In the context of a series of conferences organized by the department of Industrial Ecology at NTNU, Norway, we had the honor and pleasure to welcome Mr. Leo Meyer on the 2nd of October, for a speech on the work of the working group III of the IPCC in its 4th assessment report. Mr. Meyer is the head of the technical support unit of this working group. In this article, I will comment on the functioning principles of the IPCC and address critically the different solutions proposed by the group, with respect to the IPAT equation.
At first was explained the principle of the IPCC; what his missions were and how governments would act in collaboration with the scientists working in this panel. I will stop at this point and pinpoint the fact that governments have an influence on what is finally published, but only when it comes to the Summary for Policymakers (SPM), a 30-pages long document offering a synthesis of the work otherwise published both in the final report and in the technical summary. This report has to be approved by all the 180 participating countries word by word, graph by graph, etc… A direct consequence is that this report might be a light version of the thicker ones, only presenting facts that do not clash against policies or mentalities of various governments. If you do not have time to read the longer reports, then go for the SPM ones, but be aware that they are diluted versions of the truth available elsewhere. Their content is nonetheless accepted by scientists chairing the working group.
It is often heard that the IPCC does not represent all the scientific community; that it does not give space to alternative theories. To understand this fact, one has to keep in mind what the ultimate goal of the panel is, and how it proceeds to achieve it. How are authors selected?
- Governments and institutes of the 180 member countries submit CVs
- the IPCC Bureau matches CVs against chosen subjects. Here a first “filter” is applied, so as to choose people from different geographical origins, and from different “schools”. This in order to avoid a unique view of the issues.
- The concept of different schools might be for example relevant when it comes to economy.
- The chosen ones are not only academics, but also experts from the industry, NGOs, etc
- 15 lead authors are chosen per chapter
- The co chairs, as well as the lead authors, can also invite authors
The IPCC is so to say summarizing the current scientific knowledge on the evolution of the climate and the science therein. Its goal is not to produce new papers, explain new facts. It is an assembly of experts whose task is to read a lot of peer-reviewed papers (meaning read and corrected by other scientists) and write a report on the state-of-the-art. All the results published by the IPCC are therefore already published in the literature; the sole purpose of the IPCC is to gather the data and make it available, and in a certain extent, more comprehensible to a larger public.
The working group III has the task of describing the strategies to adopt to mitigate climate change, based on the impacts published by the working group II. Although the latter are regional, the strategies to adopt are inherently to be applied worldwide. Some differences of strategy might appear, depending on the current state of economic development of the considered country; but in the end one striking pattern comes out from the report: what we have to fix is technology, and change our consumption patterns. These two points, and particularly the former, are recurrent in the report. To summarize, technologies exist, but have to be implemented. The group does not expect any technological breakthrough to happen in the form of the discovery of a new energy source; what can be done is improvement of the existing technologies.
An “economic fix” is required in order to boost the shift from fossil to renewables, through the establishment of a worldwide price on carbon. And in spite of the apparently opposite mentalities of “bottom-up” (techno-economic analysis) and “top-down” (integrated assessment analysis), it appears that each way to address the problem can lead to substantial reductions in CO2 emissions. The following two graphs represent the possible reductions in CO2 emissions achievable through the implementation of a worldwide carbon trading system, using each of the two above-mentioned approaches. Of course the reductions will depend on the price set on eq-CO2. Due to uncertainties, a low- and high end-of-range are shown in each case.
What is frightening is to realize that the maximum emission reduction that can be achieved through technological shift, helped economically by a price on carbon, is roughly 30 GtCO2-equivalent per year, in the best case envisioned by the projections. Looking a couple of pages further in the report, one realizes that in order to stabilize our atmosphere at CO2-eq concentrations between 450 and 500 ppm, the limit for containing the temperature rise below 2 degrees, we need to peak our emissions by 2015. Let’s say that is impossible. With China and India growing, as well as the other countries still desperately looking for extensive economic growth based on over-exploitation of resources, nobody will accept such a sudden shift in mentalities. Although the solution for mitigation is within reach, we prefer not to take it and go on the same path as before.
I recently commented on Growth is Madness! that the IPCC was not addressing the population growth problem, although it recognizes it as one of the main drivers of increasing GHG emissions:
the effect on global emissions of the decrease in global energy intensity (-33%) during 1970 to 2004 has been smaller than the combined effect of global per capita income growth (77%) and global population growth (69%); both drivers of increasing energy-related CO2 emissions.
