Intro: "New figures show we are still hurtling towards dangerous climate change - at a time when policymakers are running out of ideas."
Tornado wreckage from a home in Joplin, Missouri. Many scientists fear increasingly radical weather patterns may be the result of a warming earth, 05/22/11. (photo: Eric Thayer/Reuters)
Global Warming: Bleaker and Bleaker
04 June 11
New figures show we are still hurtling towards dangerous climate change - at a time when policymakers are running out of ideas.
ometimes a quotation really does say it all. As chief economist of the International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol is not given to overstatement - so his comment in our paper today that the latest figures on greenhouse gas emissions are "the worst news" should be taken seriously. It is not just that the statistics showing another record leap in carbon output - 30.6 gigatonnes of CO2 over 2010 - to make the highest annual total in history are grim. They also come at a point when the old centrist certainties about how to tackle climate change are palpably out of date, and yet no new ideas have come along as replacement.
Over the past half-decade, three global-warming orthodoxies have pertained: the first diplomatic, the second economic, and the third industrial. The diplomatic orthodoxy was this: the best way to negotiate reductions in carbon emissions was the UN. That was the fairest forum, which allowed poorer, smaller countries a platform alongside the old economic behemoths. It could be effective, too: the 1989 Montreal protocol to phase out the use of CFCs and other ozone-harming substances had been described by former UN secretary general Kofi Annan as "perhaps the single most successful international agreement". Even the Kyoto treaty could be seen as a success, if you squinted hard enough. But then came Copenhagen in 2009, which was a flop. More negotiations take place at Durban this December, and already the British and the Americans are warning observers not to get their hopes up.
Economically, the optimists argued that the great recession of 2008-09 would give governments and industrialists a vital breathing space. A contracting world economy would naturally reduce carbon emissions, meantime, public and private sectors could strike a green new deal that would begin a shift towards low-carbon growth. Today's figures give the lie to all that: the link between GDP growth and greenhouse gases remains overwhelming. True, the distribution may have shifted eastwards since the Kyoto protocol - but that is partly because the west increasingly imports its manufactured goods. Finally, industrially, the great bet was that rich countries would wean themselves off fossil fuels and on to a mix of nuclear and renewables. Yet Fukushima has prompted Germany, Italy and Switzerland to mothball their nuclear power projects.
Today's figures, then, show a world still hurtling towards dangerous climate change - at a time when policymakers are out of solutions for slowing this process. "A nice utopia" is how Mr Birol describes the hope of keeping a rise in global temperatures below 2C. And if he thinks that, we should all be alarmed.
|
THE NEW STREAMLINED RSN LOGIN PROCESS: Register once, then login and you are ready to comment. All you need is a Username and a Password of your choosing and you are free to comment whenever you like! Welcome to the Reader Supported News community. |
 19 May 2012
|
 18 May 2012
|
 18 May 2012
|
 19 May 2012
|
 19 May 2012
|
 19 May 2012
|
 20 May 2012
|
 20 May 2012
|
 20 May 2012
|
Comments
We are concerned about a recent drift towards vitriol in the RSN Reader comments section. There is a fine line between moderation and censorship. No one likes a harsh or confrontational forum atmosphere. At the same time everyone wants to be able to express themselves freely. We'll start by encouraging good judgment. If that doesn't work we'll have to ramp up the moderation.
General guidelines: Avoid personal attacks on other forum members; Avoid remarks that are ethnically derogatory; Do not advocate violence, or any illegal activity.
Remember that making the world better begins with responsible action.
- The RSN Team
Svensmark is the Danish scientist who cannot get published in the U.S. Climate journals because they are controlled by guess who.
I can hope otherwise, but actual annual temperature averages seem to incline to my view.
Regards,
Reyn
Nice try. Link cites an article from 2009. In 2009, there were 260 days with no sunspots. Thus far this year, only one. The sun is not going into "hibernation", but following its normal 11 year cycle, currently heating up with more and more sunspots.
Bull woofy is an excellent term. After reading a ton of stuff in the early nineties, I noticed that among serious researchers, who are relatively independent and have researched long term, there was no "if we do this or if we do that we can end this destructive cycle". Most all agreed there was a limited time left with the atmosphere.
After all, the atmosphere is all there is between life on the earth and certain death.
From John Muir's "My Life with Nature":"I had heard that there were huge glaciers in Alaska, still carving noble, newborn scenery, so in 1879 i went to Alaska for the first time, Just twelve years before, the United States had purchased Alaska from Russia...At the end of our trip, we discovered a long bay that was filled with icebergs. No one had ever explored this region before. The inlet, which was surrounded by big icy mountains, is now called Glacier Bay. But when Captain George Vancouver sailed past this part of the coast in 1794, the bay didn't even exist, because the inlet was completely choked with glacier ice over 4000 ft high, 20 miles wide, and 100 miles long. When we arrived just 85 years later, the glacier had retreated 48 miles up the inlet."
Could carbon trading schemes (scams?) begun in 1800 have saved Muir's glaciers? What do you think? What if the climate alarmists are wrong and CO2 is a negligable component of a natural warming trend that no amount of carbon trading can halt?
Where's the data showing humans are responsible? Show it to John Muir.
RSS feed for comments to this post.