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.

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.

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.

Carsten Koall/Getty Images

AFP PHOTO/NASA EARTH OBSERVATORY

Yesterday, hundreds of emails and other documents hacked from the University of East Anglia leaked online. The emails, some of them up to 13 years old, were accessed at the university's Climate Research Unit renowned for the study of natural and anthropogenic climate change. The emails, many by prominent international climate researchers, exchange and  discuss scientific data, release procedures - and they also discuss how to combat and debase arguments of climate sceptics and deniers. Well, sometimes this was expressed in quite derisive terms.

The story first broke on a blog called the Air Vent, a blog some consider sceptical regarding human made climate change. Sceptics are having a field day. Mike Morano, of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth fame,  has filled his denialist site climatedepot.com with every allegation imaginable. James Delingpole from the Daily Telegraph blares: Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of  'Anthropogenic Global Warming'?Fox commentator and bloggger Michelle Malkin calls it: The global warming scandal of the century.

However, the New York Times quoted several scientists whose names appear in the e-mail messages. They

said they merely revealed that scientists were human, and did nothing to undercut the body of research on global warming.

True, some of those emails are quite juicy. But do they really debunk the general consensus about man-made climate change, refute thousands of research papers, melt glaciers, bring on droughts and floods and reveal the conspiracy against sceptics? Up to you and your common sense...

Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

The Guardian and the  Independent both report today that a new study by the Global Carbon Project , led by Professor Corinne Le Quéré, of the University of East Anglia and the British Antarctic Survey, has found that there has been a 29 per cent increase in global CO2 emissions from fossil fuel between 2000 and 2008. This, writes the Independent,

means an annual increase in emissions of just over 3 per cent over the period, compared with an annual increase of 1 per cent between 1990 and 2000. Almost all of the increase this decade occurred after 2000 and resulted from the boom in the Chinese economy.

And it means a far higher increas in global temperatures than predicted by the United Nation's International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) forecast just two years ago. The study argues that we could be on course for a 6C rise in temperatures by 2100. If in doubt about the implications of such a rise, i.e. the combustion of the rainforests, the acidification of the oceans and the consequences of irreversable tipping points, I suggest you read Mark Lynas' book "Six Degrees. Our Future on a Hotter Planet", a detailed description of a truely apocalyptic future.

Yet there are still people around who do not accept the human factor in climate change. Thomas Friedman, the voice of choice for mainstream liberal America, rebukes these incorrigible deniers in his column in the New York Times today - from a purely American perspective and for pure self-interest ( and, yes, there could be worse reasons for campaigning for a change of America's energy policy).

So, as I said, you don't believe in global warming? You’re wrong, but I'll let you enjoy it until your beach house gets washed away. But if you also don't believe the world is getting more crowded with more aspiring Americans — and that ignoring that will play to the strength of our worst enemies, while responding to it with clean energy will play to the strength of our best technologies — then you’re willfully blind, and you're hurting America’s future to boot.

And the world's, I might add.

Christopher Furlong / Getty Images

Christopher Furlong/Getty Imag

An English High Court judge, Justice Michael Burton, has just ruled that green beliefs deserve the same protection in the workplace as religious convictions, reports the Economist in its weekly online column green.view, quoting Mr Burton:

“A belief in man-made climate change and the alleged resulting moral imperatives is capable, if genuinely held, of being a philosophical belief for the purpose of the 2003 Religion and Belief Regulations.”

The plaintiff in this case was Tim Nicholson, a former “head of sustainability” for a residential-property firm. He was laid off in 2008 and sued the company for unfair dismissal on the grounds of his eco-minded beliefs. Under Britain's six-year-old Religion and Belief Regulations it is unlawful to discriminate against a person on the grounds of their religious or philosophical beliefs.

Some now fear the consequences this ruling might have, writes Time.com, quoting an employment specialistthat the decision will

"result in a tidal wave of philosophical-related litigation to employment tribunals."

Nor surprisingly, this ruling is seen as the beginning of a witch hunt by not only one of the innumerable blogs with a, let's say, denialist attitude towards man-made climate change:

So when can we expect "denier" to be replaced by "infidel"?

Well, Justice Burton seems to be a judge who likes to be precise. Two years ago, he reprimed Al Gore and his film "An Inconvenient Truth" for nine scientific errors, in a much publicised case brough to court by a British climate change denier. Not that Justice Burton had a problem with the central thesis that climate change was happening and that it was being driven by emissions from humans. Quite the contrary. But nine statements in the film, the judge said, were not supported by mainstream scientific consensus.

This time he has laid out some tests to prevent frivolous claims:

the belief must be genuinely held; it must be held for a long period of time; it must relate to something of grave importance to humanity; it must reach a certain level of cogency and seriousness; and it must not trample on existing ideas of human rights. By way of example, he said belief in the supremacy of the Jedi knights of “Star Wars” fame would be excluded, but he conceded that allegiance to the doctrines of Marxism or communism might not.

Question is, on which side will the deniers end up? Could those five points hold for them as they hold for the plaintiff?

Lonnie Thompson, Ohio State University

British environmentalist and journalist George Monbiot seems to think so. In his latest post he reports that

on Amazon.co.uk, books championing climate change denial are currently ranked at 1,2,4,5,7 and 8 in the global warming category.

The majority of climate change  deniers seem to be older people. And this, says Monbiot, has to do with their fear of death. Monbiot quotes various studies about this psychological reaction, one by Janis L. Dickinson from Cornell University who suggests that people respond to constant reporting of climate change with projects that

bring us symbolic immortality (but) often conflict with our prospects for survival.

and denial doesn't stop climate change from happening. Researchers from Ohio State University have just published new findings by paleoclimatologist Lonnie Thompson, professor of earth sciences at Ohio State University, and his collegues:

The remaining ice fields atop famed Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania could be gone within two decades and perhaps even sooner...The findings indicate a major cause of this ice loss is very likely to be the rise in global temperatures.

Lonnie Thompson, Ohio State University