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.

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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.

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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According to a new study published in Nature Geoscience,  the Antarctic icesheets could disintegrate much faster than anticipated, reports Reuters. East Antarctica has been losing ice mass at an average rate of 5 to 109 gigatonnes per year from April 2002 to January 2009. The rate speeded up from 2006. Previous estimates projected anywhere between a 4 gigatonne per year loss and a 22 gigatonne per year gain. As Jianli Chen, one of the study's authors from the University of Texas at Austin's Center for Space Research, told Reuters,

the key result is that appear to start seeing a large amount of ice loss in East Antarctica, mostly in the long coastal regions, since 2006.  This, if confirmed, could indicate a state change of East Antarctica, which could pose a large impact on global sea levels in the future.

A good versus evil battle of superhero kids: A short film explaining climate change has been released by Klimaforum09 ahead of the Copenhagen summit. A bit silly maybe, but then...