AFP PHOTO/Emmanuel DUNAND

There is a nice article by Stan Cox on Alternet today that debunks four bogus scientific theories. As in: "Is the Earth continuously producing new oil—more than we could ever burn?" or:  "Was 'The Flintstones' a work of nonfiction!?" Go laugh, a bit scary though. Strange what people want to believe in if given a chance.... But Cox remarks that

mainstream science does recognize mechanisms by which climate change can affect geological activity.

At least according to a conference held in London at the end of last year. Amongst other things, wrote the Guardian then,

the disappearance of ice caps will change the pressures acting on the Earth's crust and set off volcanic eruptions across the globe.

This does not necessarely mean that the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull, the Icelandic volcano, has anything to do with it.  But it might just give us an idea what is in store ... some empty skies, at least once in a while. And for more on eruptions, check out the blog Eruptions by Dr Erik Klemetti, a geologist at Denison U, Ohio.

AFP / Antonio Scorza

Check out Al Gore's opinion piece in the New York Times.

Global political paralysis has thus far stymied work not only on climate, but on trade and other pressing issues that require coordinated international action. The reasons for this are primarily economic. The globalization of the economy, coupled with the outsourcing of jobs from industrial countries, has simultaneously heightened fears of further job losses in the industrial world and encouraged rising expectations in emerging economies. The result? Heightened opposition, in both the industrial and developing worlds, to any constraints on the use of carbon-based fuels, which remain our principal source of energy.

He points to one of the most important reasons for inaction that remains most often unsaid. Because it is obvious? Or because it would eventually demand a change of the whole system?

The decisive victory of democratic capitalism over communism in the 1990s led to a period of philosophical dominance for market economics worldwide and the illusion of a unipolar world. It also led, in the United States, to a hubristic “bubble” of market fundamentalism that encouraged opponents of regulatory constraints to mount an aggressive effort to shift the internal boundary between the democracy sphere and the market sphere. Over time, markets would most efficiently solve most problems, they argued. Laws and regulations interfering with the operations of the market carried a faint odor of the discredited statist adversary we had just defeated. This period of market triumphalism coincided with confirmation by scientists that earlier fears about global warming had been grossly understated. But by then, the political context in which this debate took form was tilted heavily toward the views of market fundamentalists, who fought to weaken existing constraints and scoffed at the possibility that global constraints would be needed to halt the dangerous dumping of global-warming pollution into the atmosphere. Over the years, as the science has become clearer and clearer, some industries and companies whose business plans are dependent on unrestrained pollution of the atmospheric commons have become ever more entrenched.

Meanwhile, the World Watch Institute has  published an article on the media's reporting of climate change. It concludes that

unless climate change reporting improves through morein-depth, international coverage, the necessary shift to low-carbon, resilient economies will not likely occur until the worst damages become as apparent as flood water rising to our windows. By then, it may be too late.

AFP / Antonio Scorza

According to the latest poll by British  market research company Ipsos Mori, there has been a sharp decline in public  conviction that climate change is a threat, writes the Guardian,

the proportion of adults who believe climate change is "definitely" a reality dropped by 30% over the last year, from 44% to 31%.

Same goes for the American public, where poll after poll over the last months has shown that less and less people believe that climate change is a serious problem - or, if so, that it is manmade. According to the latest Rasmussen report on US public opinion,

47% think long-term planetary trends are mostly to blame, down three points from the previous survey in January. Eight percent say there is some other reason, and 10% aren't sure. (...) Belief that human activity is the primary cause of global warming has declined significantly. In April 2008, the numbers were nearly the mirror image of the current numbers. At that time, 47% blamed human activity and only 34% named long term planetary trends as the reason for climate change.

Reasons? All this comes after months of controversy about leaked emails from climate researchers and allegations of manipulating data. The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had to admit mistakes in their estimate that Himalayan glaciers would be gone by 2035 (they are melting nonetheless, but slower than the IPCC has written in their 2007 report). And the human tendency ignore problems that are too slowly developing to really  comprehend  and require too much change from us.

The United Nations has warned that extreme winter weather might have killed more than a million livestock in Mongolia.

Mongolia is currently threatened by a “Dzud”, which isa multiple natural disaster consisting of a summer drought producing small stockpiling of fodder, followed by very heavy winter snow and lower than normal temperatures. Heavy and continuous snowfall and blizzards have resulted in a sharp fall in daily temperatures - dropping to below -40°Celsius in 19 out of a total of 21 ‘aimags’ (provinces) in Mongolia.

