Nunca pensé que iba a estar escribiendo sobre este tema, pero en fin, tengo que romper mis prejuicios y darme cuenta de que sí es necesario preocuparse de la ecología y el medioambiente. Lo sé, es obvio, pero ante posturas tan fundamentalistas en la protección del medioambiente uno no puede evitar sentirse atacado y ponerse a la defensiva. Leí en el Mercurio una columna de Kofi Annan (que pegué a continuación) y me tomé en serio el tema de que todos debemos preocuparnos de los efectos que tiene la actividad humana en el medioambiente y con ello los efectos que tiene para todos. Como futuros tomadores de decisiones para ejecutiar diversos tipos de proyectos debemos ser responsables y también tomar en cuenta este elemento adicional en la evaluación de éstos.
Cambio climático
Kofi Annan, Secretario General de las Naciones Unidas
"Por si quedaba alguna duda sobre la urgente necesidad de combatir el cambio climático, dos informes publicados la semana pasada deberían alertar al mundo. Según los datos más recientes presentados a las Naciones Unidas, las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero por parte de los principales países industrializados siguen aumentando. Por otra parte, en un estudio realizado por Sir Nicholas Stern, ex economista en jefe del Banco Mundial, se define el cambio climático como el fracaso del mercado más serio y amplio que jamás se haya conocido, capaz de hacer disminuir la economía mundial un 20% y de causar perturbaciones económicas y sociales comparables a las provocadas por las dos guerras mundiales y la Gran Depresión.
Hoy en día, la comunidad científica está cada vez más convencida de que la situación es alarmante. Muchos científicos están advirtiendo ahora que el calentamiento de la Tierra ha alcanzado niveles tan extremos que se corre el peligro de provocar una reacción en cadena que podría arrastrarnos hasta un punto sin retorno. Un giro similar se está empezando a observar en los economistas. Algunos que hasta ahora habían sido escépticos están reconociendo que resultará mucho menos costoso reducir hoy las emisiones que adaptarse a las consecuencias en el futuro.
Por su parte, las compañías aseguradoras han estado pagando indemnizaciones cada vez más importantes a los afectados por fenómenos meteorológicos extremos. Además, un número cada vez mayor de líderes empresariales e industriales han expresado preocupación por el cambio climático, que consideran un riesgo económico. Los pocos escépticos que siguen tratando de sembrar la duda deben ser vistos finalmente como lo que son: personas que se han quedado sin seguidores, sin argumentos y, prácticamente, sin tiempo.
Esta semana se inauguró en Nairobi una importante conferencia de las Naciones Unidas sobre el cambio climático. Ciertamente hay mucho en juego.
El cambio climático afecta profundamente al bienestar humano en casi todos sus aspectos, desde el empleo y la salud hasta la seguridad alimentaria, pasando por la paz nacional e internacional. Hasta que no reconozcamos el carácter global de esta amenaza, nuestra respuesta seguirá siendo insuficiente.
Por otra parte, los argumentos catastrofistas destinados a infundir el miedo y obligar así a la acción suelen tener efectos contraproducentes. Debemos centrarnos no sólo en los peligros, sino también en las oportunidades asociadas a este fenómeno. Los mercados del carbono han alcanzado un volumen de aproximadamente 30 mil millones de dólares este año, pero su potencial sigue en gran parte sin ser explotado. El Protocolo de Kioto está en plena fase de aplicación, y comprende un mecanismo para el desarrollo limpio que podría generar 100 mil millones de dólares para los países en desarrollo. El estudio realizado por Stern sugiere que el mercado de los productos de energía de bajo contenido de carbono podría alcanzar un volumen de al menos 500 mil millones de dólares para el año 2050. Incluso hoy resulta sorprendente que no se haga un mayor uso de las tecnologías de eficiencia energética, cuando su aplicación tiene siempre resultados positivos. Las bajas emisiones no tienen por qué suponer un bajo crecimiento ni un freno para las aspiraciones de desarrollo de los países.
Nuestros esfuerzos por impedir nuevas emisiones no deben hacernos olvidar la necesidad de adaptarnos al cambio climático, empresa que será de enorme envergadura. Los países más pobres del mundo, muchos de ellos en África, necesitarán ayuda de la comunidad internacional para no ver frustrados sus esfuerzos por alcanzar los objetivos de desarrollo del milenio.
No obstante, aún no es tarde para que nuestras sociedades cambien de rumbo. No debemos tenerles miedo a los votantes, ni subestimar su disposición a hacer inversiones importantes y cambios a largo plazo. La gente está deseando hacer lo que haga falta para afrontar esta amenaza y pasar a un modelo de desarrollo más seguro y sensato. La conferencia de Nairobi puede y debe ser parte de esta creciente masa crítica. Debemos transmitir una señal clara y convincente de que las instancias políticas mundiales toman en serio el cambio climático.
No se trata ya de aceptar o no el hecho del cambio climático, sino de saber si, ante esta emergencia, nosotros mismos podremos cambiar a tiempo."
