Is Chinese enthusiasm for cutting emissions flagging?NANJING, China -- The European Union said Monday that cataclysmic climate change cannot be averted without Chinese leadership, but Beijing stood firm in pushing for the rich world to take the lead.

"We cannot solve the climate challenge to mankind without China taking on leadership and responsibility," Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt said in his capacity as EU president at a summit in the eastern city of Nanjing.

"So far our belief is the global effort put on the table for mitigation is not enough ... more needs to be done," he said in a post-summit address with host Premier Wen Jiabao and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso.

He spoke after a summit that reinforced the relationship between China and the EU, its largest trading partner, after U.S. President Barack Obama's visit to China fuelled talk of a "G2" world dominated by Washington and Beijing.

The two sides stressed Monday the importance of a multipolar world and agreed to work together to "actively meet global challenges and strive for a peaceful, sustainable, and prosperous world," according to a joint statement.

While acknowledging efforts made by China -- the world's largest greenhouse gas emitter -- Reinfeldt raised questions about a Chinese plan to slow its carbon emissions growth announced last week ahead of Copenhagen climate talks.

"What does it mean when it's compared to business-as-usual? What kind of measures are being put into the Chinese economy to be able to deliver on these?" he said.

Barroso told reporters late Sunday that the European Union had urged China to maximise its efforts to help tackle climate change and do all it can, exploring the "outer limits" of its position.

Wen, however, defended China's offer, saying it marked "a major contribution to global efforts" on the issue.

"China places high importance on the upcoming Copenhagen conference," said Wen, who will lead the Chinese delegation at the talks. "China is willing to work to move the conference in the right direction."

Beijing said last week that by 2020 it would curb emissions per unit of gross domestic product by between 40 and 45 percent compared to 2005 levels.

The pledge was essentially a vow to increase energy efficiency but would see China's fast-growing emissions continue to grow along with its economy.

In a low-profile weekend meeting of developing nations in Beijing, participants reiterated the Chinese position that developed countries must shoulder most carbon emissions cuts.

The official People's Daily newspaper said the meeting of representatives from China, India, Brazil, South Africa, and Sudan agreed to ask "developed countries to assume responsibility for emissions reduction targets."

Wen also said each nation's burden should depend on its development level.

"This is the key to success of the (Copenhagen) conference," he said.

World leaders gather in Copenhagen from December 7-18 for UN talks on tackling global warming beyond 2012.

Leaders have said that, at best, the meeting is likely to yield a framework accord whose legally binding details would be hammered out next year.

At Monday's joint news appearance, Barroso said major players "can always negotiate with numbers, but we cannot negotiate with science, with physics."

The European Union has offered to cut its 2020 emissions to 20 percent below 1990 levels, and by 30 percent if an ambitious world agreement can be reached.

The White House last week said Obama would offer to cut carbon emissions by
17 percent by 2020, based on 2005 levels.

Reinfeldt said the European Union was also urging Washington to do more.

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December 19th

Prelude to COP15: Climate Justice actions sweep the US before Copenhagen talks

Prologue to Copenhagen

President Obama announced today that he will attend the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, raising the stakes for himself and all participating nations.

The initial goal for Copenhagen was to forge a binding treaty. But that ambitious goal has been scaled back. With American climate protection legislation bogged down in the Senate after clearing the House, Obama can't put enough commitments on the table to secure a final agreement. Division over how to financially help developing nations respond to global warming also remains far from resolved.

But the participating nations do not want Copenhagen to be an exercise in vague rhetoric and meaningless communiques. What would constitute a success? What could come out of Copenhagen that would help us avert a climate crisis?

President Obama laid down that marker yesterday, in his joint appearance with the Indian Prime Minister:

In other words, for Copenhagen to be a success, all nations have to get started on cutting actual greenhouse gas emissions.

We don't have to agree on the exact targets, timeframes and total financial assistance. But we have to get moving, because the planetary clock is ticking.

President Obama going is a sign of American commitment. Hopefully, before Copenhagen, Obama's decision will be backed up by a tripartisan deal from Sens. John Kerry, Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham, so it will be fairly clear America is on the verge of acting, and not making excuses.

Control of Copenhagen's outcome is far from being solely in Obama's hands.

