The World Goes to Copenhagen Part lll - Truth or Consequences?

This is the last few days that the world leaders are meeting for the Climate Change conference in Copenhagen. The theme of the December 7 – 18 conference is “Hope,” The conference in Copenhagen is strictly about science and in this context the world’s leading researchers are free to tell it like it is – particularly about the need for massive and rapid reductions of carbon.
The science is in but the media seems to be harping on an incident of hacked emails in which the truth was out. There is a vast difference between putting forth a point of view, honestly held, and intentionally sowing the seeds of confusion.

This PR campaign could not be accomplished without the compliance of media. The world’s best-qualified scientists agree that climate is changing and that the burning of fossil fuels is mostly to blame. Although there is no debate in peer reviewed science journals, the well-funded and highly organized public relations campaign has left the impression – in mainstream media – of a lively and continuing scientific controversy.

The hacking of emails from a leading British climate research centre is an illegal act. The only issue that has to be dealt with as far as this occurrence is concerned is to find out who is behind it. The emails were hacked from computers at the University of East Anglia. As some of the emails seem to reflect attempts by mainstream scientists to block publication of articles by dissenting researchers, the affair has been dubbed “Climategate” by the media.

There is something else at play as well. This conference is outside of the confines of the Intergovenmental Panel on Climate Change. When so-called skeptics call this process overly politicized, they are right – only in the wrong way. Many researchers have long complained that diplomats and politicians who draft the final wording of their assessments force them to be painfully conservative in their estimates and communications about our warming world.
A key working group under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change came up with a six-page text last Friday. The draft may form the core of a new global agreement to combat climate change beyond 2012, when the present framework, the Kyoto Protocol, expires. However, most figures in the text are shown in brackets – meaning that there is not yet agreement on these specifics. Most importantly, the draft states that emissions should be halved worldwide by 2050 compared to 1990 levels.

The stakes are high in this planetary game of pass the buck. Will we have the truth or have to deal with the consequences? As the clock runs down on the conference, our chances to turn this global emergency around could be diminishing by the day due to an over-inflated PR campaign called “climategate”.

Lisa Emery, B.A. is currently living in Amherst. Lisa invites comments to her column. You can contact Lisa at: emeryvine@gmail.com or view her blog at http://emeryvinegrapevine.blogspot.com