Shackleton’s Whiskey Found Buried Near South Pole.

Lauren Frayer
Contributor to aol.com
(Feb. 6, 2010) — It’s probably the most sought-after scotch in history – crates of whiskey buried in Antarctica by the famed explorer Ernest Shackleton a century ago. He abandoned them on a failed attempt to reach the South Pole in 1909, and they’ve been on ice – literally – ever since.

Researchers from New Zealand found the crates while restoring a hut Shackleton built and used during the expedition. He and his team were forced to cut short the trip and abandon supplies, including their booze, to sail away before winter ice trapped them there.

The New Zealand team first spotted two crates underneath the hut’s floorboards in 2006, but they were too deeply embedded in ice to be salvaged. Researchers returned to the site this past week, and finally extracted the crates after drilling into the ice around them. The surprise was that there were three more crates than expected – one more of whiskey and two of brandy.

The second trip was backed by the same Scottish company that distilled Shackleton’s whiskey, Mackinlay’s Rare Old Scotch. It could be the longest booze run in history. The Whyte and Mackay distillery hopes to replicate the whiskey, which hasn’t been made in a lifetime after the original recipe was lost.

“Given the original recipe no longer exists, this may open a door into history,” the company’s master blender, Richard Paterson, said in a release posted on the company’s Web site. He called the find “a gift from the heavens” for whiskey lovers.

“If the contents can be confirmed, safely extracted and analyzed, the original blend may be able to be replicated,” Paterson said.

Experts will try to extract the historic brew delicately. Some of the crates have cracked and ice has formed inside. Icebergs surrounding the crates smelled of whiskey, and there may have been leakage, according to Al Fastier, a restoration expert with the New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust who made the find.

He told the BBC he heard the slosh of liquid inside the crates when they were moved, and is confident that much of the liquor is still inside.

Shackleton’s expedition ran short of supplies on a long trek to the South Pole that began in 1907. He had to turn back about 100 miles from the pole in 1909. The team had to move quickly to escape as winter ice began to form, so they were forced to abandon all but essential equipment and supplies – including their whiskey. No lives were lost.

A Norwegian explorer, Roald Amundsen, was first to reach the South Pole two years later, in 1911.

As for what the future holds for Shackleton’s whiskey, there are international treaties preventing the removal of artifacts from Antarctica, but Paterson wrote on his blog that he hopes to get his hands on at least a sample of the whiskey, if not a couple bottles.

“What you all want to know is: How will it taste?” Paterson wrote. “To which the answer is: Cold.”

The strongest commitments came from some of the world’s smallest countries, like the Maldives. The low-lying island nation, at great risk from rising sea levels, set a goal of being carbon neutral by 2020.

55 Countries Submit Copenhagen Pledges to Cut Emissions.

The number 55 is coincidentally  was required by the Kyoto Protocol to go into effect.
Kyoto Protocol – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
Of the two conditions, the “55 parties” clause was reached on 23 May … Annex I countries under the Kyoto Protocol, their 2012 commitments (% of …. The scheme went into operation on 1 January 2005, although a forward market has existed since 2003. … CDM projects produce Certified Emission Reductions (CERs), …
 aol.com Contributor

(Feb. 2, 2010) – The United States, China and dozens of other countries have submitted pledges to limit greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 – the first hurdle required in a voluntary pact set up at last year’s U.N. climate change summit in Copenhagen.

Fifty-five countries made good on a Jan. 31 deadline to submit their commitments, the United Nations announced Monday night. Altogether they account for 78 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, it said.

For wealthy nations, this week’s pledges formalize previous promises made in Copenhagen. But for many developing nations – whose emissions are growing more quickly than those from the rest of the world – this is the first time they’ve made public the details of their plans to slow the release of harmful gases.

The pledges, if honored, will dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which scientists blame for global warming. But the commitments fall short of what scientists believe is necessary to prevent even a slight rise in temperatures – exacerbating risks of drought, flooding and other catastrophic climate effects.

“The commitment to confront climate change at the highest level is beyond doubt. These pledges have been formally communicated,” Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, said in a statement posted on his group’s Web site. “Greater ambition is required to meet the scale of the challenge. But I see these pledges as clear signals of willingness to move negotiations towards a successful conclusion.”

More than 190 countries sent delegates to a December summit in Copenhagen, but they couldn’t reach a unanimous and binding agreement on how best to combat global warming. Instead, they settled for a voluntary accord that asks each country to set its own target to reduce emissions of damaging greenhouse gases. Fast-developing countries such as China promised to limit emissions as a share of their growing economies, while wealthy nations such as the United States pledged overall reductions. But the pact has no enforcement mechanism.

In this week’s filings, the U.S. promised to reduce emissions “in the range of 17 percent, in conformity with anticipated U.S. energy and climate legislation.” Congress is still weighing a bill that would enact the changes, and on Monday President Barack Obama asked for $1.4 billion in the 2011 budget for international climate efforts. His administration has pledged to help raise as much as $100 billion annually by 2020.

China pledged to lower its carbon dioxide per unit of gross domestic product by 40 to 45 percent, and to boost its use of non-fossil fuels to a 15 percent share of its economy.

The group of 55 countries that submitted their pledges on time also includes India, Brazil, the European Union and Japan.

Mexico and Russia had planned to submit pledges but the U.N. said they had not received them by Monday evening.

Countries that did not sign the voluntary accord include OPEC nations such as Saudi Arabia and Iran. Turkey and Malaysia are eventually expected to sign on, but have not yet done so.

But even the most ambitious pledges submitted this week are not likely to meet the Copenhagen accord’s goal of holding global warming to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) above pre-industrial levels. Signatories still have major issues to hash out, including how wealthy nations can help poor ones invest in technology to reduce harmful emissions, and develop cleaner energy sources.

The next round of formal negotiations on climate change, sponsored by the U.N., is planned for May in Germany. But de Boer said additional meetings could happen before then. “Several countries have indicated their wish to see a quick return to the negotiations with more meetings than the scheduled sessions. We are seeking further guidance from governments,” his statement read.

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The United States submitted a target of cutting its emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, “in conformity” with targets to be set by Congress. That equates to about 4 percent below 1990 levels. The 27-nation European Union pledged to reduce emissions 20 percent below its 1990 levels, increasing that to 30 percent if other countries agree to binding targets. Australia also made its target contingent on other countries, with an unconditional 5 percent below 2000 levels and as much as 25 percent with global participation.
Among developing nations, India and China both affirmed their pledges to lower their carbon intensity, or carbon emissions per unit of gross domestic product — China at 40 to 45 percent of 2005 levels, and India at 20 to 25 percent of 2005 levels. Brazil repeated a pledge it signed into law to reduce emissions as much as 20 percent below 2005 levels.
But all these promises combined will not slow warming to the extent needed to avoid the most drastic and damaging effects of climate change.

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U.S., China, others join Copenhagen Accord on climate – Each nation determines its own target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Great photo – Fumes from vehicles and smoke from factories fog the air on the outskirts of Ahmadabad last week. India was among the nations that joined the Copenhagen Accord by the Sunday deadline. (Ajit Solanki / Associated Press / January 23, 2010)

Copenhagen’s moment of truth

By Jim Tankersley
Los Angeles Times, February 2, 2010

Reporting from Washington – The United States, China and dozens of other countries accounting for nearly 80% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions have signed onto a voluntary agreement to curb climate change.

If the countries make good on their pledges, they will dramatically reduce the emissions scientists link to global warming, but not enough to hold temperatures to levels scientists say are needed to minimize risks of drought, flooding and other catastrophic effects.

Still, the number of nations signing on, along with the amount they pledged in reductions, buoyed many environmentalists after the December climate summit meeting in Copenhagen.

The 193 countries represented in Copenhagen could not reach agreement on a pact to reduce carbon emissions. They settled instead for a voluntary accord that asks each nation to pledge to reduce them.

“What we now know that we did get out of Copenhagen was clarity of what countries are going to be doing to fight climate change,” said Keya Chatterjee, director of the World Wildlife Fund’s climate change program. The situation is “much better than we had a couple months ago. But it’s still not where we need to be.”

In addition to the United States and China, the two largest emitters of greenhouse gases, the countries that met a Sunday deadline to formally join the Copenhagen Accord include India, Japan and the nations of the European Union, the United Nations announced Monday.

Each nation determined its own target for reducing emissions. Fast-developing countries such as China promised to limit emissions as a share of their growing economies, while wealthy nations such as the United States pledged reductions from historic levels.

The accord has no enforcement provision, though it does require participants to allow international scrutiny of their efforts.

Many of the pledges are contingent: The United States, for example, refuses to set a concrete target until Congress passes a climate bill, and Canada’s pledge is linked to that of the U.S.

Even at their most stringent, the pledges do not meet the accord’s goal of holding warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, climate scientists and environmental groups say.

The list of countries not signing onto the accord includes OPEC nations such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, which environmentalists do not expect to join. Other countries such as Turkey and Malaysia are expected to eventually sign on.

The countries still have major issues to hash out, including how to handle the billions of dollars to be funneled from wealthy nations to poorer ones to help them adapt to climate change and develop cleaner sources of energy.

The Obama administration asked Congress on Monday to allocate $1.4 billion in the 2011 budget for international climate efforts. The administration has pledged to help raise as much as $100 billion annually by 2020.

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BRUSSELS (Dow Jones)–Fifty five countries have submitted to the United Nations their pledges to limit greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, after they were asked to send in their commitments by the end of January, the U.N. said late Monday.

These countries account for 78% of global CO2 emissions from energy use, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the U.N. body leading the negotiations for an international agreement on how to limit global warming, said in a statement.

“Greater ambition is required to meet the scale of the (climate change) challenge, but I see these pledges as clear signals of willingness to move negotiations towards a successful conclusion,” Yvo de Boer, UNFCCC executive secretary, said in the statement.

After two weeks of talks in Copenhagen in December at a U.N.-sponsored conference with more than 190 governments, some countries agreed to a light political accord, called the Copenhagen Accord, which asked countries to submit their pledges in cutting carbon dioxide emissions, or in limiting their growth, by Jan. 31.

De Boer later said the deadline was “soft,” and he expects some governments won’t meet it, but will likely still submit pledges later in the year.

Major emitters and growing economies such as China, the U.S., the European Union, India, Brazil, Russia and South Africa have all submitted their pledges, the UNFCCC said in the statement.

These pledges remain national targets, and their communication to the U.N. won’t create an international obligation for governments to meet them.

The Copenhagen Accord is seen as a basis for future negotiations on a potential international agreement on how to limit global warming, even though the Copenhagen summit was a big disappointment for many, because countries weren’t able to agree on any substantial step–such a long-term targets–in reducing CO2 emissions.

-By Alessandro Torello, Dow Jones Newswires; +32 2 741 14 88;  alessandro.torello at dowjones.com

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If  OPEC will remain outside  even this weak agreement – why not tax their oil exports to the pont needed to force the introduction of non-fossil fuel systems? Will the 55 countries, and the other many countries that will join, not realize what is important to their own economies?

The International Conference “Deltas in Times of Climate Change.”

from: Ottelien van Steenis  – Call for abstracts for The International Conference ‘Deltas in Times of Climate Change’          September 29 – October 1, 2010, Rotterdam, the Netherlands

The two official Dutch research programmes on climate change and spatial planning (Climate changes Spatial Planning and Knowledge for Climate), the City of Rotterdam and the C40 (a group of the world’s largest cities committed to tackling climate change) invite scientists, politicians, policy-makers and practitioners to share their knowledge and experience in a major international conference on climate adaptation.

The conference pursues three main goals:
1. exchanging up-to-date top science on climate change and delta planning
2. strengthening international cooperation between deltas and delta cities
3. exploring and strengthening the links between science, policy and practitioners

Authors who wish to present a paper or poster related to the scientific programme are invited to submit an abstract.

The abstracts have to be submitted before 15 February 2010, and will be expected to fit within one of the themes:
1.     Regional climate, sea level rise, storm surges, river run-off and coastal flooding
2.     Fresh water availability under sea level rise and climate change
3.     Climate change and estuarine ecosystems
4.     Climate change and climate proofing in urban areas
5.     Competing claims and land use in deltas under climate change
6.     Governance and economics of climate adaptation
7.     Decision support instruments for climate adaptation policy
8.     Climate and health in delta areas
9.     Managing extreme weather risks

Dates to be remembered:
February 15     deadline for submission of abstract
February    registration open (fee: approximately € 350)
April   notification of abstract/poster selection
August 1    submission of draft full paper

During the conference, the Delta Alliance, Connecting Delta Cities and the C40 will be working to develop worldwide cooperation between deltas and delta cities. The Delta Alliance is an international alliance promoting effective cooperation among deltas in their efforts to manage existing and new challenges. The Connecting Delta Cities is an international network that unites delta cities that strive to make their cities climate proof.

More information is available at the  conference website and the brochure of the conference.

The Steering Committee – Pier Vellinga and Pavel Kabat
________________________________________
Programme Office Climate changes Spatial Planning / Programme Office Knowledge for Climate
p/a Wageningen UR, P.O. Box 47, 6700 AA  Wageningen, the Netherlands
T +31 30 48 6540
M +31 2120 2447
E  o.van.steenis at programmabureauklimaat….
W www.climatedeltaconference.org

 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con…

U.S. pledges 17 percent emissions reduction by 2020.

By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 29, 2010

The United States pledged Thursday to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent by 2020 from 2005 levels under an international climate agreement, though it made its commitment contingent on passing legislation at home.

The Obama administration submitted its much-anticipated reduction target to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Secretariat under the Copenhagen Accord, a non-binding deal brokered by the United States last month at the U.N.-sponsored climate talks. Under the deal President Obama helped secure in Copenhagen, major emitters of greenhouse gases are expected to “inscribe” their reduction targets by Jan. 31.

The commitment states that the United States will cut its emissions “in the range of 17 percent, in conformity with anticipated U.S. energy and climate legislation, recognizing that the final target will be reported to the Secretariat in light of enacted legislation.” It remains unclear if Congress will pass a comprehensive climate bill this year.

Ned Helme, president of the D.C.-based Center for Clean Air Policy, said as the deadline approaches, it is becoming clear that the world’s biggest carbon emitters are going to follow through on voluntary pledges they made in the run-up to last month’s talks.

“Now the smoke has cleared, people are now taking the Copenhagen Accord more seriously,” Helme said. “You’re going to see all the major players sign up.”

Several key developing nations, such as China and India, have not yet indicated what they will commit to under the agreement.

Todd Stern, the U.S. special envoy on climate change, said in a statement Thursday the administration expects “that all major economies will honor their agreement in Copenhagen to submit their mitigation targets or actions as provided in the Accord.”