Of course, this conference was the ideal occasion to ask the right person the right question. Unfortunately, someone else asked our lecturer about population before I could, and turned it in such a way that it sounded too extreme (one-birht policy was given as an example). Here follows the question that I would have asked:
The IPCC Working group III addresses only the two last terms in the famous equation I=PAT (Environmental Impact = Population*Consumption*Technology), dismissing the first one, namely population growth, although recognizing it as one of the main drivers of increased GHG emissions. The predictions summarized in limits to Growth thirty years ago are even more valid today than when the book was initially written. Indeed, the neo‐Malthusian movement is pushing towards addressing the first term of the equation. Recently, China stated that by controlling population growth, 300 million births had been avoided by 2005, leading to direct savings of 1,3 billion tones of emitted CO2 in 2005 alone. Why is the IPCC WG III not emphasizing more strongly this fact and does not introduce policies required to curb population growth, policies which could include aid to development, access to family planning, and women empowerment in developing countries? And if it is not considered as relevant by the group, then why?
In my question, I nevertheless made one error, which was also the key to the answer provided by Mr. Meyer: I implied that the IPCC was introducing policies. It is not its role. The IPCC has been created in order to give the political leaders some ideas about how to deal with the problem. The IPCC has to be “Policy relevant, not policy prescriptive”. That means that it cannot suggest new, radically different ways of solving the global warming issue rather than by choosing to solve the problem with the political, economical and technological tools that we use or have today. Indeed, population control, through the use of whichever policy, is not accepted by most of the countries member of the panel.
So the answer of our guest lecturer was the following: when it comes to such issues directly touching the population and the human beings, cultural, religious and political problems rise up and block any further discussion of the subject. If the IPCC report does not address the population issue, that is because it is not politically correct, or because it would be too provocative to certain cultures. This concern is thus left to others to address.
By avoiding such sensitive subjects, and despite the full acceptance of their importance, the experts are not even in the position to suggest policies or strategies that could help us to take care of the P factor. By leaving this aspect as an external variable nobody can do anything about, we are actually refusing to fully open our eyes, and make the inevitable crash even harder to support.
Thanks for contributing this perspective. It appears that the human community has genuine challenges to acknowledge, address and overcome. Despite all the efforts of denialists and naysayers, your urging us to open our eyes and see what looms ominously before us on the far horizon is a wonderful thing to do.
We need more leaders like you.
This is great that you had the chance to hear the IPCC’s position on population from a member of the group. It’s the first I’ve heard on the subject directly from someone from the IPCC.
By leaving this aspect as an external variable nobody can do anything about, we are actually refusing to fully open our eyes, and make the inevitable crash even harder to support.
I completely agree. You would think they could at least assign some members with especially strong levels of tact and diplomacy to address the topic in some way, to at least get it on the table. The IPCC has so much visibility which they they could use to raise awareness and promote discussion of the P of IPAT.
By avoiding it because of things like religious objections, it’s as though they’re willing to let the global future be determined by beliefs stemming from the worship of deities. Not very scientific, it seems. :-/
I see my associate, Steven Salmony, has already greeted you in your new blog venture. I add my welcome also.
Some of Steven’s writing can be found at SustainabilitySoutheast.org. Our friend and associate, Russell Hopfenberg, has just completed a narrated presentation about human population effects, which can be found at SustainabilitySoutheast.org also.
I won’t embed links because the WordPress spam filter might not like them. Fortunately Hopfenberg’s presentation is available directly from the front page of our site.
I’m sure you’ll find more authors and web sites that tackle population and other sustainability issues as you build your own site. As you suggest, however, we need all the voices, pens, and keyboards we can get to increase awareness of our unsustainable situation.
Thanks for your efforts, and welcome.
GUIDEPOST……..
http://www.liveearth.org/?p=314
Please examine the work from Jack Alpert, Ph.D. of the Stanford Knowledge Integration Laboratory.
Basically, Dr. Alpert’s work calls out to the human community to immediately begin reversing the current trend of skyrocketing absolute global population numbers by implementing a program of rapid population decline. Rather than near exponential population expansion, he is advocating rapid population contraction.
What his work indicates is the need for a worldwide, “ONE CHILD PER FAMILY” initiative. He is not the only person to be advocating such a plan of action. Alan Weisman, the author of The World Without Us, has come to precisely the same conclusion.
Just for a moment, imagine that the a majority plus one of the human community accepted the idea that what we are doing now by adamantly advocating and relentlessly pursuing certain distinctly human overgrowth activities would eventually lead to the collapse of either human civilization or Earth’s ecology or both. Let us also suppose that this majority plus one agreed that the ethical thing to do was not to keep doing what we are doing now, but something different. If having multiple human offspring was unethical and having not more than one child per family was ethical, in part because such a program of action would have survival value for the human species, its global economy, other species and the integrity of Earth, then it seems to me that humanity would naturally and democratically move in a new direction, along another path, perhaps to a good enough future for our children and generations to come.