4 comentarios:
Esta es la página de la conferencia:
http://unfccc.int/meetings/cop_12/items/3754.php
No he encontrado los estudios que cita Kofi, pero supongo que estarán por ahí.
saludos
¡Ah!!!,
por cierto, están dando en el cine un documental acerca del cambio climático. Creo que producida y presentada por Al Gore...... Temo que sea más bien sensacionalista que otra, pero bueno, será.
No olvidar el cuento del lobo y el pastor. Es cierto que el pastor dijo tantas veces que el lobo venía, que al final nadie le creía. Pero no es menos cierto que al final el lobo llegó... no cuando dijo el pastor... pero llégó.
La discusion sobre el cambio climatico y sobre el calentamiento global, desde el punto de vista cientifico y tambien desde el punto de vista de policy, resulta muy interesante, y hay (como siempre) muchos intereses politicos, economicos, ideologicos de por medio... Pero resulta tambien interesante discutir el enfoque que se debe tener al enfrentarse a estos temas. Los tomadores de decisiones en general no pueden tener toda la informacion necesaria, ni siquiera un cientifico dedicado al tema podria reunirla... por eso es muy importante pensar como proceder en estos casos...
Al respecto queria citar al senador James Inhofe, chairman del comite cientifico del senado de USA.(ver + abajo)
Por otra parte como no se mucho sobre cambio climatico, trato de buscar informacion en medios con los que estoy de acuerdo en otros temas (lo cual tambien tiene sus contras), y al mismo tiempo busco informarme mas por mi cuenta.
Para ver el estado actual de la discusion, y balancear un poco la discusion, cito un articulo (de 2003) de James Glassman en Capitalism Magazine. Esto es un poco mas politico, pero me tomo la libertad para darnos cuenta que en otras partes la discusion es mas pareja de lo que llega hasta aca.
Vale la pena tambien visitar "www.globalwarming.org".
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The Science of Climate Change
Senate Floor Statement by
U.S. Sen. James M. Inhofe(R-Okla)
Chairman, Committee on
Environment and Public Works
July 28, 2003
As chairman of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, I have a profound responsibility, because the decisions of the committee have wide-reaching impacts, influencing the health and security of every American.
That's why I established three guiding principles for all committee work: it should rely on the most objective science; it should consider costs on businesses and consumers; and the bureaucracy should serve, not rule, the people.
Without these principles, we cannot make effective public policy decisions. They are necessary to both improve the environment and encourage economic growth and prosperity.
One very critical element to our success as policymakers is how we use science. That is especially true for environmental policy, which relies very heavily on science. I have insisted that federal agencies use the best, non-political science to drive decision-making. Strangely, I have been harshly criticized for taking this stance. To the environmental extremists, my insistence on sound science is outrageous.
For them, a "pro-environment" philosophy can only mean top-down, command-and-control rules dictated by bureaucrats. Science is irrelevant-instead, for extremists, politics and power are the motivating forces for making public policy.
But if the relationship between public policy and science is distorted for political ends, the result is flawed policy that hurts the environment, the economy, and the people we serve.
Sadly that's true of the current debate over many environmental issues. Too often emotion, stoked by irresponsible rhetoric, rather than facts based on objective science, shapes the contours of environmental policy.
A rather telling example of this arose during President Bush's first days in office, when emotionalism overwhelmed science in the debate over arsenic standards in drinking water. Environmental groups, including the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council, vilified President Bush for "poisoning" children because he questioned the scientific basis of a regulation implemented in the final days of the Clinton Administration
The debate featured television ads, financed by environmental groups, of children asking for another glass of arsenic-laden water. The science underlying the standard, which was flimsy at best, was hardly mentioned or held up to any scrutiny.
The Senate went through a similar scare back in 1992. That year some members seized on data from NASA suggesting that an ozone hole was developing in the Northern Hemisphere. The Senate then rushed into panic, ramming through, by a 96 to 0 vote, an accelerated ban on certain chlorofluorocarbon refrigerants. Only two weeks later NASA produced new data showing that their initial finding was a gross exaggeration, and the ozone hole never appeared.
The issue of catastrophic global warming, which I would like to speak about today, fits perfectly into this mold. Much of the debate over global warming is predicated on fear, rather than science. Global warming alarmists see a future plagued by catastrophic flooding, war, terrorism, economic dislocations, droughts, crop failures, mosquito-borne diseases, and harsh weather-all caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions.
Hans Blix, chief U.N. weapons inspector, sounded both ridiculous and alarmist when he said in March, "I'm more worried about global warming than I am of any major military conflict."
Science writer David Appell, who has written for such publications as the New Scientist and Scientific American, parroted Blix when he said global warming would "threaten fundamental food and water sources. It would lead to displacement of billions of people and huge waves of refugees, spawn terrorism and topple governments, spread disease across the globe."
Appell's next point deserves special emphasis, because it demonstrates the sheer lunacy of environmental extremists: "[Global warming] would be chaos by any measure, far greater even than the sum total of chaos of the global wars of the 20th century, and so in this sense Blix is right to be concerned. Sounds like a weapon of mass destruction to me."
