Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Archives for April 3, 2008

Whaling: Rune has Resigned from the High North Alliance.

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Our friend Rune Frövik, Secretary of the High North Alliance, has resigned according to a Norwegian newspaper, Fiskeribladet.

The charismatic Rune has had many fights with Greenpeace and participated in CITES and IWC meetings. Rune has as well been kind enough to participated here on Jen’s blog. We remember him in the hot and interesting discussion on sustainable Norwegian whaling with Dr. Peter Corkeron:

https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/archives/001142.html#comments

The High North Alliance (HNA) was established in 1991 as an organisation for whalers and sealers in the North Atlantic. HNA had its “golden period” during the years when Norway wanted full scale whaling activity and possibilities to export whale meat. It’s calmer now in the office that is situated in the Lofoten Islands.

“There are still many challenges”, states the new to be Secretary, Laila Jusnes.

The paper doesn’t state the reason for Rune’s resignment , but I heard he owns a little whale meat processing factory in northern Norway.

I wish Rune good luck for the future (but not killing whales!).

Ann Novek,
Sweden

IPCC Underestimate the CO2 Challenge

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Climate policy expert Roger Pielke Jr, climatologist Tom Wigley, and economist Christopher Green lay out in a commentary article published in Nature why they think that the emission scenarios the IPCC produced nearly a decade ago, which are still widely used, are overly optimistic. They note that most of the IPCC’s ‘business as usual’ emission scenarios assume a certain amount of ‘spontaneous’ technological change. The size of this assumed change is unrealistic, they argue, and deceives policy-makers and the public about the crucial role policy must have in encouraging the development of technologies to prevent dangerous climate change.

Read the Nature News article, ‘Climate challenge underestimated?’ Technology will not automatically come to our aid, experts warn.

The full paper is here (subscription required).

There is also correspondence from Gwyn Prins (of Prins and Rayner):

Radical rethink is needed on climate-change policy

Excerpt:

SIR — The irreconcilable differences
between David S. Reay’s Book Review of
The Hot Topic (Nature 452, 31; 2008) and
mine, expressed in Nature Reports Climate
Change (see www.nature.com/climate/
2008/0804/full/climate.2008.23.html),
go to the heart of why there is now a crisis
in climate policy. Reay seems to believe
that agreement with a normative agenda
precludes the need for rigorous evaluation
of evidence or of proposed policy actions,
and so falls into the same traps as Gabrielle
Walker and David King, the authors
whom he praises.

These authors have no doubt that the
Kyoto Protocol is the road to follow. They
consider that anyone, particularly an
American, who doesn’t agree is wrong —
and perhaps even corrupt.

However, the Kyoto approach is broken……..