Horrible for its people, more than a third of whom herd livestock for a living. On the other hand, Alternet today examines the dairy industry in America:

While a small number of dairies are bucking the industrial trend, the vast majority of dairy products we eat come from factories that are nothing short of horrific in many cases.

Dairy farming is closely linked to the meat industry. And that industry is an ecological and ethical desaster in itself. That goes for meat production all rich industrial nations - and a growing number of developing nations as well.

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Peak oil has been with us for some time. Last month, the usually conservative International Energy Agency has admitted that it deliberately had upgraded its estimates of the world's oil supplies - don't frighten the markets, was the highest priority. Then, Fatih Birol, chief economist of the IEA, said that peak oil might occur as early as 2020. (Others think that oil production has already or is about to peak).

When connecting peak oil and climate change, the argument usually goes like this. Peak oil will delay climate change - as less fossil energy is available, it will be more expensive and less of it will be burnt. Thus, less CO2 will rise into the atmosphere, causing less drastic climate change. In this Friday's Economist Birol has given the argument a new twist:

The IEA reckons that co-ordinated action to restrict the increase in global temperatures to 2ºC will restrict global demand for oil to 89m b/d in 2030, compared with 105m b/d if no action is taken. That, Mr Birol says, “could push back the peak of production, as it would take longer to produce the lower-cost oil that remains to be developed.” Action on climate change may yet save the world from an early supply crunch.

Hope is the last thing to go.

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More and more refugees end up in cities rather than in remote rural camps, officials from the UNHCR have just revealed - more than 50 per cent of the planet's 10.5 million refugees are now battling to get by in urban areas. Cities also contain more than 20 million internal refugees and displaced people. The UNHCR warned that the arrival of large numbers of people fleeing wars and hardship adds to the strain on public resources such as city health care and schools, and can send local prices of accommodation and food soaring.

And today, on the second day of climate talks in Copenhagen, the International Organization for Migration IOM has launched a report on "Migration, Environment and Climate Change" estimating that 20 million people were made homeless last year by sudden-onset environmental disasters that are set to amplify as global warming increases. But much of it is internal or cross-border migration, belying fears that millions of poor people will go to rich countries as a result of climate change. Although the number of people affected by natural disasters has more than doubled in recent years, there has hardly been any corresponding increase in international migration from these regions. Instead, the report argues,

most migration already occurring in response to both sudden and slow-onset natural disasters such as drought is mainly internal. Movements are from rural to rural areas or from rural to urban areas while international migration is mainly cross-border movement as long-distance international migration would require planning and resources that those who have lost homes and livelihoods are less likely to have.

That is, climate refugees are moving in droves to already-crowded cities. Absurd world: Others are leaving the fast life behind, like former Treasury Department official Neel Kashkari, reports the Washington Post. Kashkari lead former Treasury secretary Hank Paulson's Troubled Asset Relief Program TARP and then left Washington apruptly to move into a cottage in the Sierra Nevadas.  It is a tranquil new life, close to nature  - but you've got to be able to afford it. The countryside might eventually become a place for the happy few.

Phil Jones, the director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in England, has stepped down. He stands at the center of  "Climategate" the affair of thousands of emails between climate scientists that were hacked from the computer of the renowned  British research unit.  Their release  has triggered a heated debate about the validity of climate change research - climate deniers see the leaked emails as prove for the manipulation of data to overstate the case for human made climate change and  for a vast conspiracy of the scientific community against them.

The research unit is conducting an investigation of the incident. It publishes updates about it on its homepage, amongst them a detailed explation of  one of the most damaging phrases found in an email from CRU from 1999 which discussed a "trick" to "hide the decline" in global temperatures. Its handling of the affair has been strongly criticized however - it apparently had been warned about the hack days before the story broke, reported RealClimate:

We were made aware of the existence of this archive last Tuesday morning when the hackers attempted to upload it to RealClimate, and we notified CRU of their possible security breach later that day.

Yet the university initially  seemed unprepared for the storm that was to follow.

