Germany’s SPIEGEL ONLINE adds fuel to the confusion about climate change with a pre-Copenhagen headline: Climatologists Baffled by Global Warming Time-Out.
This pro-environmental action country writes that the Earth’s average temperatures ahve stopped climbing since 2000 and could come to a standstill this year. 
The planet’s temperature curve rose sharply for almost 30 years, as global temperatures increased by an average of 0.7 degrees Celsius (1.25 degrees Fahrenheit) from the 1970s to the late 1990s. “At present, however, the warming is taking a break,” confirms meteorologist Mojib Latif of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in the northern German city of Kiel. Latif, one of Germany’s best-known climatologists, says that the temperature curve has reached a plateau. “There can be no argument about that,” he says. “We have to face that fact.”
Even though the temperature standstill probably has no effect on the long-term warming trend, it does raise doubts about the predictive value of climate models, and it is also a political issue. For months, climate change skeptics have been gloating over the findings on their Internet forums. This has prompted many a climatologist to treat the temperature data in public with a sense of shame, thereby damaging their own credibility. via SPIEGEL ONLINE
Publishing conflicting information about climate change is responsible journalism on a topic that’s at the top of a global agenda, if not America’s. Let me not suggest that Germany is wavering about the topic of climate change, where Chancellor Angela Merkel has committed to attend Copenhagen.
Last week SPIEGEL ONLINE wrote a blistering criticism of President Obama’s lack of leadership on environmental issues:
Barack Obama cast himself as a “citizen of the world” when he delivered his well-received campaign speech in Berlin in the summer of 2008. But the US president has now betrayed this claim. In his Berlin speech, he was dishonest with Europe. Since then, Obama has neglected the single most important issue for an American president who likes to imagine himself as a world citizen, namely, his country’s addiction to fossil fuels and the risks of unchecked climate change. Health-care reform and other domestic issues were more important to him than global environmental threats. He was either unwilling or unable to convince skeptics in his own ranks and potential defectors from the ranks of the Republicans to support him, for example, by promising alternative investments as a compensation for states with large coal reserves.
Obama’s announcement at the APEC summit that it was no longer possible to secure a binding treaty in Copenhagen is the result of his own negligence. China, India and other emerging economies have always spoken openly about the fact that the US, as the world’s largest emitter of CO2, has to be proactive in commiting itself to targets agreed on by way of international negotiation. But that is not America’s style. The US is quite happy to see itself as the leader of the Western world. But when it comes to climate change, America has once again failed miserably — for the umpteenth time.
Reuters reports that German Chancellor Angela Merkel won’t be alone in Copenhagen. As of Nov. 22, 65 leaders are enrolled for climate talks including the leaders of Britain, Germany, France, Spain, Australia, Japan, Indonesia and Brazil.
ABC News reports this afternoon that President Obama will make a decision “in the coming days” on whether or not he will attend in Copenhagen. The President isn’t in a position to make any promises that he can’t deliver in Congress.
The senior official said U.S. negotiators will propose an emissions reduction target that takes into account bills in the Senate and the House of Representatives — even though a final law is not complete. via Reuters
At this moment, the actual accomplishments from Copenhagen are in flux.
More reading: The Sisyphus from Nairobi: How the UN’s Climate Advocate Wants to Save the World SPEIGEL ONLINE
Mon, November 23, 2009
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