Wednesday, December 09, 2009

Negative Forces at Work in Copehagen

ClimateGate involves emails from climate scientists that appear to support a cover up of the real truth about global warming.

One of the emails from Phil Jones, director of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in England, references a "trick" used to represent tree ring data showing a cooling trend since 1960.

Penn State University Professor Michael Mann, originator of the "trick" used to display the tree ring data, stated that mathematicians often use the term "trick" to describe a clever approach, a nice way of solving a problem, a trick of the trade,

All that ClimateGate and "The Danish Text" (see yesterday's post on this blog) has accomplished is to muddy the waters and put participants of the United Nations Climate Change Conference at odds with each other.

With the negative energy surrounding the conference, it is easy to lose sight of the true goal and that is a shame. . . .
If the whole world comes to Copenhagen and leaves without making the needed political agreement, then I think it’s a failure that is not just about climate. Then it’s the whole global democratic system not being able to deliver results in one of the defining challenges of our century. And that is and should not be a possibility. It’s not an option. COP15 president, Connie Hedegaard.
Stay focused. Do not let the perception management sway you from your goal. As Carl Sagan said, "You are by accident of fate alive at an absolutely critical moment in the history of our planet. "

3 comments:

Joseph Condron said...

Hmmm can you read Arabic!

Few juice to you if you can.

I think all of the news coverage surrounding this leaked email is missing the bigger picture. Namely, who is behind the leak and what vested interests are responsible?

There is a mountain of peer reviewed research in support of global warming. If people wish to believe some alternative explanation for what has been happening - well that says more about their bias and prejudices than it does about rogue evidence.

Even if it is true that levels of carbon dioxide are, at present, only one third of what they were 10,000 years ago, (which they are not) the number of trees must be at least one hundred times less than it was then. Therefore, this argument becomes nonsensical.

I am from Ireland and only about three of four weeks ago the Western and Southern part of the country was completely flooded - something that was unprecedented and has never happened to this extent before. As a result many people won't be spending Christmas in their homes. We are starting to see the real effect of this now.

Make no mistake the climate talks are a massive undertaking and alternative sources of energy will have to be looked at. Considering we are limited to wind and tidal as being the only natural alternatives we probably will have to go nuclear.

The land that biofuels take up is needed for trees to absorb carbon. So that option is effectively ruled out.

Solar power, while good in theory, is actually making the situation worse as less than 10 per cent of the sun's energy (I believe the exact figure is eight) is converted into electricity. Most of it is reflected as heat. Of course this heat contributes to warming up the atmosphere - the very thing that solar power is trying to prevent. So that rules that out and makes the situation even more difficult.

I got carried away writing so I have broken this into two comments. Sorry about the inconvenience.

Joseph Condron said...

Plus you have a lot of people in countries who have no money to invest in new technology. Really you can't expect them to either.

Take India for example, there are 400 million people there living below the poverty line. That is greater than the entire population of North America. It is difficult to get people to focus on the bigger picture when they are concerned only with survival on a day to day basis.

We have a big problem with cows and methane production. This is backed by a powerful agriculture group that will be very difficult to budge. You can't really say to farmers 'you can't have cattle anymore'. You may get away with this in 1st world countries but poorer nations depend on cattle just to eat and survive.

As for the vegan alternative, this is heavily influenced by soya. The problem with this is that soya needs land to grow on and as a result much of the rainforest, which we need to combat global warming, is getting destroyed to facilitate soya plantations.

So the situation becomes even more tricky. Then you have the all-powerful lobbying oil groups and all the industry and jobs that they provide. You also have a car industry that is hell bent on promoting hydrogen (laughably derived from oil) rather than water.

Perhaps technology is the way forward but a lifestyle change will be necessary and consumerism may have to take a side step.

There is hope though and scientists are working on an energy source that could solve our problems and allow us to get all our needs from water - nuclear fusion.

I have included a link to an article on nuclear fusion and just how revolutionary it will be. Although mining our moon my have devastating unforeseen on Earth.

Nuclear Fusion

When you look at all of these problems you wonder how can anything be resolved. It takes incredible skill to tiptoe around all this minefield and to step on one could mean political suicide. But it can be done and it will.

There is no question that life will not go on regardless of Global Warming and the planet will eventually right itself - the big question though is will the human race still be around?

We have been around for a couple of thousand years. The dinosaurs lived for 160 million years. I think we can give them a run for their money. Don't you?

CyberCelt said...

@john-I enjoyed both of your comments. I am following you on Twitter.