What was the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference really about?
March 13th, 2009Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr.
A Guest Post by
Professor Mike Hulme
School of Environmental Sciences
University of East Anglia
This article is co-published with SEEDMAGAZINE.COM
The largest academic conference that has yet been devoted to the subject of climate change finished yesterday in Copenhagen. Between 2,000 and 2,500 researchers from around the world attended three days of meetings during which 600 oral presentations (together with several hundred posters on display) were delivered on topics ranging from the ethics of energy sufficiency to the role of icons in communicating climate change to the dynamics of continental ice sheets.
I attended the Conference, chaired a session, listened to several presentations, read a number of posters and talked with dozens of colleagues from around the world. The breadth of research on climate change being presented was impressive, as was the vigour and thoughtfulness of the informal discussions being conducted during coffee breaks, evening receptions and side-meetings.
What intrigued me most, however, was the final conference statement issued yesterday, a statement drafted by the conference’s Scientific Writing Team. It contained six key messages and was handed to the Danish Prime Minister Mr Anders Fogh Rasmusson. The messages focused, respectively, on Climatic Trends, Social Disruption, Long-term Strategy, Equity Dimensions, Inaction is Inexcusable, and Meeting the Challenge. A fuller version of this statement will be prepared and circulated to key negotiators and politicians ahead of the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change to be held in December this year – also in Copenhagen.
The conference, and the final conference statement, has been widely reported as one at which the world’s scientists delivered a final warning to climate change negotiators about the necessity for a powerful political deal on climate change to be reached at COP15. (Some commentators have branded it The Emergency Science Conference’). The key messages include statements that ‘the worst-case IPCC scenario trajectories (or even worse) are being realised’, that ‘there is no excuse for inaction’, that ‘the influence of vested interests that increase emissions’ must be reduced, and that ‘regardless of how dangerous climate change is defined’ rapid, sustained and effective mitigation is required to avoid reaching it.
There is a fair amount of ‘motherhood and apple pie’ involved in the 600 word statement – who could disagree, for example, that climate risks are felt unevenly across the world or that we need sustainable jobs. But there are two aspects of this statement which are noteworthy and on which I would like to reflect: ‘Whose views does the statement represent?’ and ‘What are the ‘actions’ being called for?’
The Copenhagen Climate Change Conference was no IPCC. This was not a process initiated and conducted by the world’s governments, there was no systematic synthesis, assessment and review of research findings as in the IPCC, and there was certainly no collective process for the 2,500 researchers gathered in Copenhagen to consider drafts of the six key messages or to offer their own suggestions for what politicians may need to hear. The conference was in fact convened by no established academic or professional body. Unlike the American Geophysical Union, the World Meteorological Organisation or the UK’s Royal Society – who also hold large conferences and who from time-to-time issue carefully worded statements representing the views of professional bodies – this conference was organized by the International Alliance of Research Universities (IARU), a little-heard-of coalition launched in January 2006 consisting of ten of the world’s self-proclaimed elite universities, including of course the University of Copenhagen.
IARU is not accountable to anyone and has no professional membership. It is not accountable to governments, to professional scientific associations, nor to international scientific bodies operating under the umbrella of the UN. The conference statement therefore simply carries the weight of the Secretariat of this ad hoc conference, directed and steered by ten self-elected universities. The six key messages are not the collective voice of 2,500 researchers, nor are they the voice of established bodies such as the World Meteorological Organisation. Neither are they the messages arising from a collective endeavour of experts, for example through a considered process of screening, synthesizing and reviewing of the knowledge presented in Copenhagen this week. They are instead a set of messages drafted largely before the conference started by the organizing committee, sifting through research that they see emerging around the world and interpreting it for a political audience.
Which leads me to the second curiousity about this conference statement. What exactly is the ‘action’ the conference statement is calling for? Are these messages expressing the findings of science or are they expressing political opinions? I have no problem with scientists offering clear political messages as long as they are clearly recognized as such. And the conference chair herself, Professor Katherine Richardson, has described the messages as politically-motivated. All well and good.
But then we need to be clear about what authority these political messages carry. They carry the authority of the people who drafted them – and no more. Not the authority of the 2,500 expert researchers gathered at the conference. And certainly not the authority of collective global science. Caught between summarizing scientific knowledge and offering political interpretations of such knowledge, the six key messages seem rather ambivalent in what they are saying. It is as if they are not sure how to combine the quite precise statements of science with a set of more contested political interpretations.
