Post by Will Bates, Stepitup 2007
The weekend has finished, and countries are diving into their second week in Bali of chit-chatting about what to do about climate change. While we may not be seeing much bold action so far at this round of negotiations, we know that global public pressure for urgent action is beginning to mount ...
Saturday was the third annual International Day of Action on Climate Change, which the Global Climate Campaign helped coordinate in more than 85 countries. Local groups and international activists have carried forth the message for urgent action in a big way here in Bali.
Many of the International Youth Delegation were fortunate enough to join WALHI (the largest Indonesian environmental organization) and other community groups for their Saturday event, dubbed the "Cultural Parade for Climate Justice" in Denpasar, the capital of Bali. Imagine a typical march and rally in the U.S., then add 100 degrees, humid weather, high energy, and lots of Indonesian speeches. The 3,000-person gathering was an inspiring display of well-organized grassroots action, and the fun didn't stop there ...
Just hours after the march, a smaller delegation of international youth, led by members of Avaaz.org, staged another event on the grounds of U.N. conference. They carried a banner representing the more than 545,000 global citizens that signed a petition for climate action as part of their virtual march targeting the U.N. negotiations.
The big finale of the weekend was a spectacular aerial photo action on Kuta Beach on Sunday. With aerial artist John Quigley leading ground operations, and a few international youth delegates rallying the community, we managed to gather more than 1,000 people to form a unique aerial message to the U.N. delegates and world leaders. The image of the world awash in rising seas and the call to act now will hopefully penetrate some of the nitty-gritty negotiating sessions and add to building pressure on delegates to commit to strong action here in Bali.
Regardless of what impact the image may have at this round of UNFCCC negotiations, we know it had tremendous meaning for all of us who gathered on the beach yesterday. In many ways it ways it was unlike any action we had ever joined in the U.S. All the participants were thankful for the opportunity to act as a unified, international, grassroots force -- spontaneous singing and prayer from the crowd was an incredibly powerful experience. The global grassroots climate movement is building momentum. Now, it's up to U.N. negotiators and the governments they represent to follow suit.
Click here to see more photos from the rest of the weekend.
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Comments
View as Threaded
Karen Lee Orr Posted 1:46 pm
10 Dec 2007
Bali Blog: Why biofuels are not a solution
http://www.newconsumer.com/news/item/3252/
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Greta Posted 6:40 am
11 Dec 2007
www.NoPunProductions.com ~ AmericaTheGreen.org
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stevenearlsalmony Posted 11:56 pm
11 Dec 2007
Hear ye, hear ye, words from representatives of the "Masters of the Universe" among us.
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/925
United Nation Climate change, Bali
Skeptical Scientists Urge World To `Have the Courage to Do Nothing' At UN Conference
By EPW Blog Tuesday, December 11, 2007
BALI, Indonesia - An international team of scientists skeptical of man-made climate fears promoted by the UN and former Vice President Al Gore, descended on Bali this week to urge the world to "have the courage to do nothing" in response to UN demands.
Lord Christopher Monckton, a UK climate researcher, had a blunt message for UN climate conference participants on Monday.
"Climate change is a non problem. The right answer to a non problem is to have the courage to do nothing," Monckton told participants.
"The UN conference is a complete waste of our time and your money and we should no longer pay the slightest attention to the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,)" Monckton added. (LINK)
Monckton also noted that the UN has not been overly welcoming to the group of skeptical scientists.
"UN organizers refused my credentials and appeared desperate that I should not come to this conference. They have also made several attempts to interfere with our public meetings," Monckton explained.
"It is a circus here," agreed Australian scientist Dr. David Evans. Evans is making scientific presentations to delegates and journalists at the conference revealing the latest peer-reviewed studies that refute the UN's climate claims.
