The Nobel Prize-winning international scientific panel studying global warming is seeking independent outside review for how it makes major reports.The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says it’s seeking some kind of independent review because of recent criticism about its four 2007 reports.
Critics have found a few unsettling errors, including projections of retreats in Himalayan glaciers, in the thousands of pages of the reports.
Here is the statement:
The United States must adopt a carbon pricing system, like the one President Barack Obama has submitted to Congress, if it hopes to meet its U.N. commitments on greenhouse gas emissions, the International Energy Agency’s head said on Wednesday.Nobuo Tanaka, executive director of the Paris-based IEA which advises 28 industrialised nations on their energy policy, said Washington’s 2020 target of cutting carbon emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels meant it would have to adopt new legislation imposing a cost on carbon waste.
Tanaka said the U.S. Senate needed to pass an energy bill, already given initial approval by the House of Representatives, which would allow a cap-and-trade system to set limits on greenhouse gas emissions and allow companies to trade permits.
“To really achieve these (emission) targets, the U.S. certainly has to introduce carbon prices either by cap-and-trade or carbon tax,” Tanaka told Reuters.
“The Senate must pass this comprehensive energy and climate bill otherwise it cannot design a cap and trade system.”
Yasuní National Park, located in the core of the Ecuadorian Amazon, is the most biodiverse area in all of South America, a team of Ecuadorean, American, and European scientists concludes in the first major peer-reviewed study of life forms in the park, published today.
But the 13 scientists warn that proposed oil development in Yasuní threatens to destroy one of the world’s last high-biodiversity wilderness areas.
An agreement between the Ecuadorian government and the United Nations for a $3 billion trust fund that would compensate Ecuador for protecting the most vulnerable area of Yasuní by leaving the oil underground has begun to unravel.
It is a well-known fact that powerful vested interests and those opposed to action on climate change are working overtime to see that they can stall action for as long as possible.The Centre for Public Integrity in the US has found that some 770 companies and interest groups have hired an estimated 2,340 lobbyists to influence America’s federal policies on climate change in the past year, just as the stakes became higher with the prospect of far-reaching climate legislation in the US. That translates into more than four lobbyists for each member of Congress in Washington DC.
The climate sceptics have also been active in other ways. Take the hacking of emails from the University of East Anglia and the use of private communications between the scientists involved to discredit the science contained in the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which I chair. These scientists are highly reputed professionals, whose contributions over the years to scientific knowledge are unquestionable.
Audio of Guardian’s interview with Pachauri is available here.
A draft copy of a confidential memo to the UNFCCC Secretariat has surfaced here at the Copenhagen climate talks that has some pretty disturbing analysis.
Here is the memo:
Letter via Hill Heat.
Members of Friends of the Earth groups from around the world who arrived at the Bella Center this morning to take part as official observers in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change negotiations taking place here were told that their badges were no longer valid.
Friends of the Earth representatives from countries ranging from Nigeria to Japan to Denmark have been taking part in the negotiations over the past two weeks, but when they arrived today all were denied access, despite the fact that they were holding official UN badges as well as secondary admission passes.
Friends of the Earth International Chair Nnimmo Bassey had the following statement:
“We are surprised and shocked that Friends of the Earth member groups from around the world and other non-governmental organizations have been denied access to the negotiations this morning. Our organizations represent millions of people around the world and provide a critical voice on behalf of climate justice inside the UN. We are currently attempting to discuss the situation with the UNFCCC to understand and resolve the situation.”
As of 09:30 am Friends of the Earth representatives were in the main entry lobby near the conference registration desks and available for interviews.
Island nations threatened by rising seas demanded at UN talks Friday that the world commit to preventing global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit).
In an 18-page draft accord obtained by AFP, the 43-member Association of Small Island States (AOSIS) also called for an ambitious 85-percent cut in global CO2 emissions by 2050.
“AOSIS members are at the front line of the devastating impacts of climate change,” Dessima Williams of Grenada, AOSIS’ spokeswoman, said on Friday.
Both goals are well beyond the objectives embraced coming into the December 7-18 crunch summit by rich nations and emerging giants such as China, India and Brazil.
AOSIS_proposal_for_KP_survival_and_new_Copenhagen_Protocol_-_final –
It is undoubtedly true that development rarely takes root without security; it is also true that security does not exist where human beings do not have access to enough food, or clean water, or the medicine and shelter they need to survive. It does not exist where children can’t aspire to a decent education or a job that supports a family. The absence of hope can rot a society from within.And that’s why helping farmers feed their own people — or nations educate their children and care for the sick — is not mere charity. It’s also why the world must come together to confront climate change. There is little scientific dispute that if we do nothing, we will face more drought, more famine, more mass displacement — all of which will fuel more conflict for decades. For this reason, it is not merely scientists and environmental activists who call for swift and forceful action — it’s military leaders in my own country and others who understand our common security hangs in the balance.
Working Group One of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has put out an official response to the East Anglia University email thefts:In conclusion, IPCC WGI firmly stands behind its unique procedures and behind the scientific
community and their collective work which has been, and continues to be, the basis of unbiased, open and transparent assessments of the current knowledge on the climate system and its changes.
Here is the full response:
