Members' Contributions

As a result of finding out that the Kyoto commitments technically comes to an end on the 31st December, the Scottish Climate & Energy Forum have been investigating the likely consequences of this both in terms of what is likely to happen to the protocol and the wide implications when (as it seems) the protocol effectively ends operation on the 31st December.

We have written this up as a report. The main intention of this report has been to try to find the actual facts and having sorted the chaff from the wheat, ascertain what this might mean (with particular emphasis on Scotland).

The report has been produced to coincide with today which is 100 days to Kyoto Ends, and it is available on the website:

http://scef.org.uk/attachments/article/106/End%20of%20Kyoto%20-%20A%20Perfect%20Storm%20for%20Scotland.pdf

For obvious reasons, the report is biased toward Scotland and we can only really speak with authority about the Scottish context. We will welcome any comments on the report, criticism or suggestions for improvement.

regards,

Mike Haseler

Summary of main conclusions:

1.      Commitments under the Kyoto Protocol cease as of 31st December.

2.      The 3^rd October 2012 is the latest date at which any amendment to the Kyoto protocol could have been passed for it to be operational by 1^st January 2013.

3.      With no meeting planned, and huge delays for members states to ratify, there is no practical way for an amendment to be presented and ratified by the 143 members (3/4 of members).

4. CONSENSUS SCIENCE

The term “consensus science” will often be appealed to regarding arguments about climate change to bolster an assertion. This is a form of “argument from authority.” Consensus, however, is a political notion, not a scientific notion.

As I testified to the Inter-Academy Council in June 2010, wrote in Nature that same year (Christy 2010), and documented in my written House Testimony last year (House Space, Science and Technology, 31 Mar 2011) the IPCC and other similar Assessments do not represent for me a consensus of much more than the consensus of those selected to agree with a particular consensus.

The content of these climate reports is actually under the  control of a relatively small number of individuals - I often refer to them as the “climate establishment” – who through the years, in my opinion, came to act as gatekeepers of scientific opinion and information, rather than brokers.

The voices of those of us who object to various statements and emphases in these assessments are by-in-large dismissed rather than accommodated. This establishment includes the same individuals who become the “experts” called on to promote IPCC claims in government reports such as the endangerment finding by the Environmental Protection Agency.

PHILIP BURCHAM

The Erosion of Christendom and the Predicament of Science

QUADRANT JUNE 2012

Some twenty years ago, I was a young science lecturer struggling with my first job at an institution of higher learning in Adelaide—famous of course as our "City of Churches"—a now embarrassing epithet reflecting Adelaide's one-time status as a key centre of Nonconformist Protestantism. Just returned from scientific training in the USA, I was feeling the anxiety that afflicts new academics finding themselves alone in lecture halls filled with critical, hard-to-impress late-teens: how the dickens do I hold their attention for the next forty-five minutes?

Returning to my department after a lecture one day, I mentioned my frustrations to a senior colleague. He was growing nostalgic upon nearing retirement and said something memorable that morning running along these lines: "Ah yes—things were much better in the early sixties when I started out. The little blighters used to grow up in church. They learned to sit still and pay attention to the sermon. It made our job as lecturers much easier."

by Peter Westmore

News Weekly, September 1, 2012

For years, environmental organisations in Australia have cast themselves as the only authentic defenders of the natural environment against ruthless human exploitation, usually identified with corporate Australia, particularly the mining industry, the forestry industry, agribusiness and “the big polluters” (who happen to be Australia’s electricity industry).

Their latest crusade is the introduction of a carbon tax, which is said to be necessary to prevent the build-up of greenhouse gases, particularly CO2, which are said to be causing uncontrollable global warming. The tax has contributed to the latest rise in the price of electricity for millions of households and businesses around Australia.

At the same time that the carbon tax was introduced, Australian exports of coal — which are exempt from the tax — have continued to skyrocket … with the active encouragement of the government which imposed the carbon tax!

THIS is fascinating - it's rather dazzling to see it presented this way.

Pattrick Smellie | Thursday July 05, 2012

"Could there be a bigger insult to an 'actual' farmer than the concept of 'carbon farming'?"