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February 11 2010
Utah Legislature Proposes Return to Dark Ages
In a bizarre turn of events (though perhaps not so much for the Utah legislature), the Utah State House of Representatives passed a non-binding resolution this week "questioning the science" of climate change (I guess its been snowing lately in Salt Lake City), and asking the federal government to abandon its pursuit of cap and trade legislation and carbon emissions regulation.
Expressing concerns about the consequences of current proposed climate legislation and emissions regulation on the Utah economy (that gets nearly 90 percent of its electricity from coal), Representative Kerry Gibson, the resolution's sponsor, not only took on the policy, but the science and scientists that underpin that policy as well. Despite how well they may actually understand climate science or the real work and careers of the thousands of scientists who study it.
The version of the resolution that passed on a 56-17 vote had its original language referring to "tricks," a "gravy train," and "conspiracy" removed. But as Solve Climate reports, what was left in the resolution parrots the talking points from conservative think tanks like the Heartland Institute and others.
The Utah capital has a record of hostility toward scientists when the conclusions reached threaten (real or imagined) their status quo. When Republican representative Mike Noel didn't like something Utah State University associate professor of physics Robert Davis said to a reporter last fall, he went crying to the president of the university. The bluster from Noel prompted a response from 18 BYU scientists saying in part:
We feel it is irresponsible for some of our legislators to attempt to manipulate the scientific evidence in order to support a political agenda." (read the full response from the BYU Earth scientists - pdf)
Fast forward to last week when the resolution was in committee. The following exchange between Noel and bioengineering professor Joseph Andrade aptly demonstrates how people like Noel find no need to even try to understand science, instead relying on a juvenile attemp of twisting the facts to serve his political aims (as reported by Solve Climate):
Rep. Noel: "Are you stating on record that CO2 is a pollutant? Are you saying that CO2, carbon dioxide, is a pollutant, are you saying that?”
Professor Andrade: "I'm saying that carbon dioxide has a unique molecular structure which absorbs infrared radiation, and that that is in part responsible for the effects that you're concerned with, Representative Gibson is concerned with, and Representative …."
Noel: "I want to get this on the record, ok? Are you saying that we have to rid the planet of carbon dioxide?"
Andrade: "Of course not!"
Noel: "It's not a pollutant then, it's not going to kill you. It's not going to kill plants. Is that correct? I also have a degree too, professor. So I want to get this straight. Is it a pollutant?"
(At this point the conversation devolves into a "verbal skirmish until the committee chair breaks it up)
Noel: "I'm sorry, I'm sorry … It got out of hand."
The notion, of course, that anyone is proposing that we should "rid the planet of carbon dioxide" is foolish and a disgrace to anyone in a position such as Noel's, belying his utter lack of even conversant knowledge of climate science and the natural carbon cycle. Noel has a degree – largely wasted in this case.
Tyler Volk, the science director of environmental studies at New York University, who is coming to Utah this week to give a keynote address at the University of Utah's "Climate of Change" conference, also expressed concern regarding this abject lack of understanding (or willful ignorance) of climate science.
Remaining ignorant of the facts lets people be "swayed by the winds of politics, either by the disaster-mongers or those who say, 'Everything's fine, party on,'" he said. Volk's aim is to "get people to a healthy level of concern."
For Noel, I am reminded of a recent comment I received here on this blog recently from a thirteen-year-old boy admonishing me for "believing in global warming" and then going through the common list of 1)Al Gore 2) what global warming? 3) Water vapor is the dominant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere (though the young man didn't know how to express it) 4) how can anyone propose regulating our breathing (since we exhale CO2 – a notion Glenn Beck loves to espouse) and 4) it's all Barack Obama's fault.
I suspect my young commenter was heavily influenced in his comments by the adults in his life, so I simply tried to gently set him straight on the more cogent points and encouraged him to pursue the facts on the issue independently of anyone else's influence (including mine) and make up his own mind. The issue is no more important to anyone than a thirteen-year-old, he and his friends will live in the future we pass on to them.
For Noel and the Utah legislature, they have no excuse. Yet they think and act like children.
December 23 2009
COP15 and the Copenhagen Accord – A Flawed Process, A Flawed Outcome
As the huge build-up and anticipation of the COP15 climate conference begins now to recede into history and the world peers down the road to Mexico City and COP16, I take stock of my own experience in Copenhagen and what I think of the process and result of the two-week climate negotiations.