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There are,  a new study published  by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has found,

strong historical linkages between civil war and temperature in Africa, with warmer years leading to significant increases in the likelihood of war. When combined with climate model projections of future temperature trends, this historical response to temperature suggests a roughly 54% increase in armed conflict incidence by 2030, or an additional 393,000 battle deaths if future wars are as deadly as recent wars.

How will we face this development? The military seems to have put quite a lot of thought into the violent social consequences of climate change, shows a statement by retired vice admiral Dennis McGinn before the United States Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works on Ocober 28:

Climate-driven disruption is such a viable threat that the Pentagon has already started to prepare contingencies for such scenarios.

Warns Bradford Plumer from The New Republic, we shouldn't "militarize the climate debate". The frame military planners set might be to limited -  as they focus  mainly on armed responses.

But since neither politicians nor consumers seem to do enough to reverse course, one day we might have no other choice than turn towards military strategists for help.

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There is a nice piece in this week's New York Times about weather presenters. It highlights the role they could play in rising awareness for climate change. In September, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), a United Nations agency based in Geneva, had called upon television weather presenters to become climate emissaries. As Michel Jarraud, secretary-general of the WMO, World Meteorological Organization, said in his opening statement at the World Climate Broadcasts Forum this September:

As weather broadcasters, you are situated at the intersections between science and society. You have established yourselves as emissaries of weather information to the public. (...)  The need for and use of climate information is not yet as mainstream. Seasonal climate predictions are available in many locations to inform people about the weather conditions for weeks to three months out, for example to predict higher or lower temperature or rainfall amounts than the average for the season. But many people do not recognize these outlooks as climate information. Moreover, although these seasonal predictions are essential for planning in the agricultural, water and energy sectors, for instance, they are not widely accepted as decision-making tools.(... )Now that the scientific community is striving to mainstream climate information, it is a natural next step for you to become emissaries of climate information.

Up to now, we have been told that weather is one thing and climate something else. That weather is the state of the atmosphere at a short period of time in a particular place, while climate is the term for average conditions in a place over a long  time. And that therefore for example an increase in freak weather events means nothing and is no prove for climate change. Is this going to change? It will be interesting to watch whether weather presenters will be following the suggestions of the WMO. As for now, at least many American presenters seem not convinced.

Why that should be so, nobody seems to know. But Houston-based environmental journalist Bill Dawson wrote an interesting article on the issue - and it seems that to some extent it has to do with good old  rivalry. Among others, he quotes senior meteorology lecturer Paul Knight from Penn State University who believes that

on one side, there seems to be a disdain in the orthodox scientific research community for those who are not smart enough to get a Ph.D. or do research, and instead go into the fluff of television and just forecast the weather. On the other side, there’s a certain amount of disdain from television meteorologists who are predicting the weather for those who pontificate about what their [climate] models show.

Meanwhile, some of their colleagues might not be allowed to link climate and weather. Continues the New York Times:

In Italy, where Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has voiced skepticism about the need for action on the climate, and where he owns or indirectly controls the majority of television stations, weather professionals often avoid talking about the climate for fear of losing their jobs, said Luca Mercalli, the president of the Italian Meteorological Society and a meteorologist for Rai 3.

Ah, Berlusconi. Here is another story. But for now, watch your weather men.

Miguel Riopa / AFP

BTW, and ceterum censeo: The Met Office, NERC and the Royal Society, three respected British research institutions, have just published a joint statement that should remind us about what's at stake (and maybe draw the connection between weather and climate - and our responsibility for it ourselves):

The 2007 IPCC Assessment, the most comprehensive and respected analysis of climate change to date, states clearly that without substantial global reductions of greenhouse gas emissions we can likely expect a world of increasing droughts, floods and species loss, of rising seas and displaced human populations. However even since the 2007 IPCC Assessment the evidence for dangerous, long-term and potentially irreversible climate change has strengthened. (...) Without co-ordinated international action on greenhouse gas emissions, the impacts on climate and civilisation could be severe.

The University of East Anglia is to launch a review into the theft and online publication of hundreds of emails sent by scientists in its climate research unit, writes the Guardian (see previous post). However,  while some scientists calles for an investigation into the theft, others think this would play in the hands of the climate sceptics, some of whom were also calling for an investigation.  As Andy Atkins, Friends of the Earth's executive director, told the Guardian:

Calls for an inquiry look suspiciously like an attempt to cast doubt on the science of climate change ahead of crucial UN negotiations.

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