Top scientist dismayed at spending imbalance on climate, poverty

Top scientist dismayed at spending imbalance on climate, poverty

www.google.com

The head of the world's top climate scientists says he is stunned at the trillion-dollar cheques that have been signed to ease the banking crisis when funding for poverty and global warming is scrutinised or denied.

In an interview on the sidelines of the UN climate talks here, Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said he was both astonished and dismayed at the imbalance.

"It seems very strange, what has happened..."

(visit the link for the full news article)

O.K, I don't go along with all this man made global warming hype although I do follow climate change as a natural phenomenon of which man is a very minor part; but on this man's argument I agree - why the hell are government's bailing out the creators of this man made economic crises when they continue to take our money and make our lives awkward by insisting on recycling (which I think is a good idea) when they're not willing to invest an equivalent amount of our money in alleviating poverty and slowing "global warming"?

I'm glad this man has spoken out. Will he get more media attention? Probably not. Will his statement make people think? Probably not unless they're told they can do. But I still think it's good someone in his position has spoken out openly and frankly.

www.google.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

[edit on 2/12/08 by Rapacity]

Some more from the article (I know many people don't like to leave ATS )

"It defies any kind of logic, if you look at the type of money that the world has spent on these bailouts, 2.7 trillion dollars (2.13 trillion euros) is the estimate, and it's been done so quickly and without questioning."

Pachauri recalled that when the Millennium Development Goals for attacking poverty and sickness were being drawn up, a panel chaired by Ernesto Zedillo, the former president of Mexico, suggested "a fairly modest estimate" of 50 billion dollars a year in help for poor countries.

"But everyone scoffed at it. Nobody did a damn thing," Pachauri said in the interview on Monday.

"(Yet) here, you've got agencies, you've got organisations that are not only responsible for their own failure but the failure of the entire economic system, and they get cheques worth 2.7 trillion dollars. I find this amazing... What can you say, what can you do?"

Pachauri suggested that this two-sided story illustrated a "distortion" in the economic system.

The rest is here

I know he's pushing his own agenda but he's one of the few who's saying what's on some people's minds: why bailout the banks when you could bail out the people?

[edit on 2/12/08 by Rapacity]

Its good to have a scientific voice saying this but wether heard and taken note of,thats the question.

What is a politicians view of matters of poverty etc?
Not much compared to becoming chairman of a company or being on the board.Thats the positions politicians normally take when they leave office.
So they back the big bailouts for the big companies for their own security.
Apologese for just putting in a little of the truth.

Great post OP.Have Starred and Flagged now.


[edit on 2/12/08 by gallifreyan medic]

I guess this scientist and you didn't get the memo. They don't call it Global Warming anymore since data shows it isn't happening. Now it's called Climate Change.

reply to post by gallifreyan medic


Also I don't see a star on this post.

Better hit him up.

reply to post by jjkenobi


Have done it now.
Been getting bossed by my 5 y/o daughter.Joys of being a single dad.Just the one female doing the nagging.
Off topic I know just confirming my S+F.

Originally posted by jjkenobi
I guess this scientist and you didn't get the memo. They don't call it Global Warming anymore since data shows it isn't happening. Now it's called Climate Change.

Why would they be calling it anything if it's not happening?

Climate change is official code for global warming, used so as not to rile up those who suck up the oil-company propaganda that global warming is a con job.

Apart from the occasion monsoons, moving further south each year, Australia is heating up and drying out.

However much the oil companies and their peons and suckers disbelieve global warming, many of us are already having our lives changed by it.

reply to post by Kailassa


Climate change is natural. It has always happened. It happens on all the solar system's planets. Man made global warming is a fiction based on statistical data. Data that is incomplete, misinterpreted, partly ignored and, quite often, only well chosen samples are used to push agendas. The matter was recently debated in the U.K's House of Lords and here are some extracts of an article about that debate:

The government's climate minister in the House of Lords dropped a clanger on Monday evening, when he claimed that the polar ice caps were melting at a record rate.

"It is indisputable that polar ice caps are melting - we can see that with our own eyes," Lord Hunt, Minister of State of the Department of Energy, told the house. Hunt described himself as a climate "agnostic" - but he was swiftly corrected by Lord Lawson of Blaby, the former Chancellor.

"My Lords, that is not true of the past year; The noble Lord’s predecessors were seriously misinformed by his officials, and I suspect that he will be too," Lawson replied. Twisting the knife he continued: "That is a real problem for him, and I feel for him.

"The fact is that in the Antarctic, where most of the ice is, the ice is thickening and has been for some time. In the Arctic this year there has been a greater extension of ice than ever before."

....

The debate gave the Government and its supporters the chance to say something they hadn't in the Commons. That hand on heart, that they don't know what they're talking about. Quite literally. Take this exchange between The Earl of Onslow and Lord Hunt. Onslow asked:

"The world’s climate has got colder over the past 10 years, just, while world emissions have risen by quite a lot. Can the Minister explain that?"

"My Lords, I am not a scientist," the Minister replied, "and it is not my role to debate the intricacies of scientific arguments".

...

So to Lawson.

After Mrs Thatcher's former Chancellor had written a book on policy responses to climate change, he discovered that no British publisher would take it. A US publisher brought it to market, and it's since become a hit, translated into two languages.

Lawson's main point was that this was a futile gesture. It didn't require the UK to cut its own emissions by one gram. But the consequences of this gesture were costly. He began by explaining why he hadn't spoken before in the House:

"I felt that it was unbecoming for an unbeliever to take part in a religious service, which is what all this is really about.