This perspective makes one thing crystal clear: if humankind chooses to follow the current primorse path of endless economic globalization, endless per human consumption and endless population expansion, a colossal wreckage of some kind is in offing.
In light of the work being done by the contributors to this great discussion, I would like to ask humbly that you turn your attention to a website, one I presented some time ago.
http://www.skil.org
Once there, I would like to suggest that you begin by reviewing what Jack calls SKIL Notes. There are now 45 of them and they are mercifully short. These Notes show a certain careful and skillful development of thinking about resolving THE PROBLEM that presents itself to humanity now as the proverbial ‘mother’ of all global challenges, I believe.
Always, with thanks,
Steve
Steve,
This work looks pretty interesting. Being scientifically based, the interest I have for it is increased, and I will definitely have a close look at it.
Thanks for the reference and for the comment, most welcome.
Dear Friends and Friends of Youth,
Sometimes it looks to me as if some of my brothers and sisters in the current generation of elders are so singlemindedly focused on the accumulation of wealth and power, in feathering their own gigantic nests, frequenting exclusive clubs, flying private jets, sailing yachts and visiting exotic hideaways, that they have forgotten how human life depends upon Earth’s limited resources and frangible ecosystem services for its very existence.
The “powers that be” have evidently failed to understand what it means when we say that the Earth is round, finite and has biophysical limits. One consequence of this pernicious denial of the requirements of practical reality is that the scale and rate of per capita consumption is dissipating natural resources faster than the Earth can restore them for human benefit. So great is per human overconsumption by a minority of people in our time that biodiversity is being extirpated and the environment degraded.
Is the fulfillment of the insatiable wishes of unrestrained consumers a result of unbridled big business interests relentlessly pursuing a course of endless economic expansion, based upon the feckless consumption of the very resources needed for the survival of life as we know it?
When my generation has completed its ‘mission’ of literally consuming a lion’s share of the resources of Earth, I fear our children will look back at us in anger and utter disbelief for so much that we have done and failed to do.
Consider the probability that we elders are leading our children down a primrose path toward the destruction of human civilization or Earth’s ecology or both.
Always,
Steve
We do have solutions to the global challenges looming ominously before humanity in the offing.
With the help of people like you, who rely upon plain scientific evidence, reason and common sense, there is no way we will fail our children.
Thanks to you, momentum is building around the scientific consensus on climate change. Many are the signs of forward movement and nascent change as we acknowledge and begin to address the global challenges posed to humanity by human-forced activities that are resulting in pernicious global warming.
We will overcome humankind’s momentary collective blindness; our ineffectual leaders; the ignorant naysayers and rankled denialists; and the hysterically deaf, willfully blind and electively mute among us as well as those more clever ones who speak with forked tongues, who peddle disinformation, half-truths and outright lies.
As intelligent fools with power often do, they widely disseminate and repeat false statements often enough so as to make them appear believable.
Do not be fooled.
Support Al Gore, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri and 2000 scientists of the IPCC.
With their leadership, we can make a difference by changing the world for the better…….before the folly, egoism and hubris of the “powers that be” inadvertently destroy Earth as a fit place for human habitation.
Sincerely,
Steve
Are too many of our current leaders stuck in the denial of reality?
Some of our leaders appear to be running away from real global challenges looming before humanity, as if they had seen a calamity in the making. Other leaders are promising pie-in-the-sky, “techno-fix” solutions for threats to human wellbeing and environmental health. Still others have apparently adopted the posture of an ostrich by placing their heads in the sand. Last but not least, we have a group of commanders of others who pose as hysterically deaf or blind and have become electively mute.
These various means of denying what could be called “more of the stark reality of the world we inhabit” are not helpful to anyone, I suppose, except themselves and their minions. They keep their wealth, power and privileges by maintaining the status quo, regardless of the potential for catastrophic circumstances in the offing, circumstances already dimly visible on the far horizon. Many too many, soon to be erstwhile leaders of the human community have allowed unbridled self-interests to literally separate themselves from a meaningful regard for humanity, for life as we know it, for a future of children and coming generations, and for the maintenance of the integrity of Earth and its ecosphere.
