Editorial: More than politics at stake in climate talks

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OPINION: Last night, NZ time, representatives of 192 countries gathered in the Danish capital of Copenhagen for the start of a two-week conference devoted to global warming.

Depending on your point of view, the conference represents either a last chance for humanity to save the planet from a man-made apocalypse, or the culmination of a giant fraud.

If the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is to be believed, the planet is warming, sea levels are rising and humans are to blame. The panel, a United Nations body, is forecasting temperature rises of between 1.1 degrees celsius and 6.4C this century and sea-level rises of between 18 centimetres and 59cm – sufficient to cause drought and coastal flooding and render some island countries uninhabitable.

If the sceptics are to be believed, fluctuations in the planet's temperature are normal and there is no conclusive proof that human activity is to blame for the changes in the past 50 years.

Notwithstanding the recent publication of emails suggesting that some climate-change scientists have sought to suppress data that does not conform to their theories, the weight of scientific evidence is on the side of the climate-change believers.

However, even if the sceptics are eventually proved correct, it makes sense to take a precautionary approach. If the sceptics are right, the cost of reducing carbon emissions will be measured in lower standards of living. Consumers will have to pay more for electricity and fuel, goods will be more expensive and inhabitants of developed countries such as New Zealand will have to compensate inhabitants of poorer countries for reducing their use of the polluting technologies with which developed countries built their wealth. If the sceptics are wrong, the cost will be drought, famine, the destruction of productive land and, as an editorial published by 56 newspapers today says, the drowning of whole countries.

The challenge facing negotiators is to find a formula that rich and poor countries can agree to. An agreement to which the world's biggest emitters, China and the United States, are not party to is an agreement not worth the paper it is written on. So too is an agreement from which other developing countries exclude themselves.

There is little prospect the negotiators will achieve a binding agreement in the next two weeks, but there is hope that the talks will establish the framework for an agreement next year, hope that has been fuelled by the sudden increase in the number of world leaders, New Zealand's John Key among them, who have recently changed their travel plans so they can be in Copenhagen for the final two days of the talks.

They should bear in mind that the conference is about much more than domestic politics. Reducing carbon emissions will cause financial hardship and expose them to criticism, but failing to do so could irrevocably change the course of human history. According to the IPCC there is little time. It is forecasting rain-fed food production to decline by up to 50 per cent in parts of Africa by 2020. The world's leaders must be brave as well as wise.

- © Fairfax NZ News

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Brent   #5   10:54 am Dec 11 2009

What I find amazing is that these so-called independent thinkersm have not given more thought to the more outlandish claims of the Climate Changers.

Like "The ice caps are melting and the sea will rise up to 1.5 metres".

And "Tuvalu and Kiribati are being inundated because of Climate Change".

Both are easily debunked through the basic principles of high-school physics. Try these 2 experiments and then explain to me why the great Climate Change scientists have a different explanation:

1. Fill a container with water and add some ice - lots of it - just like the sea ice floating at the poles. For this experiment, make sure the mixture is just on the point of overflowing. Either that or make an accurate mark of the level.

Now sit and watch it melt. Watch the water level. Does it increase or overflow?

No it doesn't. That's because ice is less dense than water (that's why it floats). That's also why the melted ice takes up slightly less space than the water the ice previously displaced.

2. You will need a long open-topped container for this one. Get it exactly level. Pour water in at one end and observe.

You will discover one of the basic principles of hydraulics - that water finds its own level.

Now think about the inundation of Tuvalu. Why is it that that country is being swamped but others are not? Sure some are higher, but their high tide mark hasn't risen at all while Tuvalu goes under.

Could it be that rather than the sea level rising, Tuvalu is sinking? Coral atolls are fragile and prone to damage through tectonic plate movement and erosion.

I haven't seen ANY journalist asking questions about these basics. I guess it's kind of like offering comment on the emperor's clothes. . .

Charles   #4   04:10 pm Dec 09 2009

Global Warming is a theory based on a multitude of variables and constants modelled by computers.

The accurate empirical knowledge falls over a small a period in time and this shows a warming trend, if the data collection and presentation has been done objectively and with no ideological impediment.

So for me global warming is a theory which speculates how things may turn out.

It has most definitely not been proved empirically.

Oh yes by the way deep down I wish for the development of alternative sources of energy and that we will have a more harmonious interaction with our world.

Ian McKinnon   #3   08:35 am Dec 09 2009

Has the editor's chair been taken over by a champion of the good for nothing UN? Most reasonable thinking people have had a gutsful of journalists' pro-manmade global warning attitudes. Rarely is anything published that is balanced. Thank God for Ian Wishart! Surely major advertisers will soon act with their feet.

Mark   #2   08:06 am Dec 09 2009

@1

Why are global warming skeptics always drawn to this type of story?

Is it because they know deep down that they are wrong?

Doug Matthews   #1   10:20 am Dec 08 2009

"the weight of scientific evidence is on the side of the climate-change believers".

This comment cannot be made without evidence, and no not just the evidence you want to use to push your socialist agenda, all evidence. To start with explain positive forcing, go on I dare you!

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