Reality seems to be obstructing any meaningful deal in Bali - looks like another holiday, sorry, I mean conference, will be needed, somewhere else 'nice.'
In public, climate scientists and European politicians are generally optimistic that rising carbon dioxide levels and temperatures can be curbed. In private, some are less sanguine; but there has been a widespread unwritten code of optimism to avoid being accused of scaremongering or creating despair. Now, science advisors to two governments with claims to leadership in global climate politics, Germany and the UK, have told BBC News it is unlikely that levels of greenhouse gases can be kept low enough to avoid a projected temperature rise of 2C (3.6F).
Meanwhile, the UK still plans a huge airport expansion, there is not the slightest hint of a deal that would see rich nations pay poor nations to capture their emissions from coal and even Democrats in the US Congress want to postpone any tough action on emissions until after 2020. That may be why the scientists' mask of optimism is beginning to slip.
Roger Harrabin, BBC News, 10 December 2007
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has ruled out endorsing proposed short-term greenhouse gas emission targets of up to 40 per cent by 2020 but says that does not mean the Bali climate change conference will be a failure. Mr Rudd ruled out endorsing a draft proposal from conference organisers for drastic cuts to emission levels of between 25 and 40 per cent over the next 12 years for developed nations
The Age, 10 December 2007
Washington rejected stiff 2020 targets for greenhouse gas cuts by rich nations at U.N. talks in Bali on Monday as part of a "roadmap" to work out a new global pact to fight climate change by 2009. Other countries such as Japan are also opposed, fearing such stiff goals would choke economic growth.
Reuters, 10 December 2007
The head of Japan's biggest business lobby warned Monday that another set of 'irrational' greenhouse gas emission targets like those in the Kyoto Protocol would weaken Japan Inc's competitiveness. 'If irrational regulations of total emissions are set, as it was the case under the Kyoto Protocol, we cannot avoid a weakening of our international competitiveness,' said Fujio Mitarai, who is the head of the Japan Business Federation and also chairman of Canon Inc.
Forbes, 10 December 2007
Britain is responsible for hundreds of millions more tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions than official figures admit, according to a new report that undermines UK claims to lead the world on action against global warming. The analysis says pollution from aviation, shipping, overseas trade and tourism, which are not measured in the official figures, means that UK carbon consumption has risen significantly over the past decade, and that the government's claims to have tackled global warming are an "illusion".
David Adam, The Guardian, 10 December 2007
On ‘global warming’, the only thing in which Britain leads the world is in the illusion of its political rhetoric.
Philip Stott, 10 December 2007
Rio. Kyoto. Bali. [Hawaii]. That's environmental conferences for you. They always occur in sunlit places ending in vowels, and with a consonantal component of no more than 50%. They're never in vowel-light locations like Nitvinggen or Bblarrgh or Quivdansk, where summer lasts a few hours some time in June, and where the locals spend their long winters rummaging through their clothing of animal pelts, popping lice with gnarled, nutshell fingernails, and musing vowellessly. For, there is almost a defined UN Green Meridian, where conferences To Save The World must always be held.
Kevin Myers, Belfast Telegraph, 7 December 2007
I'm also an amateur in this field but I found this information on Greenland on a Norwegian scientific site.
" There has accumulated more ice on mountain tops ove 2000 m during the last three years, but there is even a more powerful melting on lower grounds . Totally this makes for more melting....
Luke displays a fair bit of glacial ignorance, with a few shards of truth, (above).
I have no academic qualifications to discuss glaciers. So I observe, and do try to follow unbiased expert glacial advice and observations.
We recently visited the Franz Joseph and Fox glaciers, and can state truthfully that the are both certainly advancing again, and have been generally doing so since 1982, with a short retreat since then. In 2004 the FJ terminus became visible from the village for the first time in 30 years, and today is quite visible from there.
Since the 1700's, (LIA) the FJ has retreated some 2km as temps. have risen. Along the way there have been several advances and retreats. The present advance has gained some 400 meters; quite impressive. A good reference site is...
http://www.nzphoto.tripod.com/glaciers/index.htm
Note his comment 'present temporary advance' !! Doesn't qualify the retreats!
