FW: URGENT! This new evidence blows Man-made Global Warming apart!

From: Andrew Johnson

Date: 2009-10-04 15:14:17

  From: Tech News To: Hans Sent: Fri, 2 Oct 2009 11:19Subject: Fw: CCNet: A Scientific Scandal Unfolds Enough dynamite here to blow up Fort Knox!   Hans Schreuderwww.tech-know.eu/NISubmission/index.html     —– Original Message —– From: Peiser, Benny To: CCNet-News Sent: Friday, October 02, 2009 11:06 AM Subject: CCNet: A Scientific Scandal Unfolds CCNet 153/2009 – 2 October 2009 — Audiatur et altera parsCRU’S HIDDEN DATA AND THE IPCC: A SCIENTIFIC SCANDAL UNFOLDS————————————————————A scientific scandal is casting a shadow over a number of recentpeer-reviewed climate papers. The scandal has serious implications forpublic trust in science. The IPCC’s mission is to reflect the science,not create it. As the IPCC states, its duty is “assessing thescientific, technical and socioeconomic information relevant for theunderstanding of the risk of human-induced climate change. It does notcarry out new research nor does it monitor climate-related data.” But asIPCC lead author, Briffa was a key contributor in shaping theassessment. When the IPCC was alerted to peer-reviewed research thatrefuted the idea, it declined to include it. This leads to the moregeneral, and more serious issue: what happens when peer-review fails -as it did here?   –Andrew Orlowski, The Register, 29 September 2009Over the next nine years, at least one paper per year appeared inprominent journals using Briffa’s Yamal composite to support a hockeystick-like result. The IPCC relied on these studies to defend the HockeyStick view, and since it had appointed Briffa himself to be the IPCCLead Author for this topic, there was no chance it would question theYamal data. Despite the fact that these papers appeared in top journalslike Nature and Science, none of the journal reviewers or editors everrequired Briffa to release his Yamal data. Steve McIntyre’s repeatedrequests for them to uphold their own data disclosure rules wereignored.    –Ross McKitrick, Financial Post, 1 October 2009The official United Nation’s global warming agency, theIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is a four-legged stool thatis fast losing its legs.  To carry the message of man-made globalwarming theory to the world, the IPCC has depended on 1) computermodels, 2) data collection, 3) long-range temperature forecasting and 4)communication. None of these efforts are sitting on firm ground.    –Terence Corcoran, National Post, 1 October 2009Media reaction to the Yamal story has been rather limited so far. I’mnot sure whether this is because people are trying to digest what itmeans or whether it’s “too hot to handle”. None of the global warmingsupporters in the mainstream media have gone near it. The reaction ofthe Guardian – to delete any mention of the affair from their commentthreads – has been extraordinary.   –Bishop Hill, 1 October 2009Britain will have to stop building airports, switch to electric cars andshut down coal-fired power stations as part of a ‘planned recession’ toavoid dangerous climate change. A new report from the Tyndall Centre forClimate Change Research says the only way to avoid going beyond thedangerous tipping point is to double the target to 70 per cent by 2020.This would mean reducing the size of the economy through a “plannedrecession”.   –Louise Gray, The Daily Telegraph, 30 September 2009 Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara warned on Wednesday the 2016 Olympicscould be the last Games, with global warming an immediate threat tomankind. “It could be that the 2016 Games are the last Olympics in thehistory of mankind,” Ishihara told reporters at a Tokyo 2016 press eventahead of the vote. “Global warming is getting worse. We have to come upwith measures without which Olympic Games could not last long.”Scientists have said we have passed the point of no return,” saidIshihara.   –Karolos Grohmann, Reuters, 30 September 2009(1) TREEMOMETERS: A NEW SCIENTIFIC SCANDAL    Andrew Orlowski, The Register, 29 September 2009(2) ANALYSIS: DEFECTS IN KEY CLIMATE DATA ARE UNCOVERED    Ross McKitrick, Financial Post, 1 October 2009(3) OPINION: CLIMATE DATA BUSTER    Terence Corcoran, National Post, 1 October 2009(4) OPINION: COOLING DOWN THE CASSANDRAS    George F. Will, The Washington Post, 1 October 2009(5) U.S. THROWS SPANNER INTO CLIMATE TALKS    Times of India, 2 October 2009 (6) CAP AND TRADE MAY SINK OPPOSITION LEADER DOWN UNDER    Lenore Taylor, The Australian, 2 October 2009(7) THE MET OFFICE AND CRU’S YAMAL SCANDAL: EXPLAIN OR RESIGN    Jennifer Marohasy (8) COOLING?    