WSJ.com - Global-Warming Skeptics Under Fire

WSJ.com - Global-Warming Skeptics Under Fire



Two New Papers Question
Results Used to Challenge
Influential Climate Study
By ANTONIO REGALADO
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
October 26, 2005; Page B3

Two global-warming skeptics who questioned an influential climate study and prompted a congressional inquiry are now facing critics of their own, as a pair of new research papers take issue with their results.

The new findings are the latest round in a politically charged dispute over the "hockey stick," a widely publicized graphic showing that temperatures during the late 20th century were likely higher than at any time in the past 1,000 years.

The hockey stick, so-called because global temperatures show a sharp blade-like rise in recent decades, was prominently featured in a 2001 United Nations report that said the burning of fossil fuels is the cause of global warming.

A dispute erupted earlier this year when oil and minerals consultant Stephen McIntyre and economist Ross McKitrick, both Canadians, published a scientific study detailing possible mathematical errors in the hockey-stick result.

Michael Mann, the Pennsylvania State University climatologist who was the author of the hockey-stick findings, claimed the charges were part of a campaign to cast doubt on global warming.

The clash broadened in June, when Rep. Joe Barton (R., Texas), head of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, ordered an inquiry into the work of Dr. Mann and two co-authors and requested extensive details of their methods and data.

Critics accused Rep. Barton of seeking to bully scientists and chill global-warming research. Until Dr. Mann turned his mathematical procedures over to the committee in July, he had declined to provide his scientific critics with a complete description of them.

In a written statement, Larry Neal, a spokesman for the committee, said the inquiry is justified because "combating global climate change is a trillion-dollar prospect" that would be funded by taxpayers. Mr. Neal said the committee staff hasn't yet begun a detailed analysis of the information it collected from scientists.

Now, two independent research reports say the Canadians' critique may have limited significance. The studies, appearing this month in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, find that while there is a statistical snafu in the hockey-stick math, it may not strongly affect the graph's accuracy.

One study, from researchers at the GKSS Research Center in Geesthacht, Germany, confirmed "a glitch" in Dr. Mann's work but "found this glitch to be of very minor significance" when applied to some computer-generated models of climate history, according to a statement released by lead author Hans von Storch.

The other study, by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution fellow Peter Huybers, argued the Canadians had overstated the effect of the problem. "The truth is somewhere in between, but closer to Dr. Mann," Dr. Huybers said. Both Dr. Huybers and Eduardo Zorita, a collaborator of Dr. von Storch, agreed they had yet to address all of the Canadians' criticisms.

The complex debate, which turns on statistical technicalities, isn't likely to end soon. In replies published in the same issue of the journal, Mr. McIntyre and Mr. McKitrick defended their conclusions. "We are not withdrawing an inch," Mr. McIntyre said in an interview.

The dispute was the subject of a page-one story in this newspaper in February.

Some scientists believe the dispute has more political weight than scientific significance. That's because, they say, other studies of past temperatures also indicate they are higher now, on average, than at any time in past 1,000 years, and perhaps far longer. "A number of studies all come to the same conclusion," Dr. Mann said.

How Round Is Your Table?

dpodbori: How Round Is Your Table?

I would like to start with an excerpt from a roundtable discussion between experts on a radioshow which (the discussion) I find absolutely hilarious. This is from The Financial Sense Newshour radioshow as of 10/1/2005 titled "Is the Global Warming Just Hot Air?" and dedicated to the climate change controvercy. The show was hosted by the famed radiocommentator and financier Jim Puplava; it can be streamed or downloaded from FinancialSense.com.

The panel of experts consisted of: Dr. Robert C. Balling, Jr., Professor in the climatology program, Dept. of Geography at Arizona State U., Alan Caruba, a veteran business and science writer, and Evelyn Garriss, the editor and publisher of The Browning Newsletter. Participants' credentials, publications and achievements are listed on the above Web page full detail.

[I jotted the transcript down into a notepad while listening to this radioshow on my Creative MUVO MP3 player on a NYC subway ride. The dialog fragment starts from 0:45:25 and ends at 0:49:57 on the audiofile. Thanks to Jay Smith from NY OilAwareness group who reviewed this transcript and offered valuable editorial remarks to make it as accurate as possible.]

EG: "... And I somehow think that if peasants in Medieval Europe were able to survive the warm temperatures of the Medieval Warm period, with all our technology we might somehow struggle through. It is not the alarming catastrophy that they make it up to be!"

RCB: "No, I totally agree with Evelyn on that. Even if the world wormed up a degree or so, I think the benefits would far outweigh the cost, and the humanity and the biosphere will be better off. But the key is, the humanity and the biosphere have seen warming and cooling in the past, will see it again in the future, and we all evolved in the world with a highly variable climate; I don't see anything at all alarming in what has happened in the last 25 years."

AC: "Well, that's the good news. I think the bad news is that when people say 'Global Warming' they often mean different things; enviromentalists mean that it's going to happen very rapidly, and have a disastrous effect on human life, and all life on Earth; whereas climatologists say 'Global Warming' and they are thinking in terms of a couple of thousands of years"

RCB: "I don't think the public out there is loosing sleep that often over global warming, I really don't. I've seen these polls come out on 'what are you most concerned about?', and the Global Warming is off the radar screen, so the average guy on the street is not walking around shaking like a leaf because the world is warming. In most cases they've heard about it, they were skeptical of it, they've heard some guy on the radio making fun of Global Warming. I don't think the American public out there is that alarmed about Global Warming. I think that there are certainly people who are trying to get them alarmed, but I don't think that's sold at all across this country. And to this day, I would guess, the vast majority of Americans find it more of a hoax than they find it something to be alarmed at."

AC: "That's good. I am glad to hear you say that."

RCB: "I don't have any data to back it up, but that's my sense."

AC: "No, I think you are right; I've been watching now since the [19]70-s. I think I would have to agree with you -- I think, in general, when you say Global Warming people kind of.. err... snicker and laugh, because it's inherently a kind of a silly notion"

RCB: "Right. And I think Evelyn was right earlier: if you go to Europe and say 'Global Warming', there are people shaking like a leaf. They've done a better job -- 'they' meaning the enviromental groups -- selling Global Warming in Europe, and maybe Europeans were just leaning that way anyhow, and [they] jumped onboard, and have been on a crusade from the get-go. I can get into my car and drive three hours south of here and enter Mexico, and start asking people what they know and think about Global Warming -- and they have never heard of it, I mean -- they have no idea what you are talking about, so it's completely off their radar screen. If you go to Mexico City, and meet with officials, then certainly Mexican government has a stake and the presence at the U.N., but probably two-thirds of the people on this planet have never heard about Global Warming, ever."

