Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Archives for March 14, 2008

Blair: Global Warming to Become Irreversible Within Two Years

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Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair once told us that Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction that could be deployed within 45 minutes. We went to war as a result, yet no WMDs were ever found. The WMD statement was a blatant LIE.

Now, according to today’s headline in UK newspaper The Guardian, ‘Blair to lead campaign on climate change’, ‘Act urgently or global warming will be irreversible, former PM warns.’

Blair said: “Essentially what everyone has agreed is that climate change is a serious problem, it is man-made, we require a global deal, that there should be a substantial cut in emissions at the heart of it, and this global deal should involve everyone, including in particular America on the one hand and China on the other, so it is the developed and developing world.”

He said the world had less than two years to secure a deal, or accept that global warming is irreversible.

“The fact of the matter is that if we do not take substantial action over the next two years, then by 2020 we will thinking seriously about adaptation rather than prevention.”

Words spoken by a man with a degree in law rather than a science.

Where is the scientific basis for ‘2 years’ and the ‘magic’ year ‘2020?’ Very little of what Blair says makes any sense from a policy or scientific point of view. Adaptation to inevitable climate change should be the key part of any climate policy regardless of whether or not any meaningful CO2 emisssion reductions are necessary or can be achieved, given climate history and the IPCC claim that CO2 remains in the atmosphere for 50 to 200 years. The situation is much worse according to Matthews and Caldeira, 2008.

Prins and Rayner are banging their heads against a brick wall and must surely believe Tony Blair is wearing the wrong trousers. Even so, the assumption that we need only prepare for warming and can ignore the possibility of substantial cooling in the future is dangerously flawed.

Whaling in the North Part 1, 2008 – A Note from Ann Novek

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Norwegian fisheries paper, Fiskeribladet, stated on March 13th, with the headline “ Scaling down whale purchase,” that Norway’s largest whale meat processing factory, Ellingsens, will scale down its purchase of whale meat.

The owner, Ulf Ellingsen stated, “Maybe we will buy whale meat, maybe not, but anyway it will be much less than previous years.”

Ellingsens factory runs mainly selling salmon. According to the paper, they are concerned that the whale hunt will finally die out, with fewer actors in every field.

“Whaling is in a downward spiral,” said the owner.

BBC stated on March 13th “Iceland whaling go-ahead likely.”

The Icelandic Minke Whalers Head said to BBC that the whaling industry is asking for a quota of about 100 minkes and some Fin whales.

Excerpt from BBC:

Stefan Asmundsson, a senior official in Iceland’s fisheries ministry and its commissioner to the International Whaling Commission (IWC), confirmed that the hunt was likely to go ahead.

“We are not expecting any big quotas, but we are likely to see in the relatively near future some quotas for minke whales.”

The Fisheries Minister is likely to make the final announcement within a month.

Cheers,
Ann Novek
Sweden

Carbon Rationing or Freedom

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Australia has now ratified the Kyoto Protocol and when George Bush’s Presidency expires the United States is also likely to join up. Indeed all counties in the developed world will probably soon become parts of a carbon emissions trading scheme. But the gap between what is agreed and what is achieved in terms of reducing emissions is likely to be significant.

Speaking at the ‘2008 International Climate Change Conference’ in New York last week, the President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus, described the “robust relationship between carbon dioxide emissions and economic growth”. He went on to suggest there are three types of countries in Europe based on their emissions profile and level of economic growth. He talks about his speech in an article in The Australian (March 12, 2008).

He described the less developed countries of the European Union (EU), including Greece, as trying to catch-up economically and in the process, since the signing of Kyoto, increasing their level of carbon emissions by 53 per cent. The post communist countries are seeing their heavy industry disappear and are experiencing a decline in GDP and a drop in emissions of on average 33 per cent. Highly established countries like France and Germany have seen their emissions increase by about 4 per cent since Kyoto was signed.

President Klaus said “the dream” to reduce emissions in the EU by 70 per cent in the next 30 years could only be achieved if there was a dramatic de-industrialisation of Europe – likely associated with a dramatic drop in GDP, a significant drop in population, or a technological revolution.

Klaus questioned the extent to which carbon dioxide, as opposed to natural variability, has driven global warming over the last 100 years. He sees the imposition of carbon rationing through emissions trading as reminiscent of communist era European politics where radical economic change was imposed from above.

These sorts of views are often labelled as climate change scepticism – but it is more climate change realism.

Of course there are those who argue that given the imminent catastrophe of global warming we all need to make some sacrifices and if this requires some draconian top down social engineering, so be it.

Also at the conference in New York was Roy Spencer who leads a team analysing temperature and cloud data from NASA’s Aqua satellite which was launched in 2002. This satellite has, for the first time, enabled the collection of detailed data on cloud formation and evolution, and temperature anomalies in the tropics.

Much of the scientific uncertainty about the size of manmade global warming is related to how the climate system responds to some warming. The climate models suggest a strong positive feedback: that the warming effects of additional carbon dioxide will be amplified by increasing water vapour. But data from NASA’s Aqua Satellite indicates just the opposite – that warming has the effect of slightly reducing the total greenhouse effect by adjusting water vapour and cloud amounts, to keep it in proportion to the amount of available sunlight.

These findings published late last year are still being digested by the meteorological community: if correct it will mean that all current climate models used by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change (IPCC) will require an overhaul.

Dr Spencer’s work supports President Klaus’ hunch that climate systems are more robust than the models suggest and that natural climate variability has been neglected in much of the research and discussion to date. The policy implications are considerable if, as Dr Spencer‘s work seems to indicate, the overhauled climate models eventually show greatly reduced future warming projections.

The conference in New York was attended by 500 so-called climate change sceptics, including meteorologists, geologists, astrophysicists, social anthropologists (studying group dynamics in the climate change community), polar bear specialists and of course lobbyists.

There was diversity of opinion among delegates at the conference as to the causes of global warming in the last 100 years, and also little consensus regarding the future of fossil fuels.

Benny Peiser from Liverpool University in the UK, acknowledged that governments worldwide had no real solutions to rising emission levels but that solutions would come through geo-engineering and the development of solar energy.

In contrast, Michael Economides from the University of Houston in the US suggested this was a pie in the sky fantasy. Professor Economides said the world was likely to continue to source most of its energy from fossil fuels for the foreseeable future.

Perhaps it all depends on the extent to which governments in developed countries, including Australia, are prepared to risk a fall in their GDP by insisting on a real reduction in carbon emissions before new low emissions technologies are in place.

Such social engineering, President Klaus warned, would be disastrous.

Instead, we perhaps have to restart the discussion about the very nature of government and about the relationship between the individual and society. Should governments let climate alarmists impose policies designed to limit an individual’s access to energy?

We do need to relearn the lessons from the collapse of communism nearly 20 years ago. It is not just about climatology; it is also about freedom.

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This article has been republished from On Line Opinion: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=7124&page=0

I was a delegate at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change, March 2-4, 2008, New York City.
You can read some of my blog posts on the conference at the following links:

February 25, 2008
The 2008 International Conference on Climate Change: I’m off to New York
https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/archives/002787.html

March 03, 2008
Climate Change Conference, New York – Day 1, In Review
https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/archives/002809.html

March 04, 2008
Climate Change Conference, New York – Day 2, In Review
https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/archives/002813.html

March 06, 2008
Climate Change Conference, New York – Day 3, In Review
https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/archives/002820.html