Rodney Chilton (9) RESOURCES DEPLETION WORRIES    Steven Zoraster (10) COPENHAGEN SUMMIT: DO SCIENCE AND ECONOMICS SUPPORT GOVERNMENTACTION ON GLOBAL WARMING?     Peter Kidson <peterdkidson@googlem…] (11) A DEATH SPIRAL FOR CLIMATE ALARMISM?     Robert Bradley (12) AND FINALLY: ‘PLANNED RECESSION’ COULD AVOID CATASTROPHIC CLIMATECHANGE     Louise Gray, The Daily Telegraph, 30 September 2009 ===========(1) TREEMOMETERS: A NEW SCIENTIFIC SCANDALThe Register, 29 September 2009 By Andrew OrlowskiA scientific scandal is casting a shadow over a number of recentpeer-reviewed climate papers.At least eight papers purporting to reconstruct the historicaltemperature record times may need to be revisited, with significantimplications for contemporary climate studies, the basis of the IPCC’sassessments. A number of these involve senior climatologists at theBritish climate research centre CRU at the University East Anglia. Inevery case, peer review failed to pick up the errors.At issue is the use of tree rings as a temperature proxy, ordendrochronology. Using statistical techniques, researchers take thering data to create a “reconstruction” of historical temperatureanomalies. But trees are a highly controversial indicator oftemperature, since the rings principally record Co2, and also recordhumidity, rainfall, nutrient intake and other local factors.Picking a temperature signal out of all this noise is problematic, and adendrochronology can differ significantly from instrumented data. Indendro jargon, this disparity is called “divergence”. The process ofcreating a raw data set also involves a selective use of samples – achoice open to a scientist’s biases.Yet none of this has stopped paleoclimataologists from making boldclaims using tree ring data.In particular, since 2000, a large number of peer-reviewed climatepapers have incorporated data from trees at the Yamal Peninsula inSiberia. This dataset gained favour, curiously superseding a newer andlarger data set from nearby. The older Yamal trees indicated pronouncedand dramatic uptick in temperatures.How could this be? Scientists have ensured much of the measurement dataused in the reconstructions remains a secret – failing to fulfillprocedures to archive the raw data. Without the raw data, otherscientists could not reproduce the results. The most prestigious peerreviewed journals, including Nature and Science, were reluctant todemand the data from contributors. Until now, that is.At the insistence of editors of the Royal Society’s PhilosophicalTransactions B the data has leaked into the open – and Yamal’s mysteryis no more.From this we know that the Yamal data set uses just 12 trees from alarger set to produce its dramatic recent trend. Yet many more werecored, and a larger data set (of 34) from the vicinity shows no dramaticrecent warming, and warmer temperatures in the middle ages.In all there are 252 cores in the CRU Yamal data set, of which ten werealive 1990. All 12 cores selected show strong growth since the mid-19thcentury. The implication is clear: the dozen were cherry-picked.Controversy has been raging since 1995, when an explosive paper by KeithBriffa at the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Angliaasserted that that the medieval warm period was actually really cold,and recent warming is unusually warm. Both archaeology and thehistorical accounts, Briffa was declaring, were bunk. Briffa relied onjust three cores from Siberia to demonstrate this.Three years later Nature published a paper by Mann, Bradley and Hughesbased on temperature reconstructions which showed something similar:warmer now, cooler then. With Briffa and Mann as chapter editors of theUN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), this distinctivepattern became emblematic – the “Logo of Global Warming”.IPCC’s Assessment Report from 2001 – with the error bars in greyemphasisedHokey hockey sticksMann too used dendrochronology to chill temperatures, and rebuffedattempts to publish his measurement data. Initially he said he hadforgotten where he put it, then declined to disclosed it. (Some ofMann’s data was eventually discovered, by accident, on his ftp server ina directory entitled ‘BACKTO_1400-CENSORED’.)Tree data was secondary in importance to Mann’s statistical technique,which would produce a dramatic modern upturn in temperatures – whichbecame nicknamed the “Hockey Stick” – even using red noise.Similarly, all the papers that used the Yamal data have the same pointto make. All suggest recent dramatic warming. Having scored a global hitwith a combination of flawed statistics and dubious dendrochronology,the acts repeated the formula.”Late 