China and India, always using America as an excuse for irresponsible growth, need to step up on emissions targets.

The EU, always crowing about its emissions targets, needs to step up on financial assistance to developing nations.

Yet Obama has set the benchmark for success. And he has put his own national and international credibility on the line to achieve that success.

It's always a political risk to set goals that you can't achieve unilaterally. But that's what leaders do.

Originally posted at OurFuture.org

Related Links:

Prelude to COP15: Climate Justice actions sweep the US before Copenhagen talks

EU pushes China further after pledge to slow carbon intensity

Copenhagen climate summit (part 1): the expectations

President Barack Obama will attend the climate summit in Copenhagen next month and offer to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, officials said Wednesday.

Obama hopes to "give momentum to the negotiations" on Dec. 9 when he attends part of the 12-day global summit aimed at finding a successor to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change that expires in 2012, a senior official said.

The president will commit to the near-term U.S. emissions reduction target of 17 percent as long as China and other emerging nations made serious pledges of their own, a White House statement said.

"In light of the president's goal to reduce emissions 83 percent by 2050, the expected pathway set forth in this pending legislation would entail a 30 percent reduction below 2005 levels in 2025 and a 42 percent reduction below 2005 in 2030," it said.

Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which is in charge of the Dec. 7-18 Copenhagen conference, warmly welcomed Obama's decision to attend.

"I think it's critical that President Obama attends the climate change summit in Copenhagen," de Boer said in a telecast news conference from Bonn.

"The world is very much looking to the United States to come forward with an emission reduction target and to contribute international finance support to help developing countries adapt to the impact of climate change.

"I think that if he can deliver on his election campaign statements that Copenhagen needs to be a success by coming to Copenhagen himself, that I think will be critical to a good outcome."

When Obama goes to Copenhagen on Dec. 9, he is likely to be the only head of state or government there as the others are coming for the last three days of proceedings.

Obama sought Tuesday to boost hopes of a meaningful deal at the Copenhagen climate summit, saying recent progress after meetings with the leaders of key players like India and China meant serious progress was being made.

India, China and other developing nations have been pressing for Western nations to offer technology and other support to help them reduce the intensity of emissions blamed for global warming.

But the emerging economies have resisted legally binding requirements, saying that wealthy nations, not them, bear the historic responsibility for carbon emissions.

As the leader of one of the world's two biggest polluters, Obama had been under considerable pressure from U.S. allies to attend the conference.

The ambitions of any U.S. targets on greenhouse gas emissions are restricted by the fact that Congress is struggling to pass legislation for comparatively meager cuts.

Obama's position for Copenhagen exactly reflects a House of Representatives bill, passed in June, that also envisages cuts of 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020 and by 83 percent by 2050.

A slightly more ambitious bill before the Senate, but not due to be debated again until early next year, talks of a 20 percent reduction from 2005 levels by 2020.

Compared to the 1990 benchmark used by almost every other country, the U.S. target only amounts to something like a four-percent reduction.

The European Union has vowed to reduce its emissions by 20 percent from 1990 levels before 2020, raising the target to 30 percent in the event of an international agreement. Japan has offered 25 percent, but attached conditions.

The United States was the world's biggest carbon emitter until it was overtaken by China in 2006, according to the Global Carbon Project, a consortium of leading climate scientists.

But Chinese officials point out that its per capita emissions are between one-third and one-fifth of developed countries.

Related Links:

EU pushes China further after pledge to slow carbon intensity

Washington Times: “Obama digs in on global warming”

Chuck Norris on Copenhagen

The IPCC’s prediction for average sea-level rise this century is 13 inches (if global warming continues unchecked). Today’s report from a group of climatologist ups the prediction to 33 inches. This is what the difference looks like on a pair of identical twins. Photo Illustration courtesy Greg Ceo.The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- the world’s foremost body for weighing and assessing climate science -- received a kick in the pants today from members who say the climate situation is much worse than the IPCC has so far reported.

Twenty-six climatologists -- including 14 IPCC members -- have released a startling update to the panel’s work, reporting that sea levels could rise and methane-laden arctic permafrost could melt much sooner than the panel had anticipated.

