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Hopes for Poznan climate change progress melting away
Written by: Megan Rowling
Oxfam human ice statues outside U.N. climate change talks in Poznan, Poland, Dec. 9, 2008
ALERTNET/Megan Rowling
ALERTNET/Megan Rowling
As climate change negotiators headed back into the Poznan International Fair after a two-day break, there was a frosty atmosphere inside and out. Delegates at the Dec. 1-12 U.N. climate change talks say recession and the change of U.S. administration make it unlikely the world will meet a deadline for agreeing a full new pact to fight global warming in Copenhagen at the end of 2009. Developing nations are fed up with what they see as a lack of progress at the conference in western Poland, with some of the poorest fearing their calls for urgent help to adapt to a warmer world are being sidelined. Activists from both rich and poor countries shivered outside in freezing temperatures on Tuesday to cajole negotiators into doing more. Oxfam erected 10 human ice sculptures to remind negotiators of the impact climate change is already having on poor people around the world. "For the millions ... already affected by climate change, there is no time for delay at these negotiations. Rich countries need to take the lead before hope in saving the planet and its people melts away," said Aboubacar Traore, Oxfam's climate change campaigner in Mali. "It seems unfair that so much has gone into this (conference) and not much has come out," said his colleague Savio Carvalho, country director for the development agency in Uganda. "Developing countries are being taken for a ride." He said the mood of the talks was sombre, although he was still optimistic a push over the next couple of days could yield some results. In a colourful and noisy display - including stilt walkers dressed as bankers in suits - others protested against the World Bank's involvement in financing for climate change responses. The bank has two Climate Investment Funds, into which G8 countries are pouring more than $6 billion, much of which will be provided in the form of cheap loans. But a coalition of 142 campaigning organisations said financing for climate change adaptation and clean energy technologies should be handled by and accountable to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). "We don't think climate financing should be in the form of loans, because this means we have to pay for the effects of a problem we did not create," said Lidy Nacpil, coordinator of the Jubilee South - Asia/Pacific Movement on Debt and Development. "These (World Bank) funds will be used to impose policy conditions on us." In a statement, the coalition said the bank had helped cause climate change by lending to projects based on fossil fuels. This lending had increased by 94 percent between 2007 and 2008, it said, adding that the bank's management structure marginalises developing countries. Later in the day, Yvo de Boer, the U.N.'s top climate change official, told journalists that excluding the World Bank from climate change financing would be "a bit like cutting off your nose to spite your face" because of the major programmes it already has on both reducing greenhouse gas emissions and dealing with the impacts of global warming. "What I do hear countries saying is 'why should we make a commitment to engage in the context of the (UNFCCC) when all of the money is actually outside the convention through other institutions?'," he said. "Part of the challenge in Copenhagen is to ... ensure that other financial institutions outside the convention are working towards the goals of the developing countries rather than only to their own." But many remain unconvinced. "The World Bank must get out of climate change issues because it is not their business," said South African Makoma Lekalakala from Earth Life Africa at the protest. "The best thing would be for total cancellation of poor countries' debts. That would help those countries take adaptation measures, and pay for environmental degradation." Soon after 9.15 when the demonstrations were due to end, an official told them to pack up. You don't get much time to save the world around here...
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3 responses to “Hopes for Poznan climate change progress melting away ”
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10 Dec 2008 12:48:02 GMT
In between less people are interested in this topic because they have to handle the real problem: economical desaster. If you compare the big media event of ther former Bali-Meeting with this event in Poznan you will see the difference.