AC: "Well, then, maybe the whole thing will just blow away..."

RCB: "Right. I was in the graduate school in the [19]70-s, when the Global Cooling was the big scare -- hey, you mentioned that earlier; Newsweek [inaudible] cover stories on the coming cooling, and the crisis of cooling, and that certainly disappeared; Global Warming has a lot more momentum; administratively, around the world, there is apparatus at work now, thousands of scientists -- it's a big business onto itself. There are billions of dollars being spent every year on research in Global Warming, meetings are being held all over the world. That really never got rolling for the Global Cooling scare back in the [19]70-s, there is much more momentum in this one, but it will run out of gas sometime. I guarantee... no, I can't guarantee that, but that's my suspicion."

AC: "Well, I obviously messed up when I went to college -- I should have started meteorology [laughter]."

RCB: "I did, and I never anticipated when I was a doctoral candidate in climatology that the subject I was focusing on would one day be frontpage news all over the world. I never knew that when I was studying at that level, I never dreamed of it. So, it did worked out well. And here is another little signal -- the scientists themselves have seen a lot of good things happen because of their involvement in Global Warmimg. I mean, I am looking around here -- I have students like we've never had before, we have resources like we've never had before; so the scientists themselves, sittin' on airplanes, flyin' around the world, sittin' in the business section of the plane, sippin' on champaign, and havin' a lobster bisque -- yeah, their take in it -- it's a pretty good deal!"

AC: "[With laughter, mockingly] It comes down to money!.. And if they pay you enough, you can play with the figures long enough, and make them come out to mean almost anything."

Even if you find the above quoting excessive, I certainly hope that you don't find it boring. I most definitely didn't, as the dialog above is much fresher, more vivid and more character revealing than many made-up dialogs in sitcoms or movie scripts (Mssrs. Larry David and Quentin Tarantino, if you are reading this, it is my hope you are not offended).

I need to say right away that I didn't sit down to write yet another environmentalist text and have no stake in the pro- and anti-Global Warming debate (at least, no more of a stake than any other denizen of the Great Industrial Civilization of the early 21st century, anyhow). I have deep respect for Jim Puplava who over the years hosted and made available for download hundreds of interviews with experts and authors, many of them top-notch.

But now, having savored in all of its (considerable) entertainment value the above roundtable discussion of experts, I'd like to attempt to pose some questions, to most of each I don't know (and will probably never know) the answer.

The conventional thinking is that actions come from policies and priorities, which in turn come from views and opinions. But how do views and opinions come to be what they are? Do we arrive at what we believe by deductive reasoning? By inductive generalizations? Through the influence of tradition, i.e. by following the steps of our cultural forebears? By repeated trials and errors? By all of the above? By none of the above? It completely baffles me.

There is a sociopsychological phenomenon mentioned by Nassim Taleb in his seminal Fooled By Randomness that he called "the firehouse effect". The concept is that firemen often have lengthy idle periods between fire alarms, so they spend a lot of time within the same group of people of a similar background (other firemen) discussing the same issues, expressing the same views and having the same discussions over and over again. Over time this leads to the following effect: they stop questioning, and start to agree with each other on many things that most outside, impartial observers would find ludicrous. Their opinions and views converge, as after a while, opinions constantly perpetuated in the same group stop being considered with skepticism. Obviously, in the case of the fire emergency personnel, this convergence process plays a positive role; however it becomes a huge liability in the case of experts or analysts. Experts or analysts often exhibit ridiculous views and opinions which do not become subject to questioning or skepticism by their colleagues -- not because they are stupid, but because the tendency to question disappear over time, and as views become a part of the group's tradition, or worldview.

Would it be justified to speculate that the firehouse effect in a group of experts may make appear as a discussion on issues what really is a caricature of a discussion? As analysis what really is bastardization of analysis? As a balanced opinion what really is sheer and utter nonsense? The lines appear to be completely blurred.

Suppose it turned out that one of the above analysts served as an advisor to a holder of a Very Powerful Political Office and, by giving advice and providing concil, impacted various Policies and Priorities. Is it hard to imagine such a scenario? Can we trust that people advising, say, senators, chairmen, or even Presidents on issues such as energy, public infrastructure or climate change exercise more balance and substance in their judgement than the experts in the above panel? I honestly doubt it because more often than not people advising office holders are the same people as those who comprise roundtable discussion panels.

Even large-scale societies such as cities and nations succumb to the firehouse effect syndrome. For example, in the above discussion, one of the experts dismisses a concern regarding a highly complex and poorely understood phenomena due to its European origin, and "the Europeans were leaning that way, anyhow", which by definition, in his view, is grounds for dismissing it outright. By this, presumably, he intends to score points with his listeners, fellow Americans. No further justification is warranted. I wonder, if the experts ever not just express opinions, but also pose questions to themselves (in a sort of a reflexive excercise of navel gazing): what was the logical chain of reasoning that brought me to this or that conclusion? Can I retrace that logical steps and double-check them? Are there independently verifiable intermediate results that I could regression-test (to borrow a term from software engineering)? For example, if I reject the idea of global warming because it is European, would it be logical to also reject the idea of coffee because it's Brazilean (for example), or toilet paper, because it's Chinese in origin?

Let's imagine, for example, Evelyn Garriss in some high profile gathering, such as a congressional hearing, setting forth the above quoted argument:

"... And I somehow think that if peasants of Medieval Europe were able to survive the warm temperatures of the Medieval Warm period, with all our technology we might somehow struggle through. It is not the alarming catastrophy that they make it up to be!"

-- followed by Dr. Robert C. Balling, Jr., Professor in the climatology program, Dept. of Geography at Arizona State University, going on record with the following:

"I don't think the American public out there is that alarmed about Global Warming. I think that there are certainly people who are trying to get them alarmed, but I don't think that's sold at all across this country. And to this day, I would guess, the vast majority of Americans find it more of a hoax than they find it something to be alarmed at."

What should the people on the receiving end of the experts' advice make out of it? Well, honestly, absolutely nothing. These are non-falsifiable statements replete with weasel words, non-sequiturs, circularities, as well as glaring examples of other falacious arguments (notably, "not invented here"). Basically, an impartial observer might note that the experts exhude extreme confidence whose sole basis is their own extreme confidence, ad infinitum.

