climate change, no transparency, no consecious

One year ago a group of eminent scientists wrote a letter to congress provocatively titled "You are being deceived." Now, in a similar vein, but with all the gory details, John McLean has put together a 66 page compilation of the modus operandi and history of said deception. It's a story of how small committees of activists cite their own work, ignore contradictory information and dissenting reviewers, use the peer review system to lock out opponents, and blithely acknowledge crippling uncertainties (but only in tracts of text that few will read, and never in summation when it matters).

© SPPI

When your favourite prancing-horse-committee - the IPCC - is failing to impress the crowds, it's time to distract them with dressage from another source. In this case, the IPCC is being reviewed by the brand new InterAcademy Council (IAC). Expect their somber pronouncement to discover some minor flaws of process, posit a few proceedural improvements, and then declare that above all, the science is sound, rigorous, and that carbon dioxide will surely kill millions if we don't allow the guys at Goldman Sachs to save us all with complex derivative triple A packages of CDM's. Amen.

There's a cyclical nature to the lifecycle of committees. Long ago The International Science Union (ICSU) was pushing the greenhouse effect scare, they ran the conferences and subcommittees and programs that helped create the IPCC.

The hand of the ICSU can be seen in the entire lead-up to the establishment of the IPCC. It arranged most of the conferences and with its funding partners - usually the WMO and/or UNEP - it managed numerous meteorological or climatological research projects, many of which had Bert Bolin in a lead role.

The IAC and ICSU have a very similar role. Both seek to fit the square peg of science into the round hole of politics, to take a field where truth is not determined by consensus and twist it to fit a field where consensus is everything. Both have grandiose statements of intent - the IAC's is "Mobilizing the world's best science to advise decision-makers on issues of global concern" - and both work very closely with UN bodies such as the UNEP, a co-sponsor of the IPCC. ... in fact the IAC seems almost a twin of the ICSU.

The AIC has 18 board members - three of which head national science bodies - all of which are members of the ICSU. One of the three is Kurt Lambeck, who recently declared his not-so-impartial interest in the matter by launching a document I wrote about a few days ago...where he announced that humans are affecting the climate, that the public were getting confused: that clouds could provide negative feedback, but somehow (defying all logic and reason) it wouldn't change the outcome if they did. Can anyone imaging Lambeck digging hard for faults with the IPCC?

McLean covers the history of the development of the committees, their connections, and their aims.

I haven't got time to do it justice, but suffice it to say, science needs competition: different researchers, different theories, and different institutions - all trying to one-up each other. When John McLean writes about the lack of transparency in the ICSU or the IPCC, and the overlapping names and aims, I see the dark shadow of monopoly science smothering the competition.

The ICSU (p 16 - 18)
In almost every country the national scientific authority ("scientific academy, research council, scientific institution or association of such institutions") is a member of the ICSU and so too are many key international organizations for specific scientific fields. According to ICSU statute 8 of membership rules21 these members are required to "support the objectives of ICSU", which gives the ICSU extraordinary authority across all scientific fields. Members of the ICSU include the Royal Society in the UK and the National Academy in the USA and that seriously undermines the standing of the statements of support for the IPCC that both bodies have released since IPCC 4AR in 2007.

There are many disquieting aspects to the ICSU:
(a) The ICSU's 8-member executive board ultimately decides that a project will be undertaken. This means that it evaluates for each project the benefit to society, but the methods that it uses remain a mystery.
(b) It relies on "selling" an idea to "client organizations" and having them provide the research funding. If the project is of no interest to these clients then no funding might be forthcoming, and when governments and intergovernmental work is involved we can assume a political dimension to that interest.
(c) It seems likely that scientists can lobby the executive board into approving certain programs that are likely to find a research partner.
(d) The ICSU has an interest in ensuring that members of its member organizations are employed (i.e. funded).
(e) It produces no scientific papers that might be exposed to peer-review but provides policy advice in monograph (i.e. book) form. The output of research and the resultant policy advice receives no independent scrutiny, especially regards accuracy and the selective use of supporting material, and the ICSU is therefore in a position of being able to manipulate international and governmental policy. (Of course peer-review might be a waste of time if those reviewers were members of ICSU member organizations.)
(f) The ISCU is not transparent in its decision-making or its actions. It discloses little enough information about its in-house work on current projects and only reports generated by past projects. No listing of the membership past executive boards is available, nor is information about the development of past projects, which means that no information is available to the public about the formulation of ICSU projects, decisions made in relation to those projects, the manner in which they were conducted and the basis for any conclusions. In short it is impossible to identify the individuals responsible for the decisions to support each ICSU program and the integrity with which those projects were carried out.
(My emphasis added).

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, adopted during the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, enlisted the international community (189 States are Parties to this convention) in the fight against the enhancement of the greenhouse effect, specifically by establishing a general objective of stabilizing greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations at a level that would prevent any dangerous, human-induced disturbance to the climate system. Detected in the 1980s, this phenomenon is considered to be more and more worrying by the successive reports submitted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the fourth edition of which will be published in 2007.

