Former US Vice President Al Gore called for steep greenhouse-gas emissions cuts at a UN climate-change conference in Poznań, Poland, on Friday. (REUTERS/Kacper Pempel)
At Poland climate talks, Al Gore calls for tough CO2 limits
By Eoin O'Carroll | 12.12.08
Speaking at the international climate talks in Poznań, Poland, on Friday, Al Gore called for a stricter upper limit on acceptable atmospheric greenhouse-gas concentrations.
The former vice president and Nobel laureate told a gathering of environment ministers from 145 countries that they need to set a new global goal of stabilizing carbon dioxide levels to no more than 350 parts per million. Reuters reports:
“The struggle is palpable here in Poznań,” [Mr. Gore] said.
“It can be done, it must be done,” said the 2000 presidential candidate, climate crusader and 2007 Nobel Peace Prize winner.
“We now face a crisis that makes it abundantly clear that increased CO2 emissions anywhere are a threat to the integrity of this planet’s climate balance everywhere.”
“As a result the old divide between the North and South, between developed and developing countries is a divide that must become obsolete.”
Previous targets called for 450 parts per million, but a report [PDF] published this year by leading scientists in The Open Atmospheric Science Journal say that this figure must be no more than 350 “[i]f humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted.”
Current atmospheric concentrations are at 387 parts per million and rising.
“If the present overshoot of this target CO2 is not brief,” the report’s abstract concludes, “there is a possibility of seeding irreversible catastrophic effects.”
An EU pact
A bright spot in the otherwise faltering Poznań talks appeared as news that the European Union had patched up a rift between its wealthier western countries and its poorer eastern ones to agree on emissions targets.
In what the Guardian (Britain) headlines as a “historic leap towards low-carbon future,” European leaders agreed on a plan to cut greenhouse-gas emissions by 20 percent by 2020 compared with 1990 levels. The plan involves establishing emissions caps that vary across the union’s 27 countries, as well as an EU-wide carbon-trading scheme.
But the EU accord, while perhaps a triumph of diplomacy, does not square with what Gore and leading scientists say is necessary to avert catastrophic climate change. According to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fourth Assessment Report, if the world’s wealthy countries cut their greenhouse-gas emissions by 25 percent to 40 percent below 1990 levels, carbon dioxide concentrations would stabilize at 450 parts per million, not 350.
Writing in the Guardian, columnist George Monbiot condemned the agreement for falling short of what was needed and for giving Europe the opportunity to push its emissions targets onto the developing world:
<< Optimism fading for Poland climate talks | MainThe agreement they have just reached is a disaster. The 20 percent carbon cut they promise by 2020 falls miles short of what’s needed, and they’ll be able to buy most of it from abroad anyway. All this means, in a world which has to eliminate most of its carbon pollution, is that other countries, which have sold their easiest reductions to us, will then find it harder to make emissions cuts of their own. It’s carbon colonialism, in which Europe picks the low-hanging fruit in developing countries, leaving them with much tougher choices later on.
Comments
2. Arthur E. Lemay | 12.12.08
Lets hope the Poznan conference just accomplishes nothing. What kind of meeting of 10,000 people can hope to do anything in the way of decision making?
If you read http://epw.senate.gov and go to the minority report you will find dammning evidence that the world’s top climate scientists are saying that they have rethought the evidence for man caused global warming caused by CO2 emissions and they now say it does not exist, is totally wrong, and is more superstion than science.
But, it is also a big money spinner. The world’s governments have spent forty billion dollars in research and have not found any evidence that CO2 controls the climate. Of course if you receive government grants, or are an employee with a global warming title, or if you are Al Gore who stands to make hundreds of millions of dollars from his carbon trading investments, then you pull out all the stops and make bogeyman statements to panic the voters into voting to restrict CO2 emissions and pay horrendously costly taxes to increased energy costs.
This is a fraud, pure and simple.
4. Richard | 12.12.08
I am all for clean air, water, and soil but when are people like Al Gore going to admit that the evidence surrounding climate change simply doesn’t add up to the dire predictions they are making?
The attitude of some that anyone who questions global warming and / or climate change is the equivelent of thinking the earth is flat is dangerous. The evidence simply does not exist to support their doomsday scenarios.
The earth is cooling, not warming. There has been progressivly more ice at the poles over the last several years. The hottest decade of the 20th century wasn’t the 90’s (as many people say) but the 30’s.
Before we implement measures that are going to cripple our developed economies we need to make sure we know what we are doing… to me this seems a little to much like a blind rush to war.
Clean air, clean water but only with a clean conscience.
