Hi, I’m Lucy from Europe Today.
Here on the blog you’ve had some heated debates about climate change over the last couple of weeks – and now the much talked-about Copenhagen Summit.
But do you feel like you understand it?
On our programme, we’ll have a panel of experts on Monday 7th December to answer listeners’ questions about the politics of the Copenhagen Summit.
We’ve had this one already: China recently promised to reduce its “carbon intensity”…by reducing carbon output. But at the same time, China plans to build more carbon-emitting coal-fired power plants. How does that work?
What’s your question for Europe Today’s climate change panel?
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BBC World Have Your Say 
What confuses you about the Copenhagen summit?
Everything.
Its basically about keeping poor nations poor and installing a global TAX on carbon dioxide, also they want to issue a Carbon Credit scheme so big banks can trade them and everyone else has to buy them. Depending on their ‘carbon footprint’ will probably effect the price, if you drive a gas guzzling car for example.
There is obviously no denying Climate Change, but this is no proof that humans have anything to do with it directly. Consider this, as the Earth warms there is a much more favourable environment for life > More animals, means more carbon dioxide (as it is a natural bi-product of life i.e breathing) and more trees to recycle this into oxygen. So how can it DRIVE the climate? Al “the science is undenyable” Gore, symply flipped the graph he uses as proof. He has been caught out on this and admitted it.
Who is this global tax going to be paid to anyway? And taxing somthing is not the same as striving to reduce it.
Good luck all going well as predicted with climate deal in sight ..I have been at it for more tahn 2 dacades and would be pleased with the positive outcome by next june.
What confuses me is that anyone would believe politicians could ever solve any problem. All most of them do is look for a media surge on a topic and back the ideas that either gets them the most votes or they follow orders from supporters. I fear any action they may take. It will cost us money and produce no good results.
What confuses me is still much of the MSM refusing to have a factual debate re: this. Every single time it’s always presented the same way: climate change. Real or a massive con job?
If climate change is real, then why are so many world-respected scientists willing to throw away their careers on a lie?
If these people (and the politicians) are getting rich, where’s the evidence? Do they all have secret Swiss bank accounts?
The emails that were hacked were totally hyped as “evidence” that climate change is a fraud? Really? Are any of these reporters scientists? And sadly, many “experts” who are against cliamte change aren’t scientists at all. But to much of the MSM that doesn’t matter.
Very disappointing.
Hi
Sorry I have to disagree – there are a lot of scientists who dispute man made global warming – 31000 signed a petition to that effect within the last 12 months. 9000 of those were Phd’s.
It was also a group of Harvard and Smithsonian scientists who did an extensive review of the literature and concluded that during the Medieval Warm Period (800 to 1400 AD) temperatures were .75 – 1.5 higher than they are today! Al Gore’s hockey stick graph completely fudges that fact and the e-mails from the CRU reveal that scientists such as Phil Jones wanted to remove all mention of the MWP. The reason is that the Medieval Warming Period is definitive proof that periods of warming are natural and cyclical – Periods of cooling are also natural and cyclical
Bear in mind also that there has been no further temperature rises in almost 12 years and that in the past 2 years temperatures have been tracking down . This is despite continuous rises in CO2 levels.
These are all facts.
So don’t be disappointed – allow yourself to be relieved. Among the many pressing problems the world is facing global warming is not one of them!
My chief source of confusion about Copenhagen is why the conference has to be held at all. Hopefully the world returns to a rationale frame of mind before we are all lumbered with carbon taxes that are going to be a burden to the average person and a boon to the carbon traders. Al Gore being one of them.
@Patti, .. perhaps this might help?
http://www.newscientist.com/special/copenhagen-climate-change-summit
The world as we know it is going to end unless we do something. That’s the line that’s being sold again and again.
How is it going to end? We’re warming the planet. The details are all explained in complex science which very few of us can understand let alone debate.
I guess the first question is how do we believe? How will they convince the masses that Man-made global warming is a real and imminent existential threat that requires immediate action.
Tied into the first question, how high a priority is it for world leaders to save the world? When the “war on terror” was at it’s peak, the government along with mass media fearmongering and propaganda mobilised the populations into preparedness to tackle the harsh realities of terror. The threat of Global Warming is much more severe, yet attracts much less attention from leaders and media. Do they believe in it themselves?