“The Copenhagen Diagnosis: Updating the World on the Latest Climate Science” is not an official IPCC report; it’s a summary of the hundreds of peer-reviewed research papers that have been published since the IPCC’s last assessment. It was released now to fill the long gap in between official IPCC reports -- the last was released in 2007, but the drafting text is more than three years old, and the next isn't scheduled until 2013. It was also timed to the Copenhagen climate talks, of course.

The essence of the new report is that things are grimmer than the IPCC has reported. And it’s not like the panel has been painting a rosy picture -- its 2007 report concluded that the warming-induced melting of the Greenland ice sheet could create significant sea-level rise in this century. IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri said at the time, “If there's no action before 2012, that's too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment."

The new diagnosis finds that arctic sea ice is melting 40 percent faster than the panel estimated just a few years ago. Another startling finding: Satellites have found that the global average for rising sea levels was 3.4 millimeters per year from 1993-2008. The IPCC estimated it would be 1.9 mm for that period -- short by 80 percent.

The report’s authors (who include the preeminent Stephen Schneider) write that “if global warming is to be limited to a maximum of 2°C above pre-industrial values, global emissions need to peak between 2015 and 2020 and then decline rapidly." If you're keeping score, 2015 is just over five years away -- somewhat less comforting than the distant "2050" you used to hear so much about.

In a time when the correspondence of scientists is hacked and stolen and as a matter of political strategy, some will no doubt dismiss the group’s research entirely. And even IPCC fans may question whether its decision-making process is swift enough to remain relevant. It certainly seems that events are outpacing the political system's ability to deal with them.

Below are the key findings from the report:

Surging greenhouse gas emissions: Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels in 2008 were nearly 40 percent higher than those in 1990. Even if global emission rates are stabilized at present-day levels, just 20 more years of emissions would give a 25 percent probability that warming exceeds 2°C, even with zero emissions after 2030. Every year of delayed action increases the chances of exceeding 2°C warming.

Recent global temperatures demonstrate human-induced warming: Over the past 25 years temperatures have increased at a rate of 0.19°C per decade, in very good agreement with predictions based on greenhouse gas increases. Even over the past ten years, despite a decrease in solar forcing, the trend continues to be one of warming. Natural, short-term fluctuations are occurring as usual, but there have been no significant changes in the underlying warming trend.

Acceleration of melting of ice-sheets, glaciers and ice-caps: A wide array of satellite and ice measurements now demonstrate beyond doubt that both the Greenland and Antarctic ice-sheets are losing mass at an increasing rate. Melting of glaciers and ice-caps in other parts of the world has also accelerated since 1990.

Rapid Arctic sea-ice decline: Summer-time melting of Arctic sea-ice has accelerated far beyond the expectations of climate models. The area of sea-ice melt during 2007-2009 was about 40 percent greater than the average prediction from IPCC AR4 climate models.

Current sea-level rise underestimated: Satellites show recent global average sea-level rise (3.4 mm/yr over the past 15 years) to be ~80 percent above past IPCC predictions. This acceleration in sea-level rise is consistent with a doubling in contribution from melting of glaciers, ice caps, and the Greenland and West-Antarctic ice-sheets

Sea-level predictions revised: By 2100, global sea-level is likely to rise at least twice as much as projected by Working Group 1 of the IPCC AR4; for unmitigated emissions it may well exceed 1 meter. The upper limit has been estimated as ~ 2 meters sea level rise by 2100. Sea level will continue to rise for centuries after global temperatures have been stabilized, and several meters of sea level rise must be expected over the next few centuries.

Delay in action risks irreversible damage: Several vulnerable elements in the climate system (e.g. continental icesheets, Amazon rainforest, West African monsoon and others) could be pushed towards abrupt or irreversible change if warming continues in a business-as-usual way throughout this century. The risk of transgressing critical thresholds (“tipping points”) increases strongly with ongoing climate change. Thus waiting for higher levels of scientific certainty could mean that some tipping points will be crossed before they are recognized.

The turning point must come soon: If global warming is to be limited to a maximum of 2 °C above pre-industrial values, global emissions need to peak between 2015 and 2020 and then decline rapidly. To stabilize climate, a decarbonized global society -- with near-zero emissions of CO2 and other long-lived greenhouse gases -- needs to be reached well within this century. More specifically, the average annual per-capita emissions will have to shrink to well under 1 metric ton CO2 by 2050. This is 80-95% below the per-capita emissions in developed nations in 2000.