Should, for example, the standards of living and the life expectancy of Medieval European peasants become the acceptable "floor", it would be very easy to sell The Long Emergency message. If the public is ready for this minimalist approach, then I think people like Jim Kunstler can find their life work complete and retire to Cayman Islands. Because we have such a long way to fall between today and Medieval Europe, we have virtually nothing to worry about (even considering that the population density has increased by a factor of ten since then). Consider, for example, that in order to fall that low we have to pass the 1970-s level first, then 1930-s level, then 1900-s level, and so forth -- and still have a long way to fall. Imagine a politician reporting to his constituents: "Yes, the life has become a lot harsher for many of our fellow cuntrymen, but, considering how low it could have fallen by now, I believe that, as a public servant, I am doing a pretty darn good job! Comparing where you could have been today, I represent a huge value for your hard-earned tax money".

Also note how this argument can be used as a sort of a an image of a knight on a sheet of cardboard paper with a hole for a face, a time-honored prop used by generations of professional photographers. For example, imagine Kunstler come along and utter something like "We are facing huge difficulties, but the life in The Long Emergency with an advanced and well-maintained raiload system will be much more tolerable and much more orderly than the life without one".

To which Evelyn Garriss responds: "I somehow think that if Medieval peasants were able to survive without the railroads, with all our technology we might somehow get by".

After which, say, an advocate of fiscal responsibility comes along, and to his arguments Evelyn responds "If Medieval Peasants managed to survive without worrying about budget deficit and fiscal responsibility, with all our technology we must somehow get by".

To which standing nearby Professor Robert C. Balling would add: "I don't think the American public out there is that alarmed about fiscal responsibility. I think that there are certainly people who are trying to get them alarmed, but I don't think that's sold at all across this country. And to this day, I would guess, the vast majority of Americans find it more of a hoax than they find it something to be alarmed at."

I really wanted to avoid asking climate change-related questions in this text, as I didn't set out to write on that topic, but more on the topic of how we think, how we analyze and who we receive advice from. And I plead almost complete ignorance on the climate change issues.

But here is a question that I just can't help asking. A professor of climatology, a Ph.D. at Arizona U., is publicly stating: "I can get into my car and drive three hours south of here and enter Mexico, and start asking people what they know and think about Global Warming -- and they have never heard of it, I mean -- they have no idea what you are talking about, so it's completely off their radar screen".

But are't Mexicans the wrong people to ask? Maybe, a three hour trip south from Arizona is not such a great idea? Maybe Dr. Balling would be better off asking the Eskimos instead, for example? After all, the claim is that the climate change manifests itself through the thawing permafrost, ice shields turning into icebergs, melting snowcaps and greening tundra. What would Mexicans have to say about all that?

That is, of course, if one wishes his publicly pronounced opinions to be at least somewhat correlated with reality.

It is really disturbing to think that Dr. Balling is somebody's advisor on climate issues, however, a cynic in me tells me that he probably is, and a very successful one.

Today's Home News
BRUSSELS (ANA - M. Aroni) -- Greece's European Commissioner Stavros Dimas, responsible for issues concerning the environment, on Monday presented the 2nd European Programme for Climate Change during a conference taking place in Brussels.

The programme began in 2000 and refers to specific measures for dealing with unavoidable changes to the climate and the extreme weather phenomena that result.

It was created to help the EU meets the targets set in 1997 under the Kyoto Protocol, when the 15 EU member-states of that time undertook to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 8 percent up until the year 2012.

The programme seeks optimum solutions for reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and gases created by road transport and air travel. It also seeks to support research and development into new, environmentally-friendly technologies and to brief the general public on these targets.

Other speakers at the conference, attended by some 450 participants, included UK Minister of State for Climate Change Elliot Morley, members of the European Parliament and representatives of private firms and non-governmental organisations.

Dutch windmills at risk from climate change

Reuters AlertNet - Dutch windmills at risk from climate change

By Anna Mudeva

DE BILT, Netherlands, Oct 20 (Reuters) - Windmills, one of the Netherlands' trademarks, may go idle because of less wind as a result of climate change, Dutch scientists predict.

New research shows scientists could have been wrong when they forecast years ago that global warming would cause more storms and wind in northwestern Europe, Albert Klein Tank of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) told Reuters.

"We said that 10-15 years ago and what we see in the observations is that the climate is warming but the number of storms is actually decreasing," said Klein Tank, who leads a team making climate scenarios for the Netherlands.

"We don't have a good explanation for that," he told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday.

The traditional windy climate of northwestern Europe has spurred a rapid growth in windmills, mainly in the Netherlands and Germany, to provide alternative energy.

Dutch windmills, however, saw declining energy production in the past decade because of less wind, Klein Tank said.

"My opinion is that this fluctuation will stabilise in the end but it's not clear at all how it will change in next 20-30 years," he said.

"It is one of the most difficult parts and the biggest challenges for scientists -- to say something realistic about future storms," he said.

A panel of scientists that advises the United Nations has projected that world temperatures are likely to rise by 1.4-5.8 Celsius by 2100, triggering more floods, droughts, storms, melting icecaps and driving thousands of species to extinction.

New scenarios about the Dutch climate, due to be published by KNMI early next year, predict a change in atmospheric flows which means more moisture coming from the North Sea in winter and more frequent droughts in summer, Klein Tank said.

Summer rainfall is also likely to become heavier because of rising temperatures, threatening an increase in river levels and floods in the low-lying Netherlands.

Klein Tank's colleague, Rob Van Dorland, said rising sea level was another danger for his country, which had battled for centuries to claw back land from the sea.

The new scenarios also forecast a 10-percent lower average temperature rise in the Netherlands by 2100 than that for the entire planet, due to the influence of the sea.

TOO LATE?

Van Dorland said huge efforts were needed to slow global warming but he believes it is too late to stop it altogether.

"It's too late now to avoid the temperature rise. It's unchangeable," he said. "But if we are doing our very best, by reducing CO2 levels by 60 to 80 percent between now and 2050, we can avoid a temperature rise higher than 1-2 degrees (Celsius)."

Scientists say increasing concentration of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide (CO2), from human activity is to blame for global warming.

"We still make the conclusion that the human factor is dominant in the last 50 to 60 years or so ... We can be conclusive about that because if you look at the natural factors the planet would have cooled," Van Dorland said.

He and Klein Tank are among about 120 scientists from around the world involved in producing the next U.N. report on climate change due in 2007. Its conclusions are expected to have a big impact in guiding government policy on fighting global warming.

Climate Change and Geoengineering

Climate Change and Geoengineering

intentional large scale manipulation of the global environment’

by Wayne Hall

October 20, 2005
GlobalResearch.ca

1

One element that is missing from ecological and social movement discussion about climate change is ‘geoengineering’. ‘Geoengineering’ is one of the words used for techniques being proposed more and more frequently by scientists and commercial journalists as a ‘politically realistic’ remedy for climate change.

