Other stories below: Andy Revkin explains the “Revkin” collection of climategate emails
David Longstreath/AP
China critical of Kyoto withdrawal plan
The plan to withdraw from Kyoto Protocol will severely mar the talking process at the UN climate conference in Durban, South Africa, the Chinese delegation told Xinhua on Tuesday.
It will further hurt the international community’s endeavor to cope with climate change, said Su Wei, deputy head of the Chinese delegation to the Durban conference and chief negotiator on climate change.
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The attempted withdrawal “will definitely add to the obstacles in our negotiation,” Su noted, in reference to reports about a recent decision by the Canadian cabinet.
Su said the Canadian delegation to the Durban conference had not yet clarified its stance.
“I learnt this message from the media,” he said.
Earlier in the day, Canadian media reported that Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s cabinet had already decided to withdraw from the agreement, and had planned to formally announce the decision after the Durban conference.
Top UN climate scientist lays out dangers of global warming, benefit of controlling pollution
The U.N.’s top climate scientist cautioned climate negotiators Wednesday that global warming is leading to human dangers and soaring financial costs, but containing carbon emissions will have a host of benefits.
Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, summarized a litany of potential disasters at a U.N. climate conference in the South African city of Durban. Although he gave no explicit deadlines, the implication was that time is running out for greenhouse gas emissions to level off and begin to decline.
Heat waves currently experienced once every 20 years will happen every other year by the end of this century, he said.
Coastal areas and islands are threatened with inundation by global warming, rain-reliant agriculture in Africa will shrink by half and many species will disappear. Within a decade, up to 250 million more people will face the stress of scarce water….
To stabilize carbon concentrations in the atmosphere would slow economic growth by 0.12 percent per year, he said, but those costs would be offset by improved health, greater energy security and more secure food supplies.
The ‘Revkin’ Collection in the Climate E-mail Release
Since Nov. 19, 2009, when someone unknown distributed a large batch of climate-related e-mail messages extracted from servers at the University of East Anglia, and now again with a newly released cache, I’ve noted that I appear repeatedly in the exchanges, both as a message author and subject. Here’s the search result for my name.
As a reporter covering climate science and policy in depth since 1988, I’d be ashamed if my name had not been in these documents. That would imply I wasn’t doing my job. In any case, all kinds of accusations and insinuations have flowed as a result. Check this search of Twitter for ‘revkin climategate’ for a sampler. Alana Goodman, an assistant online editor of Commentary, joined the crowd with a piece criticizing me earlier this week.
I reached her via Twitter last night and then emailed a longer reaction (which you can read at the end of this post). I also said I’d answer a few questions….
On bad media: There has been plenty of misinformation and/or disinformation on climate disseminated by the media over the years — much of it related to the AGW point above (conflating all climate science with flawed examples, or mashing up meanings). One case in point was George Will’s coverage of polar climate issues. Another was Time Magazine’s “Be Worried, Be Very Worried” cover story….
Q. In another e-mail you wrote, “the only discourse now is among folks who believe human-forced climate change is a huge problem…the ‘hotter’ voices are doing their job well. I’m doing mine.” From the context and the linked article, I take this to mean that your “job” was to inform the public that the only respectable discussions on climate change were going on between the “reasonable” AGW believers (you, in this case), and the extreme AGW believers – cutting out the skeptics completely. Is that what you were trying to say, or can you clarify?A. I find it hard to draw the same conclusion in looking at my coverage, which has long included the voices of researchers challenging the predominant line of thinking on climate science, among them Roger Pielke Sr., Richard Lindzen, who was quoted in the 2006 article you read, John Christy, Ivar Giaever (a Nobelist who rejects the science pointing to dangerous greenhouse warming) and others.
Corals near submarine springs offer global warming hints
Submerged springs along the Yucatan coast may offer a hint of what the coral reefs will look like in coming decades, as global warming inexorably increases concentrations of carbon dioxide in the world’s oceans.
The naturally low pH (a measure of acidity) in the water around the springs creates conditions similar to those that will result from the widespread acidification of surface waters that scientists expect to occur as the oceans absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
A team led by scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has been studying the submarine springs at Puerto Morelos near the Mesoamerican reef for the past three years.