@T- Thanks, the other links you gave me from another blog helped tremendously as far as understanding the science, but the politics of climate change is beyond me at times, i.e. “China recently promised to reduce its “carbon intensity”…by reducing carbon output. But at the same time, China plans to build more carbon-emitting coal-fired power plants.” I will try out this link as soon as i can.
I know I keep harping on about this but feel very strongly The Politicians at this gas guzzling conference should show us their own carbon footprints otherwise why should we be green? Practice what you preach or stop wasting our money on pointless conferences!
What really scares me is the rush to ratify lasting and binding deals that will cost us Trillions to implement. My big problem with Copenhagen is that everything is rolling ahead as if the question (man’s culpability in global warming) is an undisputed fact, that there are no uncertainties that need father investigation. Using an analogy of a person facing the death penalty for a capitol crime, would you, being the jury, convict knowing full well that there is a possibility that the evidence is not as watertight as the prosecution would have you believe, and further that the defense is being systematically ignored? All I say is why the big rush, we have not heard all the evidence yet.
@T (New Zealand) – I read your link. Suggest you wade through this one – with an open mind. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/nasa-giss-adjustments-galore-rewriting-climate-history/
The only people who say that “The world as we know it is going to end” due to climate change are the people who want to discredit efforts to reverse the affects
that we have on the climate.
Question: Why do perfectly good journalists continue to give voice to a bogus “debate”. The “balance” for which they seem to strive is lending equal weight to entrenched polluters and every serious, responsible, qualified scientist on the planet. There is no debate! The effects are consistently more severe than predicted years ago by conservative, careful scientists. It is not a matter of tomayto-tomahto, the “truth” will not be somewhere in the middle where uncritical thinkers would like to find their comfort zone. By continuing to frame the discussion in this way, journalists are stoking the smoke screen. As long as journalists continue to shovel credence at cynically political operatives and troglodytes, all serious solutions will be delayed and the problem, already dire, will get closer to irreversible.
Only in the last few days have I come to accept their is a minute temperature rise going on. At least up to about a month ago. I also learned it is well below what most fear salesmen projected. I also know that industry has been working to reduce all aspects of waste/pollution both in production and products. All for the reasons of profits and sales.
Now are you telling me that you think politicians will be more effective and or efficient than profit oriented industry? Also, I see most press backing the ‘stop the CO2’ side, because fear sells commercials.
When will the sub-prime carbon bubble burst??????
I don’t see what is confusing about the Copenhagen Summit.Having read(not all,but most)of the political comment,it turns out that they all agree on global warming,So no arguments there then! The argument will be,who pays and who does not.Third world will want to develop,while someone else pays for it.Developed countries will have to go home and tell their people to tighten their belts and thin their wallets.I would think that they may agree to disagree.Who knows?
Any politician disagreeing with global warming would be akin to a Muslim going into The Al Aska Mosque,and declaring himself an Atheist.
I’m confused as to why our government would get rid of the raw data, and “fudge the numbers” (when it comes to global warming). The end justify the means my rear end!
-Anthony, LA, CA
“What confuses you about the Copenhagen summit?”
What a fun question; because if you can define what confuses you about it you are no longer confused about it. If you make your confusion clear you are no longer confused.
What confuses me about this summit is the fact that, we are trying to be sold the idea that this matter now is owned by politicians and a few scientists.
Look at all the cities in the world. What you tend to see most on the road is millions of cars majority of which have only one occupant. Look at the destruction on natural cover. All of us continue to play a role in one way or another. How many unnecessary electric bulbs are on at this time? Misuse of stationery in the office.
What is likely to happen is writing of yet another paper that no one cares to look at once the conference is over. Some countries will use this platform to tell us that we now need nuclear energy immediately as if we have exhausted all other avenues to address the issue.
I am not saying that it is bad to have such a conference. It is very important but things won’t change until all of us acknowledge that we can play a role in saving our world environment. Everyone should campaign for Green and shun promoting industries and businesses that produce goods that contribute to climate change to the worse in our private and public lives.
Hello again
Nothing! I have a feeling of deja vu in other words old hat and nothing will be achieved except that new business posibilities will be opened up.
Jim
What confuses me about this “we can change the climate” frenzy is why it’s always the politicians or other non-scientists who claim that there is such a consensus among real scientists. How did the brainwashing happen, exactly?
What will be achieved in Copenhagen? Nothing. Polticians will make promises they cannot keep, for actions that would not result in climate change anyway.