Thankfully, the human community is blessed with still other leaders, intellectually honest and courageous leaders, like UN Secretary-General Mr. Ban Ki-Moon, Al Gore, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, Professor Al Bartlett, IPCC Vice Chair Mohan Munasinghe, Dr. Ernst von Weizsaecker, John Guillebaud, US Senator Bernie Sanders, Paul Chefurka, David Wasdell, Jean Krasno, Joseph Baker, Dame Jane Goodall, Jeffrey McNeely, Seti Sastrapradja, Vivian Ponniah, Peter Salonius, Hazel Henderson, Peter Nobel, Mickey Glantz, Margaret Swedish, Emily Spence, Susan B. Adamo, John C. Feeney, Lester Brown, Gretchen Daily, Bill Rees, Richard Duncan, Pentti Malaska, Deborah Byrd, Jean Gilbertson, Scott Walker, Alex de Sherbinin, Anne Ehrlich, Ashok Khosla, Paul Hawken, Werner Fornos, Jean Francois Rischard, Jan Janssens, Raoul Weiler, Mathis Wackernagel, Emily Spence, David Blockstein, Dave Roberts, Joe Romm and no less than 2000 IPCC scientists. Who knows, these and emerging leaders among our youth could be ready to “square up” to the global challenges soon be confronted by humankind, perhaps in these early years of Century XXI.
If empirical evidence from the great men, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri and Dr. Mohan Munasinghe, and their 2000 colleagues in the International Panel on Climate Change, regarding global warming, is not junk science, and not the hoax many people have assured us it is, then the political, economic and ecological ramifications of “staying the course” could be profound.
If humankind chooses to continue doing what we are relentlessly doing now by overconsuming, overpopulating, and endlessly expanding production capabilities of the artificially designed human economy, our children could unexpectedly come face to face with colossal problems, ones involving the perilous breakdown of the global political economy or the dangerous degradation of Earth’s frangible ecosystem services and limited resources, or both economic and ecologic collapse.
We see and hear in the news day after day about national security and economic security. I can understand that attention is focused upon these things. They are vital. What is difficult for me to grasp is the failure of people to openly and adequately discuss environmental security. That is vital, too, I suppose.
Let me add, in closing, that it will be pleasing to see expressions of concern for Earth’s ECOLOGY be presented in the mass media as often as words of concern for the manmade ECONOMY. I am also expecting that such parity will eventually lead to ECONOMIC wealth being directed to ECOLOGIC maintenance, dollar for dollar. That is to say, every dollar from sustainable economic development would be matched with a dollar directed to ecologic protection.
See http://www.panearth.org for a narrated slideshow about the ecological underpinnings of human population growth.
Are too many of our current leaders hiding the truth of global warming as well as “poisoning the well” of public discourse?
Too many of our politicians, economists, big-business execs and the talking heads in the mass media are all “whistling the same tune.” What is even worse is the way they entice appointees and surrogates to whistle that same tune, too. After all, who can resist offerings of great wealth, power and privileges that accrue to those who go along with what is political convenient, economically expedient, religiously tolerated and socially agreeable.
Not only are too many leaders hiding the truth, they are also actively poisoning the well of public discourse in the process. And for what? Evermore power, wealth and privileges for themselves and their minions so they can carefreely play out the “conspicuous consumption fantasies” of their “Me Generation” by living long, living large and living unsustainably, come what may, having forgotten about the future of their children and about how human life depends upon Earth’s limited resources and frangible ecosystem services for its very existence.
With thanks for your consideration,
Steve
After years of careful and skillful research by the International Panel on Climate Change, it seems to me that the time has come to examine whether many too many government officials are behaving malevolently and acting in bad faith by continuing to disseminate disinformation that debunks the established evidence on global warming.
With the establishment of the scientific consensus on climate change, is it reasonable and sensible to ask of government officials who remain obstructive and in denial of such overwhelming scientific data if they are perfidiously engaged in a violation of public trust and, therefore, malfeasant in office?
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
Dear Friends,
Perhaps a perspective from one of my colleagues in psychology is helpful.
http://www.energybulletin.net/37091.html
Always,
Steve
[...] the third and last one organized this autumn by the department of Industrial Ecology of NTNU (cf this post for a comment about the previous conference, dealing with the results of the Working Group III of [...]
Open Letter,
Please find below an email from a distinguished colleague and a personal friend of mine, with its request to you for assistance.
Dear Steven,
FEEDBACK DYNAMICS and the ACCELERATION of CLIMATE CHANGE
Climate change is non-linear. Once set in motion it is acceleratingly self-perpetuating. There is
then only a small time-window within which human intervention has any (rapidly diminishing) chance
of halting the process and returning the system to a stable state. Failure to act effectively
within that window of opportunity would inevitably precipitate cataclysmic change on a par with the
five mass extinction events known to have obliterated almost all life on earth.
