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China Insists West Must Go Further to Tackle Climate Change


Environment  (tags: CO2emissions, pollution, world, China, environment, climate-change, globalwarming, humans )

Cal
- 115 days ago - telegraph.co.uk
China has insisted that rich countries should commit to large cuts in their emissions of greenhouse gases, while declining to put a ceiling on its own emissions.
Comments

Cynthia Davis (228)
Wednesday August 5, 2009, 8:11 pm
Itsn't that like the pot calling the kettle black.
 

marilyn s. (101)
Thursday August 6, 2009, 9:06 am
EWWWWW...I'm not going to even go here guys...don't think anyone would like what I have to say about this one!!!

BUT...China, most certainly would never be able to TELL ME ONE SINGLE THING AFTER EVERYTHING THEY HAVE DONE!!! NOW I'M just plain MAD...
 

Judy Cross (83)
Thursday August 6, 2009, 9:18 am
I think it is very funny. China isn't blowing the whistle on the scam involving CO2, but they are not going to drink the koolaid either. They know what nonsense has been passed off as science...it is all based on bad computer models and false assumptions....but since under Kyoto China and India got to sell carbon credits, I think they won't say anything about what a fraud the idea of human caused climate change is until it is clear that they won't get any benefit from the scam.

Open Letter to the Council of the American Physical Society
http://www.icecap.us/
As physicists who are familiar with the science issues, and as current and past members of the American Physical Society, we the undersigned urge the Council to revise its current statement on climate change as follows, so as to more accurately represent the current state of the science: Greenhouse gas emissions, such as carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, accompany human industrial and agricultural activity. While substantial concern has been expressed that emissions may cause significant climate change, measured or reconstructed temperature records indicate that 20th - 21st century changes are neither exceptional nor persistent, and the historical and geological records show many periods warmer than today. In addition, there is an extensive scientific literature that examines beneficial effects of increased levels of carbon dioxide for both plants and animals.

Studies of a variety of natural processes, including ocean cycles and solar variability, indicate that they can account for variations in the Earth’s climate on the time scale of decades and centuries. Current climate models appear insufficiently reliable to properly account for natural and anthropogenic contributions to past climate change, much less project future climate. The APS supports an objective scientific effort to understand the effects of all processes - natural and human—on the Earth’s climate and the biosphere�s response to climate change, and promotes technological options for meeting challenges of future climate changes, regardless of cause.
 

serge vrabec (253)
Thursday August 6, 2009, 4:45 pm
They have every right to EXPECT more cooperation from us , after all we started it. It is a relief and very reassuring to see china coming to the table . One must realize that without WORLD participation we will consume ourselves to death. Its almost comical that we would do it, but we are barely off that road right now. Go China , Go world. Thx Cal

LOL Judy, get real.
 

Judy Cross (83)
Thursday August 6, 2009, 5:59 pm
Get real yourself....

"Senator Steve Fielding recently asked the [Australian] Climate Change Minister Penny Wong why human emissions can be blamed for global warming, given that air temperatures peaked in 1998 and began a cooling trend in 2002, while carbon dioxide levels have risen five per cent since 1998."
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14504
 

Chris Otahal (447)
Thursday August 6, 2009, 6:56 pm
More Icecaps prapaganda BLOG (unreviewed OPINION - NOT peer reviewed science) garbage from Judy - what a supprise - and she talks about poor science LMAO!!!

Here is what the PEER REVIEWED SCIENCE says:

Models are unreliable

The skeptic argument..."Models solve the equations of fluid dynamics and do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields, farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in. They are full of fudge factors that are fitted to the existing climate, so the models more or less agree with the observed data. But there is no reason to believe that the same fudge factors would give the right behaviour in a world with different chemistry, for example in a world with increased CO2 in the atmosphere," he states. (Source: Freeman Dyson)

What the science says...

There are two major questions in climate modelling - can they accurately reproduce the past and can they successfully predict the future?

details:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-models.htm

Did global warming stop in 1998?

The skeptic argument...For the years 1998-2005, temperature did not increase. And yes, this eight-year period of temperature stasis did coincide with society's continued power station and SUV-inspired pumping of yet more CO2 into the atmosphere. (Source: There IS a problem with global warming... it stopped in 1998 by Bob Carter)

What the science says...
While 1998 was an unusually hot year due to El Nino, the long term trend since 1998 is still that of warming.

details:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-stopped-in-1998.htm

Positives and negatives of global warming

The skeptic argument..."Two thousand years of published human histories say that warm periods were good for people. It was the harsh, unstable Dark Ages and Little Ice Age that brought bigger storms, untimely frost, widespread famine and plagues of disease." (source: Sid Avery)


What the science says...

The best way to put this in perspective is to compare all the positives of global warming to the negatives (note - some of the positives are tongue in cheek):

(note especially the links to agricultural articles - IN PEER REVIEWED ARTICLES)

details:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-positives-negatives.htm
 

Koo J. (92)
Thursday August 6, 2009, 10:35 pm
China has a point - historically, the West has been responsible for creating more emissions. The article also says that the US is holding out on reducing emissions and that China is taking steps to reduce emissions - so it's not exactly black and white. The rich western countries definitely need to be cutting emissions and developing clean and green energies, while helping other countries to do so, too.

" "We have all along believed that due to the historical responsibility of the developed nations, they must continue to take the lead with large reductions beyond 2012," said Yu Qingtai.

