Earlier this week the BBC Trust announced a comprehensive review of how the Corporation reports scientific controversy, which is of course politically sensitive over issues like Genetically Modified crops and Climate Change. The review is part of the BBC’s assessment of how it is meeting its charter obligations to be impartial.

The question of impartiality is a difficult concept in terms of scientific debate, particularly where there is a divergence between the common sense views held by lay people away from the scientific consensus of expert opinion. Channel 4 got themselves into trouble three years ago showing a “documentary” by Martin Durkin called “the Great Climate Change Swindle”that sought to undermine informed political debate by misrepresenting the balance of scientific opinion so as to give exaggerated weight to eccentrics. Durkin is of course associated with the libertarian network formerly known as the RCP, who are controversialists for the sake of it.

There is a good accessible guide to the debating tactics of “deniers” at Scienceblogs.com. One of the pertinent points they make is that some scientifically incompetent people not only have an exaggerated view of their own competence, but also fail to recognise genuine competence in others. As a result this minority not only DO NOT but CAN NOT distinguish between good science and crank theories.

Unfortunately, there has developed a sort of intellectual exhaustion over the issue of Climate Change, and scepticism has gained ground in the last couple of years, as can be seen from the huge response to the “Climategate” scandal surrounding leaked e-mails from University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit. Climate change deniers and sceptics have had a field day, and have been joined by libertarians and conspiracy theorists of all sorts. Indeed there was a huge explosion of Internet traffic on these sites. Derek Wall has pointed out that the irrationality of much of the scepticism, and Unity at Liberal Conspiracy made a very good attempt at explaining the issue of the Hockey Stick controversy as it relates to the deviation between tree ring data and global temperatures measured by a variety of other means over the last 20 years, although he has a rather more positive assessment of the credibility of the Hockey Stick than I do..

However, I believe it is also necessary to look at how scientists seeking to persuade the public and politicians of the need for urgent action have created problems themselves. For example, Wolgang Behringer’s excellent book “A Cultural History of Climate” quotes Stephen Schneider, a co-author of the 2001 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report as saying: “To capture the public’s imagination … we have to offer up scary scenarios, make dramatic simplified statements”. The difficulty with this, apart from its elitism, is that it provides hostage to fortune where people with a poor understanding of scientific reasoning grasp at inaccuracies in the simplified message and obsess over them.

The best analysis I have read of the Climategate e-mail scandal is by Peter Kelemen, a professor of geochemistry at Columbia University’s Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, in the journal Popular Mechanics.

He points out that

 “Among the hundreds of e-mails, 10 to 20 messages seem to indicate that scientists at CRU and their correspondents considered deleting information requested by critics in the context of British and American freedom of information laws, and in at least two separate cases discussed how to have associate editors of peer-reviewed journals removed from their posts because they accepted critics’ papers for publication. We do not know the detailed context of these messages, nor do we know if ideas discussed in these e-mails were actually implemented. Furthermore, though CRU has confirmed that most of the e-mails are genuine, some of them could have been forged or altered. Nevertheless, I think it is important for scientists to clearly state that if basic data were withheld, or if there was unprofessional tampering with the peer-review process, we do not condone these acts. It is equally essential to emphasize that alleged problems with a few scientists’ behavior do not change the consensus understanding of human-induced, global climate change, which is a robust hypothesis based on well-established observations and inferences.”

If the e-mails have not been forged or altered then there are genuine causes for concern about some of the behaviours from the East Anglia academics. But the logical eror by the sceptics and deniers is to leap from the fact that this or that detail may be wrong, or this or that scientist may have made a mistake, into assuming that the whole of the science is wrong.

Unfortunately, the desire to present a simple story has also led to some bad science. In general this can be seen by the quasi-religious tones that the debate over the Hockey Stick is sometimes conducted, and the accusations of bad faith.

Behringer quotes a number of worrying examples of mystification from leading climate scientists. For example, James E Hansen, a Director of a NASA Institute and professor at the Earth Institute of Columbia University writes of climate change throwing the earth into “energy imbalance”. But what is the balance that it is being thrown from? Does he regard the particular holocene climate that the Earth has sustained for the last few thousand years as “balance” and everything else as imbalance? Behringer quotes two physicists who have been co-ordinating work with the IPCC writing of climate change as a disease! Noted geo-scientist, Richard Alley has referred to the quasi-religious concept of “ecosins” – i.e. he has introduced religious metaphor into science.

Seeking to popularise the science is a good thing, but if this leads to mystification then it obscures the debate rather than enhancing it. There is also a fundamental problem of seeking to create an artificial divide so that mankind’s activity is seen as occurring outside of and antagonistic to the natural world. The impact of living organisms upon climate is as old as life itself, as the composition of the atmosphere is largely shaped by the animal and plant life, and this in turn has huge impact on temperature. Mankind’s first major impact on climate probably started as long ago as the deforestation that accompanied the neolithic revolution.

There is a further real problem with the way some climate change scientists respond to the Hockey Stick debate. This refers to a graph of climate over the last 1000 years that shows an essentially stable temperature until the last hundred years, and then a sharp upswing (the foot of the hockey stick). This was included in the 2001 IPCC report, correlating it to CO2 levels, which show the same pattern.