"On the brink of collapse"
Every morning, as I crunched my bowl of corn flakes and fortified myself for another cold, Copenhagen day, it seemed that my morning updates typically consisted of how negotiations teetered on the "brink of collapse." By the start of the second week, the phrase began to loose its impact. "On the brink of collapse" was standard operating procedure – or so it seemed to me.
Much of the reason for this, apparently, is fundamental to how UN climate negotiations work. All decisions on how to proceed require unanimous consent among all participants, and it was evident by the third day that there wasn't going to be a lot unanimity going around. When the small island nation of Tuvalu refused to go forward unless a course was set for a legally binding agreement to come as a result of the 10-day negotiating session, presiding conference president Connie Hedegaard suspended the plenary session, bringing the process to a grinding halt (it wouldn't be the last time) as other of the most vulnerable nations backed Tuvalu's proposal. Delegates were greeted by a "rapid response" demonstration outside the plenary in support of tiny Tuvalu.
And thus marked the way things would continue throughout the talks, through to the final hours of the summit.
"This process is not particularly well-suited for the problem it's supposed to confront," Michael Levi, climate and energy expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, told ClimateWire. Levi said that the complexity of creating the mechanism through which 193 countries can discuss issues of reducing emissions, leveraging financing, technology transfer, and all that come with an international climate treaty is "forbidding."
"The idea that one institution can do all the work flies in the face of not just the last two weeks, but a basic analysis of the problem," said Levi.
Emerging in the wake of the past two are calls to review and reconsider the role the United Nations will play in further negotiations. The "flawed outcome" of the Copenhagen talks highlight the "underlying weakness" in the UN climate negotiating process said Andrew Light, coordinator of international climate policy at the Center for American Progress. Suggesting the experience should bring some soul-searching to find better options for dealing with climate change
"We need to start investigating other options, or at a minimum start using some alternative forums," he said, suggesting in a Reuters article possible substitutes such as the G20 and the Major Economies Forum.
What finally saved COP15 from total and final collapse (though some argue that conference was indeed a complete failure) was the arrival of 120 heads of state and the ability of a few nations to broker any sort of deal – no matter how tepid and unsatisfactory. Principal negotiations involved 30 countries, but the final outcome was mediated by only five: China, Brazil, India, South Africa, and the United States.
Many point to this fact – that in the end it was a handful of nations and not the UN negotiating body as a whole – to show that real progress on dealing with climate change lay with bilateral talks between nations, and not with the UNFCCC.
COP15 may see an evolution in how the UN engages in future climate talks, but Jennifer Morgan, director of the World Resources Institute's climate and energy program, maintains that the UN will still play an important part in future negotiation, saying it wasn't "the end of the UN's climate role."
Proponents of the UN insist there is no other process that can bring the world together to address the full spectrum of issues that arise from climate change. Equability – "climate justice" – requires participation from all countries.
While negotiations in the final hours of the conference included leaders representing blocks of African and small island nations, no time was given for them to report back and sell the idea to their constituents. Claiming the final deal brokered stepped outside the UN process, infuriating many developed nations who felt "railroaded" into accepting what was handed to them, whether they liked it or not. Even as protestors outside the Bella Center were condemning the outcome and press reports where talking of a done deal, many delegates inside had barely been given a chance to read the draft document, leaving many delegates "fuming."
A way forward or failed opportunity
What seems fairly certain is the nobody is very satisfied with the result of the Copenhagen climate talks – and for some that is a painful understatement.
South Africa, one of the key nations in forging the final draft of the Copenhagen Accord, has now blasted the effort as an "unacceptable" failure. Buyelwa Sonjica, South Africa's environmental minister, laid partial blame for that failure at the feet of the Danish hosts, saying an "atmosphere if distrust and suspicion" pervaded negotiations because many feared Denmark was plotting to "force its position on other nations." Others blame president Obama for not taking a stronger leadership role and proposing tougher emissions targets than the 17 percent over 2005 levels already on the table (and already passed through the House of Representatives).
Some, however, offer cautious optimism that the Accord will at least lay a foundation for future negotiations. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the Copenhagen Accord an "essential beginning" that must be codified into law within the next year. British Environmental Secretary Ed Miliband insisted that calling the accord a failure was not fair, pointing to the flow of financing that it facilitates as an important step forward.
But many are bitterly disappointed, mincing no words and calling the outcome a "climate shame." Outside the Bella Center early Saturday morning, 350.org founder Bill McKibben laid blame principally on Barack Obama, saying he did no more than John McCain would have done.
Noted
And so all but four or five nations have not quite adopted, but "noted" the Copenhagen Accord. It specifies a goal to limit warming to 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels through the end of the century – but offers non-binding emissions targets that fall far short of reaching that goal. It promises $100 billion in financing for developing nations, but doesn't specify where from where the money will come.