[...]
India climate chief attacks Western 'hypocrites' He added we "have demanded that developed nations reduce emissions by 40 percent... this is fair and reasonable... China's position has not changed."

While China has taken dramatic steps to develop its green energy industries and has placed the environment at the heart of its domestic strategy,

[...]
Mr Yu, meanwhile, said China remains "optimistic" that a deal can be struck. "No one wants more than us to see the peak of China's emissions," he said. "This will not only be in the interests of the Chinese people but for the whole world." "

 

Fred Jones (3)
Friday August 7, 2009, 4:39 am
Hey Judy

David Evens is a fraud!

Who is 'Rocket Scientist' David Evans?

UPDATED: David Evans has sent along his definition of a rocket scientist. See below for details.

This title grabbed our attention: Top Rocket Scientist: No evidence C02 causes global warming. And it should. It is a pretty bold statement and the implications would be pretty big news.

So we decided to compile a backgrounder on 'The Top Rocket Scientist."

Here's the research database entry on David Evans:

No peer-reviewed articles on climate change

According to his own resume, Evans has not published a single peer-reviewed research paper on the subject of climate change. Evans published only a single paper in 1987 in his career and it is unrelated to climate change.

Evans has published an article for the Alabama-based Ludwig von Mises Instutute, a right-wing free-market think tank.

Evans also published a "background briefing" (pdf) document for the Australian chapter of the Lavoisier Group, a global warming "skeptic" organization with close ties to the mining industry.

"I am not a climate modeler"


From 1999 to 2006 Evans worked for the Australian Greenhouse Office designing a carbon accounting system that is used by the Australian Government to calculate its land-use carbon accounts for the Kyoto Protocol. While Evans says (pdf) that "[he] know[s] a heck of a lot about modeling and computers," he states clearly that he is "not a climate modeler."

Background


David Evans lives in Australia and gained media attention after an article he wrote titled, No Smoking Hot Spot was published in The Australian in June, 2008.The article claims that climate change is not caused by C02 emissions because there is no evidence of "a hot spot about 10km up in the atmosphere over the tropics." Evan's claim has been thoroughly debunked by Tim Lambert, a computer scientist at the University of New South Wales.

According to his bio, Evans claims to be a 'Rocket Scientist' and one article claims that he is a 'Top Rocket Scientist.' While Evans background does show that he has a PhD in electrical engineering, there is no evidence that he was ever employed as a rocket scientist.

Evans answered our inquiry about his claim to being a rocket scientist with the following explanation:

In US academic and industry parlance, "rocket scientist" means anyone who has completed a PhD in one of the hard sciences at one of the top US institutions. The term arose for people who *could* do rocket science, not those who literally build rockets.Thus the term "rocket scientist" means someone with a PhD in physics, electrical engineering, or mathematics (or perhaps a couple of other closely related disciplines), from MIT, Stanford, Caltech, and maybe a few other institutions.

I did a PhD in electrical engineering at Stanford in the 1980s. Electrical engineering is your basic high tech degree, because most high technology spawned from electrical information technology. I specialized in signal processing, maths, and statistics.
The definition provided by Evans would appear to be at odds with the conventional use of the term 'rocket scientist' which according to various sources is "One specializing in the science or study of rockets and their design." For example, here's an entry on Answers.com about Hermann Oberth a famous Rocket Scientist who published a book about rocket travel into outer space in 1932 and is considered one of 3 founding fathers of modern rocketry and astronautics.

Evans also claims to be "building a word processor for Windows." DeSmogBlog contacted Microsoft Corp. and they have confirmed that he does not work for Microsoft Corporation.
 

Fred Jones (3)
Friday August 7, 2009, 4:44 am
So is ICECAP


EnvironmentNC, the John Locke Foundation's environmental front group, has discovered another sterling source for discredited science: it's called ICECAP, a group that put its "reputation" on the line yesterday by guessing that 2007 may not rank as the warmest year on record in the Northern Hemisphere.

One might reasonably ask: so what? The issue of our times is global warming, not hemispheric anomalies. Yet, the agenda-driven ICECAP gets all breathless because this year's abnormality seems to be roughly in keeping with the trend.

Looking at recent temperature records, EnvironmentNC went a step further to "note the distinct lack of overall warming since 1998." Here's a wonderful example of the quality of the John Locke Foundation analysis: when dealing with a long term trend - a global climate that in the past has taken many millennia to shift half the distance that our climate has changed this century - the JLF picks out a nine-year span and presents it as evidence that climate change has stopped.

We're to assume, perhaps, that the Tooth Fairy put a halt to it as a favor to George Bush's kids - certainly EnvironmentNC has offered no other working theory.

It's also worth having a closer look at ICECAP, and especially at their list of "experts" - Fred Singer, Pat Michaels, Sallie Balliunis, Robert Balling, these "usual suspects" among climate change deniers. Check any name from the ICECAP list against the DeSmogBlog Denier Database and you're likely to find a clapped out academic career and, in the worst cases (Singer, Michaels) direct links to the coal and oil industries. Singer, especially, seemed to take up the climate cause only after the "scientific" defence of second-hand smoke became so offensive that even Philip Morris stopped paying him to argue their case. Of course, the John Locke Foundation is also linked through to Philip Morris: birds of a feather ...

 

Chaz Gaily Berlusconi (251)
Friday August 7, 2009, 9:44 am
Gosh what a contrdiction... are they going to start a war over some unholy smoke... sherbet they are giving out bad smoke signals...
 
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