By Matthew Knott in Copenhagen
After two weeks of around the clock negotiations and the participation of over a hundred of world leaders, the Copenhagen climate change summit has ended in failure, producing a flimsy political agreement far weaker than even the most pessimistic observers expected at the start of the talks.
The agreement – hastily cobbled together on the last day of the talks by 28 nations, including host Denmark, the US and Australia – drew fierce criticism by developing countries left out of the meetings, claiming rich countries had staged a “coup détat” of the UN process.
Tuvalu, Venezuela, Bolivia and several African nations had already signalled in the final official plenary session that they would not support the accord. If the deal dies on the UN conference floor – as it will if only one nation votes against it – then it esentially amounts to a glorified press release. At the time of writing it appears, after an objection by Nicaragua, that the accord will be included with the other texts as a mere “informal” or “miscellaneous” document.
Copenhagen was supposed to lay the foundations for a new international climate change treaty to be signed in Mexico next year – one that would, unlike the Kyoto Protocol, include the pledges of the world´s biggest greenhouse gas emitters, the US and China, in a legally-binding agreement.
But, in a decision that has already infuriated environmentalists around the world, the “Copenhagen Accord” does not include any mandate, or even an aspiration, to ever develop a new legally-binding climate change treaty.
The accord commits nations to keeping the global temperature rise to under two degrees, but does not specify the level of emissions reductions that will be needed to achieve this goal. A leaked UN analysis yesterday revealed that the targets currently on the table would lead to a temperature rise of over 3 degrees.
The final agreement represents a significant watering down of draft texts leaked to the media during the final day of the summit. One draft committed developed nations, as a group, to reducing their emissions by 80 per cent by 2050. Another included the goal of signing a legally-binging treaty at COP16 in Mexico. Both of these commitments were cut out of the final version.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said eleventh hour negotiations over the text by world leaders including himself, Barack Obama, Gordon Brown and Nicholas Sarkozy, had saved the summit from “catastrophic collapse”.
“We have achieved genuine progress and a genuine step forward,” he told reporters. “This is the first time ever developed and developing nations have committed to a two degree Celsius rise.”
The agreement also includes the promise of mobilising $100 billion a year by 2020 to help developing countries’ mitigation and adaptation efforts.
The willingness of developing nations to open their overseas-sponsored emissions reduction activities to oversight by international bodies was also a breakthrough, he said.
The annex of the agreement lists an emissions reduction pledge of Australia of 5 to 15 per cent on 2000 levels by 2020. Mr Rudd said the final target would be announced by February.
US President Barack Obama arrived in Copenhagen early Saturday morning and quickly joined drafting discussions with other world leaders. Neither the Premier of China, nor the Prime Minister of India attended these meetings, sending diplomats and ambassadors instead.
During the afternoon Obama then held meetings with the “Basic Group” – China, India, Brasil and South Africa – who eventually agreed to sign the accord.
President Obama described the accord as a “meaningful and unprecedented” agreement to tackle climate change. Both he and Mr Rudd admitted that much work will be needed in coming years to bring commitments in line with what the science demands to avoid disastrous global warming.
Nnimmo Bassey, Chair of Friends of the Earth International, said: “Copenhagen has been an abject failure. Justice has not been done. By delaying action, rich countries have condemned millions of the world’s poorest people to hunger, suffering and loss of life as climate change accelerates.”
76 Comments
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@41 Tom, did you notice how the words ‘a’ and ‘clue’ in my post @21 were green? That’s a thing called a ‘hyperlink’. Try clicking on it (actually them; there are two of them). You might learn something. You might also find this web thingy works rather better if you take this concept on board more generally, too.
Hansen has been roundly castigated for his pudding overegging on sea level rise by SL change specialists in the geophysical community. There’s a good reason why your citation is of a blog report of a submitted mss – i.e. it was never accepted for peer-reviewed publication. Those phrases “let us say” “can not prove” and “I am confident” should give you a clue (another one!) as to why.