"This is the most lavish conference I have ever been to, but I am only a scientist and I actually only go to the science conferences," Evans said, noting the luxury of the tropical resort. (Note: An analysis by Bloomberg News on December 6 found: "Government officials and activists flying to Bali, Indonesia, for the United Nations meeting on climate change will cause as much pollution as 20,000 cars in a year." - LINK)
Evans, a mathematician who did carbon accounting for the Australian government, recently converted to a skeptical scientist about man-made global warming after reviewing the new scientific studies. (LINK)
"We now have quite a lot of evidence that carbon emissions definitely don't cause global warming. We have the missing [human] signature [in the atmosphere], we have the IPCC models being wrong and we have the lack of a temperature going up the last 5 years," Evans said in an interview with the Inhofe EPW Press Blog. Evans authored a November 28 2007 paper "Carbon Emissions Don't Cause Global Warming." (LINK)
Evans touted a new peer-reviewed study by a team of scientists appearing in the December 2007 issue of the International Journal of Climatology of the Royal Meteorological Society which found "Warming is naturally caused and shows no human influence." (LINK)
"Most of the people here have jobs that are very well paid and they depend on the idea that carbon emissions cause global warming. They are not going to be very receptive to the idea that well actually the science has gone off in a different direction," Evans explained.
[Inhofe EPW Press Blog Note: Several other recent peer-reviewed studies have cast considerable doubt about man-made global warming fears. For most recent sampling see: New Peer-Reviewed Study finds `Solar changes significantly alter climate' (11-3-07) (LINK) & "New Peer-Reviewed Study Halves the Global Average Surface Temperature Trend 1980 - 2002" (LINK) & New Study finds Medieval Warm Period `0.3C Warmer than 20th Century' (LINK) For a more comprehensive sampling of peer-reviewed studies earlier in 2007 see "New Peer-Reviewed Scientific Studies Chill Global Warming Fears" LINK ]
`IPCC is unsound'
UN IPCC reviewer and climate researcher Dr. Vincent Gray of New Zealand, an expert reviewer on every single draft of the IPCC reports since its inception going back to 1990, had a clear message to UN participants.
"There is no evidence that carbon dioxide increases are having any affect whatsoever on the climate," Gray, who shares in the Nobel Prize awarded to the UN IPCC, explained. (LINK)
"All the science of the IPCC is unsound. I have come to this conclusion after a very long time. If you examine every single proposition of the IPCC thoroughly, you find that the science somewhere fails," Gray, who wrote the book "The Greenhouse Delusion: A Critique of "Climate Change 2001," said.
"It fails not only from the data, but it fails in the statistics, and the mathematics," he added.
`Dangerous time for science'
Evans, who believes the UN has heavily politicized science, warned there is going to be a "dangerous time for science" ahead.
"We have a split here. Official science driven by politics, money and power, goes in one direction. Unofficial science, which is more determined by what is actually happening with the [climate] data, has now started to move off in a different direction" away from fears of a man-made climate crisis, Evans explained.
"The two are splitting. This is always a dangerous time for science and a dangerous time for politics. Historically science always wins these battles but there can be a lot of causalities and a lot of time in between," he concluded.
Carbon trading `fraud?'
New Zealander Bryan Leland of the International Climate Science Coalition warned participants that all the UN promoted discussions of "carbon trading" should be viewed with suspicion.
"I am an energy engineer and I know something about electricity trading and I know enough about carbon trading and the inaccuracies of carbon trading to know that carbon trading is more about fraud than it is about anything else," Leland said.
"We should probably ask why we have 10,000 people here [in Bali] in a futile attempt to `solve' a [climate] problem that probably does not exist," Leland added.
`Simply not work'
Owen McShane, the head of the International Climate Science Coalition, also worried that a UN promoted global approach to economics would mean financial ruin for many nations.
"I don't think this conference can actually achieve anything because it seems to be saying that we are going to draw up one protocol for every country in the world to follow," McShane said. (LINK)
"Now these countries and these economies are so diverse that trying to presume you can put all of these feet into one shoe will simply not work," McShane explained.
"Having the same set of rules apply to everybody will blow some economies apart totally while others will be unscathed and I wouldn't be surprised if the ones who remain unscathed are the ones who write the rules," he added.
`Nothing happening at this conference'
Professor Dr. William Alexander, emeritus of the University of Pretoria in South Africa and a former member of the United Nations Scientific and Technical Committee on Natural Disasters, warned poor nations and their residents that the UN policies could mean more poverty and thus more death.
"My message is specifically for the poor people of Africa. And there is nothing happening at this conference that can help them one little bit but there is the potential that they could be damaged," Alexander said. (LINK)
"The government and people of Africa will have their attention drawn to reducing climate change instead of reducing poverty," Alexander added.
Steven Earl Salmony, Ph.D., M.P.A.
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001
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