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EU pushes China further after pledge to slow carbon intensity

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

Will world leaders rocket at Copenhagen?Photo: jurvetson via Flickr Creative CommonsSuddenly -- and just in the nick of time -- next month's Copenhagen conference is starting to gain momentum. National leaders have rushed to say they are going,
elevating it to the status of a major summit. More and more commitments to
action are coming in, from both developed and developing countries. And there
are signs that even the United States may put an, albeit provisional, offer
on the table.

It has all
been enough to cheer up the phlegmatic Yvo de Boer, who -- as  Executive Director of the U.N. Framework
Convention on Climate Change -- is in
charge of the talks. Last month he was sounding downbeat, but now he says:
"There is no doubt in my mind that (the meeting) will yield a success."

"Almost every day now we see new commitments and pledges
from both industrialized and developing countries," he added. "I am confident
that the President of the United States
can come to Copenhagen
with targets and a financial commitment."

Maybe de
Boer is now erring on the optimistic side, but there is no doubt that there is,
at present at least, a new mood in the
air. It is reflected in -- and partly caused by -- a stampede of heads of governments promising to come.

By the
weekend, just a week after the Danish Government had sent out the formal
invitations, 65 leaders had committed themselves to attend. They included such
heavyweights as British Prime Minister Gordon Brown,  German Chancellor Angela Merkel, President
Nicolas Sarkozy of France, Prime Ministers Yuki Hatoyama and Kevin Rudd of
Japan and Australia, and Presidents Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono of Indonesia.

Several key
leaders have yet to reply -- including President Hu Jintao of China, India's
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, South African president Jacob Zuma and, of
course, Barack Obama. But so far the Danes have not had a single refusal, and
expect many more acceptances.

The
promised turn-out is a big vindication for Gordon Brown, who was the first
leader to commit to going -- as long ago as September. Brown insisted that only
heads of governments would have the authority to negotiate and strike a deal.
He has since spent much time telephoning and talking to other leaders face-to-face
to persuade them to attend.

He will be
at it again this weekend at the summit of leaders of the former colonial
countries that belong to the British Commonwealth in Trinidad.
Manmohan Singh and Jacob Zuma can expect to come under particular pressure if
they have not accepted by then.

Meanwhile
offers of emission reductions continue to come in. Russia has agreed at a summit with
the E.U. last week to accept a 25 percent cut on 1990 levels by 2020, doubling
its previous target. This is hardly ambitious because the collapse of its economy
in the 1990s means its emissions are now much lower than they were at the start
of that decade -- but it is important because it represents another developed
country coming into the range which will trigger the big cuts promised by the
E.U., Japan, and Australia if others followed suit.

South Korea
offered a four percent reduction from 2005 levels by 2020. Again, this may
appear paltry, but is psychologically important because the country is
(somewhat anomalously) classified as a developing one, making South Korea the
first developing country to announce an absolute cut in emissions as opposed to
just reducing its rate of growth.

Even more importantly, Brazilian officials
made clear last week that the ambitious target of at least a 36.1 reduction in
projected 2020 emissions, would involve an absolute cut of at least 10 percent
from current levels.

The big questions are what the U.S. and China will offer. President Hu has
promised a "notable" reduction in expected 2020 emissions, and is expected to
attach a figure on it in Copenhagen.
And Todd Stern, the chief U.S.
negotiator indicated that  President
Obama was considering going with a provisional number for emissions reduction
even if the Senate had not voted on it by then.

There is also a growing consensus on
the even more important -- and difficult -- issue of providing finance to the
world's poorest countries to help them tackle their own pollution and adapt to
the devastating impacts of climate change. This is settling out at an
acceptance that about $100 billion a year will be needed by 2020 (a figure originally proposed by Gordon Brown
last summer), that 22-50 billion euros of this would come from international
aid, and that "fast-track finance" of 5-7 billion euros should be provided to
finance immediate action.

Of course there will be many stomach-turning ups and downs before the leaders leave the
Danish capital, and it could well all come unstuck. But the very fact that
leaders are going makes that more unlikely, because the one thing that unites
them is a determination to avoid being associated with failure.