Mark, #51
This over-egging problem is huge. I see many prominent environmentalists doing it, but from my perspective given mitigation failure, climate change is only going to be a serious problem at the end of my lifetime. By the end of my children’s lifetime it’s going to be well on the way to catastrophe. A real boiled frog problem.
Neither our psychology or the political process are built to deal with such long term threats, which leads to the delusional idiots on one hand, and the over-eggers on the other hand. The relatively few people who are concerned in the middle then run the risk of seeming disengaged. I have no idea how to deal with this problem.
My PhD is in Philosophy . . . so perhaps I can have a word to say about the logic being used (or misused) in this thread.
In short: kdkd you’ve been soundly beaten. JamesK has stayed within the bounds of reasoned argument . . you have not.
I suspect there is evidence in your writings of an uncomfortable sense of the shame attached to having one’s most cherished beliefs overturned when they seemed completely secure and beyond reproach.
@BeautifulWorld
Nice and succinctly put.
BeautifulWorld:
This must be some logical approach informed by solipsism. At least that’s what I can assume from the failure to back your assertion up.
Patronising believers and denialists. How grating. Hansen was talking about tipping points and clathrates and methane in Siberian tundra and exponential rate of change in sea level rise from a very very low base. “Exponential” – go and look that up genius.
The web has a universe of cr*p on it as well as some gems. I mean look at your jabbering. In short I doubt you are my intellectual or moral equal. Google my resume and judge for yourself champ. In any case the chief of NASA climate work puts you and me in the shade, that’s a safe bet.
@JamesK
“Man made (or not) runaway global warming is not the fact.”
It does not have to be “fact” as we have both said it cannot be proven as there is no way of providing a controlled experiment.
“It is based on a complex theory (not a single theory and all with many assumptions) that on some computer models is projected to cause runaway global warming.”
Well that and the small fact of overall global temperature increases- see Possums neat graph for that one. And the other inescapable fact that we are pumping thousands of tons of CO2 intot the atmosphere at rates previsouly only associated with major volcanic events, that by the way triggered global warming….
“Yours is the fallacy of demanding negative proof of me of a complex computer modeling projection of an unproven complex theory (in an open system).”
No mine is simply taking the conservative view that if there is a reasonable chance that AGW is real then it is reasonable to respond with a view to reduce CO2 emmissions. IF AGW is not real, then we live in a cleaner environment, if on the other hand it is real, we have saved possibly billions of lives.
“Some seriously respected scientists deny the theory. I do agree that most, although perhaps to lesser extent than the fearmongering IPCC, do accept it.”
Again so you essentially are saying that whilst most respected scientists believe in AGW you will not because “a lesser extent” do not- that is not science, that is faith
“However I see many blatantly unscientific remarks by supposed scientists. I see dissenting scientists railroaded and abused. I see illegality and unethical behaviour. I see pecuniary and power vested interests. All prior to Climategate.”
And precisely the same argument can be made against denier “science” and more so. Please do not try and convince me that the “pecuniary and power vested interests” on the climate change front have anything like the political and financial power of Coal and Oil cartels.
To understand the possible consequences but to recommend doing nothing, well I believe you summed it up best…
“That is nonsensical.”
@Beautiful World
Where is the hole in my logic?
oldskool,
presumably BW wants the conditions for accepting anthropogenic global warming to be provided by deductive proof. If you accept the premise that a logical proof is necessary, then this case is bullet proof.
However, as no logical proof is possible, and we have to rely on statistical experiments underlying observations with no real control conditions then if you accept the premises, you deny that anthropogenic global warming is possible.
In other words, a convenient, circular, delusional argument designed which conveniently maintains the fiction that there is not and can not be a problem.
So Oldschool if I tell you that I have a theory which fits past observations and this theory, when computer modeled with many variables which are given best guess weightings, predicts your ugly and premature death, you’ll believe me?
You’ll believe me although too complex to explain, it is critical you believe me as I inform you that I also know the solution?