On the same day the United States made its pledge public, the low-lying Marshall Islands announced it would reduce emissions 40 percent by 2020 under the accord. “If one of the smallest and most vulnerable island states can take action, the largest countries have no excuse not to follow our example,” said Marshall Islands Foreign Minister John Silk.

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 http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2010…

Obama announces government greenhouse gas emissions targets. It would aim to reduce its emissions by 28 percent in 2020. This obviously compares favorably with the 17% National figure and thus throws further shadow over that lower figure that will thus go for the non-federal government sectors i.e. the private sector and State and local governments even seriously bellow that 17% figure.

Further, assuming that the States of the West Coast and the East Coast will be aiming to even higher reductions then the Federal Government, one can thus conclude that the private sector that is not regulated by the State Governments, will clearly escape with reduction figures lower then 10% – that is lower then under scenarios of normal business. These figures might not be appreciated very well by worldwide competing business interests. So – lets say – the trek to finding the answer to climate change/Global Warming is only starting.

By Juliet Eilperin and Anne E. Kornblut, Friday January 28, 2010

President Obama set greenhouse gas emissions targets for the federal government, announcing Friday that it would aim to reduce its emissions by 28 percent in 2020.

“As the largest energy consumer in the United States, we have a responsibility to American citizens to reduce our energy use and become more efficient,” Obama said in a statement.  “Our goal is to lower costs, reduce pollution, and shift Federal energy expenses away from oil and towards local, clean energy.”

The White House estimated a savings of $8 billion to $11 billion in energy costs, and Nancy Sutley, who chairs the White House Council on Environmental Quality, estimated that it would amount to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 88 million metric tons by 2020 — equivalent to taking 17 million cars off the road for one year

The initiative, Sutley told reporters, “will hold the federal government accountable for leading by example.”

But it is not as sweeping as it could have been: It does not, for instance, include emissions that stem from the actiivity of federal suppliers, or from federal employees’ commutes. And while the Defense Department pledged Friday to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in non-combat areas 34 percent by 2020, this pledge does not include combat operations, which account for 62 percent of the department’s carbon footprint.

“That would not be responsible,” said Dorothy Robyn, deputy undersecretary of defense for installations and environment at the Pentagon.

Still, environmentalists and Democrats in Congress praised the move.

“I am very pleased that President Obama has set aggressive, but realistic, targets for reducing energy use by federal agencies,” said Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), who chairs the Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information, Federal Services and International Security.

And Frances Beinecke, president of the advocacy group Natural Resources Defense Council, called the initiative “a great deal for the American taxpayers and a great example for the rest of the country.”

Obama’s announcement came hours after his administration delivered a non-binding pledge to other countries that the United States would cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.

The Obama administration submitted its reduction target to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Secretariat under the Copenhagen Accord, a non-binding deal brokered by the United States last month at the U.N.-sponsored climate talks. Under the deal President Obama helped secure in Copenhagen, major emitters of greenhouse gases are expected to “inscribe” their reduction targets by Jan. 31.

The international commitment states that the United States will cut its emissions “in the range of 17 percent, in conformity with anticipated U.S. energy and climate legislation, recognizing that the final target will be reported to the Secretariat in light of enacted legislation.” It remains unclear if Congress will pass a comprehensive climate bill this year.

Several key developing nations, such as China and India, have not yet indicated what they will commit to under the agreement.

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Friday, Jan. 29, 2010

Building on Copenhagen. Japan wants space at the Table.

By SHINJI FUKUKAWA
Last month the 15th Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP15) closed by announcing the Copenhagen Accord drawn up by major participating countries. Although the process produced some positive results — such as calls for steps to hold the global temperature increase below 2 degrees Celsius and to streamline the mechanism for funding developing nations — agreement on a new framework to succeed the Kyoto Protocol was put off. Signatories were asked to work for a new strategy formulation.

COP15 provides two lessons for the international community. The first is the realization of how difficult consensus building is at the global level. Neither the European Union, which had continued to take the lead on the global warming issue, nor Japan, which had proposed a drastic 25 percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 from 1990 levels, were able to take the initiative at the conference.

An agreement drafted with the two major polluting countries — the United States and China — playing a central role was not adopted because of objections from small countries. As long as the U.N. unanimous-agreement formula continues, adopting a resolution will be almost impossible.

The second lesson is that it is extremely difficult to settle on a measure that will ensure a balance between the economy and the environment. Developing countries, while demanding that advanced nations acknowledge their historical responsibilities by making drastic emissions cuts, continued to reject requests to accept the imposition of emissions restraints on themselves. They feared that their economic growth might be restricted. The question of whether binding control measures and market functioning can go together remains unresolved.

By Jan. 31, advanced nations are required to submit their emissions-cut targets for 2020; and developing countries, their emissions-control action plans. Signatory countries are supposed to look for new methods to address the issue. Three options should be considered:

• Formulate an international framework to replace the Kyoto Protocol.

Continuation of the cap-and-trade formula on which the Kyoto accord is based is no longer feasible. Whether the pledge-and-review formula can serve as the foundation of a new framework will become a point of contention. That mechanism calls for the respective countries to pledge emissions cuts based on the world’s total allowable emissions and on the content and results of the pledges to be reviewed internationally.

I think this is an effective and practical method under the circumstances, although China, despite persuasive efforts by the U.S. at COP15, refused to accept international inspection unless it receives international assistance.

• Work out an emissions-cut mechanism on a group basis.

During the leadup to COP15, a number of mechanisms for cooperation, including the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, were in operation, as their utilization was strongly called for. These cooperative ties resemble the relationship between the World Trade Organization and free trade agreements.

I propose utilizing the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum (APEC), which is rich in flexibility and has already addressed energy and environment problems. I am interested in the fact that the three largest economic powers — the U.S., China and Japan — participate in the forum. This year Japan will chair an APEC meeting. If a common framework can be worked out, the forum could present the world with an exemplary mechanism for cooperation.

• Let countries take their own measures.

China and India have already announced their respective emissions-cut targets. It is hoped that signatory nations will consider world opinion and available technological knowhow in taking policy measures aimed at achieving maximum possible reduction targets that match their national circumstances. Some countries might implement environmental taxes, domestic emissions rights trading or technological policy measures for emissions control.

From hereon the signatories will step up discussion on a new framework in preparation for COP16. The U.S., China and India will probably hold the key to the success of that process.

The Japanese government is reported to be planning to submit its target of a 25 percent emissions cut by 2020 from 1990 levels — “premised on agreement on ambitious targets by all the major economies.” I don’t think this precondition will hold; still, it’s important that Japan take the lead in the reform of lifestyles, industrial structures and technological systems, present a practical reduction target and control its greenhouse gas emissions.

If Japan can show an excellent model of improved energy efficiency and environmental protection to developing countries by utilizing the technical capabilities it has accumulated up to now, the impact will be great. And it will receive high praise from other nations if, in addition to expanding financial assistance to developing countries, it endeavors to accelerate measures to protect intellectual property rights and promote technology transfers.

My view is that Japan should contribute to the world particularly in the field of substantive structural reform.
——————–
Shinji Fukukawa, formerly vice minister of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (now the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry) and president of Dentsu Research Institute, is currently chairman of the Machine Industry Memorial Foundation.

News Alert: Bin Laden blasts U.S. for climate change
06:49 AM EST Friday, January 29, 2010
——————–

Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has called in a new audiotape for the world to boycott American goods and the U.S. dollar, blaming the United States and other industrialized countries for global warming. In the tape, aired in part on Al-Jazeera television Friday, bin Laden warns of the dangers of climate change and says that the way to stop it is to bring “the wheels of the American economy” to a halt

This information we picked up on a page of The Washington Post that includes a large advertisement from CHEVRON Oil Company:

“HUMAN ENERGY” “Every day Chevron invests $59 million in People. In ideas. In progress – Learn more”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/29/AR2010012901463.html?hpid=topnews

Bin Laden blasts US for climate change.

Includes also a photo from the FILE – “This is an undated photo of al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden. Bin
Laden issued a new audio message claiming responsibility for the Christmas day bombing attempt in Detroit and vowed further attacks. (Anonymous – AP)

The Associated Press
Friday, January 29, 2010; 6:52 AM
CAIRO — Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden has called in a new audiotape for the world to boycott American goods and the U.S. dollar, blaming the United States and other industrialized countries for global warming.

In the tape, aired in part on Al-Jazeera television Friday, bin Laden
warns of the dangers of climate change and says that the way to stop
it is to bring “the wheels of the American economy” to a halt.

He says the world should “stop consuming American products” and
“refrain from using the dollar,” according to a transcript on
Al-Jazeera’s Web site.

The new message, whose authenticity could not immediately be
confirmed, comes after a bin Laden tape released last week in which he
endorsed a failed attempt to blow up an American airliner on Christmas
Day.

—————-

UNFCCC should take notice of this when next time Saudi Arabia will claim to be paid US Dollars for the losses that it will incur when the world will finally decide to use less oil – their hidden treasure under the desert sand. Whatever we think of Bin Laden – we know that it is the US dollars paid for oil that fuelled both – the monarchy of The House of Saud and the Bin Laden family complaints that these dollars corrupted the purity of the faith as they see it. Now – that is why we post the piece also on our “cartoons” column – not really because of our disbelief in the Chevron statement or the actual content of what is attributed to Osama.

We are afraid that some narrow minded people might actually say that because Osama says that the US is to be blamed for Global Warming – it is obvious that Global Warming is a non-issue – and US CATO will thus bless on Bin Laden – so The Heartland Institute can put him up im its Gallery of Fame. Crazy – I told you so.

If It’s That Warm, How Come It’s So Darned Cold?
An Essay on Regional Cold Anomalies – within Near Record Global Temperature.

James Hansen, Reto Ruedy, Makiko Sato, Ken Lo

Overview. Public skepticism about global warming was reinforced by the extreme cold
of December 2009 in the contiguous 48 United States and in much of Eurasia. The summer of
2009 was also unusually cool in the United States. But when a cold spell hits, we need to ask:

• Cold compared to what. Our memory of the past few winters? Winters of our childhood? Winters earlier in the 20th century?
• Cold where and for how long? Regional cold snaps are expected even with large global warming. Weather fluctuations can be 10, 20 or 30 degrees, much larger than average global warming.
• The reality of seasons. As the plot of Earth we live on turns away from the sun, in winter or at night, it cools off. That’s true even with global warming, albeit not quite so much.

Before addressing these matters, we note that scientists reporting global warming have come
under attack for a supposed conspiracy to manufacture evidence of global warming. Perhaps because
some members of the public accept these charges as reality, vicious personal messages are sent to the
principal scientists almost daily.

The spiral into an almost surrealistic situation with ad hominem attacks on scientists may have
originated in part with vested interests who do not want society to address climate change. But there is
more than that – including honest, wishful thinking that climate change is not really happening. But
wishing does not alter facts.

The scientific method practically defines integrity. All scientists make honest mistakes, but the scientific method is designed to correct them.

[Albert Einstein: “The right to search for truth implies also a duty; one must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be true.” Richard Feynman: “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool.”]

The skeptical nature of the scientific method causes conclusions to be reexamined as new data appears.
Cases of deliberate fudging of data, of scientific fraud, are so rare that these infrequent episodes live in
infamy for decades and even centuries.

We know of no cases of fraud in analyses of global temperature measurements. Despite
unfounded accusations, we believe that our best approach is simply to continue to report our scientific
results as clearly as possible. Most of the public continue to respect scientists for what they do and how
they do it. We presume that most of the public can separate science from political commentary.
Our data show that 2009 was tied for the second warmest year in the 130 years of near?global
instrumental measurements – and the Southern Hemisphere had its warmest year in that entire period.
Before discussing these data, and their reconciliation with regional cold anomalies, we must consider
the time frame of comparison.

If we look back a century, we find cold anomalies that dwarf current ones. Figure 1 shows
photos of people walking on Niagara Falls in 1911. Such an extreme cold snap is unimaginable today.
About a decade earlier, in February 1899, temperature fell to ?2°F in Tallahassee, Florida, ?9°F in Atlanta,
Georgia ?30°F in Erasmus, Tennessee, ?47°F in Camp Clark, Nebraska, and ?61°F in Fort Logan, Montana.
The Mississippi River froze all the way to New Orleans, discharging ice into the Gulf of Mexico.

As we will show, climate is changing, especially during the past 30 years. The changes are
perceptible, even though average temperature change is smaller than weather fluctuations. The answer
to the simple question: “How come it’s so damned cold” turns out to be simple: “Because it’s winter.”

3
GISS Global Temperature Analysis
Background. Global temperature change can be defined more accurately than global
temperature. The reason is simple: temperature varies strongly from one place to another,
depending on surface properties, the slope of the ground, etc. Temperature change is a
smoother field, so it can be defined with measurements at a smaller number of locations.
Temperature change is defined relative to some base period. The NASA Goddard
Institute for Space Studies (GISS) analysis uses 1951-1980 as the base period. This was the base
period being used to define “climatology”, average weather, in the 1980s when GISS scientists
began making climate simulations for comparison with observations. It seems best to keep this
base period fixed, because it has been used in many publications. Also many of today’s adults
grew up during 1951-1980, so it provides an appropriate period for analysis of how climate has
changed in human lifetimes. Finally, extensive Antarctic measurements did not begin until the
1950s, so use of an earlier base period would produce a large gap in the Southern Hemisphere.
The GISS temperature analysis is updated each month upon electronic receipt of data
from three sources: (1) weather data for several thousand meteorological stations, (2) satellite
observations of sea surface temperature, and (3) Antarctic research station measurements.

These three data sets are the input for a program that produces a global map of temperature
anomalies relative to the mean for that month during the period of climatology, 1951-1980.
The analysis method has been described fully in a series of refereed papers (Hansen et
al., 1987, 1999, 2001, 2006). Successive papers updated the data and in some cases made
minor improvements to the analysis. A central concept of the analysis is that temperature
anomalies present a smoother geographical field than temperature itself. The distance over
which temperature anomalies are highly correlated is of the order of 1000 kilometers at middle
and high latitudes, as we illustrated in our 1987 paper. Correlation distances, for monthly
temperature anomalies, are shorter at low latitudes, because of the scales of atmospheric
dynamics – but sampling studies show that the coverage of low latitude measurements is not a
major factor affecting accuracy of long?term global temperature trends.

