Tuesday
Aug252009
Climate Change: Breaking The Deadlock
Tuesday, August 25, 2009 at 11:28AM
September is going to be a busy month for climate change. On the 28th, the United States Senate will be asked to sign-on to the House approved Waxman-Markey bill to cap and reduce global warming pollution and cut U.S. imports of foreign oil. But the climate change debate--and whether other countries will commit to the massive global agenda--is still unknown. After all, how can the world possibly agree to re-direct its economy towards green growth?
A press conference organized this week by the Global campaign for Climate Action and Tck Tck Tck (an alliance that brings NGO's, faith groups, and trade unions together on climate), surveyed expert opinions on the upcoming month, where several significant international gatherings will take place in the United States and are designed specifically to increase pressure on world leaders to sign an ambitious and binding agreement at the international climate change conference in Copenhagen, Denmark in December 2009. A September 22nd summit organized by the UN's Secretary-General will seek to lobby member-states to sign on to the organization's multi-tiered global warming reduction agenda.
Yet, there here have been a series of failures leading up to the UN Summit and Copenhagen. Many developing countries favor a single, all inclusive agreement (a new Copenhagen over the stale Kyoto protocol), and others recognize the costs associated with tackling climate change. More importantly, governments simply cannot agree on how developing countries will set emission reduction targets. Many developing countries want the targets set first by developed countries. And more specifically, bilateral negotiations with major polluters, namely the United States and China, are not likely to garner the political will necessary to resolve current emission practices.
"I have no intention of playing a game. We are not looking at ways to gloss over this issue. We need to move forward." said a hopeful UN Ambassador of Denmark, Carsten Staur, the host of the international climate change negotiations in December.
The breakdown in talks at the G-8 held in Italy this summer, also left many countries wondering whether the climate agenda would ever be adopted. Skeptics added that a global treaty to help cut carbon emissions to levels that will prevent dangerous rises in global temperatures could not possible exist as long as the U.S. and Australia rejected Kyoto arguing that economic competitors like China and India get by without restrictions. And although industrialized nations pledged to limit global climate change to 2 degrees, developing nations felt the G8 should not be leading the world climate agenda and the current strategy did not sufficiently focus on cooperation between rich and poor states--forcing developing economies into the sidelines in Copenhagen.
Yvo de Boer, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) said at a stalled climate meeting in Bonn this summer, "If we keep moving forward at this pace, we may not make it in time at Copenhagen."
"There is a lag between reality and action. Copenhagen may be an illusion of action with no action" said Alden Meyer, Vice Chair of the Tck Tck Tck campaign.
The climate bill in the United States (American Clean Energy and Security Act), would force U.S. industries to comply with tougher regulations and monitoring to mitigate global warming. Many lawmakers are against the climate bill, which they say could bring up higher energy prices to consumers. Under the House-passed bill, U.S. carbon emissions would have to drop by 17 percent by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050, from 2005 levels.
"There has been a delay in this process partly due to the ongoing health care debate, which has greatly slowed down this climate agenda," said Michael Allegretti, Senior Advisor on US Policy for the Climate Group which will host Climate Week in New York beginning September 21.
If the House had not approved the Waxman-Markey bill, there is great consensus the United States would not have been able to contribute to international climate change negotiations in Denmark in December.
Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer and other democrats are leading the process and are hopeful the meeting in September will advance the climate change agenda in the US, a few months ahead of the global COP15 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen from December 7-18 2009.
By promoting alternative "green" energy like solar and wind power to replace coal and oil, the Waxman-Markey bill would dramatically shift energy production in the United States.
A press conference organized this week by the Global campaign for Climate Action and Tck Tck Tck (an alliance that brings NGO's, faith groups, and trade unions together on climate), surveyed expert opinions on the upcoming month, where several significant international gatherings will take place in the United States and are designed specifically to increase pressure on world leaders to sign an ambitious and binding agreement at the international climate change conference in Copenhagen, Denmark in December 2009. A September 22nd summit organized by the UN's Secretary-General will seek to lobby member-states to sign on to the organization's multi-tiered global warming reduction agenda.
Yet, there here have been a series of failures leading up to the UN Summit and Copenhagen. Many developing countries favor a single, all inclusive agreement (a new Copenhagen over the stale Kyoto protocol), and others recognize the costs associated with tackling climate change. More importantly, governments simply cannot agree on how developing countries will set emission reduction targets. Many developing countries want the targets set first by developed countries. And more specifically, bilateral negotiations with major polluters, namely the United States and China, are not likely to garner the political will necessary to resolve current emission practices.
"I have no intention of playing a game. We are not looking at ways to gloss over this issue. We need to move forward." said a hopeful UN Ambassador of Denmark, Carsten Staur, the host of the international climate change negotiations in December.
The breakdown in talks at the G-8 held in Italy this summer, also left many countries wondering whether the climate agenda would ever be adopted. Skeptics added that a global treaty to help cut carbon emissions to levels that will prevent dangerous rises in global temperatures could not possible exist as long as the U.S. and Australia rejected Kyoto arguing that economic competitors like China and India get by without restrictions. And although industrialized nations pledged to limit global climate change to 2 degrees, developing nations felt the G8 should not be leading the world climate agenda and the current strategy did not sufficiently focus on cooperation between rich and poor states--forcing developing economies into the sidelines in Copenhagen.