20th century warmth is unprecedented for at least roughly the pasttwo millennia for the Northern Hemisphere,” wrote the two authors ofGlobal Surface Temperatures over the Past Two Millennia published inGeophysical Research Letters in 2003 – Mann, and Phil Jones of CRU.For example, Briffa’s 2008 paper concludes that: “The extent of recentwidespread warming across northwest Eurasia, with respect to 100- to200-year trends, is unprecedented in the last 2000 years.”The same authors in 2004:It continues to this day. A study purporting to show the Arctic waswarmer now than for 2,000 years received front-page attention lastmonth. Led by Northern Arizona University professor Darrell S Kaufman,and including dendro veteran Mann, this too relied heavily on Yamal, andproduced the signature shape.Now here’s Yamal.And when Yamal is plotted against the wider range of cores, theimplications of the choice is striking:A comparison of Yamal RCS chronologies. red – as archived with 12 pickedcores; black – including Schweingruber’s Khadyta River, Yamal (russ035w)archive and excluding 12 picked cores. Both smoothed with 21-yeargaussian smooth. y-axis is in dimensionless chronology units centered on1 (as are subsequent graphs (but represent age-adjusted ring width).”The majority of these trees (like the Graybill bristlecones) have aprolonged growth pulse (for whatever reason) starting in the 19thcentury,” wrote Canadian mathematician Steve McIntyre on his blog onSunday. “When a one-size fits all age profile is applied to theseparticular tries, the relatively vigorous growth becomes monster growth- 8 sigma anomalies in some of them.”McIntyre’s determination to reproduce the reconstructions has resultedin the Yamal data finally coming to light.All the papers come from a small but closely knit of scientists whomutually support each other’s work. All use Yamal data.What went wrong?The scandal has serious implications for public trust in science. TheIPCC’s mission is to reflect the science, not create it.As the panel states, its duty is “assessing the scientific, technicaland socioeconomic information relevant for the understanding of the riskof human-induced climate change. It does not carry out new research nordoes it monitor climate-related data.” But as lead author, Briffa was akey contributor in shaping (no pun intended) the assessment.When the IPCC was alerted to peer-reviewed research that refuted theidea, it declined to include it. This leads to the more general, andmore serious issue: what happens when peer-review fails – as it didhere?The scandal has only come to light because of the dogged persistence ofa Canadian mathematician who attempted to reproduce the results. SteveMcIntyre has written dozens of letters requesting the data andmethodology, and over 7,000 blog posts. Yet Yamal has remained elusivefor almost a decade. (r)BootnoteThe Royal Society’s motto from the enlightenment era is Nullius inverba. “On nobody’s authority” or colloquially, “take nobody’s word forit”. In 2007, the Society’s then president suggested this be changed to”respect the facts”.Copyright 2009, ElReg==========(2) ANALYSIS: DEFECTS IN KEY CLIMATE DATA ARE UNCOVEREDFinancial Post, 1 October 2009By Ross McKitrickBeginning in 2003, I worked with Stephen McIntyre to replicate a famousresult in paleoclimatology known as the Hockey Stick graph. Developed bya U.S. climatologist named Michael Mann, it was a statisticalcompilation of tree ring data supposedly proving that air temperatureshad been stable for 900 years, then soared off the charts in the 20thcentury. Prior to the publication of the Hockey Stick, scientists hadheld that the medieval-era was warmer than the present, making the scaleof 20th century global warming seem relatively unimportant. The dramaticrevision to this view occasioned by the Hockey Stick’s publication madeit the poster child of the global warming movement. It was featuredprominently in a 2001 report of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel onClimate Change (IPCC), as well as government websites and countlessreview reports.Steve and I showed that the mathematics behind the Mann Hockey Stickwere badly flawed, such that its shape was determined by suspectbristlecone tree ring data. Controversies quickly piled up: Two expertpanels involving the U.S. National Academy of Sciences were asked toinvestigate, the U.S. Congress held a hearing, and the media followedthe story around the world. The expert reports upheld all of our criticisms of the Mann HockeyStick, both of the mathematics and of its reliance on flawed bristleconepine data. One of the panels, however, argued that