No wonder the late political scientist Aaron Wildavsky called global warming alarmism the "mother of all environmental scares."
Appell and Blix sound very much like those who warned us in the 1970s that the planet was headed for a catastrophic global cooling. On April 28, 1975, Newsweek printed an article titled, "The Cooling World," in which the magazine warned: "There are ominous signs that the earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production-with serious political implications for just about every nation on earth."
In a similar refrain, Time magazine for June 24, 1974 declared: "However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades."
In 1974 the National Science Board, the governing body of the National Science Foundation, stated: "During the last 20 to 30 years, world temperature has fallen, irregularly at first but more sharply over the last decade." Two years earlier, the board had observed: "Judging from the record of the past interglacial ages, the present time of high temperatures should be drawing to an end...leading into the next glacial age."
How quickly things change. Fear of the coming ice age is old hat, but fear that man-made greenhouse gases are causing temperatures to rise to harmful levels is in vogue. Alarmists brazenly assert that this phenomenon is fact, and that the science of climate change is "settled."
To cite just one example, Ian Bowles, former senior science director on environmental issues for the Clinton National Security Council, said in the April 22, 2001 edition of the Boston Globe: "the basic link between carbon emissions, accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and the phenomenon of climate change is not seriously disputed in the scientific community."
But in fact the issue is far from settled, and indeed is seriously disputed. I would like to submit at the end of my remarks a July 8 editorial by former Carter Administration Energy Secretary James Schlesinger on the science of climate change. In that editorial, Dr. Schlesinger takes issue with alarmists who assert there is a scientific consensus supporting their views.
[Refer to Chart 5] "There is an idea among the public that the science is settled," Dr. Schlesinger wrote. "...[T]hat remains far from the truth."
Today, even saying there is scientific disagreement over global warming is itself controversial. But anyone who pays even cursory attention to the issue understands that scientists vigorously disagree over whether human activities are responsible for global warming, or whether those activities will precipitate natural disasters.
I would submit, furthermore, that not only is there a debate, but the debate is shifting away from those who subscribe to global warming alarmism. After studying the issue over the last several years, I believe that the balance of the evidence offers strong proof that natural variability is the overwhelming factor influencing climate.
It's also important to question whether global warming is even a problem for human existence. Thus far no one has seriously demonstrated any scientific proof that increased global temperatures would lead to the catastrophes predicted by alarmists. In fact, it appears that just the opposite is true: that increases in global temperatures may have a beneficial effect on how we live our lives.
For these reasons I would like to discuss an important body of scientific research that refutes the anthropogenic theory of catastrophic global warming. I believe this research offers compelling proof that human activities have little impact on climate.
This research, well documented in the scientific literature, directly challenges the environmental worldview of the media, so they typically don't receive proper attention and discussion. Certain members of the media would rather level personal attacks on scientists who question "accepted" global warming theories than engage on the science.
This is an unfortunate artifact of the debate-the relentless increase in personal attacks on certain members of the scientific community who question so-called conventional wisdom.
I believe it is extremely important for the future of this country that the facts and the science get a fair hearing. Without proper knowledge and understanding, alarmists will scare the country into enacting its ultimate goal: making energy suppression, in the form of harmful mandatory restrictions on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse emissions, the official policy of the United States.
Such a policy would induce serious economic harm, especially for low-income and minority populations. Energy suppression, as official government and non-partisan private analyses have amply confirmed, means higher prices for food, medical care, and electricity, as well as massive job losses and drastic reductions in gross domestic product, all the while providing virtually no environmental benefit. In other words: a raw deal for the American people and a crisis for the poor.
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The Global Warming Hoax
by James K. Glassman (December 15, 2003)
MILAN, Italy -- On many of the walls here at the Feira Milano conference center, site of the giant United Nations meeting on climate change, Green activists have posted flamboyant posters showing a picture of Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla), with a quotation from him: "Global warming is 'the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.'"
The idea being proffered by these sophisticates, of course, is that Inhofe is a typical American rube. Global warming a hoax! What a dope!
In fact, Inhofe is one of the best-informed Senators on the science and economics of global warming. And "global warming" -- as it's used by environmental extremists -- is indeed a hoax.
Yes, the Earth's surface has warmed a bit over the past century, but is that warming caused mainly by humans or by natural cycles? And can changes in human activity -- specifically reductions in carbon-dioxide emissions -- have anything more than a tiny effect on temperature? The answers to those questions, which are at the heart of the Kyoto Protocol and other attempts to force cuts in energy use, are simply unknown.
It is the claim of certainty that is a hoax. It's a dangerous one, too, since using global-warming theory as the basis for extreme policy mandates could plunge the world into a long-term recession or even a depression.
The quote on the poster comes from Inhofe's speech during debate over the McCain-Lieberman bill that would have curtailed greenhouse-gas emissions in the United States, a measure similar to the Kyoto Protocol, which President Bush rejected in 2001 as "fatally flawed