| A Shift in the Debate Over Global Warming |
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| Tuesday, 01 July 2008 | |||||||||
 Leaders of the Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change — the scientists awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last year with former Vice President Al Gore — have emphasized that market-based approach. All three presidential candidates are behind it. And it has framed international talks over a new climate treaty and debate within the United States over climate legislation. But now, with recent data showing an unexpected rise in global emissions and a decline in energy efficiency, a growing chorus of economists, scientists and students of energy policy are saying that whatever benefits the cap approach yields, it will be too little and come too late. The economist Jeffrey D. Sachs, head of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, stated the case bluntly in a recent article in Scientific American: “Even with a cutback in wasteful energy spending, our current technologies cannot support both a decline in carbon dioxide emissions and an expanding global economy. If we try to restrain emissions without a fundamentally new set of technologies, we will end up stifling economic growth, including the development prospects for billions of people.” What is needed, Mr. Sachs and others say, is the development of radically advanced low-carbon technologies, which they say will only come about with greatly increased spending by determined governments on what has so far been an anemic commitment to research and development. A Manhattan-like Project, so to speak. And time is critical, they say, as China, India and other developing nations march headlong into the modern world of cars and electric consumption on their way to becoming the dominant producer of greenhouse gases for decades to come. Indeed, China is building, on average, one large coal-burning power plant a week. In an article in the journal Nature last week, researchers concerned with the economics, politics, and science of climate also argued that technology policy, not emissions policy, must dominate. “There is no question about whether technological innovation is necessary — it is,” said the authors, Roger A. Pielke Jr., a political scientist at the University of Colorado; Tom Wigley, a climatologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research; and Christopher Green, an economist at McGill University. “The question is, to what degree should policy focus directly on motivating such innovation?” Proponents of treaties and legislation that would cap emissions don’t disagree with this call to arms for new, low-carbon technologies. But they say the cap approach should not be ignored, either. One of them is Joseph Romm, a blogger on climate and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a nonprofit group pushing for federal legislation to restrict greenhouse gases. “Of course we need aggressive investments in R. and D. — I for one have been arguing that for two decades,” Mr. Romm wrote in a post to his blog, climateprogress.org. “But if we don’t start aggressively deploying the technologies we have now for the next quarter century, then all the new technologies in the world won’t avert catastrophe.” Another expert who has emphasized the importance of capping emissions, Adil Najam of Boston University, said he hoped this emerging debate would not distract from doing whatever is possible now to curb emissions. “You can do a tremendous lot with available technology,” said Professor Najam, one of the authors of the intergovernmental panel’s report on policy options. “It is true that this will not be enough to lick the problem, but it will be a very significant and probably necessary difference.” But Professor Pielke and his co-authors say that a recent rise in emissions — particularly in fast-growing emerging powers — points to the need for government to push aggressively for technological advances instead of waiting for the market to force reductions in emissions. Mr. Sachs pointed to several promising technologies — capturing and burying carbon dioxide, plug-in hybrid cars and solar-thermal electric plants. “Each will require a combination of factors to succeed: more applied scientific research, important regulatory changes, appropriate infrastructure, public acceptance and early high-cost investments,” he said. “A failure on one or more of these points could kill the technologies.” In short, what is needed, he said, is a “major overhaul of energy technology” financed by “large-scale public funding of research, development and demonstration projects.” At the same time, China and India continue to insist that economic growth is both their priority and right. They argue that the established economic powers should be responsible for spearheading the research to reduce carbon emissions. After all, the United States and Europe spent more than a century growing wealthy by burning fossil fuels. Developing countries repeatedly made that point last week in Bangkok in the latest round of United Nations talks over the shape of a new climate agreement. But the United States rejected a proposal from China that 0.5 percent of the gross domestic product of industrialized countries be used to disseminate nonpolluting energy technologies. As if to underscore the energy and emissions trajectories in Asia’s emerging powerhouses —and the priority placed on growth there and among important international institutions — the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank is planning to vote on Monday on helping to finance a four-billion-watt complex of coal-burning power plants, the “Ultra Mega” complex, in Gujarat State in India. Source: New York Times
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Nicke
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Gore claims that global warming is an immediate problem facing the United States and the world, and places like New York and Chicago could feel like Caribbean haunts. If there is any doubt that God has a sense of humor, it has to be dispelled by a headline in Wednesday's Drudge Report: "House hearing on 'warming of the planet' canceled after ice storm." He followed up with this: "Save it for a sunny day: Maryville Univ. in St. Louis area canceling screening of Al Gore's 'Inconvenient Truth' because of a snowstorm." |
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Nicke
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11 errors of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth." The film claims that melting snows on Mount Kilimanjaro are evidence of global warming. The Government’s expert defending the film was forced to concede that this is not correct. The film suggests that evidence from ice cores proves that rising CO2 causes temperature increases over a period of 650,000 years. The court found that the film was misleading and that the rises in CO2 lagged behind the temperature increases by 800–2,000 years. The film uses emotive images of Hurricane Katrina (above) and suggests that this has been caused by global warming. The Government’s expert had to accept that it was ‘not possible’ to attribute one-off events to global warming. The film shows the drying up of Lake Chad (right) and claims that this was caused by global warming. The Government’s expert had to accept that this was not the case. The film claims that a study showed that polar bears had drowned due to disappearing arctic ice. It turned out that Mr Gore had misread the study: In fact four polar bears drowned, and this was because of a particularly violent storm. The film threatens that global warming could stop the Gulf Stream, throwing Europe into an ice age. The Claimant’s evidence was that this was a scientific impossibility. The film blames global warming for species losses including coral-reef bleaching. The Government could not produce any evidence to support this claim. The film suggests that the Greenland ice covering could melt, causing sea levels to rise dangerously. The evidence is that Greenland will not melt for millennia. The film suggests that the Antarctic ice covering is melting. The evidence is that it is in fact increasing. The film suggests that sea levels could rise by seven metres, causing the displacement of millions of people. In fact, the evidence is that sea levels are expected to rise by about 40 centimetres over the next hundred years and that there is no threat of massive migration. The film claims that rising sea levels have caused the evacuation of residents of certain Pacific islands to New Zealand. The Government was unable to substantiate this and the Court observed that this appears to be a false claim. |
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