Related Links:

Prelude to COP15: Climate Justice actions sweep the US before Copenhagen talks

EU pushes China further after pledge to slow carbon intensity

Copenhagen climate summit (part 1): the expectations

Todd SternAs Dave lamented last week, most of the predicting and posturing preceding the Copenhagen climate talks amounts to little more than Some Person Guessing. You might consider the weekend news from the UK Observer -- which reported the Obama administration's intention to set a provisional target for U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions -- to be more of the same, though it at least relies on the head of Obama’s climate negotiation team.

From the Observer:

President Barack Obama is considering setting a provisional target for cutting America's huge greenhouse gas emissions, removing the greatest single obstacle to a landmark global agreement to fight climate change.

The Observer has learnt that administration officials have been consulting international negotiators and key players on Capitol Hill about signing up to a provisional target at the UN global warming summit in Copenhagen, now less than three weeks away.

Todd Stern, the state department climate change envoy, said the administration recognised that America had to come forward with a target for cutting its emissions. The US, which with China is responsible for 40% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, is the only major developed nation yet to table an offer.

"What we are looking at is to see whether we could put down essentially a provisional number that would be contingent on our legislation," Stern said from Copenhagen, where he was meeting Danish officials.

By doing so, the administration would get out ahead of Congress—pledging something that 67 senators may not be willing to ratify. It has so far refused to do that in its climate work, to the detriment of its international popularity. But this is what European Union countries do all the time, Rob Bradley, the World Resources Institute’s director of international climate policy, said on Friday. They make agreements at the international level, then pass national legislation to make good on their promises. And, said Bradley, they’ve grown tired of hearing why this doesn’t work in the United States.

Stern’s suggestion—a U.S. commitment contingent on Congress passing legislation—could help the administration work around that dilemma.

Finally, a bit more from Agence France-Presse:

The United States will present an emissions target at upcoming UN climate change talks in Copenhagen, a senior official said Monday, as President Barack Obama mulled whether to attend the conference.

The official refused to be drawn on what that target would be but indicated that Obama would announce it in the next few days along with a decision on whether he will fly to the Danish capital to give added impetus to proceedings.

Added impetus to proceedings--let's hope our inspirer-in-chief finds a more inspiring way to put it.

Related Links:

Prelude to COP15: Climate Justice actions sweep the US before Copenhagen talks

EU pushes China further after pledge to slow carbon intensity

Copenhagen climate summit (part 1): the expectations

You could make a pretty simple argument that the fate of the world rests with the United States Senate Republicans:

1. It takes 60 votes to pass a climate bill in the U.S. Senate (assuming it won’t be done through budget reconciliation). Getting the votes of all 58 Democrats and two Independents will be just plain tough, as they might say in the Blue Dog states.

2. It takes 67 Senate votes to ratify an international climate treaty. That requires Republican votes.

3. The international community isn’t likely to pass a climate treaty without the cooperation of the United States.

4. The world needs the Senate Republicans.

The hope is that enough of the most (relatively) independent-minded ones can be peeled away from the obstructionist line and cajoled into supporting a first-step climate bill. That’s why it’s problematic that John McCain (R-Arizona) is acting like anything but a maverick on the issue.

There’s been some interesting reporting on the McCain front today.

Before his most recent presidential run, McCain had long been a leader on taking climate change seriously and doing something about it. He and Joe Lieberman authored the first major climate bill in the Senate in 2003 and introduced new versions in 2005 and 2007. 

POLITICO summarizes his about-face:

Now the Arizona Republican is more likely to repeat GOP talking points on cap and trade than to help usher the bill through the thorny politics of the Senate.

McCain refers to the bill as “cap and tax,” calls the climate legislation that passed the House in June “a 1,400-page monstrosity” and dismisses a cap-and-trade proposal included in the White House budget as “a government slush fund.”

The shift even has former McCain aids “mystified.” Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.), the only Senate Republican who’s shown real interest this fall in working with Democrats to craft a climate bill, tells POLITICO, “I wouldn’t be here on this issue without him … He’s the guy that introduced me to the climate problem.”