While the CO2 graph is based upon data from recovered air bubbles drawn from ice core drilling, the constant value of 290 ppm in the pre-industrial era between 1000 and 1800 does suggest that perhaps the raw data has been sampled to exaggerate the later upwards trend. The temperature graph extrapolates the information for the period 1000 to 1750.

This is not really too problematic, as long as its limitations are acknowledged. But some of the most enthusiastic proponents of the Hockey Stick, like Michael Mann, feel forced to reject very empirically well established phenomenon, like the mediaeval warm period, where temperatures were higher than they were in the 20th century or today. For example, maximum tree line levels, the altitudes and latitudes that vines and wheat could be grown, the archaeological record of pollens and insect evidence; and even clothing trends in the mediaeval period prove that temperatures were higher then than today. Indeed, estimations of global temperatures over the last 2000 years derived from recent ocean floor drilling do not follow Mann’s Hockey stick, and match much more closely the 1990 IPCC calculations.

Populist accounts of global temperatures also tend to discount the global cooling that occurred between 1945 and 1975, that was indeed one of the foundations of modern climate research, as concern grew that interglacial periods rarely exceed 10000 years, and in the 1970s it was postulated that we were due for another Ice Age.

There are a number of things to say here. Firstly, the Earth’s climate is very complex, and variation in temperature is not monocausal. It is affected by the long wave variation in the Earth’s orbital distance from the sun; by sun-spot activity; by the amount of particulate in the atmosphere whether from volcanoes, meteorites, or pollution, which blocks the sunlight; it is also affected by the amount of reflection, itself a function of glaciation; over the very long term global temperature is even affected by continental drift. So the greenhouse effect, whereby water vapour, CO2, CH4 and some other trace gases trap the heat energy is only one causal agent among many.

The correlation between CO2 concentration and global temperature is very well established science, indeed first suggested in the nineteenth century by Baron de Fourier, and John Tyndall. The Greenhouse theory was first proposed in developed form by Glibert Plass in 1956, and was given empirical reinforcement when data showing the upward drift of CO2 concentrations was first published by Charles Keeling a year later. However, although a relationship between Co2 concentration and temperature is very firmly established, the mechanism may not be entirely straight forward, as there are feedback effects at work, whereby higher temperatures cause higher CO2, which can mean there is a Phase difference between the CO2 and the temperature trends.

The other thing that needs saying is that the way the consensus changed whereby climate scientists first predicted an ice age, and then changed to worrying about global warming is in fact a vindication of the scientific method, not its refutation. Stathis Psillis in his excellent 1999 book “Scientific Realism, How Science Tracks Truth” discusses in detail how working scientists distinguish between those parts of a theory which are empirically successful, and those parts which are contingent on further validation. His discussion concerns the nineteenth century theory of the caloric nature of heat as a material fluid; and the dynamical optimal ether theories of the same period, which attempted to explain the passage of light. Both of these theories were widely propagated and taught because they explained the observed behaviour better than alternate theories, but in neither case were predictive assumptions made upon the material existence of heat as a fluid or the ether as a physical structure. That is, they had explanatory power as hypotheses, but were always regarded as contingent.

The scientific impetus to studying global cooling began with J Murray Mitchell of the US Weather Bureau, who observed that the huge quantities of dust from atomic bomb testing had a different pattern of dust retention in the stratosphere from volcanoes. This led him to observe the effect of volcanoes on cooling the average global temperatures, and this drew attention to the steep rise in temperature during the first half of the Twentieth Century, since the end of the Little Ice Age in 1895. This led to Henry Kissinger in 1974 initiating international cooperation in climate change research in a speech in the United Nations, and it was the United States who further took the lead in 1978 of establishing both a national programme of research, and broad international research cooperation. During the 1970s, prompted by fears of global cooling, intensive research effort achieved much greater understanding of the causal factors behind temperature variation. Indeed plausible explanation of the cooled period between 1945 and 1975 comes from decline in sun-spot activity, and increased pollution providing a dimming effect.

So this is what we know, as established science.

i) there is a broad correlation between CO2 levels and global temperature,
ii) the greenhouse effect is only one causal factor, but it is an important factor
iii) CO2 concentrations are very steeply rising, to levels not achieved for millions of years
iv) Average temperatures have risen by 0.6 degree C over the last hundred years, and there has been a significant increase in the last 30 years
v) The rise in CO2 correlates with the explosion of air-flights, increase of animal husbandry for a more meat oriented diet, and growth of consumerism

This is quite enough to establish beyond reasonable doubt that climate change is real, and that there is a significant degree of human causation.

However, we must beware of politicization of the science whereby we assume that the general public are not sophisticated enough to understand that CO2 concentration changes are not the only factor that causes temperature changes. This feeds the scepticism. Paradoxically, where scientists and activists seeking to persuade people of the danger of climate change abandon the ground of strong science, then they open the door to deniers and sceptics arguing for more “balance” in the debate, so it is an own goal.