In the sometimes bewildering, often circus-like atmosphere of the Bella Center, a human drama played out on a thousand different levels. From earnest young hunger strikers to men in polar bear suits asking if anyone has seen Phil Jones (and providing Fox News the perfect photo op) and, almost secondary to the circus it seemed at times, an international intrigue plodded through ten long days of endless speeches, impassioned pleas, "leaked texts," and acrimonious debate.
That is until the final few hours, when what we had all come there for was finally offered to the world – the Copenhagen Accord. A flawed process led to a flawed document. It is frustrating, baffling, and discouraging. So be it. We are all, to some degree, responsible for what happened on the "road to Copenhagen", what happened in Copenhagen, and where we go from here.
On that tenuous foundation we have no choice but to move forward.
The Copenhagen Accord (pdf)
December 12 2009
A Misguided Message of Hate and Cherry-Picked Images from Copenhagen
It's getting late here in Denmark, and I'm just back to my rented apartment after a long day at the Bella Center and the COP15 climate conference.
I should be working on my coverage of the day, starting with finishing the videos of the press conference from the IPCC early this afternoon, but I want to get something off my chest first.
No doubt the media, especially the likes of Fox News, is making hay from the kerfuffal earlier this week when a group of young protestors interrupted a meeting of Americans for Prosperity in Copenhagen.
Let me be clear: Any group has every right to come here and hold a meeting (as long as they pay for the meeting hall), even if it is in direct opposition to the spirit that pervades this entire town right now. It may not be the best tactics to hijack a meeting with disruptive tactics, no matter how good your intentions, how right your ideals, or how noble your cause.
With youth comes what some, who are older and more worn down by the madness of the world, might call naiveté in there zeal to make a better world. There is too easily a misunderstanding of how their actions might be perceived to a general population that too often falls prey to the Big Tobacco-style of sowing doubt and confusion about an ostensibly complex topic (sorry for the cynicism – I'm one of those old farts).
I venture that some of the people now condemning these youth for their tactics might possibly be the same ones that took to town hall meetings all across the United States earlier this year to shout down any debate about health care. Poor tactics are made even worse when motivated by fear and hate – at least the young people here in Copenhagen have a noble cause. And the fact is, as UN Minister to the COP15 conference Connie Hedegaard said in a press briefing this evening – the spirit and drive that has taken to the streets here in Copenhagen has surely made a difference in the outcome.
So shouting down a meeting of idealogical opponents might play into the hands of those with whom you oppose – just as Lord Monckton's tireless and repeated labeling of these people as "Hitler Youth" has rightly played into the hands of those for whom he obviously now wishes to "get even" – in a sickeningly smug manner that reeks of the close-mindedness for which he accuses others. Indicting the demonstrators, as he does, of starving the poor in the developing world because of biofuel development has "doubled the price of food" is ludicrous – as if these twenty-somethings have anything at all to do with first-generation biofuel development. Somebody google Archer Daniels Midland (and if you're unsure, google "first-generation biofuel" while you're at it).
So what is my point? Thanks for asking.
As I said, earlier today, I videotaped a press conference by the chair and two leading scientists from the IPCC. The full video is about thirty minutes long. Uploading videos to YouTube requires they be no longer than ten minutes. After working on three draft articles at once in the media room at the Bella Center and finally finishing the first video upload, I decided by 9:30 it was time to head back home and finish my work here.
In the time it took to pack up my things and make one last check of my email – about three minutes – some messenger of hate left a comment on part one of the video telling me to "leave our children alone" (our children? ), calling me evil and a "self-important" communist and "evil people." (Since I'm here on a press pass, I'm not sure exactly which group of evil people I belong to – the Hitler Youth or the Evil Press).
It wasn't exactly what I wanted to see as a comment to a press conference from a leading scientific body talking about scientific matters, but hey, I'm used to it. Obviously the commenter was just out trolling for places to seed his tiny-brained message of hate, so I deleted it, confident that he'd get his (or her) jollies elsewhere.
Thirty minutes later I get "home" and fire up the laptop to get back to work and another message of hate is waiting from the same commentor, now accusing me for the poor and starving in the third world – completely oblivious to how his own way of life might impact the rest of the world – accusing me of using screaming children to spread a message of hate (I defy anyone to find a screaming child in the video) – telling me that I am a disgrace to humanity – accusing me of censorship. Well, okay, he got me there.
So I let his second message through and left one in reply. One of which I am not necessarily proud, but that come forth at the end of a long day. And I meant every word.