"The Bill will go down in history, and future generations will see it as the most absurd Bill that this House and Parliament as a whole as ever had to examine, and it has now become more absurd with the increase from 60 per cent to 80 per cent."
A futile unilateral gesture?

Lawson invited the Lordships to "pretend the planet is warming" - and ignore the figures from the Met Office and Hadley Centre. (Lawson said he didn't see the evidence supported the claim that the planet was cooling, but it certainly hadn't done a lot of warming since the 1998 El Nino). "The majority of climate scientists do not think that if there were a warming, it would be a disaster." So what then?

The point of the bill was symbolic - and only "makes sense" if other countries were to follow suit and make similarly symbolic gestures, he argued.

(The UK only contributes 2 per cent of man-made CO2 emissions worldwide, while worldwide human emissions are only 2 per cent of the planet's CO2 output. And the planet's CO2 is about one tenth of greenhouse gas. So the rhetoric is about "setting an example".)

The problem, said Lawson, was that Europe had planned to isolate the US, a plan that had "backfired horribly". This left the EU making symbolic pledges of its own - no one expects China, the world's biggest CO2 emitter, or India to follow. Except that the Europeans are now backing off. The catchy 20 per cent by 2020 reduction has been abandoned. Germans need their coal, the new members like Poland need theirs - and are playing industrialisation catch-up - and the whole thing is falling apart.

"Nothing will happen. It can only be agreed unanimously and will be looked at again in December this year, after the Poznan meeting, which I hope the Minister will grace with his presence. It will be an educational event for him."

Lawson highlighted a recent conference called "Cashing in on Carbon" in which an investment group featuring Lord Stern was prominently featured.

"So the people who gave you the glories and the joys of mortgage-backed securities are now offering the great business opportunity of carbon-backed securities."

Meanwhile the emissions trading system was a "scam": China made a lot of money selling these worthless indulgences. So much money, it had to tax them. Climate change had also proved to be a vote-loser for the Canadian Liberal opposition - its "green shift" cost it the election - and in New Zealand, said Lawson. He also warned the Tory party not to find itself "high and dry" with symbolic climate gestures.

Lords debate Climate Bill, carbon racket

My opinion: Global Warming has been changed to Climate Change because it will allow our money to be swindled from us under the guise of the Global Cooling now upon us. Called Climate Change it will deter the public from talking about that old Global Warming con in light of Global Cooling.

Also, this planet once had an atmosphere suited to anaerobic life forms. Our current atmosphere is one of many phases - it will not always be suited to aerobics. Should we really try to stop our planet's biosphere's evolution?

How Bacteria Nearly Destroyed All Life Have a read, it's damn interesting.

Just in case anyone's interested in reading a little more about this Global Warming scam, here's a nice .pdf document - An Interview with Dr Nils-Axel Morner.

Nils-Axel Mörner is the former head of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics department at Stockholm University, having retired in 2005. He was president of the INQUA Commission on Neotectonics (1981-1989),[1] and president of the INQUA (International Union for Quaternary Research) Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution (1999-2003).[2] He headed the INTAS (International Association for the promotion of cooperation with scientists from the New Independent States of the former Soviet Union) Project on Geomagnetism and Climate (1997-2003). He is a critic of the IPCC and the notion that the global sea level is rising.

Nils-Axel Mörner has been critical of the IPCC Third Assessment Report sea level chapter. [3]

"The late 20th century sea level rise rate lacks any sign of acceleration. Satellite altimetry indicates virtually no changes in the last decade. Therefore, observationally based predictions of future sea level in the year 2100 will give a value of +10±10 cm (or +5±15 cm), by this discarding model outputs by IPCC as well as global loading models. This implies that there is no fear of any massive future flooding as claimed in most global warming scenarios."[6]

This is odd, because satellite altimetry does indicate change, at about 3 mm/yr[citation needed], which is faster than that observed by the tide-gauge network[citation needed].

Mörner, at the time president of the INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, wrote about the IPCC TAR in 2000.

* "0.09 to 0.88 metres between 1990 and 2100” – from SRES scenarios. These values are completely misleading and false. Our INQUA Commission on “Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution” (which hosts the leading world experts on just the topic) has a totally different view (expressed in my previous reviews). The expert/observational-based figure is 10 cm ±10 cm."
* "It has been popular to threaten “small islands and low-lying coasts” with scenarios of disastrous future flooding. The Maldives has been the most utilised target. We have undertaken a careful analysis of actual sea level changes in the Maldives. No rise has been recorded either in the present or the past centuries. Instead we have documented a significant sea level fall in the last 20-30 years. Take this as Reality contra Models."
* "All handling by IPCC of the Sea Level questions have been done in a way that cannot be accepted and that certainly not concur with modern knowledge of the mode and mechanism of sea level changes."
* On TAR Chapter 11:
o "Chapter 11 on "Sea Level Changes" was written by 33 persons; none of which represents actual sea level research. I have now finished a 7 pages review report. It is a most shocking reading; lots of modeler wishes but very little hard facts based on real observational data by true sea level specialists. It seems that the authors involved in this chapter were chosen not because of their deep knowledge in the subject, but rather because they should say what the climate model had predicted. This chapter has a low and unacceptable standard. It should be completely rewritten by a totally new group of authors chosen among the group of true sea level specialists."

Edited to add this link: The Global Warming Fraud

The above quotes came from Wikipedia

[edit on 4/12/08 by Rapacity]