Although the three input data streams that we use are publicly available from the
organizations that produce them, we began preserving the complete input data sets each

month in April 2008. These data sets, which cover the full period of our analysis, 1880?present,
are available to parties interested in performing their own analysis or checking our analysis.
The computer program used in our analysis can be downloaded from the GISS web site.
Results. The past year, 2009, tied as the second warmest year in the 130 years of global
instrumental temperature records (Figure 2a), in the GISS surface temperature analysis. The
Southern Hemisphere set a record as the warmest year for that half of the world (Figure 2b).
Global mean temperature was 0.57°C (1.0°F) warmer than the climatologic average (the
mean for the 1951-1980 base period). Southern Hemisphere mean temperature was 0.49°C
(0.88°F) warmer than the mean for the base period.
The global record warm year was 2005, for the period with near-global instrumental
measurements (since the late 1800s). Sometimes it is asserted that 1998 was the warmest
year. The origin of this confusion is discussed below.

There is a high degree of interannual (year-to-year) and decadal variability in both global
and hemispheric temperatures. Underlying this variability, however, is a long?term warming
trend that has become strong and persistent over the past three decades.

The long-term trends are more apparent when temperature is averaged over several
years. The 60-month (5-year) and 132 month (11-year) running mean temperatures are shown
in Figure 3 for the globe and the hemispheres. The 5-year mean is sufficient to reduce the
effect of the El Nino – La Nina cycles of tropical climate. The 11-year mean minimizes the effect
of solar variability – the brightness of the sun varies by a measurable amount over the sunspot
cycle, which is typically of 10-12 year duration.

There is a contradiction between the observed continued warming trend and popular
perceptions about climate trends. Frequent statements include: “There has been global cooling
over the past decade.” “Global warming stopped in 1998.” “1998 is the warmest year in the
record.” Such statements have been repeated so often that most of the public seems to accept
them as being true. However, based on our data, such statements are not correct.

The origin of this contradiction probably lies in part in differences between the GISS and
HadCRUT temperature analyses (HadCRUT is the joint Hadley Centre, University of East Anglia
Climatic Research Unit temperature analysis). Indeed, HadCRUT finds 1998 to be the warmest
year in their record. In addition, popular belief that the world is cooling is reinforced by cold
weather anomalies in the United States in the summer of 2009 and cold anomalies in much of
the Northern Hemisphere in December 2009.

Comparison of GISS and HadCRUT results. Figure 4 shows maps of GISS and HadCRUT
1998 and 2005 temperature anomalies relative to base period 1961-1990 (the base period used
by HadCRUT). The temperature anomalies are at a 5 degree-by-5 degree (latitude?longitude)
resolution for the GISS data to match that in the HadCRUT analysis. In the lower two maps we
display the GISS data masked to the same area and resolution as the HadCRUT analysis.

The “masked” GISS data let us quantify the extent to which the difference between the
GISS and HadCRUT analyses is due to the data interpolation and extrapolation that occurs in the
GISS analysis. The GISS analysis assigns a temperature anomaly to many gridboxes that do not
contain measurement data, specifically all gridboxes located within 1200 km of one or more
stations that do have defined temperature anomalies.

The rationale for this aspect of the GISS analysis is based on the fact that temperature
anomaly patterns tend to be large scale. For example, if it is an unusually cold winter in New
York, it is probably unusually cold in Philadelphia too. This fact suggests that it may be better to
assign a temperature anomaly based on the nearest stations for a gridbox that contains no
observing stations, rather than excluding that gridbox from the global analysis. Tests of this
assumption are described in our papers referenced below.

Figure 5 shows time series of global temperature for the GISS and HadCRUT analyses, as
well as for the GISS analysis masked to the HadCRUT data region. This figure reveals that the
differences that have developed between the GISS and HadCRUT global temperatures during
the past few decades are due primarily to the extension of the GISS analysis into regions that
are excluded from the HadCRUT analysis. The GISS and HadCRUT results are similar during this
period, when the analyses are limited to exactly the same area. The GISS analysis also finds
1998 as the warmest year, if analysis is limited to the masked area.

The question then becomes: how valid are the extrapolations and interpolations in the
GISS analysis? If the temperature anomaly scale is adjusted such that the global mean anomaly
is zero, the regions warmer and cooler than average have realistic?looking meteorological
patterns, providing qualitative support for the data extensions. However, we would like a
quantitative measure of the uncertainty in our estimate of the global temperature anomaly
caused by the fact that the spatial distribution of measurements is incomplete. One way to
estimate that uncertainty, or possible error, can be obtained via use of the complete time series
of global surface temperature data generated by a global climate model that has been
demonstrated to have realistic spatial and temporal variability of surface temperature. We can
sample this data set at only the locations where measurement stations exist, use this sub?
sample of data to estimate global temperature change with the GISS analysis method, and
compare the result with the “perfect” knowledge of global temperature provided by the data at
all gridpoints.

Table 1 shows the derived error due to incomplete coverage of stations. As expected,
the error was larger at early dates when station coverage was poorer. Also the error is much
larger when data are available only from meteorological stations, without ship or satellite
measurements for ocean areas. In recent decades the 2-sigma uncertainty (95 percent
confidence of being within that range, ~2-3 percent chance of being outside that range in a
specific direction) has been about 0.05°C. The incomplete coverage of stations is the primary
cause of uncertainty in comparing nearby years, for which the effect of more systematic errors
such as urban warming is small.

Additional sources of error become important when comparing temperature anomalies
separated by longer periods. The most well-known source of long-term error is “urban
warming”, human-made local warming caused by energy use and alterations of the natural
environment. Various other errors affecting the estimates of long-term temperature change
are described comprehensively in a large number of papers by Tom Karl and his associates at
the NOAA National Climate Data Center. The GISS temperature analysis corrects for urban
effects by adjusting the long-term trends of urban stations to be consistent with the trends at
nearby rural stations, with urban locations identified either by population or satellite?observed
night lights. In a paper in preparation we demonstrate that the population and night light
approaches yield similar results on global average. The additional error caused by factors other
than incomplete spatial coverage is estimated to be of the order of 0.1°C on time scales of
several decades to a century, this estimate necessarily being partly subjective. The estimated
total uncertainty in global mean temperature anomaly with land and ocean data included thus
is similar to the error estimate in the first line of Table 1, i.e., the error due to limited spatial
coverage when only meteorological stations are included.

Now let’s consider whether we can specify a rank among the recent global annual
temperatures, i.e., which year is warmest, second warmest, etc. Figure 2a shows 2009 as the
second warmest year, but it is so close to 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006, and 2007 that we must
declare these years as being in a virtual tie as the second warmest year. The maximum
difference among these in the GISS analysis is ~0.03°C (2009 being the warmest among those
years and 2006 the coolest). This range is approximately equal to our 1?sigma uncertainty of
~0.025°C, which is the reason for stating that these five years are tied for second warmest.

The year 2005 is 0.061°C warmer than 1998 in our analysis. So how certain are we that
2005 was warmer than 1998? Given the standard deviation of ~0.025°C for the estimated
error, we can estimate the probability that 1998 was warmer than 2005 as follows. The chance
that 1998 is 0.025°C warmer than our estimated value is about (1 – 0.68)/2 = 0.16. The chance
that 2005 is 0.025°C cooler than our estimate is also 0.16. The probability of both of these is
~0.03 (3 percent). Integrating over the tail of the distribution and accounting for the 2005-1998
temperature difference being 0.061°C alters the estimate in opposite directions. For the
moment let us just say that the chance that 1998 is warmer than 2005, given our temperature
analysis, is no more than about 10 percent. Therefore, we can say with a reasonable degree of
confidence that 2005 is the warmest year in the period of instrumental data.

Comparison of GISS and NOAA global temperature change. NOAA recently announced
 http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/?report=gl… that 2009 was the fifth warmest year in their
analysis. At face value this result may seem to disagree with the GISS conclusion that 2009 tied
with several other years for the second warmest year. So we compare the GISS and NOAA
results in Figure 6, in which, following the NOAA convention, we have defined the baseline as
the mean temperature for the past century, 1901?2000.

Figure 6 reveals that the NOAA and GISS analyses are in good agreement, within the
estimated uncertainties. Both analyses find 2005 to be the warmest year. The discrepancy in
ranking of individual years is due in part to the GISS preference to describe as statistical ties
those years with global temperatures differing by a few hundredths of a degree or less.
Although quantitative analysis of the reasons for differences between these two analyses may
be warranted, it is beyond the scope of this essay.

Global cooling in the past decade?   That question can be addressed with a much higher
degree of confidence than the ranking of individual years. The reason is that error due to
incomplete spatial coverage of data becomes smaller for data averaged over several years. The
2?sigma error in the 5-year running-mean temperature anomaly shown in Figure 3, is about a
factor of two smaller than the annual mean uncertainty, thus only 0.02?0.03°C. Given that the
change of 5-year-mean global temperature anomaly is almost 0.2°C over the past decade, we
can conclude that the world has become warmer over the past decade, not cooler.

Why are some people so readily convinced of a false conclusion, that the world is really
experiencing a cooling trend? That misimpression may have a lot to do with regional short?term
temperature fluctuations, which are an order of magnitude larger than global average annual
anomalies. Yet many lay people do understand the distinction between regional short?term
anomalies and global trends. For example, here is comment posted by “frogbandit” at 8:38
p.m. 1/6/2010 on City Bright blog  http://blog.seattlepi.com/robertbrown/ar…):

“I wonder about the people who use cold weather to say that the globe is cooling. It forgets that
global warming has a global component and that its a trend, not an everyday thing. I hear people
down in the lower 48 say its really cold this winter. That ain’t true so far up here in Alaska.
Bethel, Alaska, had a brown Christmas. Here in Anchorage, the temperature today is 31. I can’t
say based on the fact Anchorage and Bethel are warm so far this winter that we have global
warming. That would be a really dumb argument to think my weather pattern is being
experienced even in the rest of the United States, much less globally.”

What frogbandit is saying is illustrated by the global map of temperature anomalies in
December 2009 (Figure 7a). There were strong negative temperature anomalies at middle latitudes in
the Northern Hemisphere, as great as ?8°C in Siberia, averaged over the month. But the temperature
anomaly in the Arctic was as great as +7°C. The cold December perhaps reaffirmed an impression
gained by Americans from the unusually cool 2009 summer. There was a large region in the United
States and Canada in June?July?August with a negative temperature anomaly greater than 1°C, the
largest negative anomaly on the planet.

Regional anomalies. How do these large regional temperature anomalies stack up
against an expectation of, and the reality of, global warming? How unusual are these regional
negative fluctuations? Do they have any relationship to global warming? Do they contradict
global warming?

It is obvious that in December 2009 there was an unusual exchange of polar and mid?
latitude air in the Northern Hemisphere. Arctic air rushed into both North America and Eurasia,
and, of course, it was replaced in the polar region by air from middle latitudes.

The degree to which Arctic air penetrates into middle latitudes is related to the Arctic
Oscillation (AO) index, which is defined by surface atmospheric pressure patterns and is plotted
in Figure 8. When the AO index is positive surface pressure is low in the polar region. This
helps the middle latitude jet stream to blow strongly and consistently from west to east, thus
keeping cold Arctic air locked in the polar region. When the AO index is negative there tends to
be high pressure in the polar region, weaker zonal winds, and greater movement of frigid polar
air into middle latitudes.

Figure 8 shows that December 2009 was the most extreme negative Arctic Oscillation
since the 1970s. Although there were ten cases between the early 1960s and mid 1980s with
an AO index more extreme than ?2.5, there were no such extreme cases since then until
December 2009. It is no wonder that the public became accustomed to the absence of extreme
blasts of cold air.

Figure 9 shows the AO index with greater temporal resolution for two 5?year periods. It
is obvious that there is a high degree of correlation of the AO index with temperature in the
United States, with any possible lag between index and temperature anomaly less than the

monthly temporal resolution. Large negative anomalies, when they occur, are usually in a
winter month. Note that the January 1977 temperature anomaly, mainly located in the Eastern
United States, was much stronger than the December 2009 anomaly.

The AO index is not so much an explanation for climate anomaly patterns as it is a
simple statement of the situation. However, John (Mike) Wallace and colleagues have been
able to use the AO description to aid consideration of how the patterns may change as
greenhouse gases increase. A number of papers, by Wallace, David Thompson (e.g., Thompson
and Wallace, 2000), and others, as well as by Drew Shindell and others at GISS (Shindell et al.,
2001), have pointed out that increasing carbon dioxide causes the stratosphere to cool, in turn
causing on average a stronger jet stream and thus a tendency for a more positive Arctic
Oscillation. Overall, Figure 8 shows a weak tendency in the expected sense.

Figure 10 shows the AO index for Dec?Jan?Feb and Jun?Jul?Aug. Variability is much
greater in the winter. There is weak correlation of the AO index and U.S. temperature in the
winter, but no significant correlation in the summer. An unusually large negative AO was
associated with the 2009 cool summer in the United States. Loss of Arctic summer sea ice is
likely to affect Northern Hemisphere continental temperatures, but sea ice loss so far is too
small and for too few years to allow empirical assessment.

We conclude that December 2009 was a highly anomalous month. High pressure in the
polar region can be described as the “cause” of the extreme December weather. But there is
no apparent basis for expecting frequent repeat occurrences of December 2009 conditions. On
the contrary – the weak winter trend is toward a more positive AO, as expected with increasing
greenhouse gases. But month?to?month fluctuations of the AO are much larger than its long
term trend, so high winter variability including cold snaps will surely continue.

However, other factors than the AO, including pervasive global warming due to
increasing greenhouse gases, affect the climate trends. Figure 10 shows that in the U.S. only
one of the past 10 winters and two of the past 10 summers were cooler than the 1951?1980
climatology. Let’s look at global maps of recent regional temperature anomalies and
temperature trends to help assess whether the U.S. tendency is an expected result due to
global warming. Figure 11 shows seasonal temperature anomalies for the past year and Figure
12 shows seasonal temperature change since 1950 based on local linear trends. The
temperature scales are identical in Figures 11 and 12.

The outstanding characteristic in comparing these two figures is that the magnitude of
the 60 year change is similar to the magnitude of seasonal anomalies. What this tells us is that
the climate “dice” are already strongly loaded. The change in the probability that the seasonal
mean temperature at any given location will fall in the category that was defined as unusually
warm during the period of climatology (1951-1980) has increased from 30 percent during the
period of climatology to about 60 percent today, as we illustrate in an upcoming publication.

The magnitude of monthly temperature anomalies is typically 1.5 to 2 times greater
than the magnitude of seasonal anomalies. So it is not yet quite as easy to see global warming
if one’s figure of merit is monthly mean temperature. Daily temperature change due to
weather fluctuations is even much larger than global mean warming. Yet it is already possible
to notice the effect by comparing the frequency of days with record warm temperature to days
with record cold temperature – days with record high temperature now exceed days with
record cold by about a two to one ratio (Meehl et al., 2009).

