My take on COP15

COP15 in Copenhagen is now over, and the result was a watered-down, non-binding political commitment, which some countries might not even sign.

Two weeks of intense negotiations went before that, where Denmark's Prime Minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, sometimes seemed to be more of a hindrance than a host, often coming across as arrogant towards the developing countries in G77. In the end, it came down to long negotiations between US on the one side and China on the other, with countries like Brazil and India and the African Union participating, and big players like the EU and Russia watching from the sideline.

The commitment they ended up with, was a compromise between many different interests, and as such, leaves much to be desired. Indeed, seem from a purely climate-oriented point-of-view, the commitments are close to worthless, even if everyone kept to it.

Does this mean that Copenhagen was a failure? Yes and no.

Yes, because no binding agreement was reached, and the commitments are too little, too late.

No, because the negotiations from Copenhagen was never going to reach a satisfying conclusion. Instead they would just be the first of many steps (much like Kyoto was before Copenhagen).

Personally, I never expected anything much from COP15, though I would have hoped for a legally binding treaty.

The US is not prepared to do what is needed for real action, and countries like China and India cannot do what's necessary and at the same time continue their economic growth - at least not without economical aid from e.g. the EU and the US.

This doesn't mean, however, that COP15 was a waste of time.

What COP15 did, was create a baseline for future talks. Instead of having to start from scratch every time, the negotiators can now start from the concessions reached in Copenhagen and move towards a more ambitious agreement.

Also, while the US is far from willing to do enough to fight anthropogenic global warming, at least they were active participants in these negotiations (unlike during the Kyoto negotiations), which is an important first step.

All in all, Copenhagen should not be regarded as a disappointing end to a long process of climate negotiations, but instead just be considered the first, tiny, step towards a proper agreement. Even if the negotiations had led to a real agreement, this would still have been the case.

In the end, it's important to realize that each and all of us need to do something as well. We need to fight the fight for good science, and keep the hordes of ignorance and lies (yes, denialists, I mean you) from gaining the upper hand in the public debate (they never will in the science debate, as they have nothing to offer there). We need to put pressure on our politicians to enact laws and start initiatives that will help reduce CO₂ and anthropogenic global warming. And finally, we need to do our own best to reduce our own carbon footprint - try to use public transportation if possible, reduce waste, etc.

Climate lecture with Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri

The chairman of the IPCC, Dr. Pachauri, held a climate lecture at the University of Copenhagen, as part of the University's series of climate lectures (this was the 24th in the series). The lecture series has been going on for several months leading up to COP15, which is going on right now in Copenhagen.

As many of these lectures are held during the day, I have unfortunately not been able to attend most of them. The only one I've seen before this one was one held by the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on a Saturday. This lecture, however, was in the evening - from 19:30-20:30, so it ended about an hour ago.

The topic of today's lecture was Key findings from the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report.

The audience was a good mixture of young and old, academia and activists, Danish and foreign.

The following is based on the notes I took during the lecture.

First the head of the University, rector Ralf Hemmingsen made a speech on the importance of an agreement at COP15, and the contributions of Dr. Pachauri and the IPCC towards this goal. Hemmingsen also made clear that science is clear regarding anthropogenic global warming.

Hemmingsen said that people wanted to get photographed with climate scientists like Dr. Pachauri, and one of Dr. Pachauri's first comments was to make clear that was because people want to have their photographs taken together with geeks.

Dr. Pachauri also raised the issue of ethics from the start - saying that we often miss ethnics when we are looking at the science.

The Dr. Pachauri went into explaining about bit about how the IPCC works. IPCC is an intergovernmental body, which is not really bound by the bureaucracy of the UN, and all its decisions are made by consensus.

First they do an outline of the report, write to countries, organizations and institutions to get nominations to the authors. This results in more than 2500 nominations, 450 lead authors, 800 contributors. After report has been written it's submitted for peer review and governmental review. These reviews are read and usually incorporated in the document, and the author has to document why any input is disregarded.