But I���m still quite interested in the topic of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) or climate change, but I���m much more interested in human behaviour related to this topic. There are two camps, the deniers of AGW and the apologists of AGW. While the deniers claim that ���science is not settled��� and a lot of questions have to be answered the apologists predicate that ���science is settled��� and all (sic!) questions are answered. So far so good. There is a scientific debate and the apologists of AGW claim that they are right due to a so called scientific consensus. In a common scientific dispute both parties would try to find proof and falsification for their hypotheses and would try to improve research to let the discussion go. J��rgen Habermas, a German philosopher of the so called "Frankfurter Schule", additionally tought that social and scientific discussions calls for something as a basic condition: respect, even against the background of different interests of the debaters. But the dispute about AGW is far away from this condition and different from every scientific discussion before, because the AGW-proponents refuse further discussion although their hypothesis still lacks proof and there is even no possibility of falsification for it. Instead of that all findings of the apologets of AGW provide just likelihood of things to happen due to human CO2-emissions. Additionally they introduced into discussion some doubtful computer graphs like the Hockeystick and curves of temperature anomalies which start to trouble them since 1980. The definition of global climate and global temperature is the average of global ���weather��� of about 30 years. But since 1980 only 28 years passed and since about ten years of the passed 28 years we watch a lateral movement of temperatures and a decreasing trendline since about 2004. Against this weak background for a hypothesis it is funny to watch the quite arrogant behaviour of the thousands of proponents of AGW on the internet who claim that they are in possession of truth regarding global warming and condemn sceptics as human beings of lower morality. We know this behaviour very well. Normally it is related to ideology and ideologically exaggerated behaviour is the common attitude of devout believers who condemn everybody who doesn���t share their belief. Probably this is a tactic of attack is the best form of defense and in order to cover, that the hypothesis of AGW logically can���t be truth because (regarding to theory of cognition) truth is unknowable by science. Science only can try to reach out for truth and may find or find not evidence. Basically every scientific finding is only acceptable under reserve. Even well tested theories like theory of relativity or quantum theory are subject to this reserve. Hence no science and no result of scientific research can and will stay for ever settled, it's always questionable. In case of AGW-hypothesis we are far away from truth or even positive proof and still remain on a level of likelihood (likely, most likely = 60 to 90 %) and dubiety. The aggressive and intolerant apologia of the hypothesis of AGW in the morally segregating way we watch worldwide therefore is advocacy of belief and not apology of significant knowledge. For example: If you are a person suffering from an nasty chronic but not killing disease and a doctor offers you a drug that will heal you from this disease at a likelihood of 90 % but at a risk to die at 10 %; I guess, that you will need a strong belief in this doctor or the science providing this drug for to accept it, and even if you believe you probably will deny to take it. Many AGW-followers are believers in a hypothesis but they want to suggest that they don���t believe but know absolute truth and condemn all who deny this doubtful ���knowledge���. Regarding the development of belief in AGW I recommend the study of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research: ���The Social Simulation of the Public Perception of Weather Events and their Effect upon the Development of Belief in Anthropogenic Climate Change��� which you will find here.15 Dec 2008 12:03:51 GMT
Jenli does not say which camp s/he is in, but s/he is sounding almost as dogmatic and the ones s/he condemns. I am a science-trained development worker and as with much science, it is almost impossible to say anything is completely true. I doubt that many of the AGW apologists would say that AGW is solid truth, but the truth that we have (i.e. the body of evidence) causes very respected international scientists to state that global warming is uniequivocal and that it is largely caused by people. When I look at the amount of CO2 in the air (greater than it has ever been, according to what we can establish from ice cores, etc.), and taking into account the accepted phenomenon of greenhouse effect which actually makes our planet habitable compared to venus, which is uninhabitable because of the same effect, their conclusion seems pretty valid to me. And I am afraid that Jenli's comparision with the drug is misleading - no one is saying that action to AGW is going to kill us, although it will inconvenience us (especially those of us in the west). Say someone told me that they were 90% certain that a Noahic global flood was coming sometime in the near future and that I needed to live in a boat for the rest of my life and store up 40 days of food, sure it might be uncomfortable, but it wouldn't kill me. Jenli's comments make me wonder if s/he is a member of the western developed nations who would rather deny the problem of climate change than give up their comfortable but, for the environment, excessive lifestyle?
22 Dec 2008 12:43:06 GMT
I remember the fears of a coming ice age when I started college in the mid 1970's. I spent considerable time studying environmental conditions and affects while earning degrees in Biology, Geology, and Environmental Science.
Reviewing the liturature on AGW published since the mid 1980's ... the models, assumptions, and predictions have all proven to be severly lacking and innacurate. There is little of science involved in the AGW controvercy ... it is as stated more of a fanaticism faith. When any evidence provided of warming or cooling trends is equal "proof" of the hypothesis for AGW, the veil of any legitimacy of this being a "scientific" pursuit simply flies out the window. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has no causal correlation as to global temprature increase or decrease. If CO2 were the prominent causal factor in global warming, how do you reconsile the cyclic warming and cooling ... ice age to warming and back that has occured over the past several million years. Right now the debate is no where near a 90/10 ratio ... the evidence is strongly pointing to AGW being hype and a disproven hypotheis. The oceans are cooling ... record cold and snow ... glaciers starting to grow again after many years of recession ... prediction after prediction failing to come to pass ... The last line from Paul W ... "Jenli's comments make me wonder if s/he is a member of the western developed nations who would rather deny the problem of climate change than give up their comfortable but, for the environment, excessive lifestyle?" ... points to a core foundation to the AGW movement ... the attempt to bring down the developed world to a level more equal to the undeveloped world, and to "punish" those who are deemed to be the privelaged. Yes ... I live in the United States. Yes enjoy a comfortable lifestyle ... I do my best in being responsible with my lifestyle choices and being environmentally responsible. Where one lives and ones lifestyle has no bearing on the reality of the science or lack there of in the AGW debate. The evidence overwhelmingly points to the conclusion that AGW is not happening.