Copenhagen: International climate science congress kicks off
Over 2000 delegates from 80 nations have gathered this week in Copenhagen to update the global assessment of climate change, and I’m fortunate enough to be one of them.
Over the next few days, the International Scientific Conference on Climate Change will hear from world experts including climatologists, social scientists and economists on how the prognosis for global warming, and its physical and societal impacts, has changed since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued its last report in 2007. The science in the 2007 report is now effectively 4-5 years out of date, so it’s clearly time for an update, which is why experts are here this week.
The updated assessment will be in the format of a 30-page synthesis document, to be published in June.
It will be peer-reviewed but not IPCC-style; that's because the ultimate aim of the congress is to deliver a hard-hitting message on the urgency of climate change to policymakers and the media ahead of the UN Conference in December, where delegates will again converge on Copenhagen, this time to agree a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.
Among the speakers who kicked off proceedings this morning was congress chair and marine scientist Katherine Richardson, who spoke to me ahead of time about why the congress is taking place and what it hopes to deliver. Read the full interview here.
I’ll be speaking in a session on Thursday on communicating climate change (and particularly on the role of blogs) and both I and my estimable colleague, Oliver Morton, will be blogging over the next few days on anything that especially surprises or interests us. For the full programme, see here.
Olive Heffernan
Comments
Nothing has done more to “GREEN” the planet over the last several decades than elevated levels of CO2 together with moderate sun driven warming. Studies show doubling CO2 levels increases plant growth rates 33 percent. It is no accident commercial greenhouse operators invest heavily in CO2 generators to increase the productivity of their operations. Farmers, ranchers and foresters, and in fact all living things, have benefited from this rare, but temporary, gift of nature. Why is our government spending so many resources to convince us otherwise?
Posted by: John A. Jauregui | March 28, 2009 07:21 AM
John, your assertion that CO2 emissions will somehow prove to be positive by ‘greening’ the planet is seriously misguided.
While it has been argued that higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations could literally fertilize plant growth and sequester carbon, experiments and model calculations both show that this is unlikely to happen on a scale that would make any difference to either plant growth or atmospheric concentrations of the greenhosue gas. So the notion that CO2 will green the planet isn’t supported by science.
But it’s interesting that you raise this as it was discussed in some detail by Naomi Oreskes at the session on communicating climate change in Copenhagen. As Oreskes highlighted in her talk, the ‘greening of the planet' by CO2 is a fallacy that was promoted in a marketing campaign funded by the Western Fuels Association (WFA), a group of Western U.S. coal producers in the 1990s. The WFA wanted to influence public
opinion on climate change and hired market researchers how best to do so. They then issued press releases, pamphlets, simulacra of scientific papers, and a 30-minute video perpetuating this idea, without any regard for mainstream scientific evidence.
Posted by: Olive Heffernan | March 30, 2009 04:52 PM