This WESTMINSTER BRIEFING (subtitled PLANET EARTH WE HAVE A PROBLEM) was delivered to a packed
audience in the House of Commons in June 2007. It is now released in the approach to the Bali
Meeting of the UNFCCC because it presents material not yet addressed by the IPCC, but which is
absolutely critical to the decision-making process at and beyond that event.
Click on (if the link is not active, copy and paste the address to your
browser) then follow the link to BALI & BEYOND to access the Introduction, Summary for Policy
Makers, Sample Presentations, and Book Order Form.
FEEDBACK DYNAMICS and the ACCELERATION of CLIMATE CHANGE provides an essential briefing for every
person and organisation involved in the UNFCCC Bali Meeting. Beyond Bali it lays the foundation for
all future strategic engagement with the imperative task of climate stabilisation.
Please do everything in your power to ensure that the material reaches:
All delegates and participants involved in the UNFCCC Bali Meeting
Political leaders and members of government at every level of society
Business leaders with strategic responsibility
Academics and research institutions working on climate change and environmental studies
NGOs and organisations of the Civil Society
Concerned citizens of all ages throughout the world community
Friends and family, colleagues and contacts
E-mail lists, groups, listings, networks, postings and web-sites
With best wishes,
David Wasdell
Director: The Apollo-Gaia Project
(Hosted by the Meridian Programme)
Meridian House
115 Poplar High Street
London E14 0AE
Tel: +44 (0) 207 987 3600
E-mail: wasdell@meridian.org.uk
Web-site: http://www.meridian.org.uk
[This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Version 4.3.46 using the F-Prot Antivirus engine Version 3.16f]
Always, with thanks,
Steve
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
Dear Friends,
For just a moment, let us consider how to get to the year 2050………from here and now.
Perhaps we could follow what we already know from good science, reasoning and common sense. We can choose to respond ably and differently, in a more reality-oriented way, to the global challenges before humanity, the challenges that we can manage because they have been induced by the spectacular unrestrained overgrowth of human activities now threatening to engulf the surface of Earth.
Of course, it is fair to ask what the family of humanity could choose to do “ably and differently.” There are several ideas that come to mind.
1) Implement a universal, voluntary program that encourages people to limit the number of offspring to one child per family.
2) Establish an upper limit on the growth of the individual human footprint.
3) Restrict immediately the reckless dissipation of limited natural resources so that the Earth is given time to replenish them for human benefit.
4) Substitute clean, renewable sources of energy, through the use of substantial economic incentives, for the fossil fuels we rely upon now.
5) Recognize that everything human beings do on the surface of our planetary home utterly depend on the finite resources of Earth. One consequence of this realization is understanding that there can be no such thing as an endlessly expanding global economy, given its current scale and growth rate, on a relatively small and noticeably frangible planet the size of Earth.
Godspeed,
Steve
Steven Earl Salmony, Ph.D., M.P.A.
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
SUPPORT THE INTELLECTUALLY HONEST AND COURAGEOUS WORK OF THE GREAT LEADERS IN BALI
The current scale and rapid growth rate of the global economy cannot be sustained much longer, much less forever, on a planet with the size and make-up of Earth. Many intellectually honest and courageous people possess this knowledge of Earth’s limitations, and are standing up in larger numbers now and speaking out loudly so as to share their understandings with others.
Given the purposes of too many leaders, of course, speaking out in intellectually honest and courageous ways are not examples of human behavior that support these leaders’ pervasively proclaimed view: only we know how to live. Afterall, have you ever heard one of these not-so-great leaders say something like, “Our way of life is non-negotiable. There is no other. It is either our way of life or else…….”?
These leaders hold a monolithic, potentially pernicious view of the way the world works and, consequently, may present themselves in our time as a formidable challenge for humanity. The global challenge presented to humankind by this leadership could be every bit as formidable a global challenge as human-induced global warming.
Here we want to objectively identify an overlooked but primary aspect of the distinctly human-forced predicament that is presented to humanity in these early years of Century XXI. I would like to submit that too many leaders among us, all espousing their insistence upon their one right way to live, present themselves to humanity and to life as we know as a global challenge.
Through ‘talking heads’ in the media and bought-and-paid-for politicians, super-rich powerbrokers have predominantly established their view about this world and what about it is most important to them. Can they say what they intend more clearly? What more can they say to be better understood? They report their message ubiquitously in the mass media.