We must also resist the moralism of arguments along the lines that “people are killing the planet”. We are part of the planet, and we mould it to our own needs; the solution is not abandoning hope in science and technology, but embracing it further, and not only reducing CO2 emissions, but also exploring complementary counter-measures like carbon capture.

Incidentally, I strongly recommend “A Cultural History of Climate (Paperback)” by Wolfgang Behringer, Polity Press, November 2009. It is particularly strong on explaining the dramatic cultural and social changes that climate variations have had on humanity over the last thousands of years, and discussing the archival and physical evidence in a very compelling way. There is also a useful summary of the scientific debate. The illustration used above is Breugel’s Hunters in the Snow, which is used on the cover of Behringer’s book, showing the harsh climate during the mini ice age in late mediaeval Europe. All the graphs are taken from Behringer.

Those chinese are so inscrutable, and the Independent reveals today their real plans for world domination. Apparently China is “clamping down” on the export of rare earth elements (REEs) required for combatting global warming.

The Independent quotes “one campaigner” as saying “There are legitimate questions over Beijing’s control over these resources. Copenhagen showed they are not above putting national interest ahead of global eforts to curtial global warming.”

Yes why should China have control of the mineral wealth within its own borders? And is China the only country to pursue national interest?

Apparently these rare earth elements are necessary for a number of green technologies.

How do we know? Because China has discovered these uses at the Rare Earth Research institute at Baotou, in Inner Mongolia.

How do we currently have ANY supplies of these REEs? Because China  has found and mined these elements on industrial scale - even though deposits do exist elsewhere.

Why is China allegedly restricting exports? Because China’s industry is going greener, and they will be using the full production themselves!

So this is the real challenge, as described in the Indie by Cahal Milmo:

“China is rapidly moving from a role as a provider of rare earth extract for export, worth a few hundred million dollars a year to Chinese GDP, to a producer of finished REE components worth billions. In response to Chinese reductions in exports, global manufacturers are forced to move factories making rare earth rich components to China. Zhang Peichen, deputy director of the Baotou rare Earth Research Institute, said “Rare earth usage in China will be increasingly greater than exports” “

So the real story is that China is leading the world. They are producing so much green, sustainable manufactured output that they are exhausting their own capacity to produce the raw materials. The rest of the world has not developed an alternative mining capability, and so now blames China!

China moving from being an underdeveloped exporter of raw materials to a high tech, manufacturing producer in its own right is seen as a threat. They don’t deserve it, we do.

This is reflective of the colonialist mind-set still too common in the West. If any other country was using its own mineral resources to develop sustainable environmental manufacturing, then this would not be presented as a sneaky trick to achieve world domination. But this sinophobic myth is a persistent strain that lies unchallenged just beneath the surface of common sense in the West.

Madam Miaow is on the money here about the recent execution in China of British drug smuggler, Akmal Shaikh.

The Optimum Population Trust is working to introduce population trading. We can produce more environmental damage but buy a credit.

The credit pays people in Madagascar to have fewer children. Neat, I don’t think.

Ian Angus takes up the story here.

There are ways of ‘fighting’ climate change that are going to lead to a lot of oppression, you don’t have to be a conspiracy crank to be worried

And you might want to listen to the new OPT song, being downloaded by the thousand, listen here for free, worrying.

The Copenhagen blame game continues with the media reaching a hysterical pitch in their attempts to demonise China over the disappointing results at the climate change summit.
By Madam Miaow

The Guardian publishes another lurid smear, this time by someone called Mark Lynas and titled: “How do I know China wrecked the Copenhagen deal? I was in the room”
Starring Mark Lynas as Sax Rohmer which, I guess, makes me Fu Manchu. (I recommend you read all the comments on the Guardian thread.)

UPDATE Wednesday 23rd December : Comment is free but only if you agree. The Guardian removed my comment below from their thread, posted 22nd December 9.23pm. Not only mine, but I notice some other very good posts robustly rebutting Lynas’s assertions and errors have been removed.

Dear Mark,

So the cold war is alive and well.

Western spin is really pulling out all the stops, perhaps because we are onto you as the various blogs and forums show.

if anything, China got strong-armed into signing a weak deal when it should have held out as Bolivia, Venezuela, Cuba and others have said.

The US and the rich nations use up almost all the carbon allowance in the atmosphere over the past 160 years, the US dithers over ten years of Bush, they refuse to ratify Kyoto, the Danish summit chair has to resign when she’s caught fast-tracking the rich nations’ deal, the West fail in their Kyoto pledges, Canada rips up its Kyoto deal and proceeds with exploiting its huge reserves of dirty oil, the US will only reduce emissions by 4% against the 1990 base year and not the 17% you describe as “serious cuts”, while China makes real strides in green technology, and so on.

But it is all China’s fault.

Hilary Clinton bursts into the conference demanding China [edit: eat merde] when the US didn’t even have anything to offer. They knew that the terms of the “verification” they demanded was an exercise in humiliation and China would not stand for it. The US can’t get anything meaningful past their senate, which includes some “wholly owned subsidiaries of the energy industry” (Monbiot) and resorts to sleight of hand.

But China is the villain.

As for Merkel, she is a massive hypocrite when you look at what her government’s been doing.