Which brings us back to the calls for action and the ‘inexcusability of inaction’. What action on climate change exactly is being called for? During the conference there were debates amongst the experts about whether a carbon tax or carbon trading is the way to go. There were debates amongst the experts about whether or not we should abandon the ‘two degrees’ target as unachievable. There were debates about whether or not a portfolio of geo-engineering strategies now really needs to start being researched and promoted. And there were debates about the epistemological limits to model-based predictions of the future. There were debates about the role of behavioural change versus technological change, about the role of religions in mitigation and adaptation, and about the forms of governance most likely to deliver carbon reductions.
These are all valid debates to have. And they were debates that did occur during the conference. Experts from the natural sciences and social sciences, from engineering and policy sciences, from economics and the humanities, all presented findings from their work and these were discussed and argued over. These debates mixed science, values, ethics and politics. This is the reality of how climate change now engages with the worlds of theoretical, empirical and philosophical investigation.
It therefore seems problematic to me when such lively, well-informed and yet largely unresolved debates among a substantial cohort of the world’s climate change researchers gets reduced to six key messages, messages that on the one hand carry the aura of urgency, precision and scientific authority – ‘there is no excuse for inaction’ – and yet at the same time remain so imprecise as to resolve nothing in political terms.
In fact, we are no further forward after the Copenhagen Conference this week than before it. All options for attending to climate change – all political options – are, rightly, still on the table. Is it to be a carbon tax or carbon trading? Do we stick with ‘two degrees’ or abandon it? Do we promote geo-engineering or do we not? Do we coerce lifestyle change or not? Do we invest in direct poverty alleviation or in the New Green Deal?
A gathering of scientists and researchers has resolved nothing of the politics of climate change. But then why should it? All that can be told – and certainly should be told – is that climate change brings new and changed risks, that these risks can have a range of significant implications under different conditions, that there is an array of political considerations to be taken into account when judging what needs to be done, and there are a portfolio of powerful, but somewhat untested, policy measures that could be tried.
The rest is all politics. And we should let politics decide without being ambushed by a chimera of political prescriptiveness dressed up as (false) scientific unanimity.
March 13th, 2009 at 9:09 am
‘there is no excuse for inaction’
I’m reminded of a great Simpsons moment. (People outside of the U.S., I feel so sorry for you missing great Simpsons’ moments!) (But there are very few great Simpsons moments anymore, so you’re no longer missing much.)
The scene is Kent Brockman, ace reporter, interviewing the Professor, expert in all things worth knowing:
Kent Brockman: “Hordes of panicky people seem to be evacuating the town for some unknown reason. Professor, without knowing precisely what the danger is, would you say it’s time for our viewers to crack each other’s heads open and feast on the goo inside? ”
Professor: “Yes I would, Kent.”
March 13th, 2009 at 9:30 am
One call for action might be to stop wasting so much carbon on such grandiose meetings. It looks to me like its purpose was really only to give papers and have fun!
March 13th, 2009 at 10:09 am
Thank you for this. It is a great relief to see that someone professionally associated with the climate issue, at UEA no less, shares our puzzlement.
We seem to continually be confronted with large numbers of academics proclaiming that to delay action is inexcusable, but who cannot say exactly what action they have in mind. Nuts!
March 13th, 2009 at 10:43 am
[...] 1:45 p.m.: A roundup of economists’ and scientists’ views at the Copenhagen climate meeting and a reaction from Mike Hulme, a participating [...]
March 13th, 2009 at 10:44 am
[...] 1:45 p.m.: A roundup of economists’ and scientists’ views at the Copenhagen climate meeting and a reaction from Mike Hulme, a participating [...]
March 13th, 2009 at 11:04 am
So following this, is it fair to blame deniers for delaying action when the heart of the matter is that there is no agreement on what the action should be?
Isn’t that the fact that we don’t know what action should be taken, the real reason why climate action are delayed?
Well not taking into account that most action that have been taken, didn’t fill their promises.
March 13th, 2009 at 11:09 am
Leave policy to the politicians seems like a good idea. Except that the public no longer trusts politicians. Science is still trusted so skilled politicians are inclined to use science to put a veneer of respectability on social policies.
Many scientists think that the ability to affect policy is a promotion of their profession, and if all goes well they will be right. However if the public starts thinking that science based policies are making their life worse the blame will go to science in general.