I’ll try again, unless WHYS thinks this is irrelevant to the question asked.
What confuses me the most about the Copenhagen conference or any for that matter is after all the hand-shaking, photo – ops, the press releases confirming reduced carbon emissions etc, is how do we practically implement the agreements on the ground? Taken from a site I have previously referred to in another blog on the same subject.
Wind – “It would take every single one of California’s 13,000 wind turbines operating at 100% capacity (they usually operate at about 30%) all at the same time to generate as much electricity as a a single 555-megawatt natural gas fired power plant. The combined output of every wind turbine in the US is actually equal to less than two coal fired power plants.
Solar – “Operating at average efficiency of 20%, the combined output of all the pv cells in the world is now equal to the output of a single coal fired power-plant. By 2008, there were just over 5,000 megawatts of solar pv cells installed worldwide.
It would take close to 220,000 square kilometers of solar panels to power the global economy via solar power, the total acreage covered by solar panels in the entire world right now is a paltry 10 square kilometers.”
I am 100% for a cleaner environment – just how do we accomplish it.
Question To the panel:
Are we – out- or – in- time, with the outcome of this conference?
The fact that while it would be nice to have a global standard to deal with this, what are the chances of it happening?
It won’t. Name any other global issue (business or otherwise) that has a global agreement that’s consistently enforced. There’s no global mobile standard. There’s no global TV standard. And the list goes on.
The powerful countries will never give up their money and power for the sake of the smaller unless there’s a return on their investment. Call it “capitalism” or whatever you like. But it’s there.
What no-one seems to understand, is that regardless of Global Warning, the rate of change relating to population growth, use of resources and pollution is so high that, inevitably, man will disappear under his own detritus sooner or later. Add in GW and the scenario brings the end game so much closer. More people less land, less food less water, rising sea levels less land less food etc etc. Mass migration to shrinking northern hemisphere lands will cause conflict war and destruction.
The best way round all this would be to consider ways to reduce the population. If nothing changes 50% less people would bring the appropriate savings and make us feel less stressed by pressures of space. The Chinese can do it and so can we. Go on you know it makes sense. You cannot rely upon unknown improvements in technology to sort us out. You cannot rely on economists who’s mantra is growth at all costs. Tie a knot in it and save the planet
The population can and will be reduced by war, starvation and disease. Just as it always has for man and the rest of nature. Nature will always find a balance. It just might not be the one you want.
What confuses me about Copenhagen is why the general public is WAY ahead of the politicians in seeing through the man-made global warming scam!
In my club of over 800 members, not a single member believes that the Copenhagen Summit is about anything else than politicians finding ways of taxing us to the hilt. Global warming is a scam. The more the politicians support the agenda, the more people will disbelieve the proposition. That should come as no surprise.
What’s the point now that we know they have been are still making it all up. How stupid do they think eveyone is?
No amount of e- mail leak nor last minute creation of doubts by skeptics are going to change my concern about global warming and wanton rainforest destruction except for building sustainable environmentally sound dams for water to avoid water wars in future.
My video of my experience of climate change going back to 1974 has already been submitted as a small video long before leak of climate data email saga.
Many poor developing countries like Maldives with underwater cabinet meeting and the Nepalese govoernment cabinet meeting.at the base of rapidly disappearing himalayan glaciers threatening flood,drought and and loss of continuous water supply in years to come are dramatization of their plight and experience of real global warming catastrophies ,and hope wise world leaders would put aside ,us and them attitude employed by developing nations at similar meetings like powerty or aid should come togther to save the planet for us as well as future generations let alone animals and plants and other species..
That people that believe in Climate Warming are for the most part people who generally care about the planet. What they don’t realize is that meetings like Copenhagen are there to set up an exchange like the Nasdaq , Nyse where carbon contracts will be bought and sold between genuine manufacturers .
But the amount of $ that will result from the transactions will be so high that no doubt will result in a new economic bubble/crash by the same bankers who have just wrecked the world these past years with mortgages and then oil at 150$/barrel . For example the Goldman Sachs firm central to the previous bubbles will also be at the helm of the new scheme.
They can’t wait to have their next pound of flesh.
What confuses me is how the MSM can completely ignore the fact that the whole AGW has now been completely discredited. Ok it hasn’t been scientifically refuted but it’s an unproven hypothesis at best. If the science was settled they wouldn’t need to lie, delete data, and distort the reviewing process. It’s not just a nail in the coffin of AGW, it’s also reducing the credibility of the MSM. Thank God for the internet.