Even John Prescott pointed out that we’ve had our industrial revolution yet the poor countries have to halt in their tracks and people live on an average of $2 per day.

But according to you China twirls its moustache and strokes its cat as it eats the planet for breakfast.

What other country has an entire city using solar powered appliances? Who else has planted such huge tracts of forest while loggers tear down the rest? China aims for 15% of its energy from renewables, it has revolutionised wind-turbines, makes a key component of electric car batteries, and so on. We in the UK can’t even meet our Kyoto promise.

The world says it’ll pay $100 billion into the global kitty. Yet how much does the US spend each year on wars? Something like a million dollars a day on petrol alone.

This game of smoke and mirrors is shameful. Dividing the world into angel and devil does not help, neither does throwing a hissy-fit when China baulks at signing the rich nations’ deal which condemns the poor nations to a slumdog future. At an early stage in its industrial development China is moving onto the right track. By all means criticise them when they screw up but give them credit for what they’re getting right. The future of the planet is too important for these political football games.

Seasons greetings, although seasons may soon be a thing of the past if the rich nations get their own way,

Anna

Practically a lone voice in the Guardian, George Monbiot writes:

Obama went behind the backs of the UN and most of its member states and assembled a coalition of the willing to strike a deal that outraged the rest of the world. This was then presented to poorer nations without negotiation: either they signed it or they lost the adaptation funds required to help them survive the first few decades of climate breakdown. … Pushing a strong climate programme through the Senate, many of whose members are wholly-owned subsidiaries of the energy industry, would have been the political battle of his life. Yet again, the absence of effective campaign finance reform in the US makes global progress almost impossible.

Almost forgot, Naomi Klein: Copenhagen’s failure belongs to Obama

UPDATE 2: A recent comment (not mine) at the above Guardian CIF thread:

The Guardian writer was trying to confuse the public by omitting the fact that the EU couldn’t even agree to its binding emission cut targets even by 2020 and they couldn’t fill that blank. He also omitted the fact that the US also refused to have its emission cut target by 2020 included in the draft. An 80% cut by 2050 on a global scale obviously would have painted a big panckage in the sky. When the rich countries have not honored their pledges to the Kyoto Protocol to cut their emissions and they couldn’t set binding short-term emission targets, how do we expect them to honor a long-term emission cut targets by 2050? In fact, Yvo de Boer in his last press conference said that the commitments to cut GHG emission by individual developing nations combined are far larger than those of the developed countries combined.
They want 80% cut by 2050 written into the accord so they could pressure the developing nations, because after all, the developing nations are the ones whose emissions will have to grow and peak as the year 2050 gets closer.
Above all, the writer didn’t even tell how the US and other rich nations were pretty successful in detrailing and deviating the negotiations over the Long-term Cooperative Action and amendments to the Kyoto Protocol, especially the Kyoto Protocol, the two documents that have legal binding over the rich countries. The writer didn’t even have the courage to mention the two most important documents, upon which any political declaration should have been based on.
It is the rich countries, the US, particularly, which has hijacked the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference. That much should be clear to us all.

Wonder how long that’ll stay posted.

The real reason Copenhagen failed.

SEE ALSO HARPY MARX

There is a moment in Malcolm Lowry’s novel Under The Volcano that reminds me of climate change sceptics.

Doomed alcoholic Geoffrey Firmin is on a journey towards death but he insists to his estranged wife Yvonne and brother that he can drink a beer or two because beer isn’t really alcohol.

For an alcoholic any excuse will do - even one as weak as the notion that alcohol isn’t really alcoholic.

For climate sceptics any excuse is enough to keep on the oil they are addicted to.

The sceptics, like all addicts, resort to the lamest arguments to deny that there might be a problem.

For the right, climate denial is increasingly a matter of faith. Listening to scientists could be an indication of dangerous socialist inclinations.

Tory David Cameron likes to be seen cycling, albeit with the chauffeur carrying his bags, but climate denial is increasingly dominant in the Conservative Party.

Thatcher’s former chancellor Lord Lawson is perhaps the best-known sceptic, but many of the most prominent Tory bloggers, such as Iain Dale, also reject the science of global warming.

I suspect that climate scepticism is virtually a membership requirement for UKIP. For the far-right, suspicion of scientists is nearly as popular as suspicion of Europeans and migrants.

Yet the facts of climate change are in essence very simple.

C02 in the atmosphere traps heat and leads to warming, temperatures are rising and this correlates with the highest CO2 for thousands of years. Thousands of peer-reviewed papers from scientists have established this link.

The arguments posed by the sceptics often lack logic.

David Bellamy, who seems to be an estranged BBC nature correspondent but at least has a scientific background, argues that CO2 is vital to life and is not a pollutant.

And? Water is vital to life and is not a pollutant but in large enough quantities it leads to drowning. CO2 in the atmosphere likewise alters the weather.

I once listened to Tory rightwinger Lord Monckton argue that the climate in the past had changed, suggesting that this refuted the role of “man-made” global warming. It is true that temperatures in the past have changed and a range of factors have been responsible, but saying that there are other causes of climate change does not refute the role of CO2.

