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Climate delegates struggle for strong signal on warming

Aug 31, 2007, 23:24 GMT

Vienna - A compromise reached Friday at a UN-sponsored climate conference in Vienna was somewhat watered down from its initial form, reflecting opposition by a group of countries to nailing down specific emission-cut targets in the battle against global warming, participants said. Delegates struggled until late Friday evening to reach consensus on whether to present non-binding targets that set specific quantities for cuts in greenhouse gas emissions to the upcoming climate conference in Bali, Indonesia in December. A recommendation for 'useful initial parameters' was adopted that would cut greenhouse gases by 25 to 40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020, to help policy makers in their assessment, after prolonged resistance from a group of countries including Japan, Canada, Russia, Switzerland and New Zealand. At the week-long meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC,) delegates from more than 100 states were laying the groundwork for negotiations on climate control after the expiry of the Kyoto Protocol in 2012. The adopted document suggested that industrialized countries could adopt more ambitious targets, and that mitigation measures depended on 'national circumstances.' You cannot expect two countries to make exactly the same commitments,' UNFCCC head Yvo de Boer said. But more needed to be done by the global community, de Boer said. There was large potential for emission reduction in developing countries. Nonetheless, de Boer believed some momentum for the Bali conference had been created. 'Bali has the responsibility to show states that governments are serious to address this very important problem,' de Boer told reporters earlier on Friday. Participating non-governmental organizations welcomed the agreement, despite its being watered down. 'We have a clear message from most governments,' a WWF activist said at a press briefing afterwards by the NGOs. The official noted that even those initially reluctant 'had seen the light' in the end. The environmentalists warned that talks had to be sped up to be effective. © 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur

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know concensusSep 2nd, 2007 - 22:48:06

29 Aug 07 - In 2004, history professor Naomi Oreskes examined peer-reviewed papers published on the ISI Web of Science database from 1993 to 2003 concerning climate change. She found a majority supported the 'consensus view,' defined as humans were having at least some effect on global climate change.
Medical researcher Dr. Klaus-Martin Schulte recently updated this research. Using the same database and search terms as Oreskes, he examined all papers published from 2004 to February 2007.

Of 528 papers on climate change, only 38 (7%) gave an explicit endorsement of the so-called consensus on climate change. If one considers 'implicit' endorsement (accepting the consensus without explicit statement), the figure rises to 45%. However, while only 32 papers (6%) reject the consensus outright, the largest category (48%) are neutral papers, refusing to either accept or reject the hypothesis.

This is no 'consensus.'

The figures are even more shocking when one remembers the watered-down definition of consensus here. Not only does it not require supporting that man is the 'primary' cause of warming, but it doesn't require any belief or support for 'catastrophic' global warming. Of all papers published in this period (2004 to February 2007), only a single one makes any reference to climate change leading to catastrophic results.

Schulte's survey contradicts the United Nation IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report (2007), which gave a figure of '90% likely' man was having an impact on world temperatures. But does the IPCC represent a consensus view of world scientists? Despite media claims of 'thousands of scientists' involved in the report, the actual text is written by a much smaller number of 'lead authors.' The introductory 'Summary for Policymakers' - the only portion usually quoted in the media - is written not by scientists at all, but by politicians, and approved, word-by-word, by political representatives from member nations. By IPCC policy, the individual report chapters - the only text actually written by scientists - are edited to 'ensure compliance' with the summary.

By contrast, the ISI Web of Science database covers 8,700 journals and publications, including every leading scientific journal in the world.

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real knowSep 2nd, 2007 - 22:50:17

I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.

Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period.

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