I don't know how this event in Copenhagen is being portrayed to the rest of the world. I can tell you this. There is no message of hate here. There is only hope for the future – the likes of which I have not seen before in my 51 years. You might think "we" people here are "evil," scaring the children, and starving the poor (and news flash to those who don't get out much, we're all a pretty diverse group, and many of the most concerned come from the same parts of the world some accuse "us" of starving to death), but consider the idea your message of hate is misguided and your images of what is going on here is cherry-picked at best.
Certainly one can begin to feel "self-important" for being here, for working hard, for acting out on your ideals and passion.
But it just might change the world.
The messages of hate from my YouTube friend can only destroy it.
Thank you, now it is time to get to work. I just had to say that.
December 10 2009
COP15 Boycotts Sarah Palin – Fox News Still Can't Count – Climate Change Still Exists
Shortly after I arrived on the ground here in Copenhagen, I heard reports from back home that erstwhile vice-presidential candidate and early-retiring Alaska governor Sarah Palin was urging president Barack Obama to "boycott" the COP15 climate talks in the wake of stolen emails from climate scientists and East Anglia University and the apparently heavily-funded and obviously conveniently timed effort to characterize the content of those emails as "proof" that the entire body of climate science is suspect.
The call for Obama's boycott of the talks came as news of a well-orchestrated international campaign to harass scientists and attempt to create a "scandal" came to light, pushing deep into Big Tobacco territory of sowing doubt and confusion. Confusion exemplified by Fox News when they purport a poll showing 120% of Americans believe that climate scientists fudge their data by… fudging their data.
Perhaps both Palin and Fox need a quick refresher in history. "Climategate" refers, of course, to Watergate, in which the real scandal was not what was found in the files, but by the fact they were stolen – and forces behind the illegal act.
The emails in question relate only to the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report, a process where 2500 scientists review, in two separate rounds, and synthesize all current peer-reviewed research into an overall assessment, placing all comments in the public domain. The trend suggested in the first through third reports remain consistent in the fourth. But more importantly, the trend in the real world – which cares little of anyone's email – continues to reveal increasingly rapid climate change.
Unable to legitimately refute the science and empirical evidence after years of repeated attempts, their hand is continually overplayed, leading to a manufactured "scandal" that will blow up in their face.
Sarah Palin thinks President Obama should boycott COP15? Too late.
COP15 – represented by a global community reflected in the numerous languages that fill the air as I write this (something that might make Palin a bit uneasy) – rejects the real scandal and the methods of those that promote it.
Additional Sources and further reading: Media Matters
Real Climate
Dernogolizer
ClimateProgress
November 24 2009
Senator Inhofe: Tilting Toward Windmills
Senator James Inhofe should be praised for his tenacious pursuit of climate change denial. For Inhofe, the ends justify the means in his relentless pursuit of denying even the possibility of risk from human-caused climate change.
Thus it is with little surprise that he has boldly announced his intention to "investigate" the public release of hacked emails from the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, saying it "calls into question" the validity of the entire body of climate science data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the United Nations. How terribly ironic that such an opportune hacking of emails – cat-nip for the likes of Inhofe – should come in the midst of a climate change debate in the Senate and the upcoming COP15 climate conference in Copenhagen.
Hundreds of emails were stolen last week from the research unit based in Norfolk, England and subsequently posted on several websites. The episode came to light when hackers attempted to post the stolen data on RealClimate, a leading climate change blog run by prominent climate scientists.
Some of the emails highlight the grudge held between climate scientists and deniers, with one email from Ben Santer at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory saying he was tempted to "beat the crap out of" noted skeptic Patrick Michaels, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.
One email from Kevin Trenberth, the head of the climate analysis section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado included a line that said "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't." The phrase, which Trenberth says was taken out of context and part of a much longer statement, has been seized upon by Inhofe and the denier community as "proof" that scientists were in collusion to suppress data suggesting there is no human influence on climate change. Trenberth emphasized the importance of considering the phrase in proper context, adding that of the 102 hacked emails in which he is involved, he doesn't "see anything embarrassing to me particularly. There are a few things that can be taken out of context, and they have been." Referring to the "lack of warming" comment, Trenberth said "We've always had some problems with the observing system," he said. "It's obviously not as good as we would like, and that's true of the temperature record, as well. What this is saying is we need better observations. What it's not saying is that global warming is not here."
Trenberth added that the most established climate research tends to be conservative and underestimate the observed evidence of global warming: "The IPCC is actually a fairly conservative process," he said. "It involves people from over 100 countries and different parts of the political spectrum to see what the best statements we can make about global climate change are. They are consensus statements, so by definition that means they are somewhat conservative."
