“World leaders say Copenhagen to be a steppingstone to final climate deal,” as I wrote on Sunday. Here is an excerpt from Time magazine’s take on the matter, “World Leaders Put Off a Climate Change Treaty,” by Bryan Walsh:
If there is a bright side, however, the deliberate downshift in expectations for Copenhagen could make it easier for world leaders, including Obama, to attend the summit and draft a stronger political agreement. In addition, diplomats could build out the framework of a future agreement, with the hope that, should the Senate pass carbon legislation early next year, a deal with real numbers could be finalized relatively quickly.
But there’s no getting around the fact that as the science of climate change grows more dire, the global political system seems increasingly unable to deal with that reality. “We don’t want a global suicide pact,” said Mohamed Nasheed, the president of the Maldives, a low-lying Indian Ocean nation that could be swamped by global warming – caused flooding. “We want a global survival pact.” But the world’s most influential leaders still aren’t ready for that.
Previous in TP Climate Progress
Everyday there is news that temperatures are increasing around the globe. However, winter still comes and parts of the globe are very cold. How does one reconcile with increasing heat trapping gases and cold temperatures. That is why there is a lot of skepticism about climate change.
How does one reconcile increasing greenhouse gases and cold temperatures in some regions at some times?
It’s called natural variation.
Expecting a monotonic increase in temperature is not at all rational.
I think it’s just a matter of definition; weather is not the same thing as climate. We have global climate change, not weather change. Weather always fluctuates. The overall global temperature is definitely rising. That doesn’t mean it will be hotter everywhere at the same time.
When you research the issue of climate change, it is very, very discouraging and disturbing! However, since reading the posts on this website, I realize that the world has changed tremendously these past several months, in trying to mitigate the problem! Considering what we left behind a year ago (the awful, awful dark period of the Bush/Cheney/Fossil Fuel Reign), it may have been a little too much to ask to have a 100% remedy from Obama. We’ve come a long way, Baby!
#1 rationalist: On Nov 14 on this site you can see a posting “Record highs out pace record lows…”
that clearly show that there are still record lows being set but far more (~2 to 1) record highs and that the shift is rising as one would expect for increasing overall temperature shifts of global warming. The operative word here is however that there is still record lows being set. You are confusing, as pointed out by others, weather for climate.
Joe — I think it would be great, and helpful, at some point if you did a post on the Russell-Einstein Manifesto. There are many parallels, and you can’t get a much more credible/”powerful” example than that. The “Manifesto” itself is short and powerful, and was signed by roughly a dozen amazing folks, almost all of them Nobel Prize winners. And, Bertrand Russell’s announcement was also moving. The Manifesto and the text of the announcement are readily available on the web.
Cheers,
Jeff
Joe, you wrote “They are increasingly ready to take action.” Ready is nothing, cuting actual GHG is urgent, and up to now we have been talking for years with no action. Again, no action on the global scale.
And the reality is that we are emitting daily increasing amount of GHG and those gases are increasing the likelihood of more severe damage to the global climate, and the possibility of catastrophic tipping-points.
What we see in the North pole region of rapid glacier melting is real and accelerating too. Every day emissions of GHG is making that worse too bringingh us closer to the point of no return.
Any delay is bringing more drastic suffering to humanity. I do not see any reason to be optimistic about the situation.
[JR: Actually, almost all the other rich countries but us are taking action -- and assuming we have a deal next year, then retty much every country in the world will be taking action. That is the reason to be optimistic. The science continues to be a reason not to be optimistic.]