The creation of huge stores of fossil fuel in the form of coal and oil has made our planet habitable for animal life.

Millions of years of geological activity have taken CO2 from the atmosphere, making the atmosphere breathable for mammals and temperate.

Yet in a matter of decades we are burning fossils that have taken millions of years to be laid down. This has potentially catastrophic results.

The sceptics have been funded by the multibillion-dollar coal and oil companies. Indeed scientists have been under huge pressure to deny the reality of climate change, particularly in the US during the Bush years.

It is important to follow the money trail, but listening to their arguments to see if they hold true is far more valuable when testing the relevance of climate sceptics.

A close examination of the sceptics’ argument is extremely instructive. It reveals not a theory backed by evidence, let alone peer-reviewed papers, but a set of paradoxical claims.

Any argument will apparently do. And the sceptics seem to disagree with each other more than with the scientific mainstream.

Professor Stefan Rahmstorf, from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, notes that sceptics can be divided into at least three different and largely contradictory species.

Trend sceptics deny that temperatures are rising. They argue that climate data is collected in cities where human activity artificially raises temperatures, climate change is an artefact of flawed data collection. However weather balloons are just one control that prove this to be false.

The fast-disappearing trend sceptics argue when presented with data that the scientists concerned are part of a conspiracy and lie.

Then there are attribution sceptics, who argue that warming is occurring but isn’t caused by emissions. Sunspots are a favourite theory, while Piers Corbyn, the meteorologist brother of left Labour MP Jeremy, has a magnetic theory of climate change.

But such theories are contradicted by scientific data which provides both a model of the greenhouse effect and solid data showing that CO2 is rising with temperatures.

Last are the impact sceptics, who don’t deny rising temperatures or reject the link with C02 emissions but say that warmer temperatures are beneficial.

The published statements of the sceptics are full of spin and internal contradiction. It is instructive to reflect that sceptics stole 10 years of emails from climate researchers at the University of East Anglia and dug out one or two suspect statements about tree-ring data.

Scientists are imperfect and science, especially the science of climate change, is uncertain. Science is rarely immune from social influences, but scientific revolutions are propelled by data and the construction of testable alternatives. The sceptics are certainly not using the data to construct an alternative theory.

More here

by Madam Miaow

Well, I used to be a fan of The Independent, what with having Robert Fisk and being so brilliant on the Iraq war. But with a recent article  headlined, “China’s delaying tactics threaten climate deal” by Chris Green, and allowing racist epithets in their comments threads, has The Indy jumped the shark?

You know what came next. I couldn’t resist posting a reply to their US BS:

That is an appalling bit of US spin and I’m amazed that Chris Green has swallowed this wholesale. I wonder just who his “sources inside negotiations” are. We can make an educated guess.

After wasting ten years under Bush, obfuscating and setting up obstructions to the talks over the past two years, Clinton rides in six-guns blazing, holding the world to ransom by demanding that the $100 billion fund for the developing world’s climate change technology is contingent on China jumping through hoops of America’s choosing while Obama has nothing to offer. The US is the nation who refused to ratify Kyoto — the ONLY legally binding instrument in the world that can require countries to cut emissions.

MEANWHILE … China is soaring ahead in green technology: it has revolutionised wind turbines (using electro-magnetic principles); the entire city of Dezhou in Shandong of 5.5 million people have their appliances powered by solar energy; it has planted the biggest area of man-made forest in the world; it is charging each household $64 towards the $30 billion it needs [to pay for its cuts in emissions]; it’s leading the world in electric cars and makes a key component of the car batteries. And yet you make this unfounded, unfair, bad-tempered attack. How does this help except to let the US off the hook?

I’m not the only one to observe that Obama has come naked to the table and some are speculating that he has been set-up to fail by right-wing elements in government.

Wen Jiabao has said that any internationally supported cuts will of course be subject to international scrutiny — meaning legally binding global decisions made through a successful treaty. He is refusing to be browbeaten by the world’s worst polluter per capita over China’s voluntary national mitigation action which will be legally binding within China.

If he’s heard Scott Ritter admit the Iraq WMD teams were also espionage groups I dare say this might also have swayed him. Who’d want the agents of such a warmongering nation swarming over their country?

China has pledged that its cuts (40-45 per GDP unit) will be adhered to even if Copenhagen fails, unlike others such as Japan that says its cuts are contingent on a deal. If China sticks to its targets it will set the international benchmark for looking after the environment. If it doesn’t, then go ahead and poke them with a sharp stick.

Yet another article is headlined, “China holds the world to ransom“.

The fan-boys gushed breathlessly:

It was unforgettable political theatre. Like a poker player with a sudden new bet, the power-dressed Mrs Clinton changed the game instantly as she pulled her gigantic sum out of the US back pocket and slammed it down on the negotiating table.

Er … it’s not actually America’s money, though, is it? This is the combined world fund to help the third world develop green technology and meet climate targets.

Let’s remember it’s not China that’s been belching out carbon emissions for over a hundred years. America has cheated the Kyoto figures, claiming to aim to cut emissions by a measly 17 percent by 2020. But this is against 2005 levels and not the Kyoto base year of 1990, meaning if we’re lucky, the US will have made cuts of only 4 percent. No wonder they put the rat into ratify and refused to sign up.

