Climate change 2010: time to get our shit together

How we respond to climate change will demonstrate what kind of people we really are.

by Tim Bousquet

Funny what flipping a calendar page means to us. This last week of the year we assess our failures and successes, recall people we've lost. The newspapers break out their "best of 2009" lists and, next week, the "what to look for in 2010" lists pop up. A lot of this reflection is playful, but there's an underlying seriousness that rolls out, forward looking, with New Year's resolutions: this coming year we'll get our act together.

But, sentimentality aside, do we really give a shit? I mean, if we're truly going to reflect on the past, and make commitments for a better future, let's not avoid the elephant in the room: climate change.

The calendar page we're flipping, December 2009, is a heavy one, weighed down with the failure of supposed world "leaders" to reach any meaningful agreement at the Copenhagen conference on climate change.

"The reality of the situation here is that global leaders have abdicated their responsibility," Andrew Weaver told me last week, in the wake of the "disaster" at Copenhagen.

Weaver knows what he's talking about: He's Canada's top climatologist and co-author of the IPCC reports on climate change.

The science of climate change is unambiguous---humanity is either going to very quickly reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, or we'll reach a tipping point of two degrees global warming in a few decades, beyond which no human action can avoid increasingly cataclysmic climate change. And reducing GHG emissions is an urgent matter---because CO2 and other gases stay in the atmosphere for centuries, and because it will take enormous efforts to change our industrial infrastructure, we can't change on a dime. Every hour of inaction makes the situation much more dire.

Weaver, like many other climatologists, came out of Copenhagen with an attitude bordering on defeatist---"frankly, you can kiss two degrees good-bye," he said. "We are self-centred, and we care about the individual over the collective, in terms of the environment in which we live. We're a selfish species, and this was clearly demonstrated in Copenhagen."

"Weaver's right, we're a selfish species," one of my scientist friends told me the other day in an online exchange. "There's nothing we can do; we're not smart enough to address climate change." I could almost hear him stroking his chin in deep contemplation at the fate of humanity.

James Hansen, the world's most well-known climatologist, has shown that, in order to avoid irreversible climate change, we'll have to get the atmospheric concentration of CO2 down to 350 parts per million within a few decades. We're now at 387 ppm, increasing at two ppm per year.

But that plan "has no chance in hell. None. Zero," says one respected climatologist in Scientific American. Why? Because it's just impractical to expect humans can rise to the occasion. More chin-stroking.

Hansen looks at the prevailing political order and also sees disaster in the making. "Hillary Clinton recently signed an agreement with Canada for a pipeline to carry tar sands oil to the United States," he writes in a recent essay. "Australia is massively expanding coal export facilities. Coal-fired power plants are being built worldwide. Unless the public gets involved, young people especially, CO2 of 450 ppm or higher may become unavoidable."

I don't know why getting involved should be limited to young people, but the defeatist, wizened fatalism of the older generation is really pissing me off. All appearances are that older people in fact don't give a shit, and aren't willing to get off their reflective asses to actually do something to address the situation.

"Are we going to stand up and give global politicians a hard slap on the face, to make them face the truth?" continues Hansen. "It will take a lot of us---probably in the streets. Or are we going to let them continue to kid themselves and us, and cheat our children and grandchildren?"

This week, as we flip our calendars, reflect on our past and make commitments to future action, maybe we can decide what kind of people we really are. Is all that reflection just a game? Or do we really give a shit?

Comments (26) RSS

Showing 1-5 of 26

Add a comment | All comments »

why are the people who support mans direct impact on climate change not giving references to support their position.all i hear is them yapping but giving no references.am i just to believe what you say.because its not going to happen.you remind me of preachers.idiots

Posted by Arische Kampfer on February 22, 2010 at 9:01 PM | Report this comment

World may not be warming, say scientists
In its last assessment the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said the evidence that the world was warming was “unequivocal”.