These leaders are making themselves crystal clear. They are all about endless economic growth, come what may. For any of them to so much as suggest an alternative to maximal expansion of human consumption, production and propagation activities now threatening to engulf the Earth, would be politically inconvenient, economically inexpedient, socially disagreeable and religiously intolerable.
Nevertheless, it appears worth noting that their “24/7″ message via mass media endorsing unrelenting economic globalization could soon be generally recognized as a scientifically unsupportable fabrication. Their contrived, consensually validated ‘necessity’ for unbridled economic growth could be eventually seen as fraudent as well as an willful exercise of governmental and corporate malfeasence, all of it based upon the selfish interests of a tiny minority of wealthy and powerful people.
These wealth accumulating and power-driven leaders and their not negotiable view of the right way for all human beings to live, I am supposing, will shortly stand out as an ominously looming threat to humanity. One day this threat will be given the attention it deserves. Sometime thereafter, this threat will be acknowledged and addressed in an intellectually honest and courageous way. Then the global threat posed by a small number of people advocating evermore patently unsustainable economic growth, come what may, will be confronted by the family of humanity.
Steven Earl Salmony, Ph.D., M.P.A.
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
A resolute call to action, Mr. Gore.
If not you, then who?
If not now, then when?
The time has come, yet again, for you to run for the US Presidency. Afterall, you won the job once already. This may be the remaining unfinished work of your life.
The United States was meant to lead the world in our time. Admittedly, things have not gone well recently; however, no other country has the wherewithall to do what is necessary.
People around the world are looking to the United States for moral leadership, but apparently see our country as a woefully inadequate exemplar today.
As you put it, since “we have to travel far quickly,” there is not time to waste….no sensible reason for waiting.
All the current presidential candidates in the USA are not talking about the real issues of our time. You and you alone can “re-center” our national debate on issues like the unsustainability of increasing conspicuous per-human over-consumption of limited resources; the unsustainability of skyrocketing absolute global human population numbers; and the soon to become patently unsustainable, seemingly endless growth of large-scale industrial/corporate activities, now threatening to engulf the surface of the planetary home God has blessed us to inhabit and, I suppose, not to overwhelm.
How can we help?
Sincerely,
Steve Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
Perhaps a duplicitous rear-guard action by representatives of the wealthy and powerful, and others who find the status quo to their liking, come what may.
Hear ye, hear ye, words from representatives of the “Masters of the Universe” among us.
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/925
United Nation Climate change, Bali
Skeptical Scientists Urge World To ‘Have the Courage to Do Nothing’ At UN Conference
By EPW Blog Tuesday, December 11, 2007
BALI, Indonesia – An international team of scientists skeptical of man-made climate fears promoted by the UN and former Vice President Al Gore, descended on Bali this week to urge the world to “have the courage to do nothing” in response to UN demands.
Lord Christopher Monckton, a UK climate researcher, had a blunt message for UN climate conference participants on Monday.
“Climate change is a non problem. The right answer to a non problem is to have the courage to do nothing,” Monckton told participants.
“The UN conference is a complete waste of our time and your money and we should no longer pay the slightest attention to the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,)” Monckton added. (LINK)
Monckton also noted that the UN has not been overly welcoming to the group of skeptical scientists.
“UN organizers refused my credentials and appeared desperate that I should not come to this conference. They have also made several attempts to interfere with our public meetings,” Monckton explained.
“It is a circus here,” agreed Australian scientist Dr. David Evans. Evans is making scientific presentations to delegates and journalists at the conference revealing the latest peer-reviewed studies that refute the UN’s climate claims.
“This is the most lavish conference I have ever been to, but I am only a scientist and I actually only go to the science conferences,” Evans said, noting the luxury of the tropical resort. (Note: An analysis by Bloomberg News on December 6 found: “Government officials and activists flying to Bali, Indonesia, for the United Nations meeting on climate change will cause as much pollution as 20,000 cars in a year.” – LINK)
Evans, a mathematician who did carbon accounting for the Australian government, recently converted to a skeptical scientist about man-made global warming after reviewing the new scientific studies. (LINK)
“We now have quite a lot of evidence that carbon emissions definitely don’t cause global warming. We have the missing [human] signature [in the atmosphere], we have the IPCC models being wrong and we have the lack of a temperature going up the last 5 years,” Evans said in an interview with the Inhofe EPW Press Blog. Evans authored a November 28 2007 paper “Carbon Emissions Don’t Cause Global Warming.” (LINK)
Evans touted a new peer-reviewed study by a team of scientists appearing in the December 2007 issue of the International Journal of Climatology of the Royal Meteorological Society which found “Warming is naturally caused and shows no human influence.” (LINK)
“Most of the people here have jobs that are very well paid and they depend on the idea that carbon emissions cause global warming. They are not going to be very receptive to the idea that well actually the science has gone off in a different direction,” Evans explained.
