Climate change

Planet B

How the underwhelming Copenhagen accord could yet turn into a useful document

See article

Readers' comments



Interesting to see a report on Copenhaguen meeting not so negative as those of other media. I agree that the decision of the USA Senate is more important than Cop15.


The majority of the comments responding to this article seem resoundingly certain of their positions that global warming is a lie or at least an exaggeration and that any of us that do not share that view are simply lazy in our research - comments of great clarity are expressed such as:

"totally doubtful science"
"CO2 theory was 100% WRONG"
"Disco Science"
"how insignificant C02 is to the climate"
"environMENTAL WMD scam"
"the climate data were cooked"
"they are only listening to a limited number of scientists"
"the science underlying the AGW thesis is no science at all"
"these people cry "Wolf""

Yet when I research myself the picture seems far from clear and I find myself concerned. Why for example would the 18 scientific organisations writing this letter to the US Senate present such a clear statement of their common concerns in terms explicitly tying them to the science upon which their careers and reputations are based if the refuting evidence is so simple?

The (AAAS) website this letter is posted on is one of the signatories of the letter - The American Association for the Advancement of Science (or AAAS).

Who are these careless and allegedly mis-informed people? Wikipedia tell us this 161 year old association is:

"The American Association for the Advancement of Science (or AAAS) is an international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation between scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsibility, and supporting scientific education and science outreach for the betterment of all humanity. It is the world's largest general scientific society, with 126,995 individual and institutional members at the end of 2008[1], and publisher of the well-known scientific journal Science, which has a weekly circulation of 138,549[2]"


At Copenbargain we signed up to
1) keeping temp rise below 2 degrees
2) giving money to developing countries
3) letting UN inspect emission achievements.

If the "greenhouse gas" experts are correct, countries like China will have to agree emission limits, and permit inspection. Unlikely.

If the "natural cycle" experts are correct, the temperature will do just what it likes, and reducing greenhouse gases will have kept us that bit cleaner.

Money to developing countries is a monitoring nightmare. You can't even tell whether a goat went to the village you intended. Best of luck with this one.

Jim Bullis

Wim De Zwijger,

As I continue reading your critical broadside, the next point that catches my eye is:

"It seems, for Russia, only 25% of the stations were kept, and only the warming ones---"

Hm, so if only 25% if the records were kept, how do you know that these were the "warming ones?" Did you take the other 75% that were the cold ones so you know these were the cold ones?

I think you are just repeating things you heard, but this is a good illustration of how the nonsense spreads.

By the way, what is the law that says scientists must release raw data?

I do agree with you that there should be some caution regarding how alarmed we should get.

Jim Bullis

Also to Wim De Zwijger:

You seem to think that "raw data" is an issue. Where would you have it start? Let's say you take the data right from an instrument. Would you know to apply calibration factors for the instrument? Would you know to integrate a stream of data points to arrive at a number that is not subject to random variation of the instrument? Would you know that sampling of any natural process is rarely meaningful unless averaged or otherwise processed to make the data meaningful?

Asking for raw data is like asking for the cash receipt records for a division of General Electric. Sure, they are require to provide full financial disclosure. Imagine what Wall Street would do with the wild swings in such data where the numbers might have no real meaning without factoring in operating costs and on and on. What a bonanza that would offer to speculators to con people into buying on the receipts when the ultimate profits would turn out entirely different.

No wonder the climate folks are reluctant to show incomplete data to critics who are intent on finding any shred of nonsense to use to start a stream of diatribe with the purpose of misleading public opinion.

Jim Bullis

Re mine of Dec 31, 0800 GMT,

I wish to make clear that while I criticize much about the campaign against global warming, including criticism about things not yet included in the climate models, there must be no misunderstanding that these models represent a monumental amount of work and those actually doing this work should be encouraged and supported.

Jim Bullis

Questions for Wim De Zwijger:

(1) Where can I find the data, any factual records, or logical inferences that indicate that there was a medieval warm period?

(2) While I can acknowledge that the temperature records are uncertain, can you dispute that the industrial revolution and the subsequent high energy use of the developed world have burned a great amount of fossil fuel?

