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[InfiniteNow]

Originally Posted by Turtle

[CENTER]=CFP: Over 100 Prominent Scientists Warn UN: Attempting To Control Climate Is ‘Futile’


The Letter: >> CFP: Open Letter to the UN Secretary General Concerning Global Warming

Yep. Interestingly, that SAME week, a letter written by 200 prominent scientists was ALSO submitted to the UN, a letter which urged action to combat global warming by reducing CO₂ emissions.


Bali Declaration

….The amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere now far exceeds the natural range of the past 650,000 years, and it is rising very quickly due to human activity. If this trend is not halted soon, many millions of people will be at risk from extreme events such as heat waves, drought, floods and storms, our coasts and cities will be threatened by rising sea levels, and many ecosystems, plants and animal species will be in serious danger of extinction.

The next round of focused negotiations for a new global climate treaty (within the 1992 UNFCCC process) needs to begin in December 2007 and be completed by 2009. The prime goal of this new regime must be to limit global warming to no more than 2 ºC above the pre-industrial temperature, a limit that has already been formally adopted by the European Union and a number of other countries.

Based on current scientific understanding, this requires that global greenhouse gas emissions need to be reduced by at least 50% below their 1990 levels by the year 2050. In the long run, greenhouse gas concentrations need to be stabilised at a level well below 450 ppm (parts per million; measured in CO2-equivalent concentration). In order to stay below 2 ºC, global emissions must peak and decline in the next 10 to 15 years, so there is no time to lose…

Here's a fair and balanced approach to both letters. I bet you won't find such a fair view of both sides presented in the Canadian Free Press to which you've linked several times. Considering their tone, and their "Christianity" section, I'd suggest they're not as "fair and balanced" as one might presume.


Climate Change - who is right and we are wrong? | TalkClimateChange

Two letters were written by two sets of credible scientists last week and addressed to the UN. One letter urged action to combat global warming by reducing Co2 emissions, and the other urged leaders to ignore the previous letter and focus on more pressing priorities instead. (see below for links and highlights)

It is clearly a bizarre situation: the attention of the world is being focused on preventing a global calamity through high profile summit meetings which promise to bring much change, whilst in the background the climate prophets are still arguing over the fundamental existence of a real problem in the first place.

Each week we read of new opinion polls, which alternately claim that large numbers of people either are, or are not concerned about global warming depending on who was asked. Our conclusion is that approximately 1 third of the world care deeply about the problem. Another third of the world don’t believe there is a problem, and the remaining third couldn’t care less and are too busy getting on with their lives.

So what’s going on? Have the UN together with many of the world’s governments been duped by an unprecedented scam? Have we run out of other challenging problems to deal with? Or is the whole issue becoming confused by honest people with other motives? And more importantly, what will it take to move on?

First let’s have a look at the contrasting highlights of each letter:

The two letters fundamentally contradict each other: firstly on the cause of climate change - natural vs manmade -, secondly on our ability to influence climate change, and finally on the subsequent causes of human suffering - economic collapse vs environmental disaster.

Frankly, its easy for an intelligent person to go with either set of scenarios, depending on what suits you best. We suspect that for many people (our enlightened readers excepted) this is exactly how they choose their position.

But since we are talking about dramatically rearranging our world we really should try to straighten this out. We have a few suggestions as a starting point:

Just the facts, ma'am.