Now Dr. Pachauri went into the findings (the report can be found here, so depend on my resume of Dr. Pachauri's speech). Some of these were:

- Global atmospheric concentrations of emissions of greenhouse gases has increased markedly as a result of human activities with an increase of 70% in 1970-2004.

- Fluctuations have in the past been the result of natural phenomenons, but within the last 100 years that's not the case. Within the last 50 years, the increase has been twice as much as the hundred year average.

- A large number of models using only natural forcing has been run, showing that the current increase is a deviation from what would be cause by natural forcing. Models
taking anthropogenic forcing into account fits the observed data.

- Sea level rise has accelerated in last couple of decades.

- Frequency of heavy precipitation events has increased over most land areas. Won't link any specific/single event to AGW, but the trend is there.

- Tropical cyclones reaching higher intensity have increased over the past 3 decades. Again, no single event to AGW, but the trend is there.

A lot of these things re-enforce each other.

- Heat waves are becoming more frequent.

- Continuing the trend will induce many changes in the 21st century much worse than what can be observed now.

- 1.1-6.4 degrees C best estimate 1.8-4 degrees C. Even the lower estimate of the best estimate would mean that the temp would increase 2.4 degrees in 2 centuries.

- Asian and African mega-deltas are particularly in danger, and the impact is severe.

- 20-30% of species are likely to be at risk if warming exceeds 1.5-2.5C

And now for the more political aspects of the findings.

- Need to think on implications on global security. Hundreds of millions of people could be forced from their native lands (rising sea levels, extreme events, floods, famines)

- Adaption alone is not expected to cope with all the projected effects of climate change

- Dr. Pachauri made clear that the cost of mitigation efforts would be very small compared to the global GNP, and near-term co-benefits may offset a substantial fraction of mitigation costs.

- We can use technologies that are currently available or expected to be commercialized in coming decades - e.g. introducing public transport places where they don't have it.

- Key tech: energy supply, transport, building

- Instruments, policies and practices - research, infrastructure, regulations, taxes, change in lifestyle (e.g. eat less meat). Needed to be implemented around the world - both in the developed countries, but also in the developing countries.

Sorry about the rather incoherent resume, but there was a lot of information in a short time.

After Dr. Pachauri's lecture, there was a short Q&A where the denialists were out in (relative) force.

First up from the denialist crowd came someone who I think might be Morano - if not, he was the same type of asshole. He made a lot of insinuations and ended up asking Dr. Pachauri if he didn't believe that fossils fuels had been the greatest boon to mankind (as it could not be both a great boon in the past and a very real source of problems now). Dr. Pachauri didn't really answer that question, but said that if the choice was between alternative energy, such as solar power, and classic energy/light sources, which releases greenhouse gases, then people in the places like India would choose alternative energy.

Given the false premise of the question, this might be the most constructive answer, but I would have preferred if Dr. Pachauri had addressed the false premise, and said that it could both be a boon and a problem.

After perhaps-Morano, came definitely-Monckton. Monckton made a lot of noise about problems with the IPCC report and accused the IPCC in general, and Dr. Pachauri specifically, of fraud, saying that people/scientists (didn't catch the names mentioned, but rest assure that it's the usual denialist token scientists) were calling for Dr. Pachauri to step down, and the IPCC to be dissolved.

Dr. Pachauri was exceedingly polite to Monckton, much more so than what his rather serious accusations would merit, and pointed out that if the IPCC was capable of fraud on the scale that Monckton claimed, then the IPCC would merit a great amount of respect, given the number of countries and people involved. At this point Monckton tried to interrupt, and Dr. Pachauri finally got angry enough to raise his voice, telling Monckton to let him finish answering the question.

After Dr. Pachauri had finished demolishing Monckton's silly accusations, Monckton tried to ask follow up questions, but was told, rightfully, by the moderator to sit down, as it was not his turn to have the floor. Still Monckton continued, until he was shouted down by the audience, which was not impressed by his antics.