You’ll believe me when I say that in order to save yourself you must give me 10% of your annual income immediately and ongoing as there is no time to lose and you must also henceforth live under my Droit de Seigneur?
Will you be ‘prudent’ and give me your dosh and your freedom?
If so there’s a queue behind you of folks that want to sell you a bridge.
Aah, so its a variant of the “models are wrong” delusional argument. Putting aside that the E&E paper itself is a very crude observational model with a misleading conclusion, here’s the best summary I’ve found that attacks this ridiculous solispsistic argument:
http://www.grist.org/article/climate-models-are-unproven/
Having run some of my own observational models on climate data, it looks to me that co2 accounts for about 80% of warming between 1980 and the present, but only accounted for about 25% of warming in the early 20th century.
So it’s up to the reader what to believe, some innuendo from JamesK who clearly has a climate change delusional’s agenda, or the results from multiple independent models which have been refined over a 150 year time period.
@kyky
Pity you can’t find them though.
Or the questionable GIGO data.
Would’ve thought it easy stuff for a stats man like yourself?
I prefer hard scientific evidence to made up shit and fairytales.
But I guess for some it’s a job.
You should tell us about it some time.
Trying to resist the temptation to reply to crap like #62 is hard. Fortunately MDM and her ilk rely on assertion and avoid evidence, so there’s not really much to say. Hopefully Crikey will bring in some kind of community lead moderation in the new year so MDM’s abusive rubbish gets buried democratically.
kdkd;
I’m not looking for deductive proof – or proof of any kind. My concern is that you use arguments that are logically fallacious. For example, when you say that . .
Energy and environment is an extremely suspect journal. It publishes lots of low quality stuff as it’s motivated by political point scoring rather than scientific discovery.. .
. . you are ignoring the fact that the very same thing can be said about journals controlled by CRU and Co.
To build any argument on the premise of journal integrity when you’ve just discredited another person for using the same methodolgy, is not a sound way of going about making your case.
I’ll not bore everyone, at least not yet, but they are other fallacies evident in your work.
Oh dear, a humanities student. Your argument only works when there’s nothing to distinguish one truth from another. Which is fine in some branches of the humanities. However when we’re being scientists we have some stringent rules which support a progress towards truth. Karl Popper is usually the philosopher that’s mentioned in this part of the conversation, but my personal favourite is Paul Feyarbrand who wrote a book called “Against Method” (subtitled ‘towards an anarchistic epistomology’ in the first edition).
There’s a simple logical flaw in the E&E article’s conclusion that’s quite easy to demonstrate (which is what I did). E&E have a history of publishing suspect stuff like this. For the most part they’re a social science journal though, so it’s understandable with an editor with political motivations who wants to go outside their expertise to score points, that they’ll get things wrong.
So really your argument is the conspiracy theory approach. That the scientific press (Nature, Science, the stable of respectable climate science journals and so on) collude to produce a body of knowledge that’s essentially ficitonal.
On the other hand there’s a 200 year history starting with the laws of thermodynamics, going through the theory of chemical bonds, and the rather more modern meteorology, geology and so on that provides a coherent body of knowledge which strongly suggests that continued emissions of co2 from fossil fuels have caused and will continue to cause changes in the earth’s energy balance resulting in increased temperature, ecosystem changes and so on.
I personally looked at multiple sources of raw temperature (including the delusionist’s favourite the UAI sattelite observations) data to satisfy myself that the above laws and theories were working together in a complex system in the way the theory would suggest it would.
So you know, its your socially constructed reality that relates to nothing to do with science, but to the social dynamics of journal publishers (conspiracy theory) versus a 200 year old coherent body of knowledge. The anthropogenic greenhouse effect isn’t like the ether. It’s something that has been shown to exist by observation for a good while now.
Based on that information, I guess it’s up to the readers to decide which is the more likely bet.
So JamesK now the truth is out;
“You’ll believe me when I say that in order to save yourself you must give me 10% of your annual income immediately and ongoing as there is no time to lose and you must also henceforth live under my Droit de Seigneur?”
NO because YOU are a single someone suspect fool, but to use your own words;
“Some seriously respected scientists deny the theory. I do agree that most, although perhaps to lesser extent than the fearmongering IPCC, do accept it.”
Comparing “seriously respected scientists” (your words) with snake oil salesman, that is class!
YOU have so far proven to be happy to believe the arguments that say there is nothing wrong. So you would have been one of the many cutting down the last of the trees on Easter Island (they’re only trees), eating the last of the Moa’s on NZ (They’ll be plenty for everyone!)
This is the rambling shifting argument of a petulant child being told they can’t have things their own way, and as I pointed out previously, for this you are a fool.
kdkd;
I wouldn’t use the word ‘fictional’ to account for the articles appearing in journals under the authority of the coterie of warming alarmists. I would say they are complicit in pretending that there is a consensus of opinion.
It may come as a shock to you, but science is done by humans and that’s why an understanding of human behaviour, which philosophers have carried out for 2500 years, is important for scientists themselves to grasp lest they begin to think they have the absolute truth about reality.
No doubt you’ve read the Robert Higg’s brilliant article on “peer review” . . but for those who haven’t yet read it, here’s something to wet your appetite.
He is advising young research students on how to cope with rejection of their proposals:
As I have always counseled young people whose work was rejected, seemingly on improper or insufficient grounds, the system is a crap shoot. Personal vendettas, ideological conflicts, professional jealousies, methodological disagreements, sheer self-promotion, and a great deal of plain incompetence and irresponsibility are no strangers to the scientific world; indeed, that world is rife with these all-too-human attributes. In no event can peer review ensure that research is correct in its procedures or its conclusions. The history of every science is a chronicle of one mistake after another. In some sciences these mistakes are largely weeded out in the course of time; in others they persist for extended periods; and in some sciences, such as economics, actual scientific retrogression may continue for generations under the misguided (but self-serving) belief that it is really progress.
At any given time, consensus may exist about all sorts of matters in a particular science. In retrospect, however, that consensus is often seen to have been mistaken. As recently as the mid-1970s, for example, a scientific consensus existed among climatologists and scientists in related fields that the earth was about to enter a new ice age. Drastic proposals were made, such as exploding hydrogen bombs over the polar icecaps (to melt them) or damming the Bering Strait (to prevent cold Arctic water from entering the Pacific Ocean), to avert this impending disaster. Well-reputed scientists, not just uninformed wackos, made such proposals. How quickly we forget.”
Higgs has 39 years experience as a University Professor, as a peer reviewer for more than thirty professional journals, and as a reviewer of research proposals for the National Science Foundation.
What, to you, appears to be a coherent body of knowledge, may well, be seen in the future, as a load of nonsense.
@Oldskool
Hmmm. That’s your opinion but I can’t see it grounded in any rational argument rather merely an ad hominem rant.
I’ll happily let your ‘argument’ rest on its laurels….. or should that be thorns?
@k2d2
“…Hopefully Crikey will bring in some kind of community lead moderation in the new year so MDM’s abusive rubbish gets buried democratically…”
65 kdkd
Posted December 23, 2009 at 12:36 am | Permalink
Oh dear, a humanities student.
I hope this is the kind of puerile rubbish that will be moderated in future?
“…when we’re being scientists…”
A statistician is not a ‘scientist’.
YOU are not a ‘scientist’.
You model other peoples data to reach a pre-determined conclusion and, in the case of AGW, can’t even manipulate the dataset to confirm nor predict the historical record.
Sadly, like most statisticians, you more than likely manipulate that data to confirm your inviolate hypothesis.
And then you complain when everyone doesn’t fall in lockstep behind your powerful deductive reasoning which is largely ignorant of even the most basic scientific tenets.
“…Fortunately MDM and her ilk rely on assertion and avoid evidence…”
Time and again I have demanded evidence from you and the likes of Sanderson and Dunne et al. and not one of you has provided anything even remotely resembling evidence.
Instead I get comedic links to wikipedia and realclimate.
Considering your overwhelming orthodoxy toward the affirmative case, why is this such a difficult task for you?
If AGW was so incontrovertible the data, methodology and conclusions supporting a global call to action would all freely available.
Where is it?
Why doesn’t Crikey have an AGW Factbook that has links to all the data (trees, temperatures, oceans, etc..); all the theories; all the conclusions; all the peer-reviewed journals; ALL the arguments in ONE PLACE.
This is supposed to be the greatest calamity man has ever faced; yet I can get more information about Britney Spears’ breakfast order last Tuesday week than I can about AGW.
Tell me why that is?
There should be a one-stop Smithsonian-like repository of information on this subject.
Where is it?
Why has no-one deemed this to be an important enough a task to ensure the future of the planet?
Instead, we get eminent and vested scientists faking and hiding data; conflicting datasets; character assassinations of ‘denialists’; burying of non-consensus research and the wholesale corruption of the peer review process.
Why the need for all this treachery and skullduggery for something that should be so self-evident?
If you believe yourself to be a ‘scientist’ you should be friggin’ embarrassed by the disgraceful behaviour of those who consider themselves as such.
Your unwillingness to speak out against them is an admission of your complicity and a tacit support of their agenda and as a ‘scientist’ you should be throughly ashamed.
Beautiful World
For the most part your post was of questionable relevance. However this bit amused me.
The reason that it amused me is that our industrial society is built on engineering advances essentially two bits of complementary scientific theory, classical mechanics and quantum mechanics. Although climate science is a complex, it’s individual components are fairly simple well established parts of these two theories.
And the peer review process is a bit more subtle than you state. Take the same paper structured in two different ways. One will be rejected for being too radical, restate it but with essentially the same content and it will be fine.
Sounds like an argument by social construction (conspiracy theory) and solipsism to me. Your background is clearly not in philosophy of science anyway, that is clear.
Most Delusional Mama
By the most pedantic of criteria I am neither a statistician or a scientist, yet I do both, and earn a living from both these things. Now the E&E paper JamesK showed was a good example of badly explained misleadingly concluded statistics.
What nonsense. You clearly have no understanding, experience or interest in science, otherwise you would not jump to either of these two conclusions.
It is. You’re clearly not looking very hard. This stuff is quite tricky and takes effort. Which is why we mostly rely on secondary sources. And why you with no interest and apparently limited intelligence lose patience and go with the conclusion that’s psychologically most palatable to you.
The rest of your paranoid rant is even more valueless and I can safely ignore it.
JamesK #68
Now that’t the pot calling the kettle black. I found both your and oldskool’s posts rather incoherent. But yours appear to be a classic form of psychological denial with shifting goalposts and selective paranoia.
Anyhow that E&E paper you showed us, I demonstrated that the conclusion was flawed quite clearly, and all I got was some ad hominem attacks saying that I was a fraud and a liar. Fortunately for me people without an ideological axe to grind and the interest in looking at Figure 2 will be able to see that your view is incoherent and inconsistent.
kdkd;
Scientists, and you yourself, are all-too human to be trusted to claim absolute knowledge on any particular issue, especially one that demands of humanity a revolutionary change.
From Higg’s again:
“In following the discussion of global warming and related issues in the press and the blogosphere, I have been struck repeatedly by the assumption or expression of certain beliefs that strike me as highly problematical. Many writers who are not scientists themselves are trading on the prestige of science and the authority of scientists. Reference to “peer-reviewed research” and to an alleged “scientific consensus” are regarded as veritable knock-out blows by many commentators. Yet many of those who make such references appear to me to be more or less ignorant of how science as a form of knowledge-seeking and scientists as individual professionals operate, especially nowadays, when national governments―most notably the U.S. government―play such an overwhelming role in financing scientific research and hence in determining which scientists rise to the top and which fall by the wayside”.
If you agree with the sort of bullying being carried out by the coterie of well funded warming alarmists, then you have much to learn about what constitutes human reason and well-being.
You are obviously not a follower of Feyerabend when he recognised – and was horrified by – the potential of science to stamp out the diversity of human thought and culture; or when he highlighted the problem of there being no separation of Science and State as there is regarding Religion and State.
Nor, it seems, have you grasped Kuhn’s correct assessment that “Whenever you get two people interpreting the same data in different ways . . that’s metaphysics”.
Or Popper: “The history of Science is everywhere speculative . . and . . . Since Scientists get subsidies for their work, science isn’t exactly what it should be. There is a certain corruption, unfortunately. But I don’t talk about that”.
One thing he did talk about was : “If Scientists believe too much in their own theories, they might stop seeking truth.”
And finally, Higgs: “Climate scientists are the best qualified people to talk about climate science, but they have no qualifications to talk about public policy, law, or individual values, rates of time preference, and degrees of risk aversion. In talking about desirable government action, they give the impression that they are either fools or charlatans, but they keep talking―worst of all, talking to doomsday-seeking journalists―nevertheless.”
To base a revolution on the say-so of a coterie of well-funded scientists in the pay of governments, is irrational (and thats why the alarmist appeal has been so emotional charged . . for one thing Governments know above everything else is how to stampede masses of people into approving or accepting ill-advised actions).
Climate Science is in its infancy. What it may reveal to us, in due course, and if it is conducted openly and honestly (as openly and honestly as possible), is something very different from what you take, right now, as an article of faith. And do not think for a minute that you alone have escaped the bounds of human epistemological limits. Your set of beliefs are grounded in a faith in science as the provider of such certainty that we must change how we live to accord with this science.
I’m not prepared to change in this way because I think it is anti-life, opposed to human well-being. To be convinced that this is not so, I will need far greater evidence of trustworthiness from scientists – a trustworthiness that has suffered badly at the hands of the alarmists. At this moment, when I read so many individual scientists speaking out against the view’s of the coterie who speak through and under the protection of agencies and journals secured in the faith, I am on their side. I am a libertarian to this degree: I will support the right and value of every scientist speaking with reason and oppose any form of censorship imposed; and censorship has been imposed all in the name of rejecting ‘poor science’. Umm . . what is Klaus the President of the Czech Republic warning us of . . ?
BeautifulWorld #73
I disagree with you. The components of climate science are not in their infancy, and there is a 200 year history of refinement of the theory. Major milestones in the early history were Newton and Ahrennius. Bohr’s model of the atom is also a significant contributor to the theory.
But I don’t read much about science in your posts – I think your position suggests you deem it of secondary importance to human processes. There’s the problem – I do read strong suggestions of the anthropogenic fallacy, notably argued against by Gallelio. Face it, there’s a very strong and coherent body of knowledge spanning hundreds of years that needs to be overturned in order for us to be able to seriously challenge the theory of human caused global warming. Secondly we have multiple independent lines of evidence, including some that emenate from “skeptics” (notably the UAI data) that support that it is happening, at the rate we would expect given proportional inputs of greenhouse gases (with suggestions of the beginnings of positive feedback mechanisms).
So I don’t buy your relativist humanist position here. There are too many consistencies, and too many supported hypotheses in the body of knowledge accumulated to date to suggest that we’re engaging in something like the search for the ether.
The faith stuff I don’t really buy, unless you’re claiming that logic and mathematics are some how faith based. f(x) != 0 is the fundamental null hypothesis we’re looking at here, and there’s very very little evidence around at present to support that in the context of anthropogenic global warming.
@ kdkd
Also am happy to leave the record prima facie of our discourse leading up to me finally calling you out on your dishonesty, lies and fraudulent claims.
JamesK I have no idea what that lawyer speak means. I suspect it means you have something to hide.
I think you are suffering from wanting to cause a distraction. The dishonesty in the conclusion of the E&E paper, or at least the way you spun it is obvious to anyone with a modicum of statistical literacy by the way.
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