There is some excellent study being done on SH glaciers..
http://www.victoria.ac.nz/geo/papers/staff/Marsden-Mackintosh-2006
Note the comment 'SH glacial advance growing in response to temperature decline, possibly a global signal'.
And here is another on Alaska..
http://www.gi.alaska.edu/~truffer/McGinnisSurge/
Paul - "The RC post on the Douglass et al paper is garbage."
How do you know it is garbage??
"Now run back to your RC masters like a good doggie."
So now you return to type and start the abuse. Obviously you have reached the limit of your very limited knowledge and all you have left if the ammunition of all bullies - abuse.
John Christie is a respected and qualified climate scientist. I do not have the knowledge to question what he signs his name to. Gavin Schmitt and the others that write RC are equally qualified and ARE able to critisise John Cristy's work. They have made themselves available to answer questions from laypeople such as myself.
Now with this new found scientific humbleness that you have found I guess we will hear no more critisism of the peer reviewed MBH99. Your unqualified hero McIntyre has no problems trashing peer reviewed work in the CA echo chamber with you cheering on. So is what is good for the goose good for the gander - eh Paul????
ooooooo
no hypocrisy here
Ender - you need to learn the difference between discussion and RC trying to trash peer reviewed papers because they don't support climate alarmism. The RC post on the Douglass et al paper is garbage.
If a comment is sent to IJC it will be responded to in full by the authors, who won't waste their time in the RC echo-chamber.
Now run back to your RC masters like a good doggie.
Paul - "I suggest genuine scientific comments are done through proper, meaningful channels - written up and submitted for peer review to the journal concerned, so that the authors can respond - rather than be subjected to pointless hand-wringing in the RC alarmist echo-chamber."
Really Paul? So is they why you wrote off too your mate - for meaningful scientific discussion.
This is almost exactly what gavin said so why run off to get a comment when JC when you think the place for conversation is peer reviewed journals????
Sid - get updated - that was a state of the art new reports direct from the AGW meeting. Try to keep up.
Make a big list Sid - I'm sure Jen will put it in the Wiki and link to it for you. It won't then clog the blog. Don't just run a big bluff with TWO - TWO !! - hahahaha
Your link "Staff believe the risk of ice collapse at the face of the Fox and Franz Josef Glaciers is high and visitors are ignoring warning signs and putting themselves at risk. " YES INDEED - probably coz it's melting and falling apart.
Even your own article shoots you in the foot - did you actually even read it
"Tidewater glaciers-glaciers with tongues that dip into salt water-advance and retreat regardless of the warmth, or coolness of the air. Hubbard Glacier, for example, is threatening to bulldoze its way into Gilbert Point, north of Yakutat, as it keeps advancing. At the same time Hubbard and a few other tidewater glaciers are advancing, the vast majority of glaciers that begin and end on land are retreating."
"Tidewater glaciers are indifferent to climate warming because of the effects of the ocean, and the shape of the surrounding landscape. These oceanfront glaciers often grow and shrink in a repeating cycle: Snows high in the mountains bulk up a tidewater glacier and force it to advance, the tip of its tongue shoving forward underwater mounds of gravel. The glacier eventually backs off the shoal into deeper water, which makes it calve more and retreat. When a glacier retreats to the head of a fiord and stops calving, another advance can begin. "
Thanks Sid - provide even more evidence to beat you guys with. Post some more.
Sorry, the second ref. is.-
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/7/story.cfm?c_id=7&objectid=10363304
Well, Ender, it would jam up Jennifers blog to give too many refrences to glacier advance, but here are two to start with.
http://www.sitnews.us/0607news/062707/062707_ak_science.html
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/7/story.cfm?_id=7&objedid=10363304
The Swiss based World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS) is firmly committed to the AGW Doctrine, which is probably why it has only picked (cherry) 30 mountain glaciers to monitor. One must ask why only 30 when in NZ alone, the gov't agency, NIWA monitors 50?
98%/95% of 30 is hardly an accurate representation of 11,000 !
Who isn't an IPCC reviewer.
Petty - given the history of things. Maybe they will.