Leaving policy to the politicians is still the best idea. When the society suffers it should the fault of politics. It may be too late for baseball but we can still keep science pure.
March 13th, 2009 at 11:27 am
Krauthammer says it better than me.
“Science has everything to say about what is possible. Science has nothing to say about what is permissible. Obama’s pretense that he will “restore science to its rightful place” and make science, not ideology, dispositive in moral debates is yet more rhetorical sleight of hand — this time to abdicate decision-making and color his own ideological preferences as authentically “scientific.” “
He’s talking about stem cells not AGW but the connection between science and politics is the same.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/12/AR2009031202764.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns
March 13th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
And speaking of connections, Thomson’s clone might well have said, “if climate prediction consensus does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough.”
March 13th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
[...] conferenza ha suscitato diverse critiche [1, 2], e non solo da parte dei cosiddetti “scettici”; anche molti scienziati hanno [...]
March 13th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
[...] makes one of them good, and two bad? Well, if you cannot spot the difference between presenting the scientific debate as it is, and selecting only the stuff that a journalist deems worth noticing, I am not sure I would be [...]
March 14th, 2009 at 6:30 am
[...] What was the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference really about? [...]
March 14th, 2009 at 8:09 am
Wouldn’t it be nice if scientists would at least admit that most of the time they are full of it? http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.0020124&ct=1
Worthwhile article in the Wash Post discussing the problems pointed out by the article above — that most published research is wrong. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/13/AR2009031302910.html
Given how bad the quality control is and how loathe climate researchers are to replicate (or even audit) the work of others in the field, is it asking too much that they acknowledge how little they really know? Perhaps, but they’ll wish they had after the public finally figures it out.
March 14th, 2009 at 9:04 am
Prof. Hulme, I think your observations are very interesting.
I’m sorry my comment here is quite long but there is a little background from another field that I’d like to introduce.
“It therefore seems problematic to me when such lively, well-informed and yet largely unresolved debates among a substantial cohort of the world’s climate change researchers gets reduced to six key messages, messages that on the one hand carry the aura of urgency, precision and scientific authority – ‘there is no excuse for inaction’ – and yet at the same time remain so imprecise as to resolve nothing in political terms.”
Whilst all those researchers didn’t sit down together to decide on the six messages, nevertheless there seems to be some sort of implicit agreement. We don’t hear much in the way of protest from any of those researchers that their views have been misrepresented.
It sounds more like that implicit agreement is because as a cultural group, those scientists on average share a similar worldview. From what I gather from Developmental Psychology, there are, depending on which model one refers to, about seven major worldviews. These worldviews are found to arise across different cultures and peoples. And these worldviews each have corresponding core values.
Some of the key themes in the environmental movement, such as “sustainability” (as opposed to endless consumerist growth), “balance”, “community”, and “sensitivity”, are typical of one of the worldviews as described in social developmental models. Spiral Dynamics is one such model, which is a fairly easy to pick up for a broad picture.
These worldviews are not pre-exiting things. As humanity developed through the centuries, new worldviews have arisen as new problems have challenged the old worldviews’ ability to cope. That’s a broad cultural perspective. On an individual level, each person is born sorta without a worldview, and as they grow up through the various developmental stages, they pass through a number of worldviews in their life as they go from child to adult and then through various stages in life. If their personal growth has been unhindered, by mature adulthood they typically reach the same worldview-stage as the average at which the culture is at already. Although not everyone does, or perhaps they only reach the same stage as their family and friends and community are at. (On average a society may be roughly centered around one worldview, but subcultures–almost like waves–can be ahead or behind by even several stages).
It is estimated than in the West about 20% of people are at the green worldview stage.
The point I’m trying to make with all this, is that many individuals grow up and reach a certain worldview-stage, and then find themselves implicitly in agreement with anyone else who also happens to have grown up and developed to that same broad stage. And all of this happens kinda automatically—it is not like someone deliberately tried to identify worldviews and teach worldviews to anyone–people just grew up and became whom they became. It’s just the developmental psychologists who objectified it and identified stages and drew maps of it all.
So in effect, there can be a consensus worldview amongst a subculture of say, scientists, without any of them having sat down to actually hammer out and question the details of why they have that worldview. In the worldview, it all just seems self-evident that “we have to do something, we have to make everyone sensitive to balance”, and so on.