(3) Also, I can acknowledge that heat accumulates on the earth due to a variety of causes, can you dispute that CO2 from burning of fossil fuel causes a greater retention of heat than would otherwise be the case for CO2 from all the natural CO2 sources?

I suggest that we still have a problem in spite of possible flaws in rhetoric from those who are very concerned about the situation. Whatever the flaws might be, I should note that there has been an amazing openness to discussion by some of those actually studying climate, in spite of the fact that this openness has to distract from their work. Zealotry from other climate folks has been much in evidence, but these seem to not be the real workers in the field.

I await your evidence of "indications that the medieval warm period was warmer --" to see how validity of such compares with data on the temperature record used in climate modeling, however approximate it is.

Wim De Zwijger

Current temperatures are far from unprecendented. There are many indications that the medieval warm period was warmer than now. Regarding the weather stations historical records : it appears the urban heat island effect is insufficently taken into account (meaning warming has been exagerated due to cities, asphalt cover and airports getting bigger). Also, areas almost the size of whole continents have next to no data. It seems, for Russia, only 25% of the stations were kept, and only the warming ones, and it's hard to see why. Not to mention scarcity of data from oceans (3/4 of the earth's surface). There are signs that the homogenisation that the raw data is subjected to has some really hard to explain upwards bumps. But that's been difficult to check because scientists who've had the raw data have turned down requests to release it until very recently(although the law says they should and it's data that's been paid for by us the public).

(For better comprehension, see the pathetic defence of the Darwin 0 record by The Economist).

On the very long term, current temperatures are in the normal range for interglacials.

Re. warming before the age of the weather stations, the "proxies" used to demonstrate warming are subject to caution. The ones first used by Michael Mann had to be dumped from subsequent IPCC reports (but the hockey stick graph derived therefrom is still used in propaganda). Another remaining proxy is the Yamal sample which numbers all of 12 trees for the recent period. 12 trees to tell us how the whole planet's climate has been changing. And the really surprising thing about about the global warming theory is that, contrary to what one would expect, a lot of the research and the computer models supposedly supporting global warming rely on a small numbers of those proxies.

There has been no measurable warming now for more than 10 years (taking into account any reasonable degree of confidence) and that disproves the computer models that are still used to this day. The quality control of the code of those models also seems problematic to say the least.

With all this, the warming in the last 130 years has been less than 1°C tops, and we're told we're now going to have +2, or 3, or 4, or more, within 30-50 years. This supposes massive multiplying effects should be kicking in more or less now, but there are no signs of them, anywhere, whatsoever.

All in all, I think the alarmist point of view should be taken with a pinch of salt.

Jim Bullis

There is something very wrong with a developed world that wastes about 80% of the energy intended for transportation and about 60% of the energy intended to make electric power. Automobiles and trucks were designed for a world where fuel seemed unlimited. Electric power generating systems were also arranged to waste energy without seriously annoying large populations. The last hundred years have been a great ride -- whoopee! Correcting this insanity is the task at hand. Global warming is a secondary issue that will be fixed only when we get the more fundamental problem solved.

It seems that the campaign against global warming could actually be a distraction that leads to failure to solve anything. The very goal of a 2 degree C limit in the rise of global surface temperature is an example of how misdirected this campaign can be. While it is plausible that man made CO2 can offset the general heat balance of the earth, it seems entirely likely that this imbalance will be taken up by the deep ocean heat capacity. We could actually have serious global warming consequences with sea level increases while the surface temperature averages rise hardly at all. All the squabbling about the temperature record may be irrelevant.

A good case can be made that the actual scientists that model the expected climate are serious people who have done very sophisticated work. Questioning their motives because they have tried to present a convincing popular case is simply wrong and mostly anti-intellectual in flavor. Still, it seems that the impending disaster of global warming is not as well understood as we might have been led to think.

Perhaps more relevant is the apparent fact that serious planning decisions continue to ignore global warming alltogether, and opt instead to solve the energy dependence problem. The bamboozled public thinks that electric cars with futuristic batteries will cut CO2 when this development will actually result only in a shift to coal as the base fuel and actually increase CO2 compared to emissions from hybrid vehicles. Why do people with economic and political good sense want to bamboozle the public? The answer is, that shifting to coal will indeed help with the oil dependency problem which is a meaningful way to perpetuate prosperity and to change the power balance in the Middle East.