In a paper published online Nov. 20 in the the journal Coral Reefs, the researchers reported that they found small, patchily distributed colonies of only a few species of corals, without the structurally complex corals that compose the framework of the nearby Mesoamerican Barrier Reef, one of the Caribbean’s largest coral reef ecosystems.
Qatar, Greenhouse Gas Titan, Will Host Next U.N. Climate Summit
The Persian Gulf nation of Qatar has been selected as the site of next year’s United Nations climate change meeting, edging out South Korea. The announcement came as this year’s meeting opened in Durban, South Africa, with delegates from 194 nations facing growing concerns about rising global temperatures and more frequent climate-related catastrophes.
The announcement from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change said that Qatar and South Korea would work closely to mold the agenda for next year’s meeting, known as the 18th annual Conference of the Parties, or COP 18. The meetings rotate among regions. The 2009 meeting was held in Copenhagen; last year’s meeting was in Cancún, Mexico.
The Math Changes on Light Bulbs
How many workers does it take to change a light bulb? Not as many as it used to.
And that is what’s making the difference in getting companies like Wal-Mart Stores Inc., GNC Corp. and Caesars Entertainment Corp. to shell out for advanced new lights.
Bulbs built around light-emitting diodes—semiconductors that produce bright light when zapped with electricity—last 10 times longer than conventional bulbs, meaning fewer ladders blocking frozen-food aisles or unsightly scaffolds towering in hotel lobbies as workers change blown-out bulbs. With energy savings not yet enough in some cases to cover the higher cost of the new bulbs, it’s lower maintenance costs that are getting sales across the finish line.
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Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
So here’s Revkin trying to defending himself against denialist criticism by claiming he is too “fair and balanced” in his treatment of legitimate science vs. crackpots. What a [snip] that man is.
Not exactly news — people in one of the wettest parts of India have a practice of growing living bridges that take generations to fully develop, and, with care can last 500 years. What a concept!
File it under Adaptation, at least. North Americans and Europeans might not be ready for grape vine or strangler fig bridges, but the climate might eventually “suggest” it.
Meghalayas’ Living Bridge
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apBO9pujP5E&feature=youtu.be
In my nonclinical, unprofessional, highly intuitive, Freudian influenced opinion, the symptoms are indicative of of the defense mechanism known as “Rationalization”. “Fair and Balanced” is often a euphemism for 50/50, when in fact, when applied to AGW, fair and balanced should be a 97/3 (warmist/denialist) weighted proposition.
When the Murdoch Evil Empire says ‘Fair and Balanced’ it is, in my opinion, a trademark Big Lie, repeated over and over so that it becomes accepted as truth, and uttered with devastating audacity and cynicism.
On Dot Earth, Revkin highlighted the criticism from Far Right Commentary, a denier store. That’s because the scientists’ remarks in the new Climategate release talk about what a complete asshole he has become, and he wants to appear to be fair.
History will judge Andy as the one who has done more to preserve the status quo than any of the denier shills like Singer and Watts, because Andy cloaks his denial of any disturbing climate science with a reasonable sounding cover story. That reassures those who don’t want to think, or care.
The denialist industry has any number of ‘niche markets’ for enterprising denialists, and a small number of scientists have jumped ship from rationality and the scientific method to join the gravy train. I’m sure they put the thirty pieces of silver to good use.
China could salvage Kyoto by agreeing to join it. It needs to.
China is already above some European nations in per-capita climate damage…even accounting for exported goods. IEA just estimated that China is on track to pass EU per-capita average in a few years and will become the all-time biggest total contributor to climate pollution in a couple decades. Coal plants last a long time, China.
Time for China to get in the game while we all still have a chance.
As I’ve said a few times, while Kyoto is being destroyed by the USA, Canada, Australia and the usual suspects, now joined by the EU under Polish leadership, China is being set up as the fall-guy. The Western MSM, as ever in full propaganda, service-to-power mode, hides the fact that China represents the interests here of the global majority, who, in the Western discourse, are ‘unpersons’ fit only to be bullied or intimidated by the Western elect. Demonising China deflects attention from the West, and is just part of an ongoing campaign to prepare Western publics for a coming confrontation with China, whose rise is simply unacceptable to Western elites.
Revkin’s [snip] is actually boasting about his promotion of blatantly dishonest deniers like Lindzen and Christy.
