Archivo etiqueta «Cambio climático»

By Dennis Byrne, a Chicago writer who blogs in The Barbershop chicagonow.com (CHICAGO TRIBUNE, 31/01/12):

It’s bad enough when politicians and true believers distort scientific findings for their own purposes. But when scientists do it, we’ve reached a dangerous point in intellectual discourse.

Such is the case with the widespread belief that evidence of global warming is incontrovertible. Thankfully, some scientists courageously have decided to publicly challenge this numbing, politically correct dogma.

Among them isNobel Prize-winningphysicist Ivar Giaever, who recently resigned from the American Physical Society because he couldn’t accept the group’s policy statement that the “evidence is … Seguir leyendo

By Bjørn Lomborg the author of The Skeptical Environmentalist and Cool It, head of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, and adjunct professor at Copenhagen Business School (Project Syndicate, 10/01/12):

Dressing up failure as victory has been integral to climate-change negotiations since they started 20 years ago. The latest round of talks in Durban, South Africa, in December was no exception.

Climate negotiations have been in virtual limbo ever since the catastrophic and humiliating Copenhagen summit in 2009, where vertiginous expectations collided with hard political reality. So as negotiators – and a handful of government ministers – arrived in Durban, expectations could … Seguir leyendo

Por Lindiwe Mazibuko, Parliamentary Leader of South Africa’s Democratic Alliance (Project Syndicate, 26/12/11):

The United Nations’ recent 17th Conference of the Parties (COP-17) in Durban, South Africa succeeded in renewing the Kyoto Protocol, which aims to reduce global greenhouse-gas emissions. But the meeting also highlighted the two major problems that plague international environmental negotiations. The first, unscientific skepticism, has an impact on the second, collective-action failure. Ultimately, only legislative bodies have the power to overcome this failure.

Skepticism regarding the need for environmental action arises from the relationship between environmental degradation and per capita income. According to the environmental … Seguir leyendo

Por Bjørn Lomborg, autor de The Skeptical Environmentalist y Cool It, director del Centro para el Consenso de Copenhague y profesor adjunto de la Copenhagen Business School (Project Syndicate, 13/12/11):

Muchas veces se dice que el tiempo extremo es una de las principales razones para tomar medidas firmes respecto del calentamiento global. Hoy en día, ningún huracán ni ola de calor pasa sin que un político o activista lo presente como evidencia de la necesidad de un acuerdo sobre el clima global, como el que se acaba de posponer hasta fines de la década en Durban, Sudáfrica.

Estas afirmaciones … Seguir leyendo

By Michael Jacobs, a special adviser to Gordon Brown from 2004-10, is a visiting professor on climate change at the London School of Economics (THE GUARDIAN, 11/12/11):

UN climate change conferences don’t of themselves cut greenhouse gas emissions. Negotiations about targets and texts cannot do that; only government policies that incentivise and require business investment in low carbon technologies and other emission-reducing activities can.

So the standard by which UN talks should be judged is whether or not they make such policy and investment more likely or less. And from that perspective the conference that has ended in Durban… Seguir leyendo

By Rachel Marsden, a columnist, political strategist and former Fox News host. She is the author of American Bombshell: A Tale of Domestic and International Invasion (CHICAGO TRIBUNE, 30/11/11):

Global leaders are meeting in Durban, South Africa, in an attempt to figure out how to continue their fight against “climate change” when the first Kyoto Protocol commitment period ends in 2012. Since I’m sitting here in the dark with the heat off, perhaps they’d grant me the temporary moral authority to offer a few suggestions for their agenda.

•Don’t waste any time fiddling with the planet’s thermostat. So the … Seguir leyendo

By Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland and President of the Mary Robinson Foundation for Climate Justice., and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town and a Nobel Peace Laureate (Project Syndicate, 30/11/11):

Before the Copenhagen climate-change summit two years ago, the two of us sat together in Cape Town to listen to five African farmers from different countries, four of whom were women, tell us how climate change was undermining their livelihoods. Each explained how floods and drought, and the lack of regular seasons to sow and reap, were outside their normal experience. Their fears are … Seguir leyendo

By Jagdish Bhagwati, professor of Economics and Law at Columbia University and Senior Fellow in International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations (Project Syndicate, 30/11/11):

The 17th conference of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, popularly known as COP-17, is taking place in Durban, South Africa, at a critical moment, as the historic 1997 Kyoto Protocol is set to expire next year. But, like the climate-change conferences in Copenhagen in 2009 and in Cancún in 2010, COP-17 can be expected to spend much and produce little.

Indeed, the extravagance of these conferences seems to grow, rather than … Seguir leyendo

By Craig Rucker, executive director of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (THE WASHINGTON TIMES, 29/11/11):

It’s that time of year again. Another holiday season and another United Nations climate conference is getting under way in some remote corner of the world.

The good news for those of us skeptical of global warming fear-mongering is that the chance of U.N. delegates now gathered in Durban, South Africa, agreeing to a revamped global warming treaty is slim. The bad news is that much remains at stake.

Global warming has become the ultimate means for anyone lacking a beneficial product … Seguir leyendo

By Heherson Alvarez, a former Philippine senator and environment secretary, and is currently Commissioner of the Philippine Climate Commission, and John Topping, Jr., President of the Washington, DC-based Climate Institute and a co-author of Sudden and Disruptive Climate Change (Project Syndicate, 23/11/11):

In 1997, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) adopted the Kyoto Protocol – an agreement among signatory states to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. In 2012, however, the Clean Development Mechanism, a system of carbon credits in which each credit represents a country’s right to emit one ton of carbon dioxide (CO2), is set to … Seguir leyendo

By John Ashton, the Foreign Office’s special representative for climate change (THE GUARDIAN, 14/11/11):

The lesson the world is learning the hard way from the financial crisis is that there is only one boat and we are all in it. To stay afloat, we need rules tough enough to stop systemic risks becoming systemic collapses. This lesson is as true for the environment as it is for the economy.

A key battle in the campaign to build an effective system of global rules will shortly take place in Durban, where the UN climate negotiations reopen at the end of … Seguir leyendo

By Gernot Wagner, an economist at the Environmental Defense Fund and the author of the forthcoming But Will the Planet Notice? (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 08/09/11):

You reduce, reuse and recycle. You turn down plastic and paper. You avoid out-of-season grapes. You do all the right things.

Good.

Just know that it won’t save the tuna, protect the rain forest or stop global warming. The changes necessary are so large and profound that they are beyond the reach of individual action.

You refuse the plastic bag at the register, believing this one gesture somehow makes a difference, and then … Seguir leyendo