There is little if anything about global warming which directly leads to a particular course of action. Those with a sensitive green worldview would say that we need to change culture to make people more caring and sharing. But anyone from a different worldview would come at the problem rather differently. Anyone of a worldview typical of tribal warlordism would perhaps say, we need to take immediate action, we need to kill that other tribe that might be using water or possessing oil fields. And much of the world is actually closer to tribal warlordism than to caring and sharing. Unfortunately this is something rather unknown to environmentalists, judging by their approach to the problem.
So assuming Developmental Psychology is broadly correct, I can see how so many scientists could get together as technical experts, discuss technical issues, but the moment they are asked to provide a summary of their position, they basically just express their sensitive caring and sharing “balance” worldview. Because that’s who they are as people.
A key observation from those Developmental Psychologists is that these worldviews really are core enduring mental structures, and a person may spend their whole adult life at one worldview-stage. Some people move through several stages, and some don’t, and nobody seems to know why. But for practical purposes, a person’s worldview cannot be changed.
March 14th, 2009 at 11:21 am
“There is little if anything about global warming which directly leads to a particular course of action.”
But this is what is so puzzling. It absolutely does lead to a particular course of action.
There is an obvious course of action, which people would be recommending strongly, did they really believe in what theya re saying. If it really is as urgent as they say they think it is, they should be proposing that we tally up the top sources of CO2 emissions, make a prioritized list of which ones to cut, and going to it without giving anyone the option. It would be authoritarian, it would lead to large scale social change, perhaps even unrest. But if things are as bad as they say, this is the only rational way to go about it. Which is better, to have a bit of unrest or lose a bit of choice, or to have the population of the planet fall below 1 billion as a result of flooding, famine, war disease and mass unrest?
If things are as bad as stated, it is perfectly obvious that this is what must be done. If it is not, absolute disaster is inevitable. Or so it is said.
Yet we have intelligent people quoting WorldWatch’s estimates, that we have to get below the 1850 emission levels by 2050, with approval, which is indeed a remedy appropriate to the scale of the alleged imminent disaster, though maybe 2050 is rather far out, if as alleged the tipping point is in the next ten years, and then behaving as if all we need to do is buy ourselves a hybrid and eat a bit more pasta and a bit less steak, and maybe bolt a windmill on our houses to generate a few hundred watts of power.
This is what makes no sense at all to those of us trying to think practically about this. And we cannot for the life of us understand why the people who make such dramatic statements about the problem do not draw the obvious conclusions from what they are saying.
March 14th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
“But this is what is so puzzling. It absolutely does lead to a particular course of action.
There is an obvious course of action, which people would be recommending strongly, did they really believe in what theya re saying. If it really is as urgent as they say they think it is, they should be proposing that we tally up the top sources of CO2 emissions, make a prioritized list of which ones to cut, and going to it without giving anyone the option.”
I agree, that is one main reason why the AGW activists’ ideas didn’t make sense to me. If the problem is that bad, why bother telling people to unplug their mobile phone chargers?
And again I think this is where having a map of various worldviews helps. I get the impression that what many green activists desire is that people change their worldviews to a green caring worldview. They want you to care, to feel, to be someone who values community over competition, who values group consensus over individualistic achievement, who value feeling over thinking. It is about trying to get more people to become “green” people.
I talk in broad generalities here, but we’re talking about a broad cultural movement. I remember one evening in the pub we got chatting to this woman whom it turns out worked for an environmental agency, buying carbon credits. I asked her, “why is there so much focus on CO2 when other things might be worse pollution, like mercury in the sea?”
Her reply was, “yes, CO2 might not really be a problem, but CO2 covers everything about production. By reducing CO2, you reduce consumption. By reducing consumption, you reduce greed.”
This woman had moved countries twice looking for some organisation that took this stuff seriously enough, so I felt that she was genuinely committed to what she believed in. And what she believed is that the world is too greedy. That is a worldview.
March 14th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Michel- the steak thing is an interesting question. I am not sure that the research has been done on the varying production systems for beef and wheat that definitively shows the environmental advantages of wheat. If the beef is grown from cattle on your place, grassfed, and you butcher it on site versus the equipment needed to seed and harvest wheat plus transport, plus electricity needed to make into pasta, etc. Someone can probably point me to this analysis..
