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EU split on climate change plans

by Julie Walsh on March 6, 2008

in Blog

With the ink barely dry on plans by the European Commission for fighting climate change, members of the EU have already started a game of tug-of-war to pull the legal proposals in their favor.

"It's most important that the national targets … take into account solidarity and [economic] convergence," said Arturas Paulauskas, Environment Minister for Lithuania, one of the EU's newest and least developed members.

The EU's climate-change plans "are not the place to deal with cohesion and solidarity — that is what cohesion funds and the [EU] budget are for," retorted Hilary Benn, environment minister for Britain — one of the EU's richest and most developed economies.

EU industry commissioner pushes for exemptions to emissions trading system

by Julie Walsh on March 6, 2008

in Blog

EU industry commissioner Guenter Verheugen is pushing for EU leaders at their summit next week to agree that energy intensive industries should have a special status when it comes to the bloc's pollution-reducing emissions trading scheme (ETS).

German daily Handelsblatt reports that Mr Verheugen next week, during the 13-14 March summit, will argue that industries due to be heaviest hit by the emissions scheme – a system that was tightened up at the beginning of the year – should be exempted.

What is Endangered: Climate or Freedom? And Just How Sensitive is the Climate Anyway?

by Julie Walsh on March 6, 2008

in Blog

New York, March 4—Let's start with some possible news from Heartland Institute's International Climate Change Conference. In the context of man-made global warming, climate sensitivity asks how much temperatures increase if one adds a specified amount of a greenhouse gas. In general, most climatologists accept the proposition, all things being equal, that if one doubles carbon dioxide in the atmosphere the average temperature will go up by +1 degree centigrade. But all things are not equal.

Cold Water on Global Warming

by William Yeatman on March 6, 2008

in Blog

It has almost become something of a joke when some “global warming” conference has to be cancelled because of a snowstorm or bitterly cold weather.

23 countries to participate in Toyako summit

by Julie Walsh on March 6, 2008

in Blog

A record 23 countries will participate in the Group of Eight summit meeting to be held in July in Toyakocho, Hokkaido, government sources said Wednesday.

The upcoming meeting will become the largest so far after it was decided to invite 15 nonmember countries to participate in "expanded dialogue" that will focus on climate change and African development, according to the sources.

During meetings involving the G-8 member countries, Japan–the host of the summit–will propose a plan to establish the "Toyako Process" (Lake Toya Process) in which 20 countries, including major greenhouse gas emitters, will discuss a post-Kyoto Protocol framework, the sources said.

Biofuels – An Assault on the World`s Poor

by Julie Walsh on March 6, 2008

in Blog

Western citizens want to use the limited land to produce ethanol rather than food for the poor.
 
Food riots in Indonesia, Mexico, Egypt, the Philippines and Vietnam. Price controls and food rationing in Pakistan and China. Are we back to the Malthusian trap as prices of agricultural and food commodities from wheat and corn to dairy products and meat have risen in the last few years to historically unprecedented levels?

Global-Warming Payola?

by Julie Walsh on March 6, 2008

in Blog

All right, let’s talk about the money.

After I asked readers to focus on the substance of the skeptics’ arguments at this week’s conference on global warming, readers insisted that I should have focused on the financing of the sponsor, the Heartland Institute. Others objected to my (and my colleague Andy Revkin) even writing about a conferenced sponsored by this group. I’m used to this sort of criticism, but I still find it baffling. Do the critics really think there’s more money and glory to be won by doubting global warming than by going along with the majority?

Matthew Nisbeth: This is an Agenda Setting Throw Down!

by Lene Johansen on March 5, 2008

in Science

I adore Matthew Nisbeth's research but he is off his rocker in this comment he posted on his blog and that he presented in an interview on The World. I did not see him at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change in New York, and this is not the first time I catch researchers I respect in their lack of actual grounding in facts before they present research on an issue.

The first ever research conference I attended as a graduate student, I attended a panel on the ethical issues on plant biotechnology. I won't mention names, but some old geezer that had not left his ivory tower for quite a few years was talking about the problem of having one genetically modified plant growing all around the world. He was a bit shocked to find out that the GMO trait was bred into more than 70,000 local varieties, because the corn that will grow in the Midwest will not grow in India quite as well. But that is the reporter in me, I call people, and I ask what they actually do.

A communication professor that I adore got into my car when I gave her a ride to a conference, and she saw a name tag from the Heritage Foundation with my name on it hanging from my rear view mirror (yeah, it's a quirky habit, but good for conversations). She said, "but Lene, aren't those conservatives?" Hell yeah they are, and I don't like them much for it, but every year they put on a conference where you meet everything from the pro-life think tanks from St. Louis (Phyllis Schlafly & Co.) to the hippie libertarian lawyers from San Francisco. At one of these conferences I got to have lunch with the guy that organize some of the bioconservative groups that Nisbeth is comparing the Heartland Institute with. I need to know those groups, it is my job and my research passion. An trust me, Nigel S. Cameron, David Prentice, or their left wing ally Wesley Smith would never publish any of my work, but Joe Bast would.