Yvo de Boer, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) said at a stalled climate meeting in Bonn this summer, "If we keep moving forward at this pace, we may not make it in time at Copenhagen."
"There is a lag between reality and action. Copenhagen may be an illusion of action with no action" said Alden Meyer, Vice Chair of the Tck Tck Tck campaign.
The climate bill in the United States (American Clean Energy and Security Act), would force U.S. industries to comply with tougher regulations and monitoring to mitigate global warming. Many lawmakers are against the climate bill, which they say could bring up higher energy prices to consumers. Under the House-passed bill, U.S. carbon emissions would have to drop by 17 percent by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050, from 2005 levels.
"There has been a delay in this process partly due to the ongoing health care debate, which has greatly slowed down this climate agenda," said Michael Allegretti, Senior Advisor on US Policy for the Climate Group which will host Climate Week in New York beginning September 21.
If the House had not approved the Waxman-Markey bill, there is great consensus the United States would not have been able to contribute to international climate change negotiations in Denmark in December.
Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer and other democrats are leading the process and are hopeful the meeting in September will advance the climate change agenda in the US, a few months ahead of the global COP15 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen from December 7-18 2009.
By promoting alternative "green" energy like solar and wind power to replace coal and oil, the Waxman-Markey bill would dramatically shift energy production in the United States.
Reader Comments (4)
The big question before Copenhagen: Can the U.S.Senate stop being influenced by the deep pockets of the oil, coal, and the nuclear lobbyists?
First there is no man made global warming. There was global warming in the 20's, 30's and 40's then a cooling and again in the beginning of this century. The planet is not as warm now as it was in the 40's and before that in the medieval warm period and before that in the roman warm period, etc.
Instead of increasing the price of fuel so that people freeze or starve to death or both, why not research renewable technology so that it is so cheap everyone wants to use it. It is a very hard sell when what is being proposed will kill people.
Any action that is taken to reduce human produced carbon dioxide to reduce global warming or influence climate is a mistake that will have no significant effect on climate and takes away freedom and prosperity.
The Solar Grand Maximum that went on for about 70 years appears to have ended. The 30 year or so Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) uptrend that combined with the Solar Grand Maximum to produce the late-20th-century temperature run-up has started its 30 year downtrend. The PDO downtrend combined with the quiet sun is resulting in continued planet cooling. (The cooling trend will be slow because of the huge thermal capacitance of the oceans. There will be temperature oscillations about the trend because of ocean turnover and other factors).
The sun has been very quiet for over 30 months. It has not been this quiet this long since 1913. The Little Ice Age coincided with few sunspots. Sunspot changes appear to be a catalyst for cloud changes and therefore have much greater influence on average earth temperature than total solar irradiance (TSI).
Climate Scientists have adopted the word 'feedback' but use it completely differently from the way that it has been successfully applied for decades by engineers in multiple practical common applications such as automobile cruise control, aircraft autopilot, missile guidance, electronic circuits, etc. etc.
Since 2000, atmospheric carbon dioxide has increased by an amount equal to 18.8% of the increase from 1800 to 2000. According to the average of the five reporting agencies, the trend of average global temperatures since 1998 shows no increase and from 2002 through 2008 the trend shows a DECREASE of 1.8°C/century. This SEPARATION (there have been many others) corroborates the lack of connection between atmospheric carbon dioxide increase and average global temperature. I wonder how wide the separation will need to get before the IPCC and a lot of others are forced to realize that maybe they missed something.
As the atmospheric carbon dioxide level continues to increase and the average global temperature doesn’t it is becoming more and more apparent that many climate scientists have made an egregious mistake and a whole lot of people have been misled.
I am now CERTAIN that added atmospheric carbon dioxide has no significant influence on average global temperature. I started with no knowledge and thus no opinion on the subject. For some time I was a skeptic regarding the human contribution to Global Warming. After thousands of hours of research I am no longer a mere skeptic. An early work is shown at http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/pangburn.html . (I have discovered a few refinements to this since March of 2008. These refinements include that only the temperature needs to be considered to show that there is no significant net positive feedback from temperature and that IPCC gives a prediction for temperature rise of 1.2 C for doubling CO2 if feedback is zero.) See the pdfs linked from http://climaterealists.com/index.php?tid=145&linkbox=true to learn why NET feedback can not be significantly positive and to see a possible cause of the temperature run-up in the late 20th century.
One of the keys to facilitating the switch to green growth is combined heat & power, which cuts costs and greenhouse gas emissions at the same time. Some European countries -- especially Denmark -- have gotten the point on this and now produce power much more efficiently. But the U.S. lags far behind.
Now perhaps I'm biased. I'm associated with Recycled Energy Development, a company that does CHP and waste energy recovery -- turning manufacturers' waste heat into clean power and steam. But the reason I'm involved is the massive opportunity. EPA and DOE studies suggest there's enough recoverable waste energy in the U.S. to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20%. That's as much as if we took every passenger vehicle off the road.