An article recently published in the magazine Popular Science provides a characteristic example of these kinds of proposals.

Describing a meeting in the White House in September 2001 organized by the US President’s Climate Change Technology Program to discuss ‘Response Options to Rapid or Severe Climate Change’, the article frankly admits that ‘while administration officials were insisting publicly that there was no firm proof that the planet was warming, they were quietly exploring potential ways to turn down the heat.’

In March 2001 President Bush had withdrawn US support from the Kyoto Protocol. This meeting therefore represented something like a US counterproposal to Kyoto, an ‘alternative approach to climate change’.

Some years ago Edward Teller, in his ‘Sunscreen for Planet Earth’, made a similar ‘alternative’ proposal.

The physicist and economist David Keith, who was present at the White House meeting, is quoted in the article as saying ‘if they had broadcast that meeting live to people in Europe, there would have been riots.’

Anyone can see what the ‘geoengineering’ proposals were simply by reading the relevant article in Popular Science.

For those for whom that is difficult, the proposals included: 1) underground storage of carbon dioxide, 2) wind scrubbers to filter carbon dioxide from the air, 3) ‘fertilization’ of oceans with iron to encourage growth of plankton, 4) petrification of carbon dioxide, 5) deflection of sunlight from the earth through the use of a giant space mirror ‘spanning 600,000 square miles’.

One point worth mentioning at least in passing is that, apart from the question of how effective these measures would really be, all these highly oil-dependent ‘solutions’ to problems largely caused in the first place by burning fossil fuels, are being prepared for a world that is beginning to run out of oil. (!)

In the case of at least one geoengineering measure, by no means the most ‘outlandish’, namely: ‘Enhancing Clouds to Reflect Sunlight’, a mass of eyewitness evidence for all over the world suggests that, despite official denials, a programme serving some such purpose is not merely a proposal but a reality and has been under implementation on an immensely large scale for at least a decade.

How significant are official denials? Note that the Popular Science article itself admits that the US administration’s words about ‘proof that the planet is warming’ do not match its deeds. If untruthful official denial of global warming is possible, why should untruthful official denial of actually ongoing measures, supposedly to combat global warming, not similarly be possible?

2.

Geoengineering is defined as ‘intentional large scale manipulation of the global environment’, e.g. by altering climate with the primary intention of reducing undesired climate change caused by human influences. ‘Geoengineering schemes seek to mitigate the effect of fossil-fuel combustion on the climate without abating fossil fuel use; for example by placing shields in space to reduce the sunlight incident on the Earth.’ (Keith D.W. 1999. Geoengineering, Encyclopedia of Global Change, New York).

In relation to ‘geoengineering’, the ‘Climate Change 2001’ report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change confirms that it ‘includes the possibility of engineering the earth’s climate system by large-scale manipulation of the global energy balance. It has been estimated, for example, that the mean effect on the earth surface energy balance from a doubling of CO2 could be offset by an increase of 1.5% to 2% in the earth’s albedo, i.e. by reflecting additional incoming solar radiation back into space…. Teller et al. (1997) found that ~107 t of dielectric aerosols of ~100 nm diameter would be sufficient to increase the albedo of the earth by ~1%. They showed that the required mass of a system based on alumina particles would be similar to that of a system based on sulphuric acid aerosol…(They) demonstrate that use of metallic or optically resonant scatterers can, in principle, greatly reduce the required total mass of scattering particles required.”

If, as very many indications suggest, such programmes and such ideas are already under implementation on a very large scale and outside the framework of international law, then they must either be stopped or legalized.

There is no point in ecological organizations disagreeing with them ‘behind closed doors’ and in public confining themselves to objections at the ‘philosophical’ level.

In early September 2005 the meteorologist Scott Stevens provoked a nation-wide scandal in the United States with accusations that hurricane Katrina had been caused by Japanese mafiosi using an electromagnetic generator sold to them by the Russians. (In much the same way last year, just before the December 26 tsunami that killed 300,000 people in South-East Asia, the author Michael Crichton published a best-selling novel ‘State of Fear’, which told of ‘ecologist terrorists’ who, for the purpose of securing funding for their programmes, engaged in artificial production of earthquakes and tsunamis.)

The truth is that we are not in a position to prove to conspiracy theorists that they are mistaken when they come out with scenarios of this kind. It is no easy task in situations of secrecy and non-transparency for ordinary citizens (and possibly not only ordinary citizens) to distinguish between non-military climate mitigation and the techniques of ‘climate as weapon’.

If the political parties, parliaments and mainstream mass media are not willing to bear the political cost of honesty in relation to ‘geoengineering’ then the Social Forums must assume this responsibility on their behalf.

Wayne Hall is a founding member of ATTAC-Hellas http://www.attac-hellas.org

Past Climate Change Supports Current Global Warming

- Forbes.com

THURSDAY, Oct. 13 (HealthDay News) -- Some of the strongest evidence yet of a direct link between tropical warmth and higher levels of greenhouse gases is found in past climate records, U.S. researchers say.

The current steady increase in tropical temperatures caused by global warming could have a major impact on global climate and result in more destructive storms like Hurricane Katrina, according to a team at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

"The relationship between tropical climate and greenhouse gases is particularly critical because tropical regions receive the highest proportion of solar output and act as a heat engine for the rest of the Earth," study co-author David Lea, professor in the university's department of Earth science and the Marine Science Institute, explained in a prepared statement.

The UCSB team analyzed the chemical composition of ancient fossil plankton shells from a deep sea core obtained in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, to get information about past climate conditions. The evidence from that analysis supports the link between increased greenhouse gases caused by fossil fuel combustion and a 1- to 2-degree Fahrenheit rise in tropical sea surface temperature over the last 50 years.

The study appears this week in Science Express, the online publication of the journal Science.

WSJ.com - Kyoto? Mamma Mia!

WSJ.com - Kyoto? Mamma Mia!

By ANTONIO MARTINO
October 7, 2005; Page A16

(See Corrections & Amplifications item below.)

ROME -- The devastating hurricanes that hit the U.S. recently offered "eco-doomsayers" -- who like to blame human activities, preferably of the industrial kind, for all sorts of natural disasters -- yet another chance to lash out at the Bush administration. America's "failure" to ratify the Kyoto Protocol -- regularly held responsible for extreme weather conditions around the globe -- was quickly found guilty of the destruction brought about by Katrina and Rita. As usual, the eco-doomsayers care very little for the small fact that their sweeping accusations have absolutely no basis in modern science.