[Inhofe EPW Press Blog Note: Several other recent peer-reviewed studies have cast considerable doubt about man-made global warming fears. For most recent sampling see: New Peer-Reviewed Study finds ‘Solar changes significantly alter climate’ (11-3-07) (LINK) & “New Peer-Reviewed Study Halves the Global Average Surface Temperature Trend 1980 – 2002” (LINK) & New Study finds Medieval Warm Period ‘0.3C Warmer than 20th Century’ (LINK) For a more comprehensive sampling of peer-reviewed studies earlier in 2007 see “New Peer-Reviewed Scientific Studies Chill Global Warming Fears” LINK ]
‘IPCC is unsound’
UN IPCC reviewer and climate researcher Dr. Vincent Gray of New Zealand, an expert reviewer on every single draft of the IPCC reports since its inception going back to 1990, had a clear message to UN participants.
“There is no evidence that carbon dioxide increases are having any affect whatsoever on the climate,” Gray, who shares in the Nobel Prize awarded to the UN IPCC, explained. (LINK)
“All the science of the IPCC is unsound. I have come to this conclusion after a very long time. If you examine every single proposition of the IPCC thoroughly, you find that the science somewhere fails,” Gray, who wrote the book “The Greenhouse Delusion: A Critique of “Climate Change 2001,” said.
“It fails not only from the data, but it fails in the statistics, and the mathematics,” he added.
‘Dangerous time for science’
Evans, who believes the UN has heavily politicized science, warned there is going to be a “dangerous time for science” ahead.
“We have a split here. Official science driven by politics, money and power, goes in one direction. Unofficial science, which is more determined by what is actually happening with the [climate] data, has now started to move off in a different direction” away from fears of a man-made climate crisis, Evans explained.
“The two are splitting. This is always a dangerous time for science and a dangerous time for politics. Historically science always wins these battles but there can be a lot of causalities and a lot of time in between,” he concluded.
Carbon trading ‘fraud?’
New Zealander Bryan Leland of the International Climate Science Coalition warned participants that all the UN promoted discussions of “carbon trading” should be viewed with suspicion.
“I am an energy engineer and I know something about electricity trading and I know enough about carbon trading and the inaccuracies of carbon trading to know that carbon trading is more about fraud than it is about anything else,” Leland said.
“We should probably ask why we have 10,000 people here [in Bali] in a futile attempt to ‘solve’ a [climate] problem that probably does not exist,” Leland added.
‘Simply not work’
Owen McShane, the head of the International Climate Science Coalition, also worried that a UN promoted global approach to economics would mean financial ruin for many nations.
“I don’t think this conference can actually achieve anything because it seems to be saying that we are going to draw up one protocol for every country in the world to follow,” McShane said. (LINK)
“Now these countries and these economies are so diverse that trying to presume you can put all of these feet into one shoe will simply not work,” McShane explained.
“Having the same set of rules apply to everybody will blow some economies apart totally while others will be unscathed and I wouldn’t be surprised if the ones who remain unscathed are the ones who write the rules,” he added.
‘Nothing happening at this conference’
Professor Dr. William Alexander, emeritus of the University of Pretoria in South Africa and a former member of the United Nations Scientific and Technical Committee on Natural Disasters, warned poor nations and their residents that the UN policies could mean more poverty and thus more death.
“My message is specifically for the poor people of Africa. And there is nothing happening at this conference that can help them one little bit but there is the potential that they could be damaged,” Alexander said. (LINK)
“The government and people of Africa will have their attention drawn to reducing climate change instead of reducing poverty,” Alexander added.
Steven Earl Salmony, Ph.D., M.P.A.
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001
The astonishing failures to act responsibly by too many leaders at the Bali Conference present us the most deplorable situation imaginable. The implications of inaction for the future of our children are potentially profound. How on Earth can the leaders in my not-so-great generation of elders consciously mortgage as well as threaten the very future of coming generations by remaining intransigent in the face of ominously looming, human-induced global challenges, the ones already visible on the far horizon?
Steven Earl Salmony, Ph.D., M.P.A.
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
Three humble proposals……………………
Hello to All,
Thanks for your contributions to these discussions and for the uncommonly constructive way in which you participate.
Perhaps you will be so kind and consider three following proposals.