Summary
The bottom line is this: the Earth has been in a period of rapid global warming for the
past three decades. The assertion that the planet has entered a period of cooling in the past
decade is without foundation. On the contrary, we find no significant deviation from the
warming trend of the past three decades.
Weather fluctuations exceed the magnitude of average global warming over the past
half century. However, the perceptive person should be able to notice that climate is warming
on decadal time scales. The global temperature trend over the past few decades has been
strong enough that there is a noticeable “loading” of the climate dice that define the
probability of unusually warm or cool seasons.

Acknowledgements. The Niagara Falls photos belong to Moisha Blechman. John Hiddema and
Richard Brenne, respectively, suggested the need for the bulleted items and a response to widespread
accusations of “hoax” in an Overview. The need for an overview was also suggested by participants on
 References
Hansen, J.E., and S. Lebedeff, 1987: Global trends of measured surface air temperature. J. Geophys.
Res., 92, 13345?13372.
Hansen, J., R. Ruedy, J. Glascoe, and Mki. Sato, 1999: GISS analysis of surface temperature change. J.
Geophys. Res., 104, 30997?31022.
Hansen, J.E., R. Ruedy, Mki. Sato, M. Imhoff, W. Lawrence, D. Easterling, T. Peterson, and T. Karl,
2001: A closer look at United States and global surface temperature change. J. Geophys. Res., 106,
23947?23963.
Hansen, J., Mki. Sato, R. Ruedy, K. Lo, D.W. Lea, and M. Medina?Elizade, 2006: Global temperature
change. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., 103, 14288?14293.
Meehl, G.A., C. Tebaldi, G. Walton, D. Easterling, and L. McDaniel, 2009: Relative increase of record
high maximum temperatures compared to record low minimum temperatures in the U.S., Geophys. Res.
Lett., 36, L23701, doi:10.1029/2009GL040736.
Shindell, D., G.A. Schmidt, R.L. Miller, and D. Rind, 2001: Northern Hemispherre winter climate
response to greenhouse gas, volcanic, ozone and solar forcing, J. Geophys. Res., 106, 7193?7210.
Thompson, D.W.J., and J.M. Wallace, 2000: Annular modes in the extratropical circulation: Part I:
Month?to?month variability, J. Clim., 13, 1000?1016.

Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the Turkish Secretary General of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), called for an Islamic Executive Bureau of Environment and a common OIC position on climate change, and led the organization to a meeting in Rabat, Morocco, Jamuary 18-19, 2010, chaired by Saudi Arabia’s Prince Turki.

The First Meeting of the Islamic Executive Bureau of Environment was held at the ISESCO Headquarters in Rabat on 18-19 January 2010. The meeting was chaired by H.R.H. Prince Turki bin Nasser bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud, General President of Meteorology and Environment Protection, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
In his message to the Meeting, the OIC Secretary General Professor Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu stated that the climate change posed an existential threat for some of the OIC Member States. Following the impasse witnessed during the Copenhagen Meeting, securing a fair and equitable agreement on climate change within the framework of existing instruments remains a priority for the OIC countries.

The Secretary General called upon the Member States to evolve a common OIC position on the climate change to safeguard their interests in the multilateral negotiations in the lead up to Mexico round. In the area of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), the Secretary General also proposed to establish a carbon dioxide exchange scheme to contribute to the reduction of carbon emission.

The Executive Bureau endorsed the proposal of the Secretary General to establish ‘H.R.H Turki bin Nasser bin Abdulaziz Special Chair for Environmental Studies’ in universities of the most vulnerable OIC countries exposed to the adverse impacts of climate change. The meeting entrusted ISESCO and the Presidency of Metrology and Environment Protection, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, in Coordination with the OIC General Secretariat to follow up the implementation of this project.

The OIC Secretary General assured the Islamic Executive Bureau for Environment, its Chair and the Secretariat of his resolve to work in unison to combat environmental challenges and securing the planet for the future generations.

Ranjit Devraj writes for IPS Terra Viva at the UN that the BASIC Group meeting concluded with an amazing – ‘Copenhagen Accord Not Legal, Kyoto Protocol Is.’ Nevertheless Brazil, South Africa, India and China – will submit their plans for voluntary mitigation actions by the Jan. 31, 2010 deadline stipulated by the Copenhagen Accord. That amounts to positive participation and denying it also.
 http://ipsterraviva.net/UN/currentNew.as…

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 27, 2010

‘Copenhagen Accord Not Legal, Kyoto Protocol Is’
Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Jan 26 (IPS) – While the BASIC bloc countries – Brazil, South Africa, India and China – will submit their plans for voluntary mitigation actions by the Jan. 31 deadline stipulated by the Copenhagen Accord, they have taken care to emphasise that the agreement, reached at the end of the December climate change summit in the Danish capital, has no legal basis.

Addressing a joint press conference after a meeting of concerned BASIC ministers on Sunday, India’s environment minister Jairam Ramesh said: “We support the Copenhagen Accord. But all of us were unanimously of the view that its value lies not as a standalone document but as an input into the two- track negotiation process under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).”

Ramesh explained that the Accord was not a legal document and that the “understanding reached at Copenhagen was that the accord will facilitate the two-track negotiating process which is the only legitimate process to reach a legally binding treaty in Mexico.” The two-track negotiation process was agreed upon at the December 2007 Bali conference, pertaining to Long-Term Cooperative Action under the UNFCCC and the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

The BASIC meeting and the press conference were attended by Carlos Minc, the Brazilian environment minister, his counterpart from South Africa, Buyelwa Sonjica, and the vice-chairman of China’s National Development and Reform Commission, Xie Zhenhua.

At the press conference, Xie said that the BASIC group’s objectives were consistent with the interests of the developing countries. “BASIC will take the lead in large-scale emission reduction and also stick to the policy of common but differentiated principle.” Sonjica said BASIC would not make any decision outside the Group of 77 (G-77) countries. “We see ourselves as adding value to the proposals of G-77,” she said.

Siddharth Pathak, a member of the international environmental group Greenpeace’s policy division, told IPS that the willingness of the BASIC group to support vulnerable countries by ensuring their participation in open and transparent negotiations and plans to provide technological and financial support was commendable. “We hope that this support will become tangible by the group’s next meeting in April.”

Pathak said that while BASIC appeared keen to consolidate itself as a group and also take along the G-77 countries, it needed to “demonstrate leadership, both in furthering negotiations on a fair, ambitious and legally binding agreement, and in terms of pushing industrialised counties to urgently reduce GhG (greenhouse gas) emissions and make their own appropriate contributions.”

Other analysts said the BASIC meeting had the potential of cementing differences both within and outside the bloc.

“What is crucial now is to see whether China and India will stick to carbon intensity figures in their action plans, as they announced before the Copenhagen meet,” said Siddharth Mishra, director at CUTS International, a leading economic policy and advocacy group. Carbon intensity is a measure of carbon dioxide emissions per unit of production.

“This will suit China well because it is already on a trajectory of lowering its energy intensity and it has voluntarily announced cuts of 40-45 percent before Copenhagen,” said Mitra. “India, too, can reduce the trend of the growth of its emissions and specify domestic regulations to ensure reductions in emissions from its dirty industries,” Mitra told IPS.

Mitra added: “We don’t know what the back-of-the-envelope calculations are, but both China and India may benefit from the pledge of 100 billion U.S. dollars by the end of the decade for developing countries to adapt to climate change and limit the global rise in temperatures, since industrialisation began, from exceeding two degrees Celsius.”

Denmark, as president of the Conference of Parties (CoP), has been asked by the BASIC ministers to convene immediately meetings of the two negotiation groups for the Kyoto Protocol and the Long-Term Cooperative Action in March and ensure that they meet on at least five more occasions before the 16th CoP in December.

After the BASIC countries joined hands with the United States in negotiating the Copenhagen Accord, at the end of the summit in the Danish capital, several developing countries expressed fears that the document would become legal and dilute the Bali two-track process.

BASIC ministers have also asked the rich nations to speedily distribute the 10 billion dollars they had pledged to the least developed countries and the islands to address climate change this year.

Brazil’s Minc said at the press conference that BASIC had decided to create its own fund to help small island states and the least developed countries. “The actual contributions will be decided at the next meeting of the BASIC in South Africa,” he said.

A day before the BASIC meet, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh let it be known that he had reservations over pressure from Danish Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen and United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon for follow-up action on the Copenhagen Accord and get results by the Jan. 31 deadline.

While the Accord had called for “economy-wide emission targets” by 2020 by the Annex-1 (rich countries) and the other countries to submit “mitigation actions,” Rasmussen and Ban had written separately to all heads of state and governments on Dec. 30, urging them to submit their commitments by Jan. 31.

Their joint letter was silent on the Kyoto Protocol, raising suspicions. Mitra said that such suspicions first surfaced after the UNFCCC executive secretary, Yvo de Boer, failed to mention the Kyoto Protocol at a press conference held soon after the Copenhagen Accord. “The impression that there is a plan afoot to bury Kyoto is not helped by the fact that the European Union is pushing it as a first step to new negotiations.”

The Kyoto Protocol, the world’s only legally binding agreement, required 37 wealthy nations to cut GhG emissions by 2012, but asked for no commitments from developing countries. In contrast, the Copenhagen Accord does not talk of mitigation goals for the developed countries and is seen to be acting to lower the bar in climate negotiations when scientists warn that the climate is changing more rapidly than estimated earlier.

The Accord was opposed by Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba, Nicaragua and Sudan on both substantive and procedural grounds. For that reason, it could not be accepted or endorsed by the CoP, which only “took note” of it, denying the document status at the U.N.

In an editorial on Tuesday, the respected ‘The Hindu’ newspaper commented that the response of BASIC “underscores the view of the developing world that the Copenhagen Accord chose to give insufficient importance to the central tenet of “common but differentiated responsibilities” outlined in the UNFCCC.

The Hindu editorial said one positive outcome of the “common strategy” adopted by BASIC countries was the fostering of “active South-South cooperation” to advance science. “Given that intellectual property rights on technology remain a major barrier to achieving higher energy efficiencies, such joint efforts involving India and China hold great promise.”

from:         Nira Gurung <ngurung@icimod.org>
reply-to   WorldEnvironmentalJournalists-owner at y…
to :              WorldEnvironmentalJournalists at yahoogr…
date:          Fri, Jan 22, 2010
subject:     Melting Himalayas – ICIMOD’s comments on a turbulent debate

Dear All,
Pleased to attach for your information and dissemination, ICIMOD’s comments on the ongoing debate on the rate of the melting of the Himalayan glaciers.

It is also shared below and available online at  http://www.icimod.org/?page=737

=====
Melting Himalayas – ICIMOD’s comments on a turbulent debate
Kathmandu, 21 January 2010
The debate on the rate of melting of the Himalayan glaciers has gained momentum in recent days. The debate has centred on the statement made in the IPCC AR4 Working Group II report that the Himalayan glaciers are retreating faster than in any other part of the world and at the present rate of retreat could disappear by the third decade of this millennium. This has culminated with the statement from the IPCC on 20 January 2010 retracting this one statement in AR4, but reiterating that the broader conclusion of the report is unaffected.

Many of the inferences regarding glacial melting are based on terminus fluctuation or changes in glacial area, neither of which provides precise information on ice mass or volume change. Measurements of glacial mass balance would provide direct and immediate evidence of glacier volume increase or decrease with annual resolution. But there are still no systematic measurements of glacial mass balance in the region although there are promising signs that this is changing. China is the only country in the region which has been conducting long-term mass balance studies of some glaciers and it has expressed the intention of extending these to more Himalayan glaciers in the near future. India has recently started to study several glaciers for regular mass balance measurements. Recognising the importance of mass-balance measurements, ICIMOD has been promoting mass balance measurements of benchmark glaciers in its member countries and has co-organised trainings to build capacity for this in the region.

ICIMOD has been drawing attention to the severe problems resulting from the lack of good scientific data and information for the Hindu Kush-Himalayan region, especially but not only on glaciers. This severely limits the ability to understand present changes or predict future impacts, a prerequisite for good decision-making thus the Centre has been promoting development of baseline information related to environmental processes and their changes. In early 2002, ICIMOD initiated a regional inventory of glaciers and glacial lakes, based on desk research and analysis of maps, aerial photographs, and satellite images. Since then, partner institutions have continued this work and developed inventories at national scales. ICIMOD is now focusing on assimilating existing information and national data and developing a regional database so that a regional monitoring system on the status of cryospheric elements like snow and glaciers can be put in place. Standardisation of methodologies
has been given due emphasis to facilitate integration of the database. At present, ICIMOD is conducting research on critical glacial lakes and is promoting the organisation of mass balance measurements in the region. Based on the analyses we have been doing, we can state that the majority of glaciers in the region are in a general condition of retreat, although with some regional differences; that small glaciers below 5000 m above sea level will probably disappear by the end of the century, whereas larger glaciers well above this level will still exist but be smaller; and that deglaciation could have serious impacts on the hydrological regime of the downstream river basins. Further, it is important to compare and summarise observations from a number of glaciers in different areas, of different size, and at different altitudes to draw clear scientifically justified conclusions about the changes that are occurring.

Although the lack of information and knowledge about the glacier melt processes in the Himalayas has been used to politicise the larger issues, the positive aspect of the debate has been the immense awareness created at various levels including politicians, decision makers, the media, and the public at large, which has led to some positive outcomes in recent months. In this context, the Indian Government has taken a decision to establish a specialised glacier research centre. Similarly, the concept of the Third Pole Environment initiated by the Chinese Academy of Sciences will have a positive impact on minimising the gaps in our basic understanding. ICIMOD is determined to contribute to developing better understanding of basic environmental processes, in particular climate change, glacial melting, and livelihoods impacts downstream, and highly commends these recent efforts made by our member countries.

***
Nira Gurung (Ms), Communications Officer
International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development
GPO Box 3226, Khumaltar, Lalitpur, Kathmandu, Nepal.
Tel +977-1-5003222 Direct Line 5003310 Ext 115 Fax +977-1-5003277  http://www.icimod.org

OK, there are disputes among Indian scientists and Indian officials who have connections to Indian oil industry. We knew this all the time and where not happy when under US President G.W. Bush the US pushed out under US business interests push, the scientific head of the IPCC and put in place the proxy Indians. But then, obviously, India is also not homogeneous – so we see internal Indian disputes.
YES – THE GLACIERS ARE MELTING AND NOBODY CAN PREDICT ACCURATELY THE YEAR OF THEIR FUTURE DEMISE – so what? The melting of these glaciers causes floods in the valleys – we know it because we see it. Yes, after they melt there will be draught – that is logic – it is implied in future shortage – that is clear. Those that love oil do not want to let go of it, and those that own refineries do not want to lose their investment – that is clear.
When lots of ice from above earth sites melts it will cause floods on coast line communities – that is clear. The melting of glaciers and the Antarctic ice will cause sea-level rise and floods – that can be sworn by – that is clear. Which island will disappear before 2013 or after – OK – that is not quite clear.
So what all this noise and only the UN can sound retreat – we do not. We also said that the relief of pressure on the tectonic plates because of the melting away of ice can cause earthquakes in areas where the plates meet – like the recent Tsunami belt over the earthquake belt shows. There are no scientific statements on this – only plain logic statements – so what? Yes we stopped short of our statement after the Haiti quakes and said – this one we do not exactly sense how it happened as we do not know of faults in that area. This is our lack of knowledge in this case that calls for help but it does not negate the prior statements. Science is not instantaneous – it requires further thinking and theories and proof if possible – not plain squabbles by industry-backed deniers and knee-jerk reactions by the UN. (our comments to the following news)

——————

SCIENCE, SPHERE, aol, January 21, 2010.