Currently producing four times the emissions of China per capita, even if all had gone well at Copenhagen, the US would still have been allowed to pollute at twice the rate of the poor countries for each man, woman and child by 2050.

In another Independent article, “Tony Juniper: China is a country that dislikes being told what to do“, the Chinese are accused of that old colonialist cliché, being “inscrutable”. What is this, the 19th Century?

Is Tony Juniper — environmentalist and director of Friends of the Earth — aware that a third of all China’s emissions are produced making goods for … guess where? How about Western markets picking up the carbon bill?

To top it off, The Indy ignores its own moderation policy. The moderators may be off getting some seasonal cheer but perhaps someone should be awake when posts titled “Obama and the Chinks” come in. Would they allow equivalent racist epithets for other minorities or are we a special case?

The Guardian has also evidently been briefed along the same lines but it is the Independent that’s picked up this particular bone with gusto and run with it, such as with this vicious article today.

John Prescott in The Guardian is good, though.

But the atmosphere was soured by the US, first by its climate change special envoy, Todd Stern, who said emissions “isn’t a matter of politics or morality or anything else, it’s just maths”, which completely ignored the per capita argument. President Obama’s speech blaming China didn’t help either. The US has pushed the Chinese hard on emissions cuts. Fine when you’ve had your industrial revolution. But China and the other developing countries need that growth. Understandable when more than half of the planet is living on less than $2 a day.

This from Joss Garland sounds right on the money: Historic failure that will live on in infamy

UPDATE: I’ve just remembered that the new Indy editor, Roger Alton, was the editor of the Observer when bizarrely it was part of a media bloc that kept trying to stitch up the UK Chinese community and blame it for the Foot And Mouth Disease outbreak which devastated large swathes of Britain in 2001. MAFF minister Nick Brown stated that this was nonsense and completely untrue. So what’s going on at The Independent?

Madam Miaow on the Copenhagen climate change summit

Johann Hari, the Indy’s one remaining journalist worth reading, gives an overview of the truths Copenhagen ignored here

By Ken Livingstone

The palpable anger of the world’s poorer nations over the wholly inadequate ambition of western governments’ commitment to tackling climate change has probably been the strongest message to emerge from Copenhagen, as the UN climate change talks enter their final week. The poorest nations on Earth are already feeling the devastating effects of more extreme monsoons, droughts and loss of glacial water. Failure at Copenhagen will be tantamount to abandoning them.

With rich countries knowingly committing to less than half the emissions cuts needed and nowhere near the financial support required to deliver new renewable energy infrastructure in the global South, the Sudanese chair of the G77 group of developing countries Lumumba Di-Aping, called a 2C rise in temperature a “suicide pact” for Africa.

Important political progress has been made over the last two years - most notably the election by the world’s largest economy of a President who understands the scientific reality of climate change. But, as ‘The Copenhagen Diagnosis’, an excellent summary of global warming by a collection of leading climate scientists, points out: “Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel burning in 2008 were 40% higher than those in 1990 (the base year for the original Kyoto Treaty)”.

The UK’s leading climate research group, The Tyndall Centre, argues that to have as much as a 50:50 chance of avoiding an average two degree rise in the Earth’s temperature (the ‘tipping point’ after which global warming is thought to be irreversible and catastrophic) then emissions in the world’s richest nations have to start declining by 2012, and achieve at least a 60 per cent reduction in emissions from energy by 2020. The best that the United States could offer this month is to cut its emissions by four per cent by 2020. Europe has been playing a better role – pledging a twenty per cent cut by 2020. But even this is not enough.

A fair, ambitious and binding deal at Copenhagen is a prerequisite for the enormous effort that will be required across the globe to avert catastrophic climate change. But even Kyoto II will be meaningless without domestic commitment in the world’s richest countries. After the delegates head home on Saturday morning, the real task will be to show the political leadership needed to drive down emissions and seize the benefits of taking a low carbon efficient path to recovery from recession.

The outcomes of the Copenhagen talks will be among the issues discussed at the Progressive London conference on 30, January, 2010. Sessions include ”After Copenhagen - turning the tide on Climate Change”. Speakers at the conference include Eugenie Harvey - Director 10:10; Serge Lourie - Leader LB Richmond Upon Thames and Green Party Assembly Members Jenny Jones and Darren Johnson. 

Click here to register for the conference.

FROM PROGRESSIVE LONDON

Copenhagen, a no nonsense guide
Climate change is probably the greatest challenge humanity faces. It is encouraging that the US is now supporting efforts to tackle climate change. However Copenhagen even if it does succeed is unlikely to agree on targets of 350ppm of CO2 and other greenhouse gases, thus temperatures are likely to rise above 4c by the end of the century with serious results.

Even more threatening is the fact that the entire global framework for ‘tackling’ climate change is based on emissions trading. Because of poor design, cheating and opt outs emissions trading has so far failed to reduce emissions at all! Companies and countries can buy additional permitts to keep on polluting. Such permits in theory would reduce CO2 but their is widespread cheating.