How daft do you think we are?
Putting out pollution-cutting targets will not work. India is perhaps the largest consumer of plastic ( bags, kitchen utensils etc ), petroleum, paper ( college text books, religious books etc ) and many other things. Even when India produces sobs stories at conferences about how its poor need to take precedence over this world’s climate, a single tour of India will make one see the largest dog-population in the world, which doubles every five months. All of these dogs are fed by the common people, the so called ‘Man in the street’. So the food for the unnecessary “Poor” is addition to dog-food, which is the rice and vegetables grown in India as food crop.
Please enforce upon this most populistic country in the world, the West will have to follow.
The leaders meeting at the summit have a lesser role to play as it is the responsibility of the technicians , engineers to create energy efficient systems.
It is right time we start creating climate control teams which can discover the solutions to specific problems and intimate the same to the entire industry.
With the recent revelation of Climategate, there is real concern about the honesty and integrity of those making these climate claims. Frauds have been exposed before by Global Warming advocates like Michael Mann’s now discredited hockey stick curve in which he manipulated numbers to get the result he wanted. These people behave more as ideologues than scientists in that they refuse to debate those with opposing views. I am concerned that Dr, Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic, may be correct when he says that the Global Warmist movement is ”budding totalitarian ideology that is the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, and prosperity in the world today”.
What confuses me? Nothing. It is obvious that the global warming/climate change debate is without foundation. Yes, the climate is currently seeing a slight increase in temperature. Between 1 and 6 degrees. There is nothing new in this as temperature have fluctuated since the creation. Sometimes up then down then back up again and so on.
So we have been looking at a natural event. Cutting back on a reliance on fossil fuel, .But, it is possible that mankind has aggravated the situation slightly. Recycling is a good idea. But this current rabid desire by politicians and others with an agenda to fulfill is unnecessary.
Politicians we know see this as a means of increasing taxation and cutting back on individual rights.
Copenhagen is a ‘fix’ designed to impose a major fall in living standards in the more affluent countries.
The fact that Gordon Brown has the courage to call the global warming skeptics on their tactics. And despite that, the Take-The-Mickey-out-of-Brown crowd just won’t stop.
My prediction? Lots of soundbites from various politicians, ministers and correspondents. A communique saying “how much wonderufl stuff was acomplished.” And then, nothing.
If this is so important, then why is Obama showing up at the end of it? Because the big countries will fight to the very end any attempts to make them pay for their actions up to this point.
I strongly support the climate change initiatives. As a resident of Northern Alberta,Canada a two degree rise in the ambient temperature would be a tremendous benefit to me. My heating costs would fall dramatically, I would burn less furnace oil and use less electric power, thereby reducing my ‘carbon footprint’ significantly. I really hope the Copenhagen Conference can reach agreement on the earliest implementation of the proposed temperature increase.
I hate to sound pessimistic, but from what I’ve understood it’s highly unlikely that there will be a new treaty done and signed by all the participants — but if there is no legally binding treaty (and of course, to be legally binding it should be ratified by national parliaments, too…) then there will be no effective global framework for tackling the climate change either. It’s a scary scenario; I’m afraid our Planet just can’t wait any longer for all the democratic decision-making processes to take place and all peoples and nations agree on acceptable and eligible measures. I wish good luck for the Summit, but I’m not holding my breath for the results.
Just today in the Indian national parliament, the ruling Indian National Congress party was criticised by all parties except the CPI(M), for sending the Prime Minister to Cophenhagen, even though the PM Mr. Singh was essentially forced by Mr. Obama to show his face in Copenhagen. Since Indian governments are elected by the public and their leaders-in-parliament are public representations, will the world notice the careless attitude of this public to the world crisis in question.
India has more than half of the global cattle population, much of the rice cultivation and forests cleared out to make villages, vegetable fields, software companies, fertiliser factories, cement factories, coal power stations, clothing mills, ladies-slimming centres and of course financial institutions. But all of this is because the West sends useless work here for which the locals only create the support system.
The Copenhagen exercise is a sham unless the West stops using email, cell phones and all the unnecessary stuff which for the past twenty years has been prefixed with the words ‘Essential’. Stop just this, and the unnecessary economies of the so-called developing countries will fall down. Via this reduced goods-consumption of everyone, global temperature is bound to reduce in two or three years by atleast ten degrees.