Nisbeth is off his rocker, cause he is applying theory as a map without checking the terrain. I am a reporter first, communications researcher second. I call the people that I don't think will ever talk to me again, and ask them to show me their way, I might have my facts wrong after all. So maybe, just maybe, I should challenge the guy to put on a climate change panel for AJMC in August, cause I know that I have access to enough data to prove that his point in the World segment is doggone wrong, and I think the coverage from the conference prove it. There is no way Heartland's view of climate change is the predominant frame on this issue, no matter how right those scientists and policy wonks are in their assessment of the consequences and lack of scientific justification for current public policy on the issue.

Impressions from the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change

by Lene Johansen on March 5, 2008

in Science

Last night I got home from an exhausting and exhilarating trip to New York City. During my stay, I barely got out of the hotel and I am still annoyed at all the wonderful presentations that I missed. Lucky for me, they will end up on the Internet shortly. I attended the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change. There was some totally cool and breaking science stories at this conference, and here are some of the impressions I had when I was talking to Gardner Goldsmith at Against the Grain on Monday and Tuesday.

Monday

Tuesday

Lazy Ass Reporters!

by Lene Johansen on March 5, 2008

in Politics

The 2008 International Conference on Climate Change was a great hit. For the sheer audacity of daring to discuss the questions that IPCC omitted, a ton of reporters could not stay away. The problem with reporters is that they pick the easy story and so far the only story that got out was the political stories.

I found some amazing science stories at the conference, but they take time to develop and sell. The science news cycle is slower than most if it is done properly. The fast science news cycle is faster, but the significance of a story takes experience and effort to follow, it used to frustrate the hell out of me when I started writing about science.

The Columbia Journalism Review published a story headlined the The Skeptics Ball, -Heartland Institute conference tests news judgment. Just by the headline they have dismissed the conference was not labeled Heartland Institute Conference. The Heartland Institute actually has one of those, but this one was the 2008 International Climate Change Conference.

As John Stossel pointed out in his speech on Tuesday, he was impressed by Joe Bast's optimism about the coverage. Bast was probably bolstered by the fact that major media internationally actually carried stories from the conference, it is more than he is used to for his courageous, but counterintuitive approaches to public policy. Mainstream media has been killing people who questions the reasoning and policy approaches to the global warming scare with silence for months and years.

I posted this comment on the Columbia Journalism Review's comment section to Curtis Brainard's story the Sceptics Ball. I have to admit, I did expect the gospel meeting, but I got a kick ass science conference, the reporters that wrote about the gospel meeting was sloppy, lazy, or in non-attendance. National and international reporting involves a lot of assumptions, and as my professors beat into me the hard way in the Missouri School of Journalism (one of the best, in case you are not part of the media mafia), assumption makes an ASS out of U and ME.

The reports that got out so far was the easy, short deadline political reports, but the science reports from this conference will take time to develop. I hope to put Roy Spencer to shame so we can make him a center fold in the magazines that science geeks reads.

"I am not sure if Curtis Brainard actually went to the conference, but I have read a lot of press accounts and I am not sure that some of those guys went to the same conference as I did. There was in fact a slough of reporters there, including a three-person team from BBC who did not find the stories they expected, but they found a whole lot of others according to my conversations with them.

The fact that few stories have surfaced yet is an aspect of science reporting, because there were quite a few interesting science stories there. Some of those stories take a bit longer to develop, because they are complicated stories.

I have participated on a ton of science conferences and a ton of political conferences over the years. I thought I was heading to another political gospel meeting when I got to New York on Sunday, but I soon figured out that I had underestimated this conference. This was a science conference like any of the top ones I have attended. Many of the presentations were breaking science stories, and I know that I have freelance material for several months following this trip.

Roy Spencer's presentation on his upcoming paper in the Journal of Climatology where he identifies a serious omission in most pre-eminent climate models are big news for science journalists, but it is probably too complicated for non-beat journalists to handle. Not because those reporters are lacking in any other department than in the time department.

The stories that have come out so far are the stories that were easy to write. I am willing to bet you that some of these reporters never left the newsroom to write their stories. They stuck with the pre-dominant frame and mostly used sources that did not attend the conference. If you are a science geek reporter and you had a chance to go, but did not, you missed out. However, as any conference we get the stories we want to get out of them and that is a part of the problem. This is our problem as reporters, not the problem of the researchers that attended this conference, but it is their reputations we are dragging through the mud."

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