The Kyoto Protocol, adopted in 1997 and currently ratified by 161 countries, reinforces the provisions of the convention. In particular, it sets binding targets for industrialized countries - what the Treaty calls “Annex 1” countries - to cut their GHG emissions by an average total of 5%. In this context, France is bound by both a collective target of an 8% reduction (“European bubble”) with its European Union partners, and an individual commitment to stabilize its emissions, which must, in 2012, be the same as in 1990. Developing countries, exempt at this stage from binding targets, are encouraged to reduce their emissions, in line with the principle of “common but differentiated responsibility” agreed to in Rio in 1992. In order to reach their targets, the industrialized countries must therefore implement national greenhouse gas emission reduction policies. Should such policies turn out to be inadequate, they may resort to three mechanisms:

  “Emission permits”, which allow industrialized countries to buy and sell emission rights from each other;

  “Joint implementation” (JI), which allows a developed country and a so-called “transition economy” country with commitments to control or cut their GHG emissions during the first implementation period of the Kyoto Protocol to make investments aiming to reduce greenhouse gas emissions outside their national territory and to take advantage of the emission credits generated by reductions obtained in this manner;

  The “clean development mechanism” (CDM), similar to the previous mechanism, except that the investments are made by a developed country with quantitative reduction commitments under the Protocol in a country that is not subject to such commitments, i.e. principally in a developing country.

The Marrakech Accords, adopted in November 2001, stipulate:

  Helping developing countries to deal with the consequences of climate change and endeavouring to minimize the potential negative effects of measures taken in industrialized countries to fight against the worsening of the greenhouse effect. To this end, three new funds were created in Marrakech in November 2001: the special fund for climate change, the fund for least developed countries, and the Kyoto Protocol fund for adjustment assistance. Furthermore, through a joint political declaration in 2001, the European Union, Canada, New Zealand, Norway, Iceland, and Switzerland have agreed to increase their support to developing countries by 410 million dollars a year (including 40.8 million dollars for France), beginning in 2005 (See the “Africa and Climate” file in the “Additional Information” section);

  Taking carbon sequestration sinks into consideration: these accords establish the procedures for recognizing afforestation, deforestation and sequestration activities. Since the ninth Conference of the Parties to the Climate Change Convention (December 2003), carbon sinks can be included in the CDMs;

  Creating a compliance audit of the obligations assumed by the States: these accords establish the guidelines for the dissemination of information related to compliance with the obligations of the Protocol (quality of emission inventories, organization of review teams, recognition of quantities allocated, registers) and an audit of commitments, along with penalties for countries that have not fulfilled their obligations (adoption of a compliance action plan, suspension of the right to trade emissions permits).

With the receipt, on 18 November 2004, of instruments of ratification from Russia by the Secretary-General of the United Nations, the Kyoto Protocol came into effect on 16 February 2005. Since this date:

  30 industrialized countries, including France, are legally required to reach the quantitative reduction or restriction targets for their greenhouse gas emissions.

  The international carbon trade market, which allows industrialized countries to buy and sell emissions credits among themselves, has become a legal and practical reality.

  The clean development mechanism (CDM) is now being genuinely implemented, thereby encouraging investments in LCDs that are concerned about limiting their greenhouse gas emissions.

Established in 2001, the Kyoto Protocol fund for adjustment assistance helps LCDs to deal with the negative effects of climate change.

Only two industrialized countries have not yet ratified the Kyoto Protocol: Australia (but it announced on December 2007 it will ratify the Protocol) and the United States, which have started a parallel initiative to the Rio Convention and the Kyoto Protocol, called the “Asia-Pacific initiative”, the stated objective of which is to accelerate the deployment of new, low carbon technologies or technologies that are capable of reducing the emissions from the use of fossil energy. China, India, South Korea and Japan have joined this initiative.

The Montreal Conference (28 November-9 December 2005): it brought together the Parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change, and, for the first time, the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol. Anticipated as being extremely delicate, in light of the wide range of positions between industrialized countries, developing countries and LDCs, this conference proved to be a political success, to which the determination of the European Union contributed considerably.

The approach of the Kyoto Protocol, founded on a quantified reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, and, along with this, the establishment of a carbon market through the creation of obligations and incentives to cut emissions (approach called “cap and trade”), was reinforced legally in Montreal, with the formal adoption of the institutional framework developed in recent years (flexibility mechanisms) and the establishment of the protocol compliance system.

The Montreal Conference also laid the groundwork required for discussions on the future system after 2012, in terms of both the Protocol and, more broadly, the Convention. This outcome makes it possible to envisage the continuation of market mechanisms after 2012 and to lessen the punishing uncertainty for the implementation of concrete actions and investment decisions (public and private) requiring long-term visibility. It has been made possible specifically by changes in the main emerging countries, aware that the sustainability of their economic development also involves tackling environmental issues voluntarily. The rallying of the main developing countries and the United States behind the informal dialogue process in place under the Convention completes this political consensus.

In this context, the dialogue needed to define the future regime for the fight against climate change must lead to the definition of a global agreement in 2009 at the latest, to ensure continuity with the current regime. Negotiations must begin during the Conference of the Parties in Bali in December 2007. The United Nations Secretary General convened a high-level event on 24 September 2007. This meeting was successful, making it possible to confirm the growing mobilization around the issue of climate change, the seriousness of the phenomenon, and the need to address it immediately.

The fight against climate chance is also brought up, in support of the United Nations’ process, during the “MEM” (“Major Economies Meetings”), which bring together the members of the G8 as well as Mexico and Indonesia.

Following a first MEM, which was held in September 2007 in Washington, another meeting took place in Hawaii on 30 and 31 January 2008, and a third meeting is scheduled for Paris this coming April.

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©2008 French Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs

The perception of farmers on the impact of climate change in Ghana.

Climate change has been one of the current threats in  the agricultural sector,from the farmers perceptive, climate affects most of their farming activities such as; prunning, weeding , number of spraying frequencies,and even their socioeconomic status.According to the IFAD's report on climate change, by 2020,the yield of rain fed crops would reduce by 40percent.Which means that the whole of Africa would being at risk as fare as food security is conceren.I would therefore suggest that all African leaders should be proactive enough to make the necessary instuitutional agreement that would ensure that the appropriate policies are implemented to figth this canker