while the Mann HockeyStick itself was flawed, a series of other studies published since 1998had similar shapes, thus providing support for the view that the late20th century is unusually warm. The IPCC also made this argument in its2007 report. But the second expert panel, led by statistician EdwardWegman, pointed out that the other studies are not independent. They arewritten by the same small circle of authors, only the names are indifferent orders, and they reuse the same few data climate proxy seriesover and over.Most of the proxy data does not show anything unusual about the 20thcentury. But two data series have reappeared over and over that do havea hockey stick shape. One was the flawed bristlecone data that theNational Academy of Sciences panel said should not be used, so thestudies using it can be set aside. The second was a tree ring curve fromthe Yamal Peninsula in Siberia, compiled by UK scientist Keith Briffa. Briffa had published a paper in 1995 claiming that the medieval periodactually contained the coldest year of the millennium. But this claimdepended on just three tree ring records (called cores) from the PolarUrals. Later, a colleague of his named F. H. Schweingruber produced amuch larger sample from the Polar Urals, but it told a very differentstory: The medieval era was actually quite warm and the late 20thcentury was unexceptional. Briffa and Schweingruber never publishedthose data, instead they dropped the Polar Urals altogether from theirclimate reconstruction papers. In its place they used a new series that Briffa had calculated from treering data from the nearby Yamal Peninsula that had a pronounced HockeyStick shape: relatively flat for 900 years then sharply rising in the20th century. This Yamal series was a composite of an undisclosed numberof individual tree cores. In order to check the steps involved inproducing the composite, it would be necessary to have the individualtree ring measurements themselves. But Briffa didn’t release his rawdata.Over the next nine years, at least one paper per year appeared inprominent journals using Briffa’s Yamal composite to support a hockeystick-like result. The IPCC relied on these studies to defend the HockeyStick view, and since it had appointed Briffa himself to be the IPCCLead Author for this topic, there was no chance it would question theYamal data. Despite the fact that these papers appeared in top journals like Natureand Science, none of the journal reviewers or editors ever requiredBriffa to release his Yamal data. Steve McIntyre’s repeated requests forthem to uphold their own data disclosure rules were ignored.Then in 2008 Briffa, Schweingruber and some colleagues published a paperusing the Yamal series (again) in a journal called the PhilosophicalTransactions of the Royal Society, which has very strict data-sharingrules. Steve sent in his customary request for the data, and this timean editor stepped up to the plate, ordering the authors to release theirdata. A short while ago the data appeared on the Internet. Steve couldfinally begin to unpack the Yamal composite.It turns out that many of the samples were taken from dead (partiallyfossilized) trees and they have no particular trend. The sharp uptrendin the late 20th century came from cores of 10 living trees alive as of1990, and five living trees alive as of 1995. Based on scientificstandards, this is too small a sample on which to produce apublication-grade proxy composite. The 18th and 19th century portion ofthe sample, for instance, contains at least 30 trees per year. But thatportion doesn’t show a warming spike. The only segment that does is thelate 20th century, where the sample size collapses. Once again adramatic hockey stick shape turns out to depend on the least reliableportion of a dataset.  But an even more disquieting discovery soon came to light. Stevesearched a paleoclimate data archive to see if there were other treering cores from at or near the Yamal site that could have been used toincrease the sample size. He quickly found a large set of 34 up-to-datecore samples, taken from living trees in Yamal by none other thanSchweingruber himself! Had these been added to Briffa’s small group the20th century would simply be flat. It would appear completelyunexceptional compared to the rest of the millennium. Combining data from different samples would not have been an unusualstep. Briffa added data from another Schweingruber site to a differentcomposite, from the Taimyr Peninsula. The additional data were gatheredmore than 400 km away from the primary site. And in that case theprimary site had three or four times as many cores to begin with as theYamal site. Why did he not fill out the Yamal data with thereadily-available data from his own coauthor? Why did Briffa seek outadditional data for the already well-represented Taimyr site and not forthe inadequate Yamal site?Thus the key ingredient in most of the studies that have been invoked tosupport the Hockey Stick, namely the Briffa Yamal series, depends on theinfluence of a woefully thin subsample of trees and the exclusion ofreadily-available data for the same area. Whatever is going on here, itis not science. I have been probing the arguments for global warming for well over adecade. In collaboration with a lot of excellent coauthors I haveconsistently found that when the layers get peeled back, what lies atthe core is either flawed, misleading or simply non-existent. Thesurface temperature data is a contaminated mess with a significant warmbias, and as I have detailed elsewhere the IPCC fabricated evidence inits 2007 report to cover up the problem. Climate models are in grossdisagreement with observations, and the discrepancy is growing with eachpassing year. The often-hyped claim that the modern climate has departedfrom natural variability depended on flawed statistical methods andlow-quality data. The IPCC review process, of which I was a member lasttime, is nothing at all like what the public has been told: Conflicts ofinterest are endemic, critical evidence is systematically ignored andthere are no effective checks and balances against bias or distortion. I get exasperated with fellow academics, and others who ought to knowbetter, who pile on to the supposed global warming consensus withoutbothering to investigate any of the glaring scientific discrepancies andprocedural flaws. Over the coming few years, as the costs of globalwarming policies mount and the evidence of a crisis continues tocollapse, perhaps it will become socially permissible for people tostart thinking for themselves again. In the meantime I am grateful forthose few independent thinkers, like Steve McIntyre, who continue to askthe right questions and insist on scientific standards of openness andtransparency. Ross McKitrick is a professor of environmental economics at theUniversity of Guelph, and coauthor of Taken By Storm: The TroubledScience, Policy and Politics of Global Warming.Copyright 2009, FPEDITOR’S NOTE: More on the CRU’s Yamal scandal and its impact, see: ============(3) OPINION: CLIMATE DATA BUSTERNational Post, 1 October 2009By Terence CorcoranThe official United Nation’s global warming agency, theIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is a four-legged stool thatis fast losing its legs.  To carry the message of man-made globalwarming theory to the world, the IPCC has depended on 1) computermodels, 2) data collection, 3) long-range temperature forecasting and 4)communication. None of these efforts are sitting on firm ground.Over the past month, one of the IPCC’s top climate scientists, MojibLatif, attempted to explain that even if global temperatures were tocool over the next 10 to 20 years, that would not mean that man-madeglobal warming is no longer catastrophic. It was a tough case to make,and it is not clear Mr. Latif succeeded. In a presentation to a worldclimate conference in early September, Mr. Latif rambled somewhat andveered off into inscrutable language that is now embedded in a millionblog posts attempting to prove one thing or another.A sample: “It may well happen that you enter a decade, or maybe eventwo, you know, when the temperature cools, all right, relative to thepresent level…And then, you know, I know what’s going to happen. Youknow, I will get, you know, millions of phone calls, you know -‘What’sgoing on?’ ‘So is global warming disappearing, you know?’ ‘Have you liedon us, you know?’ So, and, therefore, this is the reason why we need toaddress this decadal prediction issue.” The decadal prediction issue appears to be a combination of computermodel problems, the unpredictability of natural climate variation, andassorted uncertainties. Making all this clear to the average globalcitizen will not be easy and climate scientists need to be able to makeit clear, said Mr. Latif. “We have to ask the nasty questions ourselves,all right, or some other people will do it.”All this is still swirling around the global climate issue today. Butnow along comes another problem. Canadian data buster Steve McIntyre hasspend most of the last three years deconstructing the IPCC’s famousclaim that the last couple of decades of the 20th century were thehottest in a thousand years. Using what was called The Hockey Stickgraph, the IPCC claimed to have the smoking gun that showed a sharp runup in global temperatures through to 1997. The validity of the IPCC databegan to crumble when Mr. McIntyre and Ross McKitrick of GuelphUniversity found serious data problems that raised doubts about thegraph and the claims of record high temperatures.As Ross McKitrick explains in his op-ed, Steve McIntyre has uncoveredanother data distortion that further undermines the original graphicclaim that the world has set temperature records in recent years. Ifworld temperatures may have been just as hot in the past as they havebeen recently, and if the the next two decades could be cooler than theyhave been recently, the theory of climate change becomes an even toughercase to make.The IPCC is now on wobbly legs at all four corners. Its models areinadequate and need overhaul, data integrity is at issue, the climate isnot quite following the script, and the communication program for thewhole campaign is a growing struggle.   Copyright 2009, NP==========(4) OPINION: COOLING DOWN THE CASSANDRASThe Washington Post, 1 October 2009By George F. Will “Plateau in Temperatures Adds Difficulty to Task Of Reaching a Solution”  –New York Times, Sept. 23 In this headline on a New York Times story about the difficultiesconfronting people alarmed about global warming, note the word”plateau.” It dismisses the unpleasant — to some people — fact thatglobal warming is maddeningly (to the same people) slow to vindicatetheir apocalyptic warnings about it. The “difficulty” — the “intricate challenge,” the Times says — is”building momentum” for carbon reduction “when global temperatures havebeen relatively stable for a decade and may even drop in the next fewyears.” That was in the Times’s first paragraph. In the fifth paragraph, a “few years” became “the next decade or so,”according to Mojib Latif, a German “prize-winning climate and oceanscientist” who campaigns constantly to promote policies combating globalwarming. Actually, Latif has said he anticipates “maybe even two”decades in which temperatures cool. But stay with the Times’s “decade orso.” By asserting that the absence of significant warming since 1998 is amere “plateau,” not warming’s apogee, the Times assures readers who arealarmed about climate change that the paper knows the future and thatwarming will continue: Do not despair, bad news will resume. The Times reported that “scientists” — all of them? — say the 11 yearsof temperature stability has “no bearing,” none, on long-term warming.Some scientists say “cool stretches are inevitable.” Others say theremay be growth of Arctic sea ice, but the growth will be “temporary.”According to the Times, however, “scientists” say that “trying tocommunicate such scientific nuances to the public — and to policymakers– can be frustrating.” The Times says “a short-term trend gives ammunition to skeptics ofclimate change.” Actually, what makes skeptics skeptical is theaccumulating evidence that theories predicting catastrophe from man-madeclimate change are impervious to evidence. The theories areunfalsifiable, at least in the “short run.” And the “short run” isdefined as however many decades must pass until the evidence begins tofit the hypotheses. The Post recently reported the theory of a University of Virginiaprofessor emeritus who thinks that, many millennia ago, primitiveagriculture — burning forests, creating methane-emitting rice paddies,etc. — produced enough greenhouse gases to warm the planet at least adegree. The theory is interesting. Even more interesting is the reactionto it by people such as the Columbia University professor who says itmakes him “really upset” because it might encourage opponents oflegislation combating global warming. Warnings about cataclysmic warming increase in stridency as evidence ofwarming becomes more elusive. A recent report from the United NationsEnvironment Program predicts an enormous 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit increaseby the end of the century even if nations fulfill their most ambitiouspledges concerning reduction of carbon emissions. The U.S. goal is an 80percent reduction by 2050. But Steven Hayward of the American EnterpriseInstitute says that would require reducing greenhouse gas emissions tothe 1910 level. On a per capita basis, it would mean emissionsapproximately equal to those in 1875. That will not happen. So, we are doomed. So, why try? America needs a national commission appointed to assess the evidenceabout climate change. Alarmists will fight this because the firstcasualty would be the carefully cultivated and media-reinforced myth ofconsensus — the bald assertion that no reputable scientist doubts thegravity of the crisis, doubts being conclusive evidence of disreputablemotives or intellectual qualifications. The president, however, couldsupport such a commission because he is sure “there’s finally widespreadrecognition of the urgency of the challenge before us.” So he announcedlast week at the U.N. climate change summit, where he said the threat isso “serious” and “urgent” that unless all nations act “boldly, swiftlyand together” — “time . . . is running out” — we risk “irreversiblecatastrophe.” Prince Charles agrees. In March, seven months ago, he saidhumanity had 100 months — until July 2017 — to prevent “catastrophicclimate change and the unimaginable horrors that this would bring.”Evidently humanity will prevent this. Charles Moore of the Spectator notes that in July, the prince said thatby 2050 the planet will be imperiled by the existence of 9 billionpeople, a large portion of them consuming as much as Western people nowdo. Environmental Cassandras must be careful with their predictions lestthey commit what climate alarmists consider the unpardonable faux pas ofdenying that the world is coming to an end. Copyright 2009, WP==============(5) U.S. THROWS SPANNER INTO CLIMATE TALKSTimes of India, 2 October 2009 Nitin Sethi, TNN NEW DELHI: The promise of a deal at Copenhagen seem to be turning into apipedream as the US has refused to put down hard numbers for mitigationunder the second phase of Kyoto Protocol at the ongoing climatenegotiations at Bangkok. EU too seems to be taking a deal-breakingcondition saying, “environmental integrity” was central to the UN treatyand “equity” of different countries’ rights was just one element. The negotiations at various levels seem to be grinding into a logjamwith US determined not to sign on to the Kyoto Protocol. The USnegotiators fought hard at different forums within the UN talks to blockany progress on industrialized countries’ commitments to reduceemissions in the mid-term under the second phase of Kyoto Protocol. India stood steadfast in demanding that the rich countries put up theiroffers in terms of hard numbers for emission reductions over 2012-2020under the existing protocol. But, US and many other developed countriesseemed determined to do away with the Kyoto Protocol entirely. This is not the first time that US has voiced its opposition to theKyoto Protocol which demands quantified targets from rich countries. UShad not signed on to Kyoto earlier and it continues to oppose the onlytool the global treaty has for making measurable and comparablereductions in the dangerous greenhouse gases. The protocol is also seen by a select band of industrialized countriessuch as US and Japan as a wall of differentiation constructed in theconvention. The parent treaty — UN Framework Convention on ClimateChange — lays most of the burden of mitigation on the industrializedcountries that caused it in the first place. The Kyoto Protocolactivates this principle of burden sharing into hard actions andtargets. The protocol in its first phase sets fixed percentages by whichcountries reduce their emissions by 2012 below 1990 levels. Many of the industrialized countries have not moved on a trajectory toachieve the targets for 2012. Part of the discussions in the UN talkshave been to set a higher level targets for the second phase of KyotoProtocol between 2012-2020. But the US, not keen to take on any commitments in the mid-term, hasalways shown interest in disbanding with Kyoto Protocol and insteadtaking on a series of actions that are decided by countries on their own– say energy efficiency targets — and merely presented to the UNforum. India and developing countries have pointed out that would makethe targets incomparable and render it impossible to figure out if anysignificant reductions have been made in emissions to prevent a climatecalamity. Other industrialized countries too have so far shown little interest inoffering credible and robust targets for the second phase of theprotocol. The offers so far on the table from the industrializedcountries, if implemented, would only bring in reductions in the rangeof 11-18% by 2020 below 1990 levels. India and other developingcountries have demanded that the industrialized countries follow therecommendations of the UN climate science panel — IPCC — and take cutsin the range of 25-40% below 1990 levels by 2020 which would put theworld on a trajectory to avoid temperatures reaching dangerous levels inthe decades to come.Copyright 2009, TOI=============(6) CAP AND TRADE MAY SINK OPPOSITION LEADER DOWN UNDERThe Australian, 2 October 2009Lenore Taylor, National correspondent