More bad news: McCain is vulnerable to a primary challenge from the right, according to a new Rasmussen poll. Matt Yglesias concludes:

This seems like pretty much terrible news for the world. The most likely path between Point A and Senate passage of a reasonable climate bill is for McCain to rediscover his interest in the issue. But that’s not the sort of thing a Senator worried about a right-wing primary challenge is likely to do.

For more on the way it used to be: Grist’s interview and overview of McCain’s environmental record from last year’s campaign show how he’s changed his position on a climate plan.

And don’t expect the Republican dynamic to change soon, according to Greenwire. Reporter Alex Kaplun takes a look at upcoming primaries and finds candidates courting the Republican base by taking hard-line positions against a climate bill. His sources say “the general trajectory of the Republican Party as whole for the foreseeable future will be toward opposition of the climate bill.”

All this still amounts to reading tea leaves on where McCain will be if the Senate ever gets around to voting on a climate bill. Maybe he’s still working through some post-election blues. Maybe, over time, he’ll be drawn to playing a constructive role again.

Related Links:

EU pushes China further after pledge to slow carbon intensity

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

Shucks, we shoulda known!Photo courtesy Andrew Ciscel via Flickr With the Copenhagen climate talks upon us we learn that hackers recently broke into thousands of emails and internal documents from a leading climate research center and dumped them onto an anonymous Russian server. The hacked emails
(160 MB worth, unzipped) came from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU). They allegedly include 10-year's worth of exchanges between top U.S. and British climate scientists who were debating the latest developments in climate research. Global warming skeptics, the internet over, are using the (illegal) hacking to claim that global warming is a hoax, full of fudged data and dishonest, conspiratorial scientists. It's "the global warming scandal of the century," claim conservative bloggers.

A CRU spokesperson confirmed that their server was hacked; however, the spokesperson told the BBC that "Because of the volume of this information we cannot currently confirm that all of this material is genuine."

The exchanges reportedly include discussions about climate data and how to respond to climate skeptics, a few blunt comments about the most fervent deniers, and one doctored photo of climate skeptics stranded on an ice floe. But the most controversial comments, plucked out of context, come from a private correspondence between CRU researcher Phil Jones and Pennsylvania State University's Michael Mann (author of the infamous "hocky stick graph" of rising global average temperatures):

"I’ve just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e. from 1981 onwards), and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline," wrote Jones.

I'll save you from the science wonkery and allusions here (check out RealClimate for a more detailed explanation), but noisy climate skeptics are jumping on two parts of that sentence. Guess which ones? Yup, "trick" and "hide the decline."

Jones was referencing two sets of data on temperature change during the last decade. One used changes in tree rings; the other used thermometers. Both showed a rise in temperature until the 1960s, when the thermometers continud to record a rise and the tree rings did not. When other independent temperature measures confirmed the thermometer readings, scientists abandoned the tree rings data. 

The legitimate climate scientists over at RealClimate have an indepth response to the allegations being made against the CRU folks, some of whom are RealClimate contributors. While conceding that "hide" was a poor choice of words, they translate the science slang at work here: "Scientists often use the term 'trick' to refer to 'a good way to deal with a problem,' rather than something that is 'secret."

"It sounds incriminating," Michael Mann told Andrew Revkin of The New York Times about his email exchange with Phil Jones. "But when you look at what you're talking about, there's nothing there."

RealClimate's level-headed response to the event is worth reading, along with its active and excellently moderated discussion thread. Another point they make which is worth emphasizing in light of blog posts calling this "a scandal that is one of the greatest in modern science":

It appears that the original Russian FTP server, which held the illegally obtained files, has been shut down, although the files have now been uploaded elsewhere on the web.

A few things to keep in mind throughout this entire "scandal":

As implicated researcher Michael Mann notes to the respected international scientific journal Nature: "The deniers will probably do anything they can to distract the public from the reality of the problem [of climate change], and the threat that it poses. Cherry-picked, out-of-context quotes, stolen from private e-mails, is the best they've got."

Related Links:

EU pushes China further after pledge to slow carbon intensity

Science historian Weart on global warming

UK Guardian: “Scientists must stop sanitising their message”

The climate problem is incredibly complex. Heck, it’s unfathomably complex to most folks, as it involves chemistry, computer models, economic development, and, of course, the weather.