One big problem I have with reporting, and the climate activists are too blame more than the media, is the statement that China is the biggest polluter.
That is like saying Sally Smith is reckless with her spending because she is going into debt faster buying a car to get to work than her parents who are $300,000 underwater on their debts from going on holiday, buying boats, ATVs, clothes, eating out, drinking, but are forced to live within their income because their credit is so bad no one will loan them a penny more.
No nation on earth is a bigger polluter than the US, and no nation will ever be a bigger polluter than the US, no matter how much faster they pollute today or over the next two decades.
If the US ever cuts its rate of pollution to allow China a chance to catch up, China will quickly reduce its pollution because the US will reduce pollution because sustainable energy is cheaper than fossil fuels.
China understands very well the huge advantage the US has from four centuries of almost unrestricted polluting, with only four decades of half-hearted limitations on pollution.
Minor quibble. Last time I looked UK lead the US in all-time emissions.
dick, I simply cannot believe that is true. Please enlighten me further. The USA was only a few decades behind the UK in industrialising, and was soon vastly greater in production. It knocked down a hell of a lot more trees, too.
China overtook the US in 2007 as the biggest CO2 emitter, by country.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/jun/19/china.usnews
China’s rate per capita is still behind US emissions per capita. However with one seventh the world population (over 14%), China emits over 23% of the world’s carbon dioxide.
In legacy historic CO2 emissions, China is still behind the US.
You are totally correct. The poor world absolutely insists that the historical burden of greenhouse emissions, that made the West rich, be considered. The West, with its trademark intimidation, bullying and contempt for the non-Western untermenschen (not members of the ‘international community’ by racist definition)is using the climate talks in order to impose perpetual poverty and subservience on the poor world, and, with brutal cynicism and conscienceless mendacity, is blaming China for the impasse that they have deliberately created.
Ottawa has set a record for the warmest November on record, and that 30-day burst of heat has also powered us to the warmest fall on record……… The average high temperature in November was an astonishing 9.9 Celsius — so far from the normal monthly high of 4.8 C that it doesn’t even look like Ottawa.
“It’s not even close,” said David Phillips, Environment Canada’s senior climatologist.
“In this business I get excited by 0.1 of a degree, when you break a record. This is incredible.” The five-degree difference looks like “a different season, or a different part of Canada. It’s phenomenal when you average 30 days.”
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Ottawa+shatters+weather+record+with+phenomenal+warm+November/5790058/story.html
“What was interesting also is it would have been the driest November on record except for Tuesday’s rainfall.”
Same for large parts of Europe. Temperatures in November were way above average, causing some flowers to start blooming and other wacky phenomena.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15107243
Belgium has had its driest November on record and is on track for top-five warmest years (a record is still possible – previous records 2007 and 2006).
OK. That wasn’t the right link.
I got my stuff here:
http://www.hln.be/hln/nl/5096/Durban-2011/article/detail/1355018/2011/11/29/Appelbloesems-wespen-en-paasbloemen-natuur-van-slag-door-abnormaal-warme-herfst.dhtml
Forget about ‘The Rapture’-the climate Rupture is at hand.
http://unfccc4.meta-fusion.com/kongresse/cop17/templ/play.php?id_kongresssession=4317&theme=unfccc
A discussion from Durban about the ethics of the climate change disinformation campaign.
As the climate talks are underway in Durban, this fall is on track to become the warmest on record in the Barents Region. The average temperature for September, October and November in Tromsø, northern Norway has been 6,6 degrees Celsius. The former record of 6 degrees for the same period was back in 1938, according the Norwegian Meteorological Institute.
http://www.barentsobserver.com/the-heat-is-on.4990862-116320.html
Over northern Russia January to October temperatures were about 4.0 Celsius (7.2 Fahrenheit) above average in places. Nearby Finland had its hottest summer in 200 years.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/8922414/Durban-Climate-Change-Conference-2011-caps-decade-tying-record-for-heat.html
Smart City: Barcelona will erste sich selbst versorgende Stadt werden http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.heise.de%2Fnewsticker%2Fmeldung%2FSmart-City-Barcelona-will-erste-sich-selbst-versorgende-Stadt-werden-1387668.html
Smart City: Barcelona wants first to be self-sustaining city