First of all, it is not true that President George W. Bush is alone in opposing the Kyoto agreements that his predecessor Bill Clinton signed. In fact, when Kyoto was submitted to the U.S. Senate for ratification on July 27, 1999, the result was 95 nays and zero yeas. Not a single senator, not even from the most liberal fringe, voted in favor of Kyoto. (The ratification of international treaties requires the support of at least two-thirds of the Senate.)

Mr. Bush's position, in other words, is not simply the product of a supposedly archconservative president who arrogantly imposes his radical views on a nation held hostage by religious zealots -- as a rather popular myth here in Europe would have it. It is instead a view shared widely on both sides of the aisle in Congress and supported by the vast majority of the American public.

Second, there is no scientifically sound link between rising global temperatures and an increase in the frequency and intensity of hurricanes. Nor are the events of the recent weeks unprecedented: As Max Mayfield, Director of the National Hurricane Center, pointed out, a comparable series of hurricanes of similar intensity has already been observed in 1915.

Third, and most important, while a scientific consensus about the true nature of climate change is still lacking, we know for certain that the impact of Kyoto on the average global temperature will be negligible at best. The U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change forecasts that without the ratification of Kyoto, the average global temperature will rise about one degree Celsius by 2050. The same panel predicts that after the implementation of Kyoto, the temperature will still rise 0.94 degrees. In other words, the benefits from Kyoto amount to about 0.06 degrees in half a century. Remarkably, this is even the most optimistic estimate: S. Fred Singer -- the climatologist who developed the method for measuring the ozone layer -- reckons that it may be as small as 0.02 degrees. This is a difference so minuscule that our available instruments wouldn't even be able to notice it!

Moreover, the U.S. is not the only country that did not ratify the Kyoto Protocol. Both China and India, major and growing producers of so-called "greenhouse-gas emissions," are not required to abide by its terms. The EU countries, including my own, ratified Kyoto. That the EU would still insist on implementing the protocol must be seen as an institutional form of collective self-flagellation. Kyoto will severely penalize the European economy without bringing any real progress toward the noble aims proclaimed by the EU. As Carlo Stagnaro, environmental director at the Istituto Bruno Leoni, Italy's free-market think tank, observes, the Earth's atmosphere cannot tell European carbon dioxide emissions from the rest of the world's.

What's more, the limitations imposed by Kyoto will make our current energy problems worse. The relative slowing of oil prices after the steep rise of the last weeks must not deceive us -- the world's energy demand is bound to grow in lockstep with the breathtaking economic growth of China and India.

Those countries, such as Italy, that for decades steered clear of building new power plants and gave up on nuclear power -- the cleanest, safest and cheapest energy source available today -- will need to face up to a harsh reality: Compliance with the Kyoto Protocol will punish even the existing energy-producing capacity by capping emissions. The cost of energy in Italy, already higher than the European average, let alone that in the U.S., will go up even more. Given the country's lack of competitiveness, that can only be described as a self-inflicted wound.

Perhaps the problems of our times are manmade, after all. But rather than being caused by those "neocons" in Washington, they stem from the noble intentions of environmentalists so bent on "saving nature" that in the process they wage an unremitting war against mankind and its endeavors.

Mr. Martino is Italy's defense minister.


Corrections & Amplifications:

Contrary to this editorial feature, the U.S. Senate did not reject the Kyoto protocol. Instead, it adopted a non-binding resolution in July 1997 urging the Clinton administration not to sign. The treaty was never submitted for Senate ratification.

Chilling Effects of Climate Change in the Antarctic

ENVIRONMENT: Chilling Effects of Climate Change in the Antarctic

Gustavo González

SANTIAGO, Oct 12 (IPS) - Climate change, which the scientific community links to the increased intensity of tropical storms and other extreme weather phenomena, is also making itself felt in Antarctica, where the "hole" in the ozone layer continues to grow and the increasing break-up of the ice shelves could have played a role in the recent deaths of Argentine and Chilean scientists and members of the military.

"The hole in the ozone layer expanded this year, and the quantity of ozone destroyed within that area increased as well," Bedrich Magas, a researcher with the University of Magallanes, told IPS from the city of Punta Arenas. Magas carries out daily measurements of ultraviolet radiation in the port city of 120,000, located at the southern tip of Chile.

According to the Argentine Antarctic Institute, in September - the start of the southern hemisphere spring û the hole in the ozone layer reached 28 million square kilometres, representing an eight percent increase from 2004. In addition, the ozone value dropped from 95 to 87 Dobson Units (a measure of the "thickness" of the ozone layer, with 220 units considered the acceptable lower limit).

In satellite images, the hole appears as a fluctuating oval-shaped area that in the most critical period û which peaks in September and October - stretches from Antarctica to the southern part of South America, affecting cities in southern Argentina and Chile like Punta Arenas, 1,000 km north of the Antarctic's King George Island and 2,300 km south of Santiago.

The ozone layer protects the earth from the harmful effects of ultraviolet radiation, which include skin cancer and cataracts in humans and threats to flora and fauna.

Claudio Casiccia, a physicist who heads the Ozone Laboratory at the University of Magallanes, told IPS that in early October, the hole shrank to 21 million square kilometres, from 24 million square kilometres in August and 28 million square kilometres in September. Nevertheless, the ozone value has remained below 100 Dobson Units.

"The southern portion of South America, Patagonia and the Magallanes region, are under the influence of the Antarctic ozone hole for a short period in springtime, with varying thickness and intensity. This year, we had an event (in Punta Arenas), but there was no major increase in ultraviolet radiation, because the angle of the sun is still steep and it is quite cloudy," said the scientist.

The thinning of the ozone layer is blamed on chemical emissions like halons, which are used in fire extinguishers, CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons), used in refrigerators, air conditioners and aerosols, and methyl bromide, used as a pesticide and in building fumigations.

The Montreal Protocol, signed in 1987, set global targets for phasing out these chemicals, which "according to estimates by scientists will allow the ozone layer to recover by the middle of this century," Ana Isabel Zúñiga, head of the governmental National Environment Commission's Ozone Programme in Chile, told IPS.

But the scientific community itself has warned that the greenhouse effect, caused by carbon dioxide (CO2) and other emissions from the burning of fossil fuels blamed for global warming, is also having an impact on the thinning of the ozone layer.

The Kyoto Protocol, aimed at cutting emissions of greenhouse gases û which has not been signed by the United States, the largest single source of these gases û should thus act along with the Montreal Protocol to protect the ozone layer, while it curbs other phenomena attributed to global warming.

Attention has been focused lately on devastating hurricanes like Katrina and Stan, because studies have shown that warmer oceans and rising sea levels are producing stronger tropical storms, said Vicki Arroyo, director of policy analysis for the Virginia-based Pew Centre on Global Climate Change.