This complexity demands strong, explanatory journalism—the kind of fact gathering and storytelling that too many news organizations are ignoring in an era of declining budgets and celebrity infatuations.

There are exceptions, thankfully. The good people at the Earth Journalism Awards have singled out 15 journalistic approaches to the climate problem (or aspects of it) that they believe did the best job at exploring the issue and breaking it down for their readers.

The 15 finalists for the 2009 awards include a Scientific American series on carbon sequestration and a report from the Business Daily of Nairobi on how Kenya’s companies are losing out in the global carbon trading scheme.

You, dear reader, have a voice in selecting the winner of the Earth Journalism Global Public Award.  Go to the site, read the stories, and vote on the one you think is the best.

You’ll be doing two important things—informing yourself, and supporting journalists who are doing their best to gather facts about the most consequential threat facing humanity.

The winning story will be presented at the Earth Journalism Awards ceremony to an audience of negotiators, climate change experts, activists and media representatives in Copenhagen on December 14 on the eve of the negotiations.”

Follow the Earth Journalism Awards on Facebook.

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Prelude to COP15: Climate Justice actions sweep the US before Copenhagen talks

EU pushes China further after pledge to slow carbon intensity

Copenhagen climate summit (part 1): the expectations

PARIS -- Braking the rise in Earth's population would be a major help in the fight against global warming, according to an unprecedented U.N. report published Wednesday that draws a link between demographic pressure and climate change.

"Slower population growth ... would help build social resilience to climate change's impacts and would contribute to a reduction of greenhouse-gas emissions in the future," the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) says.

Its 104-page document emphasises that population policies be driven by support for women, access to family planning, reproductive health, and other voluntary measures.

"It really is the first time that a United Nations agency has looked hard at the connections between population and climate change," lead researcher Bob Engelman, vice president for programs at the green group Worldwatch Institute, told AFP.

"People are at the root of the problem and at the solution of it, and empowerment of women is the key."

The report, the 2009 State of World Population, paints a grim tableau of the peril of climate change and the likely impact on humans, in terms of floods, drought, storms, and homelessness.

But it notably puts distance between a decades-long tradition in the U.N. arena whereby population growth and its part in environmental destruction were rarely -- if ever -- evoked.

"Fear of appearing supportive of population control has until recently held back any mention of 'population' in the climate debate," the document admits.

Things, though, are starting to change. More than three dozen developing countries have already included population issues in national plans on climate, it says.

Negotiators, including the European Union, have tentatively suggested that the question be considered in talks, designed to culminate in Copenhagen next month, for a 192-nation post-2012 global climate pact.

Today, the world's population stands at around 6.8 billion. By mid-century, it will range between 7.959 billion to 10.461 billion, with a mid-estimate of 9.15 billion, according to U.N. calculations.

The difference between 8 billion and 9 billion is between one and two billion tons of carbon per year, according to research cited in the report.

That would be comparable to savings in emissions by 2050 if all new buildings were constructed to the highest energy-efficiency standards and if two million one-gigawatt wind turbines were built to replace today's coal-fired power plants.

"[P]opulation growth is among the factors influencing total emissions in industrialized as well as developing countries," it says.

"Each person in a population will consume food and require housing, and ideally most will take advantage of transportation, which consumes energy, and may use fuel to heat homes and have access to electricity."

Mitigating population rise would have a double benefit, it says.

It reduces greenhouse-gas output, especially if the decline occurs in developed countries, whose per-capita emissions are up to 10 times those of poor countries.

And it also helps countries -- especially poor nations with high population growth -- adapt to the impacts of climate change.

"The growth of population can contribute to freshwater scarcity or degradation of cropland, which may in turn exacerbate the impacts of climate change," says the report. "So too can climate change make it more difficult for governments to alleviate poverty and achieve the Millennium Development Goals."

The report says taking demographics into account can help national policies and the quest for a U.N. climate agreement.

Women are not only more vulnerable than men to the effects of climate change but also hold the key to helping resolve it through fertility control and involvement in the economy, it adds.

Thus helping women will entail access to reproductive health care, education, and gender equality.

Related Links:

Prelude to COP15: Climate Justice actions sweep the US before Copenhagen talks

EU pushes China further after pledge to slow carbon intensity

Copenhagen climate summit (part 1): the expectations