A few questions more were asked, and the Q&A came to a close.

Given the applause the different questions and answers gave, I'd say that the denialists were rude and noisy, but few in number, while science-minded people made up the majority of the audience.

As a final note, I should perhaps suggest people sympathetic to Monckton to explain to him that Denmark actually have laws against slander and libel, and accusing scientists of fraud might very well be considered such by the Danish courts, especially in this context.

Update: I've just received an email with a link to the actual powerpoint presentation used by Dr. Pachauri - it can be found here.

The Copenhagen Diagnosis

Some of the world's best climate researchers have put together a report, the Copenhagen Diagnosis, which updates the readers on what has happened in climate research since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report.

The report is targeted towards policy makers, the media, and the general public, and as such it "synthesize the most policy-relevant climate science published since the close-off of material for the last IPCC report", allowing policy makers to make informed decisions based on all available (peer-reviewed) material, and not just material available 3 years ago.

If you want to be informed about the current state of climate research, and on our knowledge of AGW, then read this report. It won't include any of the many manufactured controversies, just the pure science, which has been through a proper peer-review process.

The most important challenge of our time

There are many issues that I blog about on a regular, or at least semi-regular basis, that are of real importance to not only me, but to a lot of people. Ironically, however, I rarely blog about the one issue that I think is the single most important one facing us. The one issue upon which we, as a whole and as individuals, will be judge by future generations.

I am talking about anthropogenic global climate change (AGC).

The first time I became aware of AGC was back when I was in 8th grade. This was in 1988 or 1989. Back then, there was a whole lot of doubt about the issue, but a clear consensus was beginning to form, based upon not only the observable facts, but also on our understanding of science. Still, there was room for doubts.

Since then, we have seen the temperatures rise to alarming levels, and our understanding of the science behind AGC is much better, leaving no room for doubt. And let's make this very clear - among the scientists working with climate research and related subjects, there is no doubt. There might be a crank somewhere claiming that the evidence is inconclusive, like there are scientists who denies evolution, but the evidence for AGC is overwhelming.

Not strong. Overwhelming. Not just for the fact that the temperature is changing, with temperatures rising etc., but for the fact that this change is driven by mankind.

I cannot emphasis this strongly enough.

Unfortunately, the measures necessary to stop AGC, or at least lessen it, are not being taken. There is not the political will to do so.

At the same time, scientists are starting to panic - fearing that we might soon reach the point where we cannot turn back.

It seems like the voices of the scientists are finally starting to get heard. Perhaps some politicians had their eyes opened by the reports by the IPCC, which unambiguously said that all evidence shows us that AGC is real, and that we have to act now.

I don't know, but I am happy that the politicians are starting to take this seriously.

On December 7th, a climate conference starts here in Copenhagen - generally called Cop15. It is perhaps the last real chance of making a treating addressing AGC in time for it to have effect.

Today, I spent an hour listening to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon speak about "The Road to Copenhagen" at the University of Copenhagen. I haven't always been too impressed by the current Secretary-General, but on the subject of AGC, I've always been impressed by his dedication. He, as few other politicians, seem to realize that AGC is the single most important issue, regardless of financial crisis, flu pandemics etc. If we cannot address AGC, those other issues will seem quite small in comparison to what we will encounter in the future.

The Secretary-General was optimistic about Cop15, explaining that a lot of positive signals had already been made by key players, such as the EU and Japan, and even poorer countries like China and India seems committed. Regarding the elephant in the room, the US, he said that the US has changed it position from the previous administration, and while their level of ambition might be lower than we would want (not his exact wording), the rest of us "have to encourage them continuously".

Obviously, I hope he is right regarding the likelihood of getting a treaty out of Cop15, but I also think it's important that we, the public, try to do our best to help it along. If you can, write your member of parliament/congress and ask him or her to support a meaningful, science-based treaty, without regard to personal/nationalistic gains.

If we blow this chance, there very well might not be another. If that's the case, future generations won't judge us kindly.