Carbon trading like carbon offset has done nothing to cut emissions but has made bankers billions in profit.

More here

From Morning Star. Alan Simpson MP writes:

Over the next couple of weeks we will see a level of political frenzy let loose on the international stage.

Ministers will try desperately to salvage something from the crushed expectations of the Copenhagen summit.

I don’t doubt the integrity of those attempting the rescue mission. It just feels that they have the same prospects as households trying to resist the floods in Cumbria.

In this case it is the sheer force of tidal stupidity within the global community that will sweep away most of our bridges.

Without wishing to be facetious, perhaps our best hope of success from Copenhagen is failure.

Global leaders are trying to stitch together a climate change agreement based around many of the assumptions that got us into the mess in the first place.

Rich nations still argue that a return to economic growth has to come first. Poor nations argue that they are entitled to a larger share of it.

No-one seems willing to question the model itself.

“Trade is good for the poor,” argue the free-trade ideologues, who choose to ignore that much of this trade is entirely dominated by global corporations.

Transnational companies use the assets of the developing world to enhance the quality of their offshore bank accounts, rather than the onshore life prospects of the poor.

None of the big lobbying organisations hovering around Copenhagen argues the case for a post-globalisation economics, in which regionalised economic systems take priority over global ones.

Sooner rather than later, the world’s leaders will need to understand that “security” issues are displacing free-trade agreements, and will continue to do so.

A huge fuss recently erupted over rich companies and countries acquiring land rights in the developing world.

The most dramatic was undoubtedly the deal set up by the Madagascar government.

It planned to lease half of the island’s arable land to the South Korean company Daewoo.

The firm was to get the land for 99 years and pay next to nothing for it.

In exchange Madagascar was offered a barter arrangement for infrastructure projects.

Such was the level of public anger about this deal that Malagasy president Marc Ravalomanana was forced out of office.

The deal has now been scrapped. However, it was not the only land grab that has been taking place.

The UN food and agriculture organisation (FAO) calculated that a recent wave of land acquisitions has taken place in Africa equivalent to one 10th of the continent’s existing farmed area.

Saudi Arabia already had huge land holdings in Sudan. It has now signed an additional $100 million (£61m) deal for fertile land in Ethiopia.

China has agreements for new land holdings in Zimbabwe and Algeria. Egypt has leased two million acres of land in Uganda to grow corn and wheat.

A new wave of colonial occupation is taking place. Conquest is by contract rather than by the sword.

In the last couple of months there have been a string of reports about how climate change is dragging Kenya into tribal conflicts about the right to survive.

This year’s drought is the third year in succession. The rain has been either insufficient or has arrived at the wrong time.

Nearly four million Kenyans are dependent on food aid. Thousands of animals have died of starvation and thirst.

Fighting between tribes sometimes begins and ends with the slaughter of each other’s cattle. Kill the livelihood and you kill the tribe.

Often it is only the uneasy brokering of water rationing agreements by tribal leaders that holds off the descent into a raw fight for survival.

It is against this background that you must make your own judgements about Qatar’s acquisition of 40,000 hectares of Kenya’s Tana river delta to grow fruit and vegetables for consumption by Qataris.

Britain also buys huge quantities of green beans, cut flowers and fresh vegetables from Kenya.

These are produced using water that Kenyans no longer have for themselves.

It is a form of water sequestration - transferring the “embedded water” in goods from the south to supermarket shelves in the north.

At some point the poor will refuse to play. But the revolt may not begin with the poor.

Australia has begun a “security” rethink about fishing rights around its territorial waters. It has threatened to cut the nets of boats in what it regards as its domain.

The actual confrontation may not be with Russian or Japanese “fish factory” ships, which hoover up vast tracts of the sea bed. It is the lives and livelihoods of small Indonesian fishing communities that are more likely to be threatened.

International objections came in thick and fast when the Philippines suspended all rice exports in the middle of a food crisis of its own.

But when big nations take action to protect their food security interests, it is only a matter of time before the whole ball game changes.

A new protectionism - food security - will come to override trade agreements or market liberalisation. And so it should.

The alternatives are civil war or tidal population movements in search of food and water.

The trouble is that rich nations want access to cheap food, but not the refugees that cheap food ultimately produces.

India is building a 2,500-mile fence to keep out would-be refugees from Bangladesh. The US has done much the same with Mexico.

They are joined by a collection of oil-rich, water-poor countries whose own food security needs are being met by buying crops out of the mouths of the poor.

Still, the World Trade Organisation, International Monetary Fund and World Bank demand market liberalisation as a precondition of debt relief.

Over the last two decades aid and investment in sustainable agriculture has plummeted.

What we need are policies that protect the traditional rights of smallholders and family farmers. What we get is huge international pressure on the poorest of countries to sign away land deals under the pretext that common land is “unused” land.

The same presumption was made in the early years of imperial expansion.

Explorers from France, Spain, Britain and Portugal were handed a papal bull which allowed them to claim the lands they “discovered.”

It was the church doctrine of terra nullius - an assumption that these were empty lands, regardless of the indigenous societies which may have lived there for thousands of years.

Then, as now, land acquisition was based on superior force. Then, but not now, there was land and water to spare.

