London Times on Copenhage III

The enemies uniting to go for the kill at Copenhagen
An odd alliance of climate sceptics and true believers threatens any deal made at the summit


Ed Miliband was furious. His press conference should have highlighted Britain’s role at the Copenhagen climate talks that open tomorrow — but instead he faced questions on whether global warming was even true.

“We have to beware of the climate saboteurs,” he barked. “The timing of this leak and the questioning of the science [are] not coincidental.”

Miliband was not just referring to the now infamous leaking of emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit. His definition of “saboteurs” also included climate sceptics such as Lord Lawson, who recently set up the Global Warming Policy Foundation, and David Davis, the former Conservative frontbencher, who last week challenged the science in a newspaper article.
“Whenever you get to a difficult political moment, a difficult set of decisions, there’ll be people saying there’s an easy way out,” Miliband said. “The science is, however, clear and settled and we will push on in getting an agreement that is consistent with the science.”

The day he spoke, his words were being undermined — by the man who has done most to make global warming a global obsession. Jim Hansen, director of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said he shared the sceptics’ hope that the Copenhagen talks would fail. “The whole approach [at Copenhagen] is so wrong that it is better to reassess the situation,” he said.

What Hansen was complaining about was not the science, but the solutions to be proposed at Copenhagen and, in particular, the proposal to set up global carbon markets, in which permits to pollute are bought and sold.

At first sight, Hansen’s outburst has no link to the campaigning of the other so-called saboteurs. But beneath the surface the two anti-Copenhagen camps have much in common. Both reflect a backlash that is threatening to undermine the whole process and both can trace their roots back to the 1980s and 1990s when Hansen led the scientific establishment in warning politicians that greenhouse gases were warming the world.

Peter Taylor, one of the few British sceptics to come from a genuinely scientific background, has explained what happened in his book Chill: A Reassessment of Global Warming Theory.

“The scientists who believed in climate change outmanoeuvred the sceptics and turned their view of global warming into the official line,” he said. “Ever since, the two sides have been polarised. That has stifled scientific debate and helped to set the scene for the disagreements we are seeing today.”

Where did the sceptics go? Largely ignored by the mainstream media, they began building an online community, centred on several prominent bloggers. This is the base from which most of the current attacks have sprung. The best known is Steve McIntyre, who set up the Climate Audit site to air technical doubts raised over some climate change research.

To his amazement the site has become a huge success. “I have been getting 6m hits a year for the past four years and now it has tripled to 60,000 hits a day. People feel starved of information about this,” he said. His website has been followed by many more ways of putting pressure on the “warmists”.

Meanwhile, the climate scientists have been building a bigger support base. Over the past decade the science supporting Hansen’s view that the world is warming has grown ever stronger.

The computerised projections championed by Hansen appear to have been borne out by observations such as the summer melt of the Arctic ice cap or the fact that 86% of the world’s glaciers appear to be shrinking.

Ironically, just as the science pioneered by Hansen appeared to be growing invincible, it was now his turn to be outmanoeuvred and marginalised when it came to solutions. He had always favoured a direct carbon tax — in which oil, gas and coal are taxed at the point where they are extracted from the earth or imported into a country.

However, when world leaders met in Kyoto in 1997 to draw up an agreement on cutting greenhouse gases, they chose something else — a cap-and-trade scheme under which every country gets a limit or cap on its carbon emissions. Copenhagen should extend this into a worldwide trading system.

Hansen hates that system, believing it will prove too complex to work; so now, just like the sceptics, he and his supporters are working to undermine Copenhagen.

We should know soon if this accidental alliance can derail a deal but in the short term it seems unlikely. That’s because, over the next two weeks, about 100 world leaders will be arriving in Copenhagen — a change that has turned it from a conference into a high-level summit.

Their presence will generate huge pressure for apparent success — a pressure that means there will almost certainly be some kind of agreement. The question is: given the breadth of opposition, will it be worth anything in the long term?

Precis

The article "The enemies uniting to go for the kill at Copenhagen" discusses how Copenhagen skeptics from different points of view are uniting against the summit, hoping that it will be a big failure. On one side of the camp are the people that don't believe in global warming, which was evident at Ed Miliband's press conference at which people asked if global warming actually existed. On the other side are the climate change scientists like Dr Hansen who believe that Copenhagen is going to fail, because of the "cap and trade" approach it is taking. Together they are known as "saboteurs, but Miliband believes that they should not be an issue during the conference and that a good deal will be made. Even though both parties are working together now, they operate in different ways. The climate change skeptics which were ignored by the media, began to build a big online community, based on several bloggers, under which Steve McIntyre. The climate scientists have been building a bigger support base by creating more scientific proof for the theory that the earth is becoming warmer. As the skeptics we're left out by the media, now the climate scientists are by the solutions that are being discussed, and so the two fronts join. The climate scientists don't agree with the "cap and trade" system that is being used and instead suggests a carbon tax to provide the solution for climate change. Even though this alliance against the Copenhagen summit will probably not stop the world leaders from making a deal, the question is whether this deal will be worth anything in the long term.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/copenhagen/article6945810.ece