UN Climate Body Eats Crow Over Glacier Warning.

from Theunis Bates, a Contributor.

LONDON (Jan. 20) — It sounds like the plot of a Hollywood disaster movie: Central and Southern Asia are hit by biblical floods when the Himalayan glaciers suddenly melt. After that cataclysm, water no longer flows from the mountains, leaving rivers like the Mekong and Ganges dry and millions facing permanent drought. That was the picture painted by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2007 report, which said there was a “very high” chance that these glaciers would disappear by 2035 if the world kept warming.

But the IPCC, the U.N. body charged with investigating climate change, has retracted that claim after it emerged that its predictions of a sudden melt weren’t based on peer-reviewed evidence, but instead on an article that appeared in the popular science magazine New Scientist in 1999.

Subel Bhandari, AFP / Getty Images

While the Khumbu Glacier near Mount Everest is shrinking, the United Nations admits it overstated the threat of a total glacial meltdown in the Himalayas.

Climate change skeptics have lapped up the scandal, which they’ve already dubbed “Glaciergate,” saying that it further erodes the credibility of climate science already damaged by last year’s Climategate e-mail scandal. Global warming denier Peter Foster, writing in Canada’s National Post, said the error showed how the “IPCC’s task has always been not objectively to examine science but to make the case for man-made climate change by any means available.”

But Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, vice chairman of the IPCC, said the mistake did not undermine the report’s key conclusions: that the warming climate is accelerating glacial melt and that this will affect the supply of water from the world’s major mountain ranges, “where more than one-sixth of the world population currently lives.”

“I don’t see how one mistake in a 3,000-page report can damage the credibility of the overall report,” van Ypersele told the BBC. “Some people will attempt to use it to damage the credibility of the IPCC; but if we can uncover it and explain it and change it, it should strengthen the IPCC’s credibility, showing that we are ready to learn from our mistakes.”

The argument over the IPCC’s melt date went public last November, when a paper written by Indian geologist Vijay Kumar Raina revealed that there was little consistency in the behavior of the Himalayan glaciers. Some were shrinking, he found, some expanding, and others were stable. If global warming were to blame, he asked, why weren’t they all following the same pattern? “A glacier … does not necessarily respond to the immediate climatic changes,” he wrote. “For if it be so then all glaciers within the same climatic zone should have been advancing or retreating at the same time.”

India’s environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, endorsed the paper and accused the IPCC of being “alarmist” in its predictions. But IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri shot back that Raina’s findings were “voodoo science” and accused Ramesh of repeating the claims of “climate change deniers.”

Embarrassingly, it’s now the IPCC that stands accused of sloppy science, as a rigorous system of fact checks would have kept the controversial assertion out of the 2007 report. The claim first appeared in a 1999 interview between a New Scientist journalist and the Indian glaciologist Syed Hasnain, who speculated that the mountain range’s glaciers could vanish by 2035.

Environmental group the World Wildlife Fund then repeated Hasnain’s prediction in its 2005 report, “An Overview of Glaciers, Glacier Retreat, and Subsequent Impacts in Nepal, India and China.” As this was only was a campaigning paper, it had not undergone a thorough scientific review. But its lack of scientific rigor didn’t stop the IPCC using the WWF document as a source.

In chapter 10 of its 2007 report, the IPCC concluded: “Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world, and if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate. Its total area will likely shrink from the present 500,000 to 100,000 square kilometers by the year 2035 (WWF, 2005).”

But many glaciologists believed those claims were overheated. As most Himalayan glaciers are hundreds of feet thick, only a sudden, huge spike in global temperatures could cause them to disappear before 2035. “The reality, that the glaciers are wasting away, is bad enough,” Graham Cogley, a glaciologist at Canada’s University of Trent, who played a key role in exposing the flawed claim, told the United Kingdom’s Sunday Times. “But they are not wasting away at the rate suggested by this speculative remark and the IPCC report. The problem is that nobody who studied this material bothered chasing the trail back to the original point when the claim first arose.”

Indian glaciologist Murari Lal, the lead author of that section of the IPCC report, last week rejected claims that the U.N. group had made a serious error. “We relied rather heavily on gray [not peer-reviewed] literature, including the WWF report,” Lal told New Scientist. “The error, if any, lies with Dr Hasnain’s assertion and not with the IPCC authors.”

Unsurprisingly, Hasnain has refuted that attempt to pass the blame. “The magic number of 2035 has not [been] mentioned in any research papers written by me, as no peer-reviewed journal will accept speculative figures,” he said to New Scientist. “It is not proper for IPCC to include references from popular magazines or newspapers.”

That’s a tough but obvious lesson, and one the IPCC is unlikely to forget.

With all our good intentions in this area, we wonder if it was a helpful bit of information that the UN of the “Seal-the Deal” experience helped now bring to the table at a time the UNFCCC tries to gather the shards from its previous efforts.

Sorry, we still think that progress will come only under the aegis of a US-China G2 symbiotic move that will eventually be joined by India, Brazil, Africa, and eventually the EU, after this body decides to reorganize in a united entity.

How can it be that someone hopes a US Congress will cough up a bill supportive of this sort of legislation after reading the posting we bring forth herewith? Saying you have money in your pocket but want the government to help you make more?

All  of this for 450ppm? This after what scientists said should be 350ppm?

——–

Climate Change: Heavyweight Investors Urge Action.

by IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis – Global Desk, January 18, 2010.

As the UN climate change secretariat prepares for the first global round of post-Copenhagen meetings at its headquarters in June in Bonn, an international coalition of investor groups is calling for concluding a legally-binding agreement this year.

The group wants such a treaty to comprise comprehensive long-term measures for mitigation, forest protection, adaptation, finance, and technology transfer, including a global emission reduction target of 50-85 percent by 2050, consistent with estimates from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The coalition — consisting of U.S., European and Australian investor groups and managing $13 trillion in assets — argues that there are competitive advantages for countries with comprehensive climate and energy policies.

“But we cannot wait for a global treaty,” says the group. The U.S. Congress and other global decision-makers should “take rapid action” on carbon emission limits, energy efficiency, renewable energy, financing mechanisms and other policies that will accelerate clean energy investment and job creation.

“Germany’s comprehensive policies, for example, have sparked significant private investment in industries focused on addressing climate change, leading to eight times more renewable energy jobs per capita than the United States,” the investors say in a statement released January 14 in New York.

The climate investor meeting was hosted and organised by Ceres, the United Nations Foundation and the United Nations Office for Partnerships. Ceres is a leading coalition of investors, environmental groups and other pubic interest organizations working with companies to address climate change and other sustainability challenges

“As powerful as these investors are, they can’t underwrite a clean energy transformation at the critical scale needed without clear rules only government can provide,” said Mindy S. Lubber, president of Ceres and director of the Investor Network on Climate Risk.

“Government policy can make clean energy cost-competitive by leveling the playing field with fossil fuels. Only government policy provides the long-term certainty that can turbo-charge private investment in clean energy, address the climate change threat and protect our planet.”

“Nations that address the energy challenge most effectively will quickly realize huge global economic opportunities. The race is on and there’s a need for speed,” said Pennsylvania State Treasurer Rob McCord, who joined Lubber and other leading investors in announcing the investor statement at the UN.

“Many of the most immediate impacts from global warming are affecting the poorest countries, which are least responsible for the problem and least prepared to adapt,” said Timothy E. Wirth, president of the United Nations Foundation.

“To keep the rise in global temperatures to acceptable levels, the world will require a huge increase in capital investment for low-carbon infrastructure in developing countries (where most of the global energy growth will occur in the next 50 years). Most of this investment will have to come from the private sector — financial leaders like those participating in . . . (January 14) summit.”

“Some 85 percent of the financial resources needed to cope with climate challenges must come from private sources. In effect, the battle over climate change will be won — or lost — in the hands of private investors,” said Bjarne Graven Larsen, CIO of ATP, Denmark’s largest institutional investor. “In order to play this role effectively, strong, stable and credible policy frameworks are crucial. We are waiting for policymakers to deliver.”

“Given that Copenhagen was a missed opportunity to create one fully functional international carbon market, it is more important than ever that individual governments implement regional and domestic policy change to stimulate the creation of a low carbon economy,” said Peter Dunsombe, chairman of the IIGCC (Investor Group on Climate Change), a network of European investors.

“Sustaining the momentum on combating climate change and delivering a legally-binding treaty in 2010 represent two of the big challenges of the year in terms of achieving sustainable growth and poverty reduction,” said Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director.

“This statement underlines that investors, representing trillions of dollars of assets, remain firmly focused and resolved on realizing a low-carbon, resource-efficient green economy. Governments should swiftly act on the pledges and promises made at the meetings in Copenhagen in respect to emissions reductions and finance.”

The coalition of investors considers following measures critical:
- Short- and long-term emission reduction targets
- Policies that put an effective price on carbon such that businesses and investors reassess investment value and redirect their investments
- Energy and transportation policies to vastly accelerate deployment of energy efficiency, renewable energy, green buildings, clean vehicles and fuels, and low-carbon transportation infrastructure
- Financing mechanisms that can mobilize private-sector investment on a large scale, particularly in developing countries
- Measures and financing to support adaptation in developing and developed countries
- Policies requiring corporate disclosure to investors of material climate-related risks and programs to manage those risks.

Without government actions, private-sector investment will not reach the scale required to address climate change effectively. While leading studies indicate that the costs of action to reduce GHG emissions are both affordable and significantly lower than the costs of inaction, developing a global low-carbon economy will nonetheless require substantially increased levels of investment from the private sector.

For example, the UNFCCC Secretariat estimates that more than $200 billion in total additional investment capital for mitigation is required each year by 2030 just to return GHGs to their current levels by then.

“So this is certainly an achievable level of investment — and one that would yield returns in terms of energy savings, energy security, reduced capital expenditures for pollution control, and avoided climate damages,” the coalition of investors says. (IDN-InDepthNews/18.01.2010)

Multidisciplinary International Scientific Conference on Energy, Environment and Health – Optimisati – Optimisation and Future Energy Systems.     Copenhagen, May 31 – June 2, 2010.

from: Kenneth Karlsson

First Announcement

Dear Colleagues,

The “International Conference on Energy, Environment and Health – Optimisation of Future Energy Systems” will take place in Copenhagen from May 31 to June 2, 2010. The conference which brings researchers from atmospheric physics and chemistry, air pollution modelling, environmental sciences, energy systems, human health and environmental economy scientific communities together, will take place at the Carlsberg Academy at the former resident of the Danish Nobel Price winner Professor Niels Bohr.

The aim of the conference is related to future energy scenarios and the consequences for health, environment, climate change and economy. Focus will be on interdisciplinary support systems for assessment of future energy production and consumption, including direct and indirect costs.

The conference consists of five successive sessions (more info on the sessions is available at the conference website – http://ceeh.dmu.dk):

1: Energy System Modelling
Keynote speaker: Professor Henrik Lund, Aalborg University, Denmark
2: Environmental and Health Impacts
Keynote speaker: Professor Steffen Loft, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
3: Economic Valuation
Keynote speaker: Professor Susan Chilton, Newcastle University, United Kingdom
4: Integrated Modelling
Keynote speaker: Markus Amann, IIASA, Austria
5: Future scenarios for energy production and consumption
Keynote speaker: Dr. Maryse Labriet, President of ENERIS

Deadlines
Abstract submission, April 1, 2010
Extended abstract submission, May 15, 2010
Early bird registration, April 1, 2010
Final registration, May 1, 2010

For more information please visit the website at http://ceeh.dmu.dk.

Hope to see you in Copenhagen!

Best regards from the Organising Committee,
Lise Frohn, Kenneth Karlsson, Allan Gross, Eigil Kaas and Jørgen Brandt

For more information please contact:

Lise Marie Frohn, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, Strategic Research Coordinator
National Environmental Research Institute, University of Aarhus
Department of Atmospheric Environment
Frederiksborgvej 399
DK-4000 Roskilde
Denmark
Phone: +45 46 30 11 78
Fax: +45 46 30 12 14
Email:  lmf at dmu.dk

 http://www.opendemocracy.net/john-elking…

Can consumers save our climate?

John Elkington, 5 January 2010, www.OpenDemocracy.net

Subjects:Civil society, Economics, Science, China, Climate change.

After Copenhagen, can market forces – and consumers in particular –
help address global warming? In an article originally published on
 Many of the business and government leaders who gathered in Copenhagen
for the United Nations climate talks believe that market forces in
general—and consumers in particular—will drive the transition to a
low-carbon economy. It’s a comforting thought, but I wouldn’t count on
it just yet. Having coined the term “green consumer” in 1986 and
co-written the million-selling book, The Green Consumer Guide in 1988,
I clearly believe in the effectiveness of well-targeted consumer
action in tackling environmental issues—but I also fear that anything
today’s green consumers may do will be swamped by the actions of
hundreds of millions of tomorrow’s new consumers in the emerging
markets, particularly in China.

As climate change becomes an increasingly urgent priority for all of
us, governments clearly have a crucial, central role to play. But
governments don’t operate in a vacuum. Every one of us will need to
think – sooner or later – about how we can use the leverage we can
apply in our multiple roles as citizens, employers or employees,
investors and, critically, voters, not simply as consumers.

Yes, we have seen major retailers like Wal-Mart launching major new
initiatives such as their Sustainability Index, designed to pressure
suppliers throughout their value chain to “green” their operations.
But I have often argued that consumers are – at best – the equivalent
of “shock-troops”. That is, they can be mobilised for short periods of
time, as they have been on issues like CFCs, lead in petrol or
genetically modified foods, bringing intense pressure to bear on
various leverage points in the economy. But for sustained action we
need concerted, effective and long-term action by business, by
investors and governments.

