coverage!

Stephen Leahy on "A never-ending night, and longer day"

Stephen Leahy — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 16:21:43 +0000

David, I've been watching most of the meeting on the live UN webcast over the past few days and you've been providing an excellent summary and explanation of the issues. This has been without question the best Bali blog, I almost felt as if I were there. Congratulations and thanks very much for your efforts. Stephen (an environmental journalist who couldn't be there)

spamlet on "The world and climate change: all together now"

spamlet — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 21:12:30 +0000

But I expect you have more rewarding things to do. S

steven_12 on "The world and climate change: all together now"

steven_12 — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 14:26:17 +0000

Steven Do you have any evidence to support your assertion that "these infamous computer models are never tested in a verifiable way"? In which way do you feel they might be tested but are not tested? I have seen a model running, showing a mismatch between observed and expected, until they added the sulphate aerosol data, when the match improved. The match will never be 100% because perfection is not attainable, but we have a reasonable approach to a match. Computer models are just hypotheses, rendered into software. If there were a computer model that supported your theory, would you dismiss that also? I suspect not. If you rule computer models that show an AGW effect out of court, given that they are the only way of analysing such a complex system, you are saying in effect that global atmospheric changes must not be analysed scientifically, except in the case that they support your views. What would it take to change your mind on this matter? How much evidence do you require? Richard

If this software is tested in a verifiable way then anybody can have a go with it. I've personally been involved in a project where a user interface under development was demonstrated on a projector to management types. The demonstrator talked his audience through the demo while in the meanwhile demonstrating the functionality of the application.

What the management types were shown however was not the application but a series of powerpoint slides. There was no application to demonstrate because it wasn't ready, there was only a need to demonstrate one.

Software is not tested by someone doing a demo on a screen and other people walking away with conclusions. It's more complicated.

richard on "The world and climate change: all together now"

richard — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 14:18:52 +0000

Modern climate models have become increasingly accurate in reproducing how the real climate 'works'. They are based on our understanding of basic scientific principles, observations of the climate and our understanding of how it functions. By creating computer simulations of how different components of the climate system - clouds, the Sun, oceans, the living world, pollutants in the atmosphere and so on - behave and interact, scientists have been able to reproduce the overall course of the climate in the last century. Using this understanding of the climate system, scientists are then able to project what is likely to happen in the future, based on various assumptions about human activities. It is important to note that computer models cannot exactly predict the future, since there are so many unknowns concerning what might happen. Scientists model a range of future possible climates using different scenarios of what the world will 'look like'. Each scenario makes different assumptions about important factors such as how the world's population may increase, what policies might be introduced to deal with climate change and how much carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases humans will pump into the atmosphere. The resulting projection of the future climate for each scenario, gives various possibilities for the temperature but within a defined range. While climate models are now able to reproduce past and present changes in the global climate rather well, they are not, as yet, sufficiently well-developed to project accurately all the detail of the impacts we might see at regional or local levels. They do, however, give us a reliable guide to the direction of future climate change. The reliability also continues to be improved through the use of new techniques and technologies

richard on "The world and climate change: all together now"

richard — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 13:59:24 +0000

steven_12 on "The world and climate change: all together now"

steven_12 — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 11:51:53 +0000

The article above relates to the northern lights, and does not add any new stuff. It is well known that solar input varies, and that this has an influence on global temperatures, but not enough to account for the changes which we are now witnessing. Conservatives, contrarians, and AGW sceptics operate by finding single reports that seem to back their belief that an enormous AGW Conspiracy is taking place. But AGW is not dependent on single papers or factors. The Earth's climate is a system, and systems can best be reflected in computer models, which bring all the factors into consideration. Our understanding will change with time, but we understand enough now to know that America Canada and Japan, by blocking any effective outcome at Bali, are acting against their own interests and the interests of all mankind.

Computer models have to be tested. They're also impact by various constraints related to computing. Since these infamous computer models are never tested in a verifiable way it's troublesome to take them serious.

richard on "The world and climate change: all together now"

richard — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 10:18:02 +0000

opendemocracy on "Bloggers on the Bali"

opendemocracy — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 22:26:49 +0000

Chris, You are _so_ right about activist-reporting. i tried to think about this here: As for the name, BLONGO must be it. Brilliant. (blongueur has very unfortunate french connotations - a "longueur", (length) is also a dull passage in a piece of writing ...)