Another U.S. scientist, Peter Frumhoff with the Global Environment Programme of the Union of Concerned Scientists, told IPS in late September that "The recent science has clearly linked higher storm intensity to climate change."

The phenomenon of climate change was also blamed for the drought, high temperatures and flooding seen in Europe since 2002.

Casiccia said that while the link between global warming and extreme weather events is still being studied, "it has been accepted that there is an important relationship, in need of further study, between the weakening of the ozone layer and global climate change."

Paola Vasconi, coordinator of the Santiago-based Terram Foundation's environment programme, told IPS that the increase in ultraviolet radiation also drives up temperatures.

"One thing is probably certain: if the climate does not stabilise, the hole in the ozone layer will never close," said Magas, who pointed out that the United States emits "the shocking equivalent of 25 tons of CO2 per capita every year, compared to 3.7 tons for Chile and a global average of three tons per capita."

The link between global warming and the thinning of the ozone layer was demonstrated in 1987 by international measurements taken in the Magallanes region, the scientist pointed out.

"The incredible thing is that after that, efforts were not undertaken to curb emissions of greenhouse gases, which are today, now that CFC emissions have been curtailed, the main cause of the destruction of ozone worldwide," said Magas.

"Although it sounds terrible, the hurricanes are welcome, if that's what it takes to change the mentality of the big, irresponsible polluters," he added.

U.S. "President (George W.) Bush issued a call to ‘drive less' and announced a federal programme aimed at cutting fuel consumption û accompanied, of course, by deregulation policies on the environment allowing for increased exploration and drilling for oil in protected wilderness areas," said Magas.

On Sept. 16, International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan underscored the efforts made by the international community to curb the use of ozone-depleting substances.

The next day, two Argentine men lost their lives in Antarctica û biologist Augusto Thibaud and naval officer Teófilo González - when their snowmobile plunged into a deep hidden crevasse.

And on Sep. 28, Captain Enrique Encina and non-commissioned officers Fernando Burboa and Jorge Basualto, members of the Chilean army, died when their snow-cat fell into a 40-metre crevasse in Antarctica.

Magas pointed out that although there have always been crevasses on that continent, making travel dangerous, the ice shelves are increasingly breaking up due to the higher temperatures associated with global warming.

With a surface area of more than 14 million square kilometres, Antarctica is the fourth-largest continent. A full 95 percent of the territory is ice, and the continent accounts for 70 percent of the world's fresh water reserves.

UK Chief Scientist warns we must act on climate change now

PM - UK Chief Scientist warns we must act on climate change now

Wednesday, 12 October , 2005 18:30:00
Reporter: Mark Colvin
MARK COLVIN: Britain and Australia may have been together in the Iraq war, but when it comes to climate change they’re poles apart.

The UK and Australia are on different sides on the Kyoto Protocol and the regime of carbon trading which comes with it.

The Chief Scientific Adviser to the British Government, Sir David King, is in Canberra at the moment for talks in which he’s hoping that Australia may come round to the UK’s view on global warming.

He insists the need is real and immediate and says Britain has already had to increase its spending on coastal protection from 200 million to 500 million pounds a year because of climate change.

Sir David King told me this afternoon that there was no longer any scientific doubt about global warming or what was causing it.

DAVID KING: We’ve now developed a very sophisticated understanding of our climate system. It’s completely absurd to suggest that there is even a debate about the issue: is climate change occurring? We know that the planet has warmed by about 0.7 degrees Centigrade over the last hundred years.

Is it due to carbon dioxide emissions? We know that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have risen very substantially over the last hundred years and we also know that these two facts are connected.

Where the climate science community and, by the way, some of the world’s most brilliant applied mathematicians and physicists and chemists involved in that, where the climate science community is currently engaged in the debate is on what the impacts to the world will be from the changes that are already occurring and are in the pipeline for all of us.

MARK COLVIN: One of the reasons almost that some of the sceptics say that we shouldn’t believe this is simply, paradoxically, because there is such a consensus. They say that when there’s a scientific consensus of this nature that’s when you should be most suspicious.

DAVID KING: Well, excuse me if…

MARK COLVIN: Is there any answer for that?

DAVID KING: Excuse me if I say that that is almost the most absurd argument I have yet heard.

It’s rather like saying the second law of thermodynamics has got total consensus amongst the scientists, so we should question it. Or that energy conservation operates, so we should question that.

Science moves by challenge, but the challenge moves the topic on. And so the consensus has moved, not because it’s some kind of a vote taken amongst the scientists, but because there is no viable challenge. The strength of the science is such that we have to move on.

MARK COLVIN: Alright, well putting those arguments aside, the other big assault on Kyoto has been much more political and really to do with the fact that it left out two of the biggest and most growing, if you like, polluters in world, namely China and India.

Isn’t that an insoluble problem about Kyoto?

DAVID KING: I don’t believe it’s at all an insoluble problem about Kyoto.

Kyoto was set up, quite rightly, for those countries which had produced most of the carbon dioxide increase in the atmosphere to date, to take action first.

And it was always believed that in the second phase of Kyoto the rapidly developing economies, China, India, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, would be brought into the arrangements and that is what we will be discussing in Montreal on the first of December and beyond.

MARK COLVIN: But in the meantime, China and India are absolutely powering ahead with their industrial development and that means an enormous amount of petrol and coal being burned and an enormous amount of pollution.

So in that sense hasn’t Kyoto failed already?

DAVID KING: I don’t believe Kyoto has failed already.

First of all, in terms of China and India, the amount of carbon dioxide produced from those two countries still doesn’t match up to, or even begin to match up to, the amount of carbon dioxide produced by the fully developed world.

By 2020, by 2030, we will see, at the present rate of change, both of those countries attain the same level of energy usage as the developed world.

Quite simply, if we don’t manage that process globally, the cost of managing the risks to our populations around the world is going to become absolutely massive.

MARK COLVIN: Now here in Australia, we’re a huge exporter of energy, we’re a big, big coal producer, as I’m sure you know, and we’re also exporting gas to China. In fact, China is a big expanding market for energy.

Do you have much expectation of being able, in these economic circumstances, to get through to the Australian Government on these issues?

DAVID KING: I certainly hope to.

First of all, we need to develop the technologies in Britain, in Europe, in America, in Australia, so that we ourselves are able to generate energy without carbon dioxide emissions. And once we have developed that, to transfer those technologies to these rapidly developing nations.

MARK COLVIN: Sir David King, Britain’s Chief Scientist, speaking to me from Canberra.