Also we have great enthusiasm for the "smart grid" which promises only to slightly trim losses from the existing electric power system with the underlying result of perpetuating the system of central power plants where vast amounts of heat are wasted. The dream of wind and sun as power sources seems like a deception to justify new transmission links, when the continued uneconomic reality of these ideals shows nothing real should be expected here. The bamboozled public will wake to the reality that the new transmission links will simply enable wasteful power production practices by bringing power generated far away to the urban users. Imagine "mine-mouth" power plants in the coal regions of the USA, far out in the country alongside of windmills. Guess what the proportion of power coming from wind will be.

The real goal should be to cut energy use with due concern for the functioning of industrial society.

We have some examples of how to do better. The Aptera is a car that dramatically decreases the energy needed for personal transportation of the sort that people need, and might eventually come to believe looks good. Distributed cogeneration of electric power using natural gas, where the generators are at individual households that use the otherwise wasted heat, thus doubling or tripling the system efficiency of electric power production. Miastrada Company is also involved in such future developments. (I represent Miastrada Co.)

By working to solve the fundamental problem as discussed above, we arrive at possible solutions that make economic sense in their own right. The appropriate test of any solution is whether it is economically sustainable without long term infusions of public money, whether it comes from the Treasury or through extra costs for fuel or electricity.

The tragedy of Copenhagen is that the solutions depended on infusion of public money, whether to cap and trade or subsidize poorer countries. Overlaying all this is the incredible naivety that setting of goals and making pledges means anything at all. Realists should have stayed home once Presidents Obama and Hu agreed that neither would make binding commitments. President Obama knew with certainty that he could never get such a treaty ratified and President Hu was probably aware that he would also face intractable planners who know the real costs involved.

So we can try to spin a meaningless exercise into something that might turn out to have some positive results. Or we could try to awaken to a real challenge to rethink the way we do things in a way that fixes the fundamental problem of extreme energy waste.


Our politicians are spending vast sums of money on the unproven assumption that reducing co2 will somehow reduce climate change. I find this extremely worrying. I find it equally concerning that they are only listening to a limited number of scientists rather than considering all the evidence.
If the concern is running out of energy this is a different problem with other solutions.


As this is such an important and costly issue, I would suggest that we resolve the contradictory views to ensure that we have the science right. There seem to be many learned objections to the question of the benefits of carbon capture that warrants futher study and money should be first allocated to the science so that we at least get this right.


Trying to solve the wrong problems?
After having read Superfreakonomics the global warming theme looks greatly exagerated almost but not quite like much ado about nothing - jumping out of the box regarding this highly political problem and looking at makeable cost efficient solutions could be more useful - I am not trying to promote pollution - but to keep an open mind for what really (might) work instead of creating panic.


@CTF - Safety in numbers? Or Sheep? Or Lemmings?

There was a marvellous brief discussion on the BBC a couple of days ago when a smart presenter was talking smoothly and assuredly about the fact that there had been no Mediaeval Warm Period, and none of the other climate changes we have in our history books. Just the sanitised line (40 year moving average, for goodness sake!) of the famous "hockey stick" temperature graph. Or if these did exist, then they were purely local phenomena. And yet what we know about the Angkor civilisation's demise suggests that the same pattern of climate change disrupted the Monsoon whose control their power was based on. There is similar evidence from New Zealand.

Most of the influential people I have heard making assertions about Man-Made Global Warming are smooth PR presenters with no science qualifications to speak of. Or people with vested (if not fully declared) interests. And the evangelical, speaking convincingly from profound faith in the same way as generations before they would have made similar assertions about sin and excess on the part of mankind testing the Grace of God & demanding that we change in some way that they have decided is correct for us. And politicians positioning themselves to gain or retain power.

Small, and perfectly reasonable changes in temperatures, and other selected measures (tiny reductions in surface pH in oceans, for example) are being cited as symptoms of a much larger and unreasonable set of changes to come. At some conveniently distant point in the future. The sky is still not falling, and I wonder how long we are going to put up with hearing these people cry "Wolf"?