Stefan- the question of which pollution is important to address reminds me of a talk by Billy Frank of the Nisqually Tribe as the keynote speaker of
Planning for Seven Generations
http://www.cbp.ucar.edu/tribalagenda.html
You can click on his keynote speech there to get a link to his talk.
As I recall, he is concerned over continuing to poison the waters, and the relative diminishment of the departments at University of Washington with people who know about fish and forests. To some extent I think he was questioning why we devote so much attention to carbon problems when there are other pollution problems that seem equally or more compelling where he and his people live.
March 14th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
A key observation from those Developmental Psychologists is that these worldviews really are core enduring mental structures, and a person may spend their whole adult life at one worldview-stage. Some people move through several stages, and some don’t, and nobody seems to know why. But for practical purposes, a person’s worldview cannot be changed.
……
There is an obvious course of action, which people would be recommending strongly, did they really believe in what theya re saying. If it really is as urgent as they say they think it is, they should be proposing that we tally up the top sources of CO2 emissions, make a prioritized list of which ones to cut, and going to it without giving anyone the option.”
Stefan
Absolutely brilliant! I think that you have hit the nail on the head of the dichtomy of the entire AGW/non AGW movement.
My problem with AGW as a political movement goes straight to your worldview description. The scientists that posit AGW (no matter if it is correct or not), seem to for the most part share a world view that “naturally” leads to a certain set of solutions, many of which are derived from a worldview that from my perspective (worldview) originates in the early-70’s environmental movement worldview. Albert Gore has specifically stated that the book “Limits to Growth” both informed and set his world view. This is patently obvious when you read his book “Earth in the Balance” which is really just his restatement of the theme introduced by Meadows in LTG.
My worldview dates from the mid 1960’s when as a small child became enraptured with the positive worldview that comes from science fiction (Star Trek and the Apollo program). I have since dedicated my life to making that positive worldview a reality. In my education (physicist with an engineering physics degree) and in my professional career I have worked in this arena and see a completely different solution set that results in a prosperous world derived from the acquisition of the material resources of the solar system for the benefit of the people of the Earth. I have even written a book on the subject where I took on the “Limits to Growth” worldview and did a comparison/contrast with the the space economic development worldview.
It is quite amazing to me how dismissive the Limits to Growth (LTG) worldview people are of the space economic development worldview without any exploration of what the ultimate result of their worldview would mean to the people of the Earth, or what the space alternative would truly mean toward building a more prosperous humanity.
This leads to a question for you. You state that a worldview cannot be changed but how fixed are you in that statement? What does it take, how much evidence is required, and what can be done to bring a different worldview, one that is far more positive than the doom and gloom of the LTG worldview, into play as a viable alternative?
March 14th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
Dennis,
I’ll try to give what I’ve gathered on the subject, but this is second-hand so I may be way off. You might find one of the books/models to be useful:
http://www.amazon.com/Spiral-Dynamics-Leadership-Developmental-Management/dp/1557869405
As I understand it, they estimate that it takes a minimum of 5 to 10 years for a person to move through a worldview stage, but many may stay there for life. So a person might change, if you are willing to wait long enough. In the meantime though, even if one person moves out of one stage, another person may be entering that stage (having moved up from the previous stage), so there’s always going to be some percentage of the population who are at each stage. And that percentage will go out and vote for political parties, so their influence will always be there.
The existence of a number of broad worldviews is not a bad thing, as actually each worldview arose to address some problem or issue, certain life conditions which the already existing worldviews were not able to deal with. The green worldview arose in the 70s, perhaps at a time when we were starting to realise some of the downsides to industrialisation. Each new stage is meant to be an improvement but it also brings new problems. So we don’t really want to get rid of any worldview–even if we could–rather, we’d like a healthy well functioning version of each worldview, rather than unhealthy problematic versions.
That leaves us with the problem of how to deal with the unhealthy versions. At least one serious environmental philosopher has written about how environmentalism is verging towards fascism. That would be a very unhealthy version. And a shame given that we all benefit from clean water and clean air.
A model like Spiral Dynamics can be useful because it tries to identify the very core concerns of each world view. In other words, these are the things that a person will not compromise on. If you contradict a core concern, then you are just seen as flat wrong. But once you know the core concerns, you can use them. You can make a proposal in such a way that, you take care to always address the core concern, whilst being free to change everything else as needed to actually fix a problem. There is no reason why environmentalism should become fascistic. That’s perhaps just an unfortunate culture clash as the green worldview tries to manipulate the other worldviews.