On the positive side, however, there is growing evidence that
consumers around the world are paying more attention to environmental
issues, including climate change. Earlier this year, for example, The
National Geographic Society and Canada’s GlobeScan released the second
annual “Greendex” of sustainable consumption patterns across 17
countries. And it was a fairly sophisticated piece of work. A total of
65 lifestyle choices of consumers are included in the index, covering
areas as diverse as energy use, transportation, housing, food and
product purchases.

Mexico vows to set new efficiency rules for autos, it will also push for more efficient new government buildings.
05 Jan 2010, Reuters

(Adds background on alternative energy, efficient buildings)
MEXICO CITY, Jan 5 (Reuters) – Mexico will limit imports of inefficient used cars and encourage low-carbon technology to reduce its overall volume of tailpipe exhaust, the energy ministry said on Tuesday.
The ministry said it was also mulling regulations that would for the first time set a national standard for auto emissions. Such standards would be at the “vanguard” of international best standards, the agency said.

—
Officials hope to slowly purge heavy, inefficient autos from among the roughly 21 million cars now on the road in Mexico. The nation’s auto fleet is expected to rise by more than 14 million vehicles by 2017.
Only 1 percent of Mexican automobiles currently use alternative fuel, the ministry said.
The new importation rules will aim to “avoid the accelerated aging of the Mexican car fleet,” the agency said in a statement.
A senior Mexican environmental policymaker said in August the country would likely adopt fuel efficiency standards compatible with those in place in the United States. [ID:nN03537208]
Mexico is one of the world’s largest car builders and most global auto companies have at least one factory in the country.
Stakeholders in the domestic auto market have long lobbied for limits to be placed on the import of older used cars from the United States to help support the domestic market.
The new goals were developed as part of a multi-year national plan to create a sustainable energy policy.
In a separate move, the ministry promised to outline new standards for energy efficiency in newly-built government offices.

——–

We wish to bring up the possibility that some unscrupulous US interest might yet bring up NAFTA and free trade arguments to disallow  stopping the dumping of old US cars in Mexico, a measure that clearly has to do with Mexico interests that prefer not to have this competition to their home produced vehicles. We will watch.

GLOBAL WARMING IGNITES BORDERS AS WELL

By Manuel Manonelles, BARCELONA, (IPS) Posted by Other News January 3, 2009.

Little by little, it is being confirmed that the melting of the polar ice caps, whether in Antarctica or the Arctic, is happening significantly faster than initially predicted. The consequences of this for peace, one of the main victims of climate change, are enormous.

Glaciers and areas of high-altitude mountains that were previously considered zones of perpetual snow are now melting. A paradigmatic case is that of the alpine border between Switzerland and Italy where during a recent routine verification, certain sections of ice or perennial snow that had been on the map since 1861 were found to be missing. In this case, the two countries have enjoyed long periods of peaceful coexistence and are approaching the problem in a logical and cordial fashion, forming a commission to find a technical solution.

However, the possible implications of cases like this in other geographical areas are very worrisome. The destabilising potential of a similar development on the India-Pakistan border would be enormous, particularly in the zone of Kashmir or the Siachen glacier, where more than 3000 soldiers of both countries have died since 1984. The same is true of the tense China-India border, or the deeply problematic border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, which will grow increasingly porous with melting, contributing to a rise in destabilisation in what are already two of the most unstable countries on the earth.

Another major effect of global warming is the gradual opening of major global shipping lanes in areas that had previously been impassable because of ice. The Northeast Passage along the north of Russia, used recently for the first time in history, shortens travel between the ports of China, Japan, and Korea and Hamburg, Rotterdam, and South Hampton by 4,000 kilometres. With the Northwest Passage along northern Canada, travel between the China and the ports of the eastern United States is similarly shortened.

The opening of these new routes will completely change the dynamics of intercontinental trade and might render irrelevant places that until now were considered geostrategically essential, such as the Panama and the Suez Canal.

Add to this the draw of massive reserves of raw materials expected to be present in the Arctic, ever more accessible as the ice recedes, which is provoking a race for control of the area – including an arms race – and is stoking tensions particularly between Russia, Norway, Denmark, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States. The Russian news agency TASS has calculated oil reserves in the area at over 10 billion tonnes. Last year Canada approved an extraordinary 6.9 billion dollar arms bill to strengthen its military presence in its arctic zone, while Russia has resumed tactical flights of nuclear bombers in its polar region, triggering the protests of numerous countries.

This also explains, in part, the speed with which the European Union is processing the application for EU membership of bankrupt Iceland, which would place the body in the best possible position for future negotiations and territorial claims in the area with regard to future access to the “Arctic banquet”.

The melting of the ice caps is also the major cause of rising sea levels, which have other irreversible territorial, social, and economic consequences, such as the physical disappearance -partial or total- of certain small island states of the Pacific likely to occur within a few years -the Maldives, Samoa, Kiribati, among others. Obviously the implications are vast, including – in addition to the personal, environmental, cultural, and national trauma – the political and legal status of future states that have no territory. The principal components of the global infrastructure, from ports and refineries to airports and nuclear plants, are also seriously at risk, and will find themselves near or at or even below sea level.

It is important to note in this context that the majority of the global population lives in areas close to the sea, starting with megacities like Mumbai, London, New York, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Buenos Aires, and densely-populated areas like the Ganges delta in Bangladesh, where rising sea levels are already wreaking havoc in the form of water pollution and related effects. Recent studies indicate the possibility of some 200 million new environmental refugees in coming years -refugees who would only increase the already considerable humanitarian pressures and tensions in these areas and exacerbate existing or latent conflict.

The Global Humanitarian Fund issued a report this year that shows unequivocally that climate change today is responsible for some 300,000 deaths per year. Numbers for the medium and long-term are even higher. In this context, the urgency of fighting climate is a pre-condition for a peaceful future. Therefore, the international community has no other option, specially after the fiasco in Copenhagen, to spring into action as soon as possible. It is about climate, but also about peace and human lives.

—————-

This and all “other news” issues edited by Roberto Savio can be found at http://www.other-net.info/index.php

His latest book is The Post-petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook: Recipes for Changing Times, published in 2006.^[2] In it Bates examines the transition from a society based on abundant cheap petroleum to one of “compelled conservation.” The book looks at the ways of preparing for this transition. He regards the coming change as an opportunity to “redeem our essential interconnectedness with nature and with each other.”

In his introduction, Bates outlines the realities of declining fossil energy and global climate change. He puts forward a “twelve step petrochemical recovery program,” from post-growth economics through methods to conserve fresh water, manage wastes, generate energy, produce and store food, and travel without the aid of fossil fuels. As a review by Ryan McGreal states: “The central message in this book is sustainability and permaculture. A recurring theme is that every waste product is something else’s food, and that the most sustainable arrangement works with the prevailing conditions, not against them.”^[3] McGreal summarizes Bates’ proposals for human adaptation as follows:

“Instead of wasting energy trying to fight nature, it makes more sense to understand nature and use it to your mutual benefit. This, of course, means the end of one-size-fits-all industrial solutions and a return to decentralized, idiosyncratic plans based on local conditions.”^[3]

1. ^ Ecovillage Training Center. The Farm, Summertown, TN. Retrieved on 20067-06-22.
2. ^ .The Post-petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook: Recipes for Changing Times (2006). New Society Publishers.
3. ^ ^{a b} McGreal, Ryan (January 10, 2007) “Reviews.” Raise the Hammer, Hamilton, Ontario. Retrieved on: February 25, 2007.

Bates went to Copenhagen and posted a list of 16 daily reports on his blog as posted on Jan Lundberg’s www.CultureChange.org

We will re-post here two of that series of 16 articles – the last one #16, and the the #13 article of his series, the one about Christiania, which is a part of Copenhagen that started going green before this was even made fashionable through Agenda 21 – at the UN conference on the Environment and Development of the Rio 1992 fame. In effect it was Christiania that became an example for Agenda 21.

by Albert Bates

22 December 2009

My COP15 Journal: Day Sixteen, Dec. 19

“Goodbye Africa, goodbye south Asia; goodbye glaciers and sea ice, coral reefs and rainforest; it was nice knowing you, not that we really cared. The governments which moved so swiftly to save the banks have bickered and filibustered while the biosphere burns.” — George Monbiot, The Guardian, Dec. 18, 2009

Last Day: When we arrived in Copenhagen 16 days ago, we were met by Ross and Hildur Jackson, our hosts at a farm near Birkerød, just outside the city. Hildur had been organizing the Windows of Hope meeting at Christiania and Ross had been drafting white papers and talking points for the Global Ecovillage Network to share with delegates during the negotiations. Ross intends to expand his central position paper, The Breakaway Strategy, into a book soon, and the core of that document turned out to be remarkably prescient as to the outcome of COP-15.

In The Breakaway Strategy, Ross prescribed the ideal components of a fair and binding climate treaty:

1. It should guarantee that the adopted CO2 emissions target will be met with 100% certainty. We will not have two chances to avoid runaway warming. We must get it right the first time;
2. It should be effective and cost-efficient;
3. It should be equitable in order to get the backing of all 7 billion world citizens who are the ultimate owners of the biosphere; and
4. It should be simple and transparent.

The “Kyoto approach” of negotiating CO2 reduction targets, credit bargaining, technology transfer and who pays what to whom — fails all four criteria. If there was any doubt, we need only revisit these past two weeks.

Ironically — and the irony was heightened by the decision of the Danish government 4 days ago to exclude the non-governmental organizations (“NGOs”) from the Bella Center — at least three proposals had been put forward by the NGO community over the last two years that fulfill all four criteria. They are:

1. The Earth Atmospheric Trust: earthinc.org
2. Kyoto2: kyoto2.org
3. The Carbon Board*

To Ross’s three we would add two Irish NGO proposals, Cap and Share and the Carbon Maintenance Fee, based on New Zealand’s prototype Land Use and Carbon Analysis System (LUCAS) to provide a robust and comprehensive carbon reporting and accounting system. Admittedly both of these additions involve more government involvement (and potential for corruption) than the simpler Carbon Board solution cited in The Breakaway Strategy.

The strategy has two components, a top-down political initiative, and a bottom-up civil society initiative. Recognizing that the major powers are locked into a national interest battle and unable to act in the global interest, the strategy turns to some of the smaller nations, such as Maldives and Tuvalu, that are freer and more committed to take on leadership. The Carbon Board, which allocates pollution on a per capita rationing system, is just one example of how such a partnership can function in practice. It administers a reward and punishment system for policing the atmosphere, but could as easily be applied to rationing everything humans are ruining or depleting to extinction — fisheries, food, water, or phosphorus, for instance.

The first step would be for the organizers to leave the World Trade Organization (WTO), hence the name breakaway. The WTO is a major part of the problem because it prevents individual nations from introducing environmentally friendly production methods and subsidizing industries that go green.

From the start of the COP-15 meetings it became evident that a very different agenda was being worked than the Kyoto, multilateral, inclusive, transparent, “shared but differentiated” commitment process that had evolved since the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm in 1972.

Within hours of the opening, the buzz in the halls was all about the secret text that Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen had been circulating to just the G8 parties. Inexplicably, the UN had begun to function like the WTO. Some called it an “Am-Bush.” Others called it “Kyotic.”

Rasmussen, as head of Venstre, the right wing party, and a coalition including the rabid anti-immigrant party in Denmark, had become the official host of the meeting. Until midway through the second week of the COP, that role had fallen on the more capable shoulders of Denmark’s former environmental minister, Connie Hedegaard. With years of experience at the UN, and in the Kyoto process particularly, Hedegaard knew the players, the positions, and was respected as fair and impartial.

Rasmussen would, in contrast, become known for high-handed demands, back-room wheeling and dealing, mass arrest and detention of protestors on suspicion of future traffic obstruction, demoting Hedegaard on the eve of the final high-level talks, and then abruptly bringing her back in to try to salvage a deal, barring the civil sector IGOs and NGOs from the meeting midway through the second week, after putting them through torturous and repeated dawn-till-dark outdoor linestandings in freezing cold and blowing snow, and then breaking with the EU and G-77 to back the USA’s “coalition of the willing” approach.

Leaving the NGOs out in the cold — literally — meant that none of civil society’s detailed ideas could rise to the surface when they were most needed to break out of government sector’s impasse. Instead, the US came in and tried to bully China, and China, in a geopolitical-orbit-shifting rebuke, stood firm and did not blink. The US limped home with a spin-doctored document, while China was revealed as the emerging world power to be reckoned with. Some of that had to do with China’s massive investments in Africa and the two-thirds world over the past decade, which had built it a large store of political capital. Unfortunately, it spent a big hunk of that when it sold out Africa to the 5-party outcome.

Naomi Klein said, “Africa was sacrificed. The position of the G77 negotiating bloc, including African states, had been clear: a 2C increase in average global temperatures translates into a 3–3.5C increase in Africa. That means, according to the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance, ‘an additional 55 million people could be at risk from hunger,’ and ‘water stress could affect between 350 and 600 million more people.’”

Rasmussen and the G8 powers led by the Obama delegation, made their case for colonialism. What was being colonized and divided between occupying powers was not the G77, but the sky. For a mere ten billion dollars per year, G8 shareholders were sold a carbon market worth $1.2 trillion per year. Matthew Stilwell of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development said that rich countries were allowed to exchange “beads and blankets for Manhattan,” adding, “[They]‘ve carved up the last remaining unowned resource and allocated it to the wealthy.”

With a $100 billion/year buy-out (first payment — 2020, a US election year) — or one army-year in Kabul, shared out between 193 countries, citizens from the Maldives will be offered hotel rooms in Houston the way New Orleans hurricane refugees were.

Greenpeace Executive Director Kumi Naidoo said, “In a cruel irony I have just learned that the three Greenpeace activists who, posing as world leaders, entered the Danish Palace for the State Dinner on Thursday night to unfurl a banner calling for a real climate deal are to spend the next three weeks in jail. They will be away from their families over Christmas and the New Year. The real leaders, who attempted to get real action are now in jail, while the alleged ‘leaders’ got clean away, and are fleeing the Copenhagen climate crime scene in private jets and 747s.”

In the end, just five countries signed the “Copenhagen Outcome,” a mushy mishmash of voluntary pledges. They left some serious heavy lifting for November 2010, when COP-16 convenes in Mexico. There the chair will be Felipe de Jesús Calderón Hinojosa, a man to whom Lars Lokke Rasmussen must surely have looked to as a role model to guide him on steering a fractious political process to the safe harbor of crystal chandeliers, overstuffed chairs before the fire, a snifter of Cognac, and a good cigar — perhaps Cuban.

If anyone can keep those solution-oriented NGO ideas out of the process at COP-16, it will be Felipe Calderón.

