"They have
wasted valuable time and energy. They have acted as though they had a second
planet in reserve. … Considering what's at stake, Obama and Co. simply can't
afford to produce nothing but hot air."
Is the world heating up? Is man the cause? And does it matter who caused it? The dabate is fierce, and protesters, like the one above in London at a protest of about 20,000, are making themselves heard.
The Cologne Cathedral half
under water. That was the 1986 cover of Der SpiegelMagazine
which caused such a furor. It illustrated the looming “climate catastrophe.”
The horror story was one of sea levels rising by 70 meters [230 feet] and swallowing-up
large sections of Germany.
That really hit
home. It created a fear of impending doom. But of course, this was a vision
deemed extremely excessive.
In a world heating up like a greenhouse, it would still take centuries if not
millennia for the Greenland and the South Pole icecaps to melt entirely. Only
then, many generations later, would sea levels rise by about 70 meters or more.
Such media exaggerations
were said to do more harm than good. The term climate “catastrophe” was blacklisted. Henceforth
the commonly-used term would become climate-“change.” Today, more than two
decades later and before what will perhaps be the most important global climate
summit in Copenhagen - the gathering of evidence by a majority of climate
scientists is complete. There of course are still “climate skeptics,” those who
cast doubt on the competence, integrity and the maintenance of neutrality by
the profession's leading scientists and who are now constructing a “Climate-Gate”
but they no longer frame the debate.
Evidence that the
earth is experiencing a climate change unlike anything ever seen by modern civilization
is overwhelming. Dramatic signs continue to accumulate. The changes appear to
be taking place at a faster rate than predicted in the 2007 report by the U.N.'s
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC]. And now we all know precisely what
the scenario for - yes - the climate "catastrophe” will be. Should the earth
heat up by more than two degrees, it will threaten to flip earth's planetary “dip-switches,”
which would kick off processes that will be irreversible. The Greenland ice could
melt, the Amazon rainforest could dry out, the Indian Monsoon could become unstable
- to name but three examples.
In other words: should the
leading politicians in the climate debate; Obama, Wen Jiabao,
Merkel and Co., as well as their successors, miss this two-degree target, they
will assume unknown responsibility. It would take just a few decades to bring an
end a 10,000-year period of relative climate stability and moderate temperatures
during which human civilization developed.
Posted by WORLDMEETS.US
Alarmism is indeed misplaced.
But French President Nicolas Sarkozy was right when
he proclaimed that, “In Copenhagen, the future of our planet is at stake.” He
resumed: “Ours is the last generation with the ability to take action.” To wit:
If we don't courageously slam on the brakes, we’ll be left later with only the
accelerator.
In light of this, the way the
climate-powers have behaved in the run-up to the Copenhagen summit appears even
more grotesque. Despite sending a signal for a groundbreaking
“Copenhagen-Protocol” in Bali in 2007,
they wasted valuable time and energy. They acted as though they had a second
planet in reserve. Two years of fruitless lead-up conferences have come and
gone, and not even a specially-convened, top-level climate summit under the
auspices of the U.N. and the G-20 made any headway.
People thought is couldn’t
get any worse, but it has: The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum in
Singapore, three weeks before Copenhagen, left the impression that the climate
summit might be cancelled altogether due to a lack of interest on the part of
some world leaders. There certainly wouldn’t be a Copenhagen-Protocol declared by
the U.S. and China.
That at least turned out to
be a salutary shock. Since then, no less than 70 heads of state and government have
pledged come ton Copenhagen. That's more than have ever attended a purely
climate summit before. Since then, hopes have been raised strongly enough that even
serious setbacks have been overcome, such as the debacle of the Australian
government being unable to pass climate change legislation. Or take the
signaled “No” from emerging nations on plans to at least adopt the
two-degree-target into the Copenhagen Declaration, which during the course of coming
year will be woven into a post-Kyoto Protocol.
Posted by WORLDMEETS.US
Considering what's at stake,
Obama and Co. simply can't afford to produce nothing but hot air in Copenhagen.
If they do, only prayer will be left - in the Cologne Cathedral and wherever
else it's still dry.