Exactly how one would modify a proposal depends on which worldview we are dealing with. Reading Spiral Dynamics (or any of a number of other models) helps one to spot in people which worldview you are dealing with. Once you know that, you can take care to say the right things to resonate with that person’s core concerns, and frame everything in ways that that person will find of value. This can sound like manipulation, but it is better than just fighting entrenched positions, and it at least acknowledges that that person has a right to be who they are, and that we respect their worldview; we’re not trying to change them.
One of the authors/experts of Spiral Dynamics, Don Beck, has recently been working in the Middle East. Don Beck identified that the core value for many of the Palestinians is their sense of honor. That sense of honor demands that they must fight to get back land taken by Israelis. At the very least they should die trying. Honor is their core code. Don Beck has been leading an effort to reframe their sense of honor towards honor for the sake of their children, that their children should become educated, industrious entrepreneurs. Beck isn’t trying to change their core code, he is trying to shift how it is expressed, and realign it with the problems that their society is facing. The society needs development, and successful business that will improve the nation’s standard of living.
So I try to remember that quality of thinking, when we’re looking at environmentalism and its core values. We probably need to start by just identifying the core values—-community often comes up, which is perhaps why “consensus” is so convincing to the pro-AGW crowd but kinda irrelevant to people from other worldviews, including myself—-and once we know those core concerns, we can talk to them in a way that they can listen to us because we’re addressing what matters most to them.
So I guess that’s the puzzle. How do we produce a better healthier environmental movement than the current one, so that the new generation of kids which grows into this stage, will adopt the healthy version rather than the kinda fascistic and destructive version which we currently have?
Technological fixes are often frowned upon by environmentalists. Perhaps their core concerns are that technology “goes wrong”, (like nuclear) and that what we need are low tech soft “sustainable” approaches. Nonetheless these people have no problem using a computer. They often rally against big corporations. Nevertheless I gather a modern chip fab costs over a billion dollars, and the likes of Intel are worth multiple billions. So there is obviously some way to frame high technology in a way that looks “light” and “soft” enough. Arthur C Clarke wrote about a future where everyone lived in four towers which reached geostationary orbit, and the rest of the planet was left to revert to pure Nature. Even though there is tremendous technology involved with that, and yet is has some appeal for Nature worshippers. But see I don’t know what’s possible with technology in the real world today, but to gain the environmental movement’s support it needs to have an image of sensitivity, clean running, and non-greedy.
March 14th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
The problem with the “non-greedy” part is it that there will always be a privileged ruling class, so what you end up with is modern serfdom. The Gores and the Obamas of the world are definitely not going to be joining the rest of us as we bleed, sweat, and cry while we toil under the hot sun, or out in the driving snow, and anybody who dares to mention the hypocrisy must be shipped off to the gulags. How many times will people be fooled into walking straight down that horrifying path?
March 14th, 2009 at 10:57 pm
Here is the link to the project, directly related to the global warming:
http://www.globalfrozing.com/Atmospheric_powerplant_thermothread.html
The target of this project is to decrease the temperature of the atmosphere and produce the electricity in the same time.
I am looking for investors, sponsors, grants for it.
Any comments and suggestions will be highly appreciated
March 15th, 2009 at 12:52 am
[...] conference have not been unanimously endorsed by all 2,500 delegates. You could check that with Mike Hulme, no less, who has explicitly stated that “The six key messages are not the collective voice [...]
March 15th, 2009 at 8:49 am
There are some interesting comments here:
http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2009/03/yet_another_bunch_of_people_ki.php#comments
March 29th, 2009 at 1:08 am
[...] johtaja Mike Hulme hämmästeli tekstissään Kööpenhaminan julkilausuman syntyä. (Linkki: What was the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference really about?) Hulme kehui itse kokousta ja siellä käytyä tasokasta keskustelua mutta hän oli tyrmistynyt [...]
April 6th, 2009 at 2:44 am
[...] http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/what-was-the-copenhagen-climate-change-conference-reall... [...]
April 7th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
[...] culminating six-point manifesto as the product of a broad consensus (simultaneously published on the Prometheus blog). Some scientists studying particular facets of how global warming could affect things that matter [...]
April 29th, 2009 at 11:24 pm
Very strange. I posted a response–and it was deleted. Shame on you, University of Colorado at Boulder, for censoring my response.