UN climate conference avoided debate
CALGARY SUN
By LICIA CORBELLA
Tomorrow, most of the 10,000 delegates who attended the 11th annual UN Climate Change Conference will leave their heated, four-star hotels and return to whichever one of the 180 countries from whence they came.
Presumably, they will all be walking to the nearest windpowered, seagoing vessel to head home. Yeah, right.
Many of the government delegations will actually have the gall to hop aboard the most fuel-inefficient mode of travel -- exclusive private jets -- as they contemplate the new religion to which they adhere. That being the religion of human-caused global warming rather than the age-old things attributed to climate change over millions of years, like solar cycles and ocean currents.
It is also safe to say that the vast majority of those 10,000 delegates who should be walking home, but instead will drive and fly, were not climate scientists.
For the most part, the world's most respected climate scientists were not welcome, because, well, they aren't believers in the religion.
Most, like Dr. Tim Patterson, a paleoclimatologist at Carleton University, said he "couldn't be bothered" to attend and scientists like Dr. Madhav Khandekar were barred from the gabfest altogether.
Khandekar, who has a PhD in meteorology, a masters degree in statistics and won several post-doctoral fellowships, including one with the National Research Council, was a top climate scientist with Environment Canada for 25 years, as well as with the UN. Altogether, Khandekar -- who has never had any affiliation with energy companies -- has worked at the highest levels on climate research for 48 years and has published more than 100 highly regarded scientific papers.
On Nov. 29, the opening day of the conference, Khandekar arrived in Montreal along with Morten Paulsen with the Calgary-based Friends of Science, and was not allowed to register.
Meanwhile, other delegates including some with the World Wildlife Fund, who spent much of the conference dressed up as pandas (and who harassed Khandekar), had free and easy access.
"I was very disappointed and disillusioned by the whole process. There was absolutely no room for debating the science," said Khandekar, from his home in suburban Toronto, where, he pointed out he was comfortable and warm as a result of fossil fuel, without which he, and most Canadians, would likely be dead from cold or at least severely gangrenous.
Khandekar, a vegetarian and environmentalist, said he resorted to simply handing out some of his research papers to delegates entering the convention centre in Montreal.
Khandekar says scientific evidence seems to indicate that "solar variability" is one of the main causes of global warming. He also says he has studied extreme weather events of the past 150 years worldwide "and I don't see any increase in extreme weather events."
What has happened, he said, is the 24-hour cable news cycle has increased our perception that there are more extreme weather events.
"One hundred years ago they were happening all the time but we didn't get to know about them," he said.
Yesterday Prime Minister Paul Martin gave an impassioned speech at the conference, arriving as he did, on one of the least fuel-efficient planes in service -- a Boeing 727.
In his speech, Martin lambasted the U.S. and other countries that refused to sign on to the Kyoto Protocol to reduce CO2 emissions, which are not a pollutant.
"There are nations that resist, voices that attempt to diminish the urgency or dismiss the science," said Martin.
Meanwhile, since signing Kyoto, Canadian greenhouse gas emissions have shot up 24% over 1990 levels -- which is 30% above our Kyoto target. Canada is ranked 35th out of 40 countries in a recent UN report of Kyoto signatories.
The big bad Americans have only increased greenhouse gas emissions by 13% from 1990 levels.
Basically, Canada's position on global warming has been nothing more than hot air.
Have a nice walk home, delegates!
calsun.canoe.ca |