Today we need new policies which treat water as the scarce resource it is, which live modestly within the limits nature sets and which tread respectfully around the irresistible force that water can also become.

The connections between Kenya and Cumbria are that they each tell us that management of water and land are central to our future survival.

How we manage crises will be an unavoidable challenge, even for climate sceptics.

If the climate scientists are right, however, a return to “business as usual” economics will only accelerate the shift from crisis to chaos.

A half-hearted deal in Copenhagen would speed up the process.

Rich nations will not shell out sufficient cash to deliver food security and energy security programmes in the south. Without this the south will not sign up to any climate change agreement.

Rich nations will not agree to live on less and to share more. They want the world to be as it was - business as usual and a transformation without tears.

They wish.

Maybe it is better to face up to the fact that today’s global institutions - and the mindset of the negotiators - are themselves not fit for purpose.

They will not save a place for us on the planet.

Perhaps only an abject failure in Copenhagen can force a break from the politics that created the mess in the first place.

As Einstein is famously credited as saying: “The thinking it took to get us into this mess is not the same thinking that is going to get us out of it.”

This is from the ever excellent Green Left Weekly, the Australian branch of the informal global conspiracy for ecosocialism, will the Australian Green Party challenge carbon trading (?) I hope so…however the environmental movement is generally backing this locura so we shall see.

Simon Butler

14 March 2009

A debate is underway in the Australian Greens about how the party should respond to the Rudd government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS).

On March 21, a meeting of the Greens national council in Perth will consider the options.

Greens members have told Green Left Weekly that the key question in dispute is how will the Greens vote in the Senate when the CPRS legislation is presented. The Greens have been strong critics of the government’s plan since it was announced in December.

Unless the ALP strikes a last-minute deal with the Coalition to get the legislation through, the Greens have the numbers to stop the government’s pro-business emissions scheme in the Senate and force the government to go back to the drawing board.

Will they grasp this opportunity?

Despite mounting criticisms that the CPRS will fail to reduce Australia’s emissions to safe levels, PM Kevin Rudd and minister for climate change Penny Wong have repeatedly said no changes will be tolerated.

The $9 billion worth of free handouts to the wealthiest polluters is here to stay, they say.

The scheme’s design, which means all carbon usage reductions by individuals will only allow the dirtiest industries to pollute more, cannot be altered.

The paltry emissions reduction target of 5% by 2020 — a target that plainly ignores the urgings from climate scientists for far deeper cuts — is not negotiable.

The ALP government’s intransigence is no surprise. The ABC’s Four Corners on March 9 provided detailed confirmation that the CPRS is the product of immense pressure and lobbying from the corporate interests that profit most from Australia’s heavy reliance on fossil fuels.

The big polluters are calling the shots in shaping the ALP’s climate policy, rendering it disastrously ineffective.

Tactically, Rudd and Wong also hope that by holding out to the last moment they might successfully pressure the Greens to accept a compromise, and secure the legislation’s passage largely unchanged.

The debate in the Greens revolves around three principal options.

Should the Greens propose amendments to the CPRS bill, but still vote for it in the end “under protest” because a flawed emissions scheme is better than nothing at all?

This option has support among the more conservative, parliamentary-orientated section of the Greens — those least inclined to break from business-as-usual politics because they fear it could be electorally unpopular.

This short-term outlook denies the unyielding reality of the climate emergency. The laws of chemistry and physics care nothing for “shrewd” parliamentary maneuvers — global warming does not play politics.

Alternatively, should the Greens put forward some serious amendments and tell the government that the incorporation of all amendments are a condition of their support?

One policy proposal currently circulating in the Greens is arguing for this firmer approach. It argues that the Greens should draw a line in the sand over the massive handouts to big polluters, demand the scheme enables individual actions to make a difference, and ensure that the income generated from the sale of carbon permits is redirected to investment in renewable energy.

If the Greens took this stand, but were eventually forced to vote against the CPRS, it could win the Greens wide respect for standing up to the powerful “greenhouse mafia” and galvanise public debate on real action to reduce emissions.

A third tendency has the closest links with the grassroots climate movement and questions whether carbon trading schemes can play a significant role at all in a serious climate policy.

A policy proposal along these lines points to the recent failure of emissions trading in the European Union.

This position holds that emissions trading should not be the major response to climate change because it will not significantly reduce emissions but will result in higher energy costs for low- and middle-income earners.

Rather than support based on emissions trading, the Greens should argue for strong government intervention in renewables and emphasise a “just transition” to create green jobs.

This position is most closely aligned with what science, and global justice, demands.

The environment movement will be keenly watching the outcome of this debate.

In January, more than 500 people attended the Climate Action Summit in Canberra. The summit participants, representing more than 150 climate action groups nationwide, decided that the CPRS must be prevented from becoming law.

The Greens’ spokesperson on climate change, Senator Christine Milne, was a keynote speaker at the summit. She commended the grassroots climate movement and said that the Greens aimed to represent the movement’s aims in parliament.

Milne received a standing ovation after her speech — an accolade received by no other speaker.

The movement will be watching to see if its confidence was well-founded.