The science underlying the AGW thesis is no science at all. It has never been grounded or tested against basic physics. For an examination of the multiple ways it fails such examination, read this: .

The only warming occurring is the long-term rebound from a) the last Ice Age, and b) the more recent Little Ice Age. Pray that it continues. You would NOT like the alternative.

As for CO2, its emission should be subsidized. If only we could get back up to the geological average of 1,000 - 2,000 ppm, agriculture and food supply world-wide would benefit immensely.


The question mattering most for me is: When do we change the "bible GDP" against something more valuable? No matter if you believe in "climate change" or not... at least you should take care of the following:
- Is the river's water drinkable (ever tried the Ganges)?
- Is the food I'm eating healthy?
- Do I see trees when going to work or looking out of the windows?
- Can I still enjoy nature's beauty (will the Amazonas still be nice without any tree)?

Pedro K

It is time to look at other approaches. The idea that the UN, which could not cater nor properly organise an event like the Copenhagen Compromise can work out a massive, international deal for reducing C02 emissions is laughable. It is time that The Economist recognised that.

The developing world, led by China, is making the decision that they want to be rich more than they want to reduce C02 emissions. This has to be allowed for.

As The Economist has sensibly argued in the past, a carbon tax would be a wiser option. If most, or all if the tax were low, of this money was dedicated to researching low C02 emitting energy sources it may get somewhere. The Lomborg option has to be taken. The previous approaches have failed.

To look at the 18 years since the Rio Conference as anything but a failure and to maintain that some agreement is just around the corner is deluded. It's time to wake up.

Traders nous

With all the science avaliable showing how insignificant C02 is to the climate and the Winter the Northern hemisphere is experiancing at this stage, please you are flogging a dead horse. How many more years of record breaking cold weather is it going to take for a socialist to see reason. Maybe never.

Meme Mine

The best solution is to realize that climate change is a solution looking for a problem. The best solution is to realize that this is a social phenomenon, a fab. It’s not science. Culture defines science and this definition took the old definition right off the road.
When paid consultants posing in white lab coats calling themselves "scientists" (Saints and Gods to the Doomers), politicians promising to make the weather better with more taxes, PR firms, corporate blood thirsty media and now "economists" ALL agree on anything, be suspect, not blindly obedient and unquestioning. This is the end of the world we are talking about because SAVE THE PLANET and CLIMATE CRISIS is about DEATH. Look your kids in the eyes and tell them they are going to die an unspeakable death on a dying planet.
How foolish is any doomer to believe that an "all-in" bet of death is sustainable? If you do, well then march yourself right into history along side witch burning and disco.
REAL and honest environmentalists are happy about climate gates' smoking icebergs of truth. Why do you warmies wish for this misery? Do you rubber neck car accidents too. Stop scaring my kids.
And why are there always thousands and thousands MORE scientists than protesters always? Shouldn't they be marching first?
Stop scaring my kids, freaks.
Why are the effects of climate change after 24 years always reported so far away on mountains, polar caps, deep in oceans and rainforests, formerly jungles?
Stop scaring my kids with your environMENTAL WMD scam.


The smartest course of action moving forward is to heed the advice of virtually ALL of the world's leading scientists and economists who believe that a revenue-neutral carbon tax is the best solution to climate change.


30 12 09

I see that The Economist is still in denial, with a capital “D, regarding the fiasco in Copenhagen.

If the delegates were truly concerned about the health of the planet, Climategate's revelations should have caused at least an undercurrent of relief. If the climate data were cooked, as seems to be the case, and the cooked data was further manipulated to produce the familiar global horror stories, isn’t that potentially good news? Shouldn’t some reporter have asked “What’s your reaction to the news that we might NOT be on the road to imminent destruction?”

Since the delegates supposedly had the global environment as their overriding concern, they should have been at least cautiously optimistic, if not just plain excited. Instead all they got excited about was that they weren’t to get the trillions of Euros and Dollars they’d hoped for. This ludicrous and lavish meeting just degenerated into a squabble over handouts.

Sincerely, John E. Lukens, Ph.D.
Gilmanton Iron Works, NH, USA



Products and events