Far from being the "smoking gun" that some, including Senator Inhofe, would like to characterize the stolen emails, they do little more than occasionally expose some scientists "behaving badly." They represent only a "handful" of the thousands of scientists that have contributed to a broad convergence of data showing a warming planet.
Anthony Leiserowitz, the director or the Yale Project on Climate Change and also a social scientist, said the emails will be remembered as little more than an embarrassment to some of the researchers."It shows that the process of science is not always pristine," said Leiserowitz. "But there's no smoking gun in the e-mails from what I've seen," he said, adding that the episode serves up red meat to the 2 or 3 percent of general public that are hard-core deniers: "For that small group it is like meat to the wolves."
University of Leeds environmental professor Piers Forster concurred that the emails are more telling of human nature than of science: "Whilst some of the e-mails show scientists to be all too human," he said, "nothing I have read makes me doubt the veracity of the peer review process or the general warming trend in the global temperature recorded."
Tilting at windmills
What is most ironic to me is that Senator Inhofe, someone caught time and again supporting or promoting bogus campaigns in his ongoing effort to impugn climate science, would seize on a bunch of stolen emails to charge others with tactics of which he himself is guilty. Claiming that the "science isn't settled" on climate, he continues to belie his own understanding of how science works.
Inhofe's quest for an investigation is a "wild goose chase" says Daniel Weiss, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Inhofe is "talking about emails that were written ten years ago about how to present study data."
As Chris Wood, author of Dry Spring once told me, "Reality always wins."
Senator Inhofe will forever try to deny that simple fact, attempting to bend reality to his own misguided (at best) beliefs, often based on the flimsiest of reasons. It's all so much tilting at windmills.
Sources and further reading:
Reuters
Climate Progress
ClimateWire (subscription)
E&E News (subscription)
Huffington Post
Post
November 10 2009
A Sense of Urgency Ahead of Cop15?
I am currently in the Maryland countryside, participating in a Transatlantic Media Dialog hosted by the German Embassy and the Ecologic Institute. The mission of the event is, in part, to serve as a followup to the efforts the German foreign ministry has made in recent months to create a better understanding of German energy and climate policy, including the international environmental journalist press trip in which I participated last spring. These efforts serve to foster greater communication on the Transatlantic Climate Bridge begun by the German government in January.
Policy experts,writers, and journalists from both the EU and US have an opportunity here to discuss climate policy and public perceptions of the issue in the final days before the COP15 climate conference in Copenhagen next month.
It has been widely reported that the definition of success in Copenhagen is steadily shifty downward in a "management of expectations" as the theatrics in the US Senate over the Kerry-Boxer climate bill play out. As goes the US Senate, it is understood and feared, so goes what can be achieved at COP15.
Much of the discussion yesterday focused on the varying perceptions of the state of negotiations on both sides of the Atlantic. Those in the EU typically, and rightly look at the US as laggards in climate protection and energy policy. Those in the US see much of the touted gains in emissions reductions in the EU as "Fall Wall" profits – pointing to the fact the as much as 50% of the emissions reductions in the EU since 1990 is due to the collapse of Eastern European industry in the wake of the fall of the Berlin wall. In light of that, current US efforts may be far more ambitious than they seem at first blush.
Both sides have legitimate arguments, and the discussion served to highlight the differing perspectives of how we got where we are today (and I will touch more on this in subsequent posts).
What is at issue now, however, with COP15 looming just a few short weeks ahead, is where do we go from here? For some time, 2009 has been understood as the year that climate change comes onto the international stage with the world community grappling with the growing impacts of climate change and working to move beyond the Kytoto Protocol expiring in 2012. In many parts of the world there has been a growing sense of urgency that time to act is increasingly short. But that sense of urgency is perceived as lacking in the US, as expressed by Jakob Erickson, a counselor for climate affairs for the Danish Embassy based in Washington DC.
Erickson's closed his address yesterday imploring the US to regain that sense of urgency, asking "Where is it? What happened? Where is the debate in the US media?"
Speaking with Erickson afterwards, he told me that despite the apparent lack of urgency in the public's perception of the issue, and despite the starkly polarized posturing in Congress, the political momentum is probably not going to be greater than it is now. The Obama administration expresses commitment on getting legislation done on climate change, as will as a willingness to to go to Copenhagen if it will help seal some sort of a deal.
The time is now, and the matter could not be more urgent.
Maybe Soup is currently being updated? I'll try again automatically in a few seconds...