Recent Increase in Hurricane Intensity Related to Climate Change, Scientists Conclude

The Epoch Times | Recent Increase in Hurricane Intensity Related to Climate Change, Scientists Conclude

By Nicholas Zifcak
The Epoch Times Washington D.C. Staff Oct 10, 2005


Nasa Image/AFPThere is a clear link “between increasing hurricane events, intensity, and global warming,” concluded Dr. Judith Curry Tuesday while speaking at the World Bank. Dr. Curry and Dr. Peter Webster presented the findings of the article they, G.J. Holland, and H.R. Chang published in the September 16th issue of Science, a national scientific journal. “We haven’t proved this beyond a reasonable doubt, but we have preponderance of evidence,” she continued.

The authors based their research on global hurricane data from 1970 to 2004. Hurricanes are classified on a scale of 1 to 5 from depending on their wind speed, with 1 being the slowest and 5 the fastest. Over the last thirty-five years, category 1 hurricanes have decreased, while categories 2 and 3 have remained stable. But Category 4 and 5 hurricanes have grown from forty per year in the 1970s to ninety per year in the 1990s and has maintained that rate up through the present. Hurricane Katrina was a category 4 hurricane when it struck Louisiana, though off shore it reached category 5.

To evaluate possible causes of the hurricanes Dr. Curry and her colleagues looked for correlations between rising global sea surface temperatures and the frequency and intensity of hurricanes.

“There are several ingredients to get a hurricane. Sea surface temperature is absolutely necessary,” stated Dr. Curry. Other important factors are wind patterns and air moisture. She indicated that the Gulf of Mexico had warm surface water this year, warm water a couple hundred feet deep. When the powerful winds of the hurricane churn this warm water intensify the hurricane. In this warm Gulf water Dennis, Emily, Katrina, and Rita developed into category 4 and 5 hurricanes. “This is the greatest cluster of storms we have seen” Mr. Webster explained, “this is the first time category 4 or 5 storms have been in the Gulf this early in the year.”

Sea surface temperature increases of 0.5 degrees have been measured across the globe in all ocean basins. But the dramatic increase in hurricane number and intensity seen in the North Atlantic is not common to all oceans. Most basins have seen only an increase in hurricane intensity (as indicated above). If global increased hurricane intensity correlates with increasing sea surface temperature, then why is the sea surface temperature rising? Rising sea surface temperature is one aspect of the general global warming effect. While it is difficult to deny data showing rising sea surface temperatures across the globe, the exact cause is yet to be isolated. Dr. Curry has, however, made her conclusions as to the cause of rising sea surface temperatures, namely increasing pollution of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2). She cautioned that the “increased hurricane intensity represents the greatest near term socioeconomic impact of greenhouse warming.”

Some have claimed that the recent upswing in land falling hurricanes is related to a larger cycle of hurricane patterns. But global data shows that the number of land falling hurricanes in the U.S. is 0.2% of global hurricanes. U.S. land falling hurricanes can’t “explain anything about global variability.” To understand global weather shifts, global weather patterns must be examined.

Climate change hits radar

St. Paul Pioneer Press | 10/09/2005 | Climate change hits radar

One of the deadliest U.S. hurricane seasons in more than a century has some Wall Street investors sounding like members of the Sierra Club.

Firms including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. are telling U.S. clients for the first time that climate change poses financial risks. With damage estimates for Hurricanes Katrina and Rita as high as $200 billion, an increasing number of investors are joining public pension funds in urging action on global warming, which scientists say may be making storms more powerful.

Even before Katrina flooded 80 percent of New Orleans, Goldman's chief investment strategist, Abby Joseph Cohen, was signaling a shift on Wall Street.

"Environmental issues, in particular climate change, are receiving increased focus from the investment community," Cohen said in an Aug. 26 report to clients.

"Katrina is going to be a big stimulus for Washington to act," said Morton Cohen, a hedge fund manager at Cleveland-based Clarion Group, which manages $200 million in assets, almost half of which are energy-related. "It's pretty obvious we have to do something about building refineries in this country and diminishing our amount of coal-burning toxins."

The concerns on Wall Street may step up pressure on President Bush to drop or soften his opposition to mandatory limits on greenhouse-gas emissions.

"The Bush administration has gotten itself in a box," said Marc Levinson, a JPMorgan Chase economist in New York. "It continues to say global warming may not really be a problem, even though by now almost everyone who has seriously looked at the issue says this is a problem."

Utilities including Exelon Corp. and lawmakers including Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican, support national limits on greenhouse emissions.

— Bloomberg News

China pushing for free trade

China has a new calling card: champion of free trade.

Since March, Beijing has opened free-trade talks with South Korea, Pakistan, Australia and Iceland. In November, it signed deals with Thailand, Malaysia and eight other Southeast Asian countries. Even though China's government still controls large swaths of the country's economy, it has sealed or is seeking free-trade pacts with 25 countries — up from zero two years ago.

All this is raising alarms within the Bush administration, whose own trade agenda has lost momentum amid rising protectionism in Congress. In particular, Washington is fretting over China's courting of countries on the outs with the U.S., including Venezuela, Cuba, Sudan and Uzbekistan.

Chinese officials say they aren't trying to rival the U.S. or stir trouble. Beijing's trade and investment agenda, they say, is designed to support an economy dependent on exports that also has a thirst for energy and raw materials. In addition, for decades, U.S. presidents have urged China to join the international economy and to take its rightful place on the diplomatic stage.

"Ironically, now our teachers are getting worried because we, the students, followed your advice so faithfully and became so successful," said Long Yongtu, a former deputy trade minister who led China into the World Trade Organization, in a May speech to the Institute for International Economics in Washington. "As the students, we believe that our teachers should not be worried about that."

— Wall Street Journal

Climate change hits radar

St. Paul Pioneer Press | 10/09/2005 | Climate change hits radar

Climate change hits radar

St. Paul Pioneer Press | 10/09/2005 | Climate change hits radar

Artic System on trajectory to New State

Arctic System on Trajectory to New, Seasonally Ice-Free State

The Arctic system is moving toward a new
state that falls outside the envelope of glacialinterglacial
fluctuations that prevailed during
recent Earth history. This future Arctic is likely
to have dramatically less permanent ice than
exists at present. At the present rate of change, a
summer ice-free Arctic Ocean within a century
is a real possibility, a state not witnessed for at
least a million years. The change appears to be
driven largely by feedback-enhanced global
climate warming, and there seem to be few, if
any, processes or feedbacks within the Arctic
system that are capable of altering the trajectory
toward this “super interglacial” state.