It warned that greenhouse gases had already heated the world by 0.7C and that there could be 5C-6C more warming by 2100, with devastating impacts on humanity and wildlife. However, new research, including work by British scientists, is casting doubt on such claims. Some even suggest the world may not be warming much at all.

“The temperature records cannot be relied on as indicators of global change,” said John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a former lead author on the IPCC.

The doubts of Christy and a number of other researchers focus on the thousands of weather stations around the world, which have been used to collect temperature data over the past 150 years. ...

The IPCC faces similar criticisms from Ross McKitrick, professor of economics at the University of Guelph, Canada, who was invited by the panel to review its last report.

The experience turned him into a strong critic and he has since published a research paper questioning its methods.

“We concluded, with overwhelming statistical significance, that the IPCC’s climate data are contaminated with surface effects from industrialisation and data quality problems. These add up to a large warming bias,” he said.

Such warnings are supported by a study of US weather stations co-written by Anthony Watts, an American meteorologist and climate change sceptic.

His study, which has not been peer reviewed, is illustrated with photographs of weather stations in locations where their readings are distorted by heat-generating equipment.

Some are next to air- conditioning units or are on waste treatment plants. One of the most infamous shows a weather station next to a waste incinerator.

Watts has also found examples overseas, such as the weather station at Rome airport, which catches the hot exhaust fumes emitted by taxiing jets.

In Britain, a weather station at Manchester airport was built when the surrounding land was mainly fields but is now surrounded by heat-generating buildings.

Terry Mills, professor of applied statistics and econometrics at Loughborough University, looked at the same data as the IPCC. He found that the warming trend it reported over the past 30 years or so was just as likely to be due to random fluctuations as to the impacts of greenhouse gases. Mills’s findings are to be published in Climatic Change, an environmental journal.

“The earth has gone through warming spells like these at least twice before in the last 1,000 years,” he said.

Feb 14 2010
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/envi…

Posted by LAH on February 15, 2010 at 10:59 PM | Report this comment

Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995

* Data for vital 'hockey stick graph' has gone missing
* There has been no global warming since 1995
* Warming periods have happened before - but NOT due to man-made changes

By Jonathan Petre
Last updated at 5:12 PM on 14th February 2010
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12…

Posted by LAH on February 15, 2010 at 1:27 AM | Report this comment

Professor Phil Jones, who is at the centre of the “Climategate” affair, conceded that there has been no “statistically significant” rise in temperatures since 1995.

The admission comes as new research casts serious doubt on temperature records collected around the world and used to support the global warming theory.

Researchers said yesterday that warming recorded by weather stations was often caused by local factors rather than global change.

Feb 15 2010
http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/1…

Posted by LAH on February 15, 2010 at 1:12 AM | Report this comment

Tim;

I agree with you mate...but I've lost my stamina to argue against the deniers anymore....they're just too organized and determined, although for the life of me I don't understand their objection to getting off finite oil and onto alternative energy.

Or is more that they just don't want to be "told" by "science" to do it? They didn't like it back in school, and they don't like it now!

It was bad enough before the internet, all we had to deal with where people like "more" who clearly do not understand the "balance" of gasses in our atmosphere with dumb posts like the one below...But now we have to deal with the latest internet Olympics: "url hurling" where people like "hal" inundate the web with cut and paste nonsense from the likes of the Daily Mail (snicker) and that idiot tenured denier from MIT, James Linshisname, that also says smoking cigearettes is not harmful...

*sigh*

I just can't be arsed anymore.

I don't have any kids, so I suppose I don't have a dog in this race anyway, lol.

The deniers seem so damned sure of themselves now, based on what? Nothing, lol
But it's too hard to debate them now "the emails the emails the emails!" and now "The glaciers the glaciers the glaciers!"

Good grief. Fuck it, says I. Let them have their way. Keep burning up the oil, ignore the future, go for it!

...I am reminded of the classic last line in carpenter's "The Thing":

"Well, why don't we just sit back, wait and see what happens...?"