* Ross Jackson, “An Ideal Climate Agreement?” (Permaculture Magazine, UK, no.58 Winter 2008). See www.ross-jackson.com (Articles, English), “Climate Solutions: Part I, Comparisons” and “Climate Solutions: Part 2, The Carbon Board.

* * * * *

Follow Albert’s adventures in Copenhagen and Hopenhagen on his blog. For more on his peak oil work, see the Culture Change article Albert Bates, guide for our post-petroleum, globally warmed future. For more articles on or by Albert on this website, visit this listing

* * * * *

Christiania: Copenhagen’s Funky Jewel of Sustainability - by Albert Bates

The White House, Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release December 18, 2009
Remarks by the President during press availability in Copenhagen.

Bella Center, Copenhagen, Denmark
10:30 P.M. CET

THE PRESIDENT:  Let me start with a statement and then I’ll take a couple of questions.

Today we’ve made meaningful and unprecedented — made a meaningful and unprecedented breakthrough here in Copenhagen.  For the first time in history all major economies have come together to accept their responsibility to take action to confront the threat of climate change.

Let me first recount what our approach was throughout the year and coming into this conference.  To begin with, we’ve reaffirmed America’s commitment to transform our energy economy at home.  We’ve made historic investments in renewable energy that have already put people back to work.  We’ve raised our fuel efficiency standards.  And we have renewed American leadership in international climate negotiations.

Most importantly, we remain committed to comprehensive legislation that will create millions of new American jobs, power new industry, and enhance our national security by reducing our dependence on foreign oil.

That effort at home serves as a foundation for our leadership around the world.  Because of the actions we’re taking we came here to Copenhagen with an ambitious target to reduce our emissions.  We agreed to join an international effort to provide financing to help developing countries, particularly the poorest and most vulnerable, adapt to climate change.  And we reaffirmed the necessity of listing our national actions and commitments in a transparent way.

These three components — transparency, mitigation and finance — form the basis of the common approach that the United States and our partners embraced here in Copenhagen.  Throughout the day we worked with many countries to establish a new consensus around these three points, a consensus that will serve as a foundation for global action to confront the threat of climate change for years to come.

This success would have not been possible without the hard work of many countries and many leaders — and I have to add that because of weather constraints in Washington I am leaving before the final vote, but we feel confident that we are moving in the direction of a significant accord.

In addition to our close allies who did so much to advance this effort, I worked throughout the day with Prime Minister Meles of Ethiopia, who was representing Africa, as well as Premier Wen of China, Prime Minister Singh of India, President Lula of Brazil, and President Zuma of South Africa, to achieve what I believe will be an important milestone.

Earlier this evening I had a meeting with the last four leaders I mentioned — from China, India, Brazil, and South Africa.  And that’s where we agreed to list our national actions and commitments, to provide information on the implementation of these actions through national communications, with international consultations and analysis under clearly defined guidelines.  We agreed to set a mitigation target to limit warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius, and importantly, to take action to meet this objective consistent with science.

Taken together these actions will help us begin to meet our responsibilities to leave our children and our grandchildren a cleaner and safer planet.

Now, this progress did not come easily, and we know that this progress alone is not enough.  Going forward, we’re going to have to build on the momentum that we’ve established here in Copenhagen to ensure that international action to significantly reduce emissions is sustained and sufficient over time.  We’ve come a long way, but we have much further to go.

To continue moving forward we must draw on the effort that allowed us to succeed here today — engagement among nations that represent a baseline of mutual interest and mutual respect.  Climate change threatens us all; therefore, we must bridge old divides and build new partnerships to meet this great challenge of our time.  That’s what we’ve begun to do here today.

For energy holds out not just the perils of a warming climate, but also the promise of a more peaceful and prosperous tomorrow.  If America leads in developing clean energy, we will lead in growing our economy, in putting our people back to work, and in leaving a stronger and more secure country to our children.

And around the world, energy is an issue that demands our leadership.  The time has come for us to get off the sidelines and to shape the future that we seek.  That’s why I came to Copenhagen today, and that’s why I’m committed to working in common effort with countries from around the globe.  That’s also why I believe what we have achieved in Copenhagen will not be the end but rather the beginning, the beginning of a new era of international action.

So with that, let me just take a couple of questions, and I’m going to start with Jeff Mason.

Q    Thank you, Mr. President.  Can you give a little bit more detail about how the transparency issue will work, how countries will show or prove that they’re doing what they say they’ll do on emissions curbs?  And can you speak also more specifically about cutting emissions?  There’s no mention of that in your statement or in what we’ve heard so far, specifically about the agreement.

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, on the second question first, the way this agreement is structured, each nation will be putting concrete commitments into an appendix to the document, and so will lay out very specifically what each country’s intentions are.

Those commitments will then be subject to a international consultation and analysis, similar to, for example, what takes place when the WTO is examining progress or lack of progress that countries are making on various commitments.  It will not be legally binding, but what it will do is allow for each country to show to the world what they’re doing, and there will be a sense on the part of each country that we’re in this together, and we’ll know who is meeting and who’s not meeting the mutual obligations that have been set forth.

With respect to the emissions targets that are going to be set, we know that they will not be by themselves sufficient to get to where we need to get by 2050.  So that’s why I say that this is going to be a first step.  And there are going to be those who are going to — who are going to look at the national commitments, tally them up and say, you know, the science dictates that even more needs to be done.  The challenge here was that for a lot of countries, particularly those emerging countries that are still in different stages of development, this is going to be the first time in which even voluntarily they offered up mitigation targets.  And I think that it was important to essentially get that shift in orientation moving, that’s what I think will end up being most significant about this accord.

From the perspective of the United States, I’ve set forth goals that are reflected in legislation that came out of the House that are being discussed on a bipartisan basis in the Senate.  And although we will not be legally bound by anything that took place here today, we will I think have reaffirmed our commitment to meet those targets.  And we’re going to meet those targets, as I said before, not simply because the science demands it, but also because I think it offers us enormous economic opportunity down the road.

Q    And the first part of the question, about the transparency issue?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, as I said, there is a specific –

Q    (Inaudible.)

THE PRESIDENT:  Exactly.  There is the annexing combined with a process where essentially they are presenting to the world — subject to international consultation and then analysis — exactly what are these steps.  So if I make a claim that I’m reducing greenhouse gases because I’ve changed mileage standards on cars, there will be a process whereby people will be able to take a look and say, is that in fact in effect?

Jennifer Loven.

Q    Thank you, sir.  You’ve talked to, in your remarks earlier today, about other nations needing to accept less than perfect in their view.  Can you talk about what you gave up and where you might have shifted the U.S. position to get to this point?  And also, if this was so hard to get to, just what you have today, how do you feel confident about getting to a legally binding agreement in a year?

THE PRESIDENT:  I think it is going to be very hard and it’s going to take some time.  Let me sort of provide the context for what I saw when I arrived.

And I think it’s important to be able to stand in the shoes of all the different parties involved here.  In some ways the United States was coming with a somewhat clean slate, because we had been on the sidelines in many of these negotiations over several years.

Essentially you have a situation where the Kyoto Protocol and some of the subsequent accords called on the developed countries who were signatories to engage in some significant mitigation actions and also to help developing countries.  And there were very few, if any, obligations on the part of the developing countries.

Now, in some cases, for countries that are extremely poor, still agrarian and so forth, they’re just not significant contributors to greenhouse gases.  But what’s happened obviously since 1992 is that you’ve got emerging countries like China and India and Brazil that have seen enormous economic growth and industrialization.  So we know that moving forward it’s going to be necessary if we’re going to meet those targets for some changes to take place among those countries.  It’s not enough just for the developed countries to make changes.  Those countries are going to have to make some changes, as well — not of the same pace, not in the same way, but they’re going to have to do something to assure that whatever carbon we’re taking out of the environment is not just simply dumped in by other parties.

On the other hand, from the perspective of the developing countries like China and India, they’re saying to themselves, per capita our carbon footprint remains very small, and we have hundreds of millions of people who don’t even have electricity yet, so for us to get bound by a set of legal obligations could potentially curtail our ability to develop, and that’s not fair.

So I think that you have a fundamental deadlock in perspectives that were brought to the discussions during the course of this week.  And both sides have legitimate points.

My view was that if we could begin to acknowledge that the emerging countries are going to have some responsibilities, but that those responsibilities are not exactly the same as the developed countries, and if we could set up a financing mechanism to help those countries that are most vulnerable, like Bangladesh, then we would be at least starting to reorient ourselves in a way that allows us to be effective in the future.

But it is still going to require more work and more confidence-building and greater trust between emerging countries, the least developed countries, and the developed countries before I think you are going to see another legally binding treaty signed.

I actually think that it’s necessary for us ultimately to get to such a treaty, and I am supportive of such efforts.  But this is a classic example of a situation where if we just waited for that, then we would not make any progress.  And in fact I think there might be such frustration and cynicism that rather than taking one step forward, we ended up taking two steps back.

But I want to be very clear that ultimately this issue is going to be dictated by the science, and the science indicates that we’re going to have to take more aggressive steps in the future.  Our hope is that by investing in clean energy, in research, in development, in innovation, that in the same way that the Clean Air Act ended up spurring all kinds of innovations that solved the acid rain problem at a much cheaper and much more rapid pace than we expected, that by beginning to make progress and getting the wheels of innovation moving, that we are in fact going to be in a position to solve this problem.

But we’re going to need technological breakthroughs to get to the goals that we’re looking for.  In the meantime, we’ve got to be able to take the steps that are in our grasp right now, like for example energy efficiency, something I emphasized last week.

All right.  Helene Cooper.  I’m sorry.

Q    What about the compromise shift question?

THE PRESIDENT:  I have to say that, quietly, we did some pretty good ground work during the course of this year, so that our position was relatively clear.  I think that the one principle that I brought to this is that whatever commitments we make, I want to be able to be sure that they’re actually commitments that we can keep.  So we tried to be modest in what we thought we could accomplish.  I think there was interest on the part of some to, for example, increase our mitigation targets.  Although when you look out in the years 2025 or 2030, our goals are actually entirely comparable with Europe’s.  On the front end they appear to be less, because frankly, they’ve had a head start over the last several years in doing things like energy efficiency that we care about.

What I said to the other people in the room is, is that I want to make sure that whatever it is that we promise we can actually deliver on, and that it would be unrealistic for us to think that we can turn on a dime and that suddenly a clean-energy economy is going to emerge overnight, given the fact that it’s going to require significant effort.  And companies and industries are going to be wanting to make changes — we’re already seeing those changes, but they haven’t all borne fruit yet.  And we want to make sure that we’re not getting too far ahead of ourselves in terms of targets, even as I understand that the science compels us to move as rapidly as we can.

All right.  Helene Cooper.

Q    Thank you.  I wanted to ask you about this listing of the — in the appendix.  Going forward do you think that’s going to continue to be sufficient, or do you think verification is going to remain a source of friction between the U.S. and China?  And also on cap and trade, are you able to — were you able to assure the leaders here that you’ll make that a legislative priority next year?

THE PRESIDENT:  With respect to the appendix, these countries have set forth for the first time some very significant mitigation efforts, and I want to give them credit for that.  I mean, if you look at a country like India, as I said, they’ve got hundreds of millions of people who don’t have electricity, hundreds of millions of people who, by any standard, are still living in dire poverty.  For them, even voluntarily to say, we are going to reduce carbon emissions relative to our current ways of doing business by X percent is an important step.  And we applaud them for that.

The problem actually is not going to be verification in the sense that this international consultation and analysis mechanism will actually tell us a lot of what we need to know.  And the truth is that we can actually monitor a lot of what takes place through satellite imagery and so forth.  So I think we’re going to have a pretty good sense of what countries are doing.

What I think that some people are going to legitimately ask is, well, if it’s not legally binding what prevents us from, 10 years from now, looking and saying, you know, everybody fell short of these goals and there’s no consequences to it?  My response is that, A, that’s why I think we should still drive towards something that is more binding than it is.  But that was not achievable at this conference.

And the second point that I’d make is that Kyoto was legally binding and everybody still fell short anyway.  And so I think that it’s important for us, instead of setting up a bunch of goals that end up just being words on a page and are not met, that we get moving — everybody is taking as aggressive a set of actions as they can; that there is a sense of mutual obligation and information sharing so that people can see who’s serious and who’s not; that we strive for more binding agreements over time; and that we just keep moving forward.  That’s been the main goal that I tried to pursue today.

And I think that as people step back, I guarantee you there are going to be a lot of people who immediately say, the science says you got to do X, Y, Z; in the absence of some sort of legal enforcement, it’s not going to happen.  Well, we don’t have international government, and even treaties, as we saw in Kyoto, are only as strong as the countries’ commitments to participate.

Because of the differing views between developing countries and developed countries, in terms of future obligations, the most important thing I think we can do at this point — and that we began to accomplish but are not finished with — is to build some trust between the developing and the developed countries to break down some of the logjams that have to do with people looking backwards and saying, well, Kyoto said this, or Bali said that, or you guys need to do something but we don’t need to do something; getting out of that mindset and moving towards a position where everybody recognizes we all have to move together.  If we start from that position, then I think we’re going to be able to make progress in the future.

But this is going to be hard.  This is hard within countries; it’s going to be even harder between countries.  And one of the things that I’ve felt very strongly about during the course of this year is that hard stuff requires not paralysis, but it requires going ahead and making the best of the situation that you’re in at this point, and then continually trying to improve and make progress from there.

Okay, thank you very much everybody.  We’ll see some of you on the plane.

Q    Mr. President, who will sign the agreement — since you’re leaving, who here has the power to sign it?

THE PRESIDENT:  We’ve got our negotiators who are here.  I’m not going to be the only leader who I think leaves before it’s finally presented, but they are empowered to sign off — given at this point that most of the text has been completely worked out.

Q    Does it require signing, is it that kind of agreement?

THE PRESIDENT:  You know, it raises an interesting question as to whether technically there’s actually a signature — since, as I said, it’s not a legally binding agreement, I don’t know what the protocols are.  But I do think that this is a commitment that we, as the United States, are making and that we think is very important.

All right.  Thanks, guys.

END

ON THIS DAY – On Dec. 21, 1988, a terrorist bomb exploded aboard a Pan Am Boeing 747 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people; now, 21 years later, remembering what addiction to oil can do to us, the New York Times starts to discern a path to a better future for the planet.

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL OF December 21, 2009
Copenhagen, and Beyond.

The global climate negotiations in Copenhagen produced neither a grand success nor the complete meltdown that seemed almost certain as late as Friday afternoon. Despite two years of advance work, the meeting failed to convert a rare gathering of world leaders into an ambitious, legally binding action plan for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It produced instead a softer interim accord that, at least in principle, would curb greenhouses gases, provide ways to verify countries’ emissions, save rain forests, shield vulnerable nations from the impacts of climate change, and share the costs.