5. Denso414 | 12.12.08
Gore’s an idiot. I’ll betcha he can’t (and won’t) explain why the Arctic ice cap has been growing more in the last two years than ever in history. And all the morons believe everything they are told. Don’t believe it? Google “Artic ice growing”. And whatever you do, don’t google anything about the south pole. It’s been growing for years. Global shift maybe, warming no. Oooo, can’t wait to get responses to this……
6. Da Truth | 12.12.08
First off – I believe Global Warming is a very serious “Very Real- Man Induced” problem.
However, I do not believe the US is to blame. All we did was develop technologies that the rest of the world would have, if they could have. We were, and are, simply more technologically advanced[ [and the world is very jealous of this, and therefore all the criticism, not to mention that we are the worlds only Superpower, and the world is also jealous of that. Kyoto is as much an attempt to undermine our economy as an attempt to solve Global Warming. Much of the world is just using it as an Economic Tool against us – and many people in the US see this for exactly what it is, Hypocrisy,….. and much of the world knows we know. Probably the main reason even Clinton and Gore would not truly support Kyoto]].
Having a degree in Natural Resources I think the evidence (about global warming) is very Clear and Convincing ‘today’. However, I was not really sure until about 1995, even though I started seeing strong evidence around about 1985. At that point a noticeable warm up started (at least where I was living, & others said they noticed it also, in my area & elsewhere). In my opinion the evidence gradually got stronger till 95, when I thought the evidence was strong enough (and has only gotten stronger, today it is downright scary – the Arctic Ice Cap Meltdown - not funny). So, I really don’t think you can blame us till then (95), and many still don’t (or don’t want to) see it, & not just in the US. However, since 95 the US has made many moves (on many fronts) to combat the problem, and many other countries are dragging their feet, or have been given a free pass (the main Kyoto problem). One of the biggest examples here is China…..but there are others.
The world says it is our Industry that caused the problem (they don’t talk about Britain, and other Industrialized nations as much), but it is also probably mostly ‘Our Technology’ that is going to solve it……………….[I could also throw in many examples of other countries stealing our technology on the international market (weak international patent protections, and many anti-US countries want it that way), the vast majority of SE Asian Industries are built on Appropriated US Technology……. Etc., Etc…………………….…
Our Technology and Industry also saved the world in WWI, WWII, and the Cold War (not to mention other situations). If we had not spent all those years developing various Industries, and Aircraft, & Jeeps, & Tanks, & Ships the afore-mentioned wars would have been lost [[prior to Pearl Harbor the only modern Fighter Plane in SE Asia, other than a Japanese model, was the P-40 Curtis Hawk (Flying Tigers), not a great plane but it kept China from falling]]. We had to use Trains & Trucks to move parts from factory to factory. It took factories to build trains & trucks also, and they had to burn fuel (all this putting carbon in the atmosphere, etc). All those planes, & jeeps, & tanks, & ships etc also burned fuel etc., etc., etc. Not to mention when ours, or the other side’s material got destroyed & released carbon.
Our Industry saved the world on several occasions (also, we have established MANY Democracies around the world,….. how many has Russia or China established !!!). So when people talk about this situation as if we are the only beneficiaries, of such Industrialization, they should look at history again, more objectively. If not for us, much of the world could today be under Japanese Imperialism, or Nazism, or USSR domination………’Comprende’.
The rest of the world has ‘As Much a Responsibility’ to solve this problem as we do,
So, THEY SHOULD STOP BALKING, and cut the EXCUSES.
7. Simon | 12.13.08
OK, so we believe that the climate can change, because ice ages have been verified. But all the planets, Earth included, have been warming. This “inconvenient truth”, this fact of scientific observation seems to escape people like the politician Gore. How can the fact that all the planets were warming agree with the claim that human-produced carbon dioxide is the cause?
The Earth’s average temperature has stopped increasing and is starting to decline. At the same time it is claimed that carbon dioxide output is increasing. Can these two observations be reconciled? The same “inconvenient truth” occured for decades after the 1940s as carbon dioxide continued to increase while temperatures continued to fall.
The Russian Academy is predicting a mini ice age starting 2012 to 2015 lasting at least until 2055. What does Gore say about this scientific prediction? Does he realise that cold weather kills more people than warm weather, that crops fail in early frosts? I’m getting my ice skates sharpened so that I can skate on the frozen Thames in this so-called global warming. The more evidence I see, the more I smell a global warming con.
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1. Freddy | 12.12.08
This man lives in a mansion in Nashville, TN that uses more power
than 20 average homes. He has a private jet. He have made millions on
the global warming topic. He’s such a hypocrite. People are still
ignorant enough to listen to him.