Complete article: http://paos.colorado.edu/~dcn/reprints/Overpeck_etal_EOS2005.pdf

Climate Change More Rapid than Ever

Climate Change More Rapid than Ever

By: Max Planck Institute for Meteorology
Published: October 6, 2005 at 07:35

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology presented on Thursday, September 29, their first model calculations for the future of the climate. According to the calculations, in the next 100 years, the climate will change more than ever. Given particular conditions, it is expected that the sea ice in the North Pole region will completely melt in the summer. Extreme weather events in Europe will increase in frequency and strength.

According to the calculations of scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, over the next century the climate will change more quickly than it ever has in the recent history of the earth. These results come from the latest climate model calculations from the German High Performance Computing Centre for Climate and Earth System Research.


Melting of arctic sea ice as a result of global warming. Image: Michael Böttinger / DKRZ / Max Planck Society 2005


The global temperature could rise by up to four degrees by the end of the century. Because of this warming, the sea level could rise on average by as many as 30 centimeters. The scientists expect that under certain conditions, the sea ice in the arctic will completely melt. In Europe, summers will be drier and warmer, and this will affect agriculture. The winters will become warmer and wetter. Another consequence of the heated atmosphere will be extreme events like heavy precipitation with floods.

"The significant result of these future scenarios is the progressive raising of mean global temperatures and the movement of climate zones in connection with that," says Dr. Erich Roeckner, the project leader of the model calculations in Hamburg. "Almost everywhere on earth, the forestry industry will have to husband different types of trees than it has until now."

In addition to the findings about the complex interplay between atmosphere and ocean, the current climate models from the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology also include new findings about the effects of aerosols and the influence of the earth's carbon cycle. The results confirm speculations over recent years that humans are having a large and unprecedented influence on the climate and are fuelling global warming.

To verify their own climate model calculations, the researchers first simulated the climate of the last century and compared the results with the real climate. "In this way, the theoretical models could be adapted very well to reality," says Professor Jochem Marotzke, the Managing Director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology.

The results by the climate researchers from Hamburg will be presented in the report from the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It is developed every five years, on the commission of the WMO, World Meteorological Organisation, and the UNEP, United Nations Environmental Programme. The IPCC report is provided to governments as an independent source of information. In total, 1000 scientists worldwide are working on the fourth edition of the progress report, due for release in 2007. The scientists are commissioned by their governments to participate in the comprehensive, independent climate status report.

"The Max Planck Institute for Meteorology is participating in the calculation of the IPCC scenarios with a coupled atmosphere-ocean model that is considered one of the best climate models worldwide," says Dr Guy Brasseur, the Director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, and one of the 15 coordinating main authors of the IPCC Report. "As scientists, we want to provide politicians with a decision paper that is as understandable as possible, and from which they can decide which measures ought to be politically implemented as urgently as possible."

In the framework of the international workshop "Future Climate Scenarios and their Use for Impact Studies", scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology presented, on September 29th and 30th, their latest model calculations, and discussed them with colleagues and operators from Germany and abroad. The data and results will be made available, in particular, to research groups that deal with the effects of climate. Those include regional results and the effects on land and sea ecosystems, hydrology, air quality, and socio-economic systems.

The Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg is one of the leading worldwide climate research facilities. In the last two years it has contributed 50 scientists to the research project, and made a financial outlay of almost 10 million euros.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Climate change summit postponed

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Climate change summit postponed

By Richard Black
Environment Correspondent, BBC News website



Which way is the wind blowing for climate control?
The first meeting of the Asia-Pacific climate pact, scheduled to take place in November in Australia, has been postponed, the BBC has learned.

Announced in July, the pact of six nations aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through technology and voluntary partnerships.

It has been hailed in some quarters as an alternative to the Kyoto Protocol.

Green groups say the postponement shows that governments involved view the Kyoto process as more important.

"The partnership was a hastily drawn together arrangement, and the group wanted to demonstrate they were going to produce something quickly," said Stephanie Long, Climate Justice Campaigner for Friends of the Earth in Australia.

"Nothing has happened to take this pact forwards, there's been nothing to disclose what it would entail, and it doesn't seem like it's as important to get around the table as it was to announce the setting up of this pact," she told the BBC News website.

Launch in Laos




Laos launch for climate pact
The Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate was announced in the Laotian capital, Vientiane, in July, at the Association of South East Asian Nations regional summit.

It brings together Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and the United States, which together account for nearly half of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.

The partnership's vision statement speaks of:

developing, deploying and transferring existing and emerging clean technology
exploring technologies such as clean coal, nuclear power and carbon capture
involving the private sector.
Missing, in stark contrast to the Kyoto Protocol, is any mention of mandatory reduction targets for greenhouse gas emissions
Although the statement says the partnership would not replace the Kyoto process, the implication at the July announcement was clear; here was an alternative model through which countries could combat climate change without risking economic pain.

Criticised at the time for being short on detail, ministers referred forwards to the inaugural ministerial meeting, to be hosted by the Australian government in Adelaide in November.

A senior official involved in the process told the BBC News website that the meeting would not now take place as scheduled, and that January was the earliest possible time.

The Australian government declined to confirm the postponement, but said that there had been no formal announcement of a date or location.

Crucial timing

The timing is significant because the meeting will now take place after the next round of United Nations climate negotiations, which opens in Montreal on 28 November.


Targets or technology? The focus for November's UN deliberations
The key topic for that meeting is what shape any future international agreement on climate change should take; whether it should be another global treaty setting mandatory targets, and if so, whether targets should extend to developing nations.

Australia and the US, which have not ratified the Kyoto treaty, are among those which would prefer a looser, more voluntary arrangement emphasising clean technology.

Last month, the British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has in the past supported a "child-of-Kyoto" concept, indicated a possible change of mind.

"Probably I'm changing my thinking about this in the past two or three years," he said at the Clinton Global Initiative meeting in New York, going on to extol the importance of technology in curbing emissions.

"Based on recent statements by Tony Blair I would say that there is a move in the direction of voluntary agreements," observed Julian Morris, executive director of the International Policy Network, a market-oriented think-tank.

"Looking at the geopolitics, it seems unlikely that China, India, South Africa, or Brazil would realistically sign up to emission reductions; and one can understand why, because it would definitely impact their economic growth.

"We don't know precisely what this Asia-Pacific pact entails, but to the extent that it encourages technology transfer it would be a good thing."

But Stephanie Long sees in the meeting's postponement the balance tipping towards the UN model.

"If the Asia-Pacific partnership had been able to have their meeting around the same time, it would have really taken the power out of the Montreal meeting," she said.

"If they haven't been able to organise the climate pact meeting in time, that demonstrates that Kyoto is actually the more important climate change forum."