The hard work has only begun, in Washington and elsewhere. But Copenhagen’s achievements are not trivial, given the complexity of the issue and the differences among rich and poor countries. President Obama deserves much of the credit. He arrived as the talks were collapsing, spent 13 hours in nonstop negotiations and played hardball with the Chinese. With time running out — and with the help of China, India, Brazil and South Africa — he forged an agreement that all but a handful of the 193 nations on hand accepted.

Mr. Obama aside, there were two keys to the deal. One was a dramatic offer of $100 billion in aid from the industrialized nations to poorer countries to help them move to less-polluting sources of energy and to deal with drought and other consequences of warming. The offer had an instant soothing effect on many poorer nations that had been threatening to walk out all week.

The other was China’s willingness to submit to a verification system under which all countries would agree to report on their actions and — assuming details could be worked out — open their books to inspection. Transparency is a huge issue in Congress, and Mr. Obama made clear in his opening remarks on Friday that he would not agree to a deal unless China gave ground.

An enormous amount of work lies ahead, both for the president and for the other signatories to what is now being called the Copenhagen Accord. In order to deliver on his promises to reduce America’s greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent by 2020 and provide a chunk of that $100 billion in aid, Mr. Obama must persuade the Senate to approve a cap-and-trade bill — a huge task.

Meanwhile, there can be no letup by the rest of the world’s negotiators, no matter how tired and beat up they may be. These talks have been so chaotic and contentious that some people believe the United Nations machinery has outlived its usefulness, and real progress will henceforth be made in smaller gatherings of the big players.

There may be some truth to this, but at the moment it is hard to see how many of the arrangements agreed to in principle at Copenhagen — the verification system, for instance — can be made to work without detailed agreements. There must also be some mechanism that holds all countries responsible for doing everything they can to tackle climate change. As it is, the pledges now on the table, from both rich and poor countries, are nowhere near enough to keep atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide from rising above dangerous levels.

But for the moment it is worth savoring the steps forward. China is now a player in the effort to combat climate change in a way it has never been, putting measurable emissions reductions targets on the table and accepting verification. And the United States is very much back in the game too. After eight years of playing the spoiler, it is now a leader with a president who seems to embrace the role.

NEW YORK TIMES RECENT FURTHER ARTICLES ABOUT THE UN FRAMEWORK CONVENTION ON CLIMATE CHANGE

Mixed Bag for Obama on Climate Change Deal Amid the Recession

By JOHN HARWOOD

A victory for President Obama in Copenhagen will not necessarily help his popularity at home.

December 21, 2009

MORE ON THE UNFCCC AND: FOREIGN AID, GLOBAL WARMING, UNITED STATES ECONOMY, GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS, PELOSI, NANCY, OBAMA, BARACK, KERRY, JOHN

An Air of Frustration for Europe at Climate Talks

By JAMES KANTER

Caught off guard by the Copenhagen accord, European leaders felt pressure to back it even though they thought it did not go far enough and had a process in which they had little influence.

December 21, 2009

MORE ON THE UNFCCC AND: GLOBAL WARMING, COPENHAGEN (DENMARK),EUROPEAN COMMISSION

Copenhagen’s One Real Accomplishment: Getting Some Money Flowing

By JAMES KANTER

The accord in Copenhagen was “a big step forward” after previous talks offered no financial support mechanisms, Ban Ki-moon, the U.N. secretary general, said.

December 21, 2009

MORE ON THE UNFCCC AND: GLOBAL WARMING, ENERGY AND POWER,COPENHAGEN (DENMARK)

Compromising on 2 Issues, Obama Gets Partial Wins

By PETER BAKER

From Copenhagen to Capitol Hill, the president determined the outer limits of what he could accomplish on climate change and health care and decided that was enough, for now.

December 20, 2009

MORE ON THE UNFCCC AND: GLOBAL WARMING, HEALTH INSURANCE AND MANAGED CARE, REFORM AND REORGANIZATION, OBAMA, BARACK

A Grudging Accord in Climate Talks

By ANDREW C. REVKIN and JOHN M. BRODER

After delays, theatrics and deal-making, climate talks ended with an agreement to “take note” of a pact shaped by five nations.

December 20, 2009

MORE ON THE UNFCCC AND: GLOBAL WARMING, TREATIES

• Science and Politics of Climate Change
• Who’s at the Climate Talks, and What Do They Seek?
• Climate Change Conversations

U.N. Climate Talks ‘Take Note’ of Accord Backed by U.S.

By ANDREW C. REVKIN and JOHN M. BRODER

The agreement left open the question of whether the accord would gain the full support of the countries involved in the talks on limiting the risks of climate change.

December 20, 2009

MORE ON THE UNFCCC AND: COPENHAGEN (DENMARK)

• Science and Politics of Climate Change
• Who’s at the Climate Talks, and What Do They Seek?
• Climate Change Conversations

———————————————————————————————————-

Off to the Races

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

A competitive Earth Race led by America can be a more self-sustaining way to reduce carbon emissions than a festival of nonbinding commitments at a U.N. conference.

December 20, 2009

MORE ON THE UNFCCC AND: GLOBAL WARMING, GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS, UNITED STATES, UNITED NATIONS

———————————————————————————————————

Updated Dec. 18, 2009

Representatives of 192 nations gathered in Copenhagen to seek a consensus on an international strategy for fighting global warming, in a series of meetings between Dec. 7 and Dec. 18, 2009.

Leaders concluded a climate change deal the Obama administration called “meaningful” but which fell short of even the modest expectations for the summit. The maneuvering that characterized the final week of the talks was a sign of their seriousness; never before have global leaders come so close to a significant agreement to reduce the greenhouse gases linked to warming the planet.

President Obama injected himself into a multilayered negotiation that was far more chaotic and contentious than anticipated – frozen by longstanding divisions between rich and poor nations and a legacy of mistrust of the United States, which has long refused to accept any binding limits on its greenhouse gas emissions.

The accord drops what had been the expected goal of concluding a binding international treaty by the end of 2010, which leaves the implementation of its provisions uncertain. It is likely to undergo many months, perhaps years, of additional negotiation before it emerges in any internationally enforceable form.

Read More…

On Thursday morning, delegates made their way through a snow-covered landscape to the Bella Center, many of them increasingly concerned about the “precious little time” remaining to reach agreement in Copenhagen on a “vast amount of difficult issues,” but nevertheless still clinging to the hope of “sealing the deal”

on Friday at a historic moment in the fight against climate change.

As they arrived, many noted that the large exhibit area leading to the meeting rooms felt “eerily empty” – not filled with energetic youth as usual. This was because strict limits had been placed on the number of observers allowed in the Bella Center. Echoes of their voices were, however, still being heard: many NGO stands in the exhibit area displayed the messages “civil society has been removed from the negotiations” and “how can you decide about us without us.”

The halls of the Bella Center still felt crowded, however: the artistic protests and large number of youthful faces were replaced by members of the press lugging television cameras and lighting equipment through the halls as well as large security details for VIPs. A number of the world’s leaders with their entourages were also spotted rushing through the corridors as Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva, Felipe Calderón, Evo Morales, Gordon Brown, Hugo Chavez, Kevin Rudd, Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Evans Atta-Mills, Hillary Clinton and many, many others gathered in the Bella Center. “Now we really are at the center of the world’s attention – I do hope we will be able to live up to the great hopes and expectations,”

commented one negotiator.

A positive step in that direction was taken as negotiations at the expert level resumed after the COP and COP/MOP plenaries were given assurances from COP President Rasmussen that work would be transparent and based on texts forwarded by the AWG-LCA and AWG-KP. Several informal drafting groups thus convened throughout the day, and late into the night. The high-level segment and national statements taking place all day and late into night in the main plenary hall were being shown on CCTV throughout the center. Most had large groups of people crowded around watching their leaders make impassioned calls to “seal the deal” in Copenhagen and take advantage of the unprecedented gathering of decision-making power. It was widely recognized that this marked the largest gathering of the world’

s leaders outside New York and therefore constituted a historic moment.

Indeed, some softening of positions and progress could “finally” be detected from the statements by high-level representatives on Thursday. At her press conference in the morning, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that the US is prepared to work with other countries to mobilize US$100 billion a year by 2020. A financing announcement had also been made earlier by Japan to raise climate aid to about US$15 billion by 2012. In his plenary statement, French President Sarkozy also stressed the need for financing for developing countries and remarked that if keeping the Kyoto Protocol is what it takes, then the Kyoto Protocol could be retained. Reports on softening in China’

s position concerning MRV were also circulating. Many were hoping these announcements would have a positive impact on the negotiations.

Negotiators were prepared for a long and sleepless night, as the COP and COP/MOP contact groups decided to continue working well beyond midnight. Rumors were also circulating that the world leaders were making their own efforts to work towards a deal. “

One way or another Friday is going to be a historic day in this process, and the whole world is pushing for us in this building to make it a resounding success.

and as per The Japan Times, Friday, Dec. 18, 2009:

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/nn20091218a1.html

Friday, Dec. 18, 2009

Japan, U.S. vow cash to gain climate deal

America set to join $100 billion aid fund: Clinton

By ERIC JOHNSTON and SETSUKO KAMIYA

Staff writers

COPENHAGEN —

In a last-minute attempt to achieve a breakthrough at the U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen, Japan and the United States announced Wednesday and Thursday short- and long-term financial pledges for developing countries to mitigate the effects of climate change over the next three years and to adapt to the future effects of global warming by 2020.

The announcement of new aid packages came on the ninth and final day of formal negotiations on a deal for new emissions reduction targets for the post-2012 period, following the expiration of the first period of commitments under the Kyoto Protocol.

On Wednesday evening, Japan pledged ¥1.75 trillion ($15 billion) in public and private funding to help developing countries adjust to climate change between 2010-2012. The U.S. announced Thursday morning it would work to help provide developing countries with up to $100 billion annually through yet-to-be-determined financial mechanisms and incentives by 2020 for adaptation to future climate change.

“We’re announcing this pledge in the hope that it will become a driving force for the negotiations to move forward and come to a meaningful agreement,” Environment Minister Sakihito Ozawa said Wednesday, at Japan’s first open press briefing of the COP15 conference.

Of the total, public finance comprises about ¥1.3 trillion ($11 billion) and the rest will be collected from the private sector by creating a new plan involving the Japan Bank for International Cooperation, said Vice Foreign Minister Tetsuro Fukuyama. Details of that plan were still being discussed and will require a change in the law, he added.

Ozawa’s announcement now means short-term financing pledges for developing countries, which the United Nations said should be around $30 billion by 2012, have nearly been met. The European Union announced last week that about $10.8 billion in total would be available for the remaining period and the U.S. and other countries were expected to contribute as well.

But the long-term financing of the deal has been the more controversial issue. Economists and nongovernmental organizations have said that anywhere between $140 billion and $200 billion or more would be needed by 2020 to assist developing countries facing desertification, increased floods, crop failures and potential climate refugees displaced by severe weather patterns due to global warming.

“Today, I would like to announce that in the context of a strong accord, in which all major economies stand behind meaningful mitigation actions and provide full transparency as to their implementation, the U.S. is prepared to work with other countries toward a goal of jointly mobilizing $100 billion a year by 2020 to address the climate change needs of developing countries,” U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said.

“We expect that this funding will come from a wide variety of sources, public and private, bilateral and multilateral, including alternative sources of finance,” she said.

But while both Japan and the U.S. offered developing nations a carrot, the pledges also came with a big stick, as Ozawa and Clinton said developing nations must commit to legally binding emissions cuts.

“If those conditions are not met, we’ll have to withdraw this pledge,” Ozawa said.

In a warning directed toward China — which insists that its reduction target of 40 percent to 45 percent per unit of gross domestic product by 2020 compared with 2005 levels is a domestic, voluntary measure and should not be codified in an international treaty —

both Ozawa and Clinton said there were conditions attached to their pledges, which included participation in a new deal, and emissions-reduction actions that were transparent.

“I’ve often quoted a Chinese proverb which says that when we are in a common boat, you have to cross the river peacefully together. Well, we are in a common boat,” Clinton said.

“All of the major economies have an obligation to commit to a meaningful mitigation action and stand behind them in a transparent way.”

It remained to be seen whether the new pledges by the U.S. and Japan would be the game-breaker negotiators had been looking for to move the negotiations forward.

Fundamental differences over the amount by which countries should reduce their emissions remain.

 

 

In a meeting Thursday evening with Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama,static.lingospot.com/spot/image/icon.gif); background-position: -22px 100%; padding: 0pt; margin: 0pt !important; border: 0px none initial;” src=”http://static.lingospot.com/spot/image/spacer.gif” alt=”" /> Wen said China wants the 1997 Kyoto Protocolstatic.lingospot.com/spot/image/icon.gif); background-position: -22px 100%; padding: 0pt; margin: 0pt !important; border: 0px none initial;” src=”http://static.lingospot.com/spot/image/spacer.gif” alt=”" /> to be extended, and his nation was not obliged to join it. But Hatoyama reportedly said that because the protocol only covers countries that account for between 27 percent and 30 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions,static.lingospot.com/spot/image/icon.gif); background-position: -22px 100%; padding: 0pt; margin: 0pt !important; border: 0px none initial;” src=”http://static.lingospot.com/spot/image/spacer.gif” alt=”" /> a new, broader, international framework was needed.

The logjam in negotiations appeared broken Thursday by the arrival of nearly 120 heads of state and the Thursday financial pledges from Japan and the U.S. And by early Friday it appeared a political agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissionsstatic.lingospot.com/spot/image/icon.gif); background-position: -22px 100%; padding: 0pt; margin: 0pt !important; border: 0px none initial;” src=”http://static.lingospot.com/spot/image/spacer.gif” alt=”" /> might finally be in the offing.

But according to Sarkozy, differences between developed countries and major developing economies over the level of transparency needed on their recently announced emissions reductions plans were holding up an agreement.

Many world leaders, including Hatoyama and Obama, were scheduled to leave Copenhagen later Friday afternoon while the outcome of the conference remained unclear.

A three-page draft of a provisional agreement was being circulated among delegates Friday morning, and reports were that it was vague and repeated previously agreed upon general emissions reductions goals like a 50 percent reduction in emissions by 2050 that were made at other international summits earlier this year.

The Thursday announcement by Clinton that the U.S. would work with other countries to eventually provide $100 billion annually by 2020 for long-term climate change adaptation was greeted with relief by leaders in developed countries as a game-changer that could help produce a deal.

But developing countries, especially in the African group of nations, remained skeptical over the details of Clinton’s announcement, which were considered vague. One African leader suggested Thursday afternoon that no deal was better than a bad deal.