The first proposal is an idea that has been deeply developed by Dr. Jack Alpert of the Stanford Knowledge Integration Laboratory (SKIL), .
According to his calculations, if we agreed, as one family of humanity, to begin now to implement VOLUNTARILY a “One Child Per Family” policy, it would be possible in the coming 50 years to rapidly decrease absolute global human population numbers to 1.5 billion rather than have human numbers worldwide grow to a fully anticipated 9.2 billion people by 2050 (UN Population Division projections). Although there is much more to say about this proposal, I am going to immediately pass on to the matter of modifying the global economy: the second proposal.
There are remarkably well-developed ideas by Aubrey Meyer of the Global Commons Institute in England regarding a plan for the “contraction and convergence” of the global economy, as a way of protecting the Earth from the reckless and relentless expansion of economic globalization that could soon become patently unsustainable on a relatively small planet with Earth’s limited resources.
It goes without saying that the Earth does not possess enough resources to sustain the human species, if every human being on the planet consumes resources as voraciously as people in the ‘developed’ world do now. My third proposal calls for a plan to be formulated that redistributes resources and caps excessive per-capita over-consumption.
I suppose what I am trying to point out is this: current per human consumption in the ‘developed’ world, unbridled increase of human industrial/production capabilities in the ‘developing’ world, and skyrocketing human numbers in the ‘undeveloped’ world cannot be sustained much longer by the limited natural resources and frangible ecosystem services of Earth.
As many have made clear to us elsewhere, there is plenty of blame to go around for the distinctly human-forced predicament in which humanity finds itself in these early years of Century XXI. At least to me, it appears that all of us in the human community are implicated in this situation, even though no one among us is responsible for our circumstances. Collective thought and action is anticipated; more sensibly sharing resources and cooperating with one another as a family of humanity is in the offing, I suppose.
With warm regards,
Steve
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001
We are losing the exquisite value of one of God’s gifts to humanity: good science.
Is it possible that the standard for determining what is real and true in a culture is this: whatsoever is widely shared, consensually validated and judged to be ecomonically expedient, politically convenient, socially agreeable and religiously tolerated is true and real?
At least to me, it seems that good science is being ignored and silence allowed to prevail when reasonable and sensible evidence comes into conflict with what culture prescribes as real and true. Perhaps science does present culture with evidence of inconvenient truths.
Steven Earl Salmony, Ph.D., M.P.A.
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001
Dr. Paul Sereno: “This is going to be the century where science either saves the planet, or we fail as a species.”
Dear Paul,
Seldom do I agree so completely with a single statement as I do with your statement above. It seems to me that the humankind has come to a crossroads, as many are recognizing in our time, and has a choice. We can choose to be guided by God’s great gift to humanity of good science and find the courage to what is necessary ot preserve our species and life as we know it or we can choose to stay the course of the predominant culture by overpopulating the planet, relentlessly expanding economic globalization activities and increasing per human over-consumption, which would lead most likely to the failure of humanity…….among other catastrophic occurrences and consequences.
Sincerely,
Steve
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
A TRAIN AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL?
Does how “I feel” about the predicament regarding the human-induced global challenges that are already visible on the far horizon have any meaning at all or value? So what?
There is a light at the end of a tunnel covering the “primrose path” we have set out for our children to march along to reach their future. I think magically and also remain somehow wishful for the children’s long-term wellbeing, for environmental protection and preserving Earth’s body; however, please understand that deep within me is a keen sense of foreboding for the children because the light at the end of the tunnel appears, at this very moment, to be moving toward all of us.
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
If we keep overpopulating Earth; if we keep conspicuously overconsuming limited resources; and if we keep endlessly expanding big-business activities, thereby polluting the relatively small, evidently finite, noticeably frangible planet as we keep doing now, then a good enough future for our children cannot be assured, can it?
I can understand the wish to ignore human overpopulation as a ominous, huge global challenge; however, to obstinately deny the potentially pernicious, human-driven problems posed by the proverbial ” mother ” of all the looming global challenges, visible even now on the far horizon in the form of skyrocketing absolute global human population numbers projected to reach 9+ billion people within the lifetime of my not-so-great generation’s children, appears to render a selfish disservice, one that avoids the difficult work of widely sharing in a timely fashion an adequate understanding of our distinctly human-induced predicament.
Humanity cannot begin formulating a plan of action to address the human predicament without a consensually-validated understanding of what the predicament is, I suppose.
The multifaceted predicament before us appears to made even more demanding because the necessary time for confronting and overcoming the global challenges appears short ………. and not to be on our side.