What a shower!
Paul Melia in Copenhagen says that the climate change conference has been a complete shambles
Saturday December 19 2009
When the world's most famous climate change campaigner this week warned that the Arctic could be completely ice-free within five to seven years, the world sat up and listened.
Former US vice-president Al Gore told the UN Climate Change conference in Copenhagen that new research showed there was a 75pc chance that the entire north polar ice cap could be ice-free during the summer months.
This would result in the doomsday scenario of rising sea levels caused by global warming becoming reality within a decade.
But the nobel laureate, honoured for his work in highlighting the dangers of climate change, was wrong.
The climatologist whose work he relied on said he would "never" estimate such a dramatic scenario.
"It's unclear to me how this figure was arrived at," Dr Wieslav Maslowski from the US Naval Postgraduate School in California said. "I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this."
For the public already grappling with the introduction of a carbon tax -- and facing water bills and a congestion charge to help cut carbon dioxide emissions -- it's another reason not to trust the science and believe it's all a money-making racket from governments under unprecedented financial pressures.
It's been a bad few weeks for the "warmists" but good ones for the "deniers".
First, hacked emails were leaked from the University of East Anglia which suggested that scientists had manipulated data to prove that global warming was a man-made problem.
Then it emerged that UK civil servants had suppressed warnings that the noise generated by wind turbines -- which will help produce up to one-third of all Irish power by 2020 -- could damage people's health and disrupt sleep.
And while people inside the Bella Centre in the Danish capital were talking of helping the poor and looking after the planet, outside, the police were wielding their batons and tear gas and taking lumps out of protesters objecting to slow progress at the talks.
This week, leaders from 193 nations gathered in Copenhagen to try to hammer out a deal which will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and keep global temperature rises to no more than 2°C above pre-industrial levels.
It's not been a success.
The UN made a mess of organising the conference, booking a venue that holds 15,000 while registering 45,000 to attend.
This has resulted in long queues -- even with accreditation, it still takes over an hour to get in -- and it's bedlam inside. Thousands of people mill around mounting protests, others scurry to and from official meetings, and there's always someone engaging in passionate debate about what must be done.
Sceptics are invariably described as right wing, and lobbyists and press officers hold background briefings to tell journalists what's "really" going on.
The US, roundly criticised for not committing, spins it one way. The EU another. The world's poorest -- the G77 and China -- have another take, while in the background the talks about procedures and texts and commitments and finance rumble on.
The plan was to have agreement by Thursday night so leaders, including US President Barack Obama, could show up on Friday to sign-off amid a frenzy of media attention. But regardless of whatever decision finally emerges from Copenhagen, change is coming.
Ireland and the world is on a low-carbon path, but the climate change campaigners -- the non-governmental organisations, governments and lobby groups -- need to get their act together.
Already browbeaten by apocalyptic visions of a future plagued by extreme storms and drought, many people feel bullied for not being a committed "warmist".
The message is being sold but not necessarily bought -- half the US population don't believe in climate change.
Environmentalist Pat Finnegan says people know there's a problem.
"I remember sheltering during one of the rain storms last year and hearing a woman saying, 'Sure that's not Irish rain'," he says.
"This is precisely what climate change is -- a change in patterns of events. That means when it goes dry, it goes very dry. When it gets wet, it gets very wet. People who don't believe are quite entitled to that opinion, but I don't think they're being served by science.
"More than 3,500 of the world's top experts agree this is happening. The science has been accepted by even the most sceptical countries like Saudi Arabia and the US."
But every time an email is leaked or a mis-statement made, it's more fuel to the sceptics.
It's time for the powers that be to up their game. The public thinks that climate change means more costs. It does, at the beginning.
But once a home is retrofitted with better insulation and conserves heat, heating bills will fall, leading to savings over time. Appliances and cars will become more efficient and be cheaper to run.
Water charges will exist, but simple things like turning off the tap when brushing your teeth will save money.
Instead of paying to burn oil that ends up as gas in the atmosphere, wind and wave will provide cheap power -- this means lower bills.
And failure to act will -- the accepted science says -- be disastrous.
Only by convincing the public of the need for change will the world change. Failure to do that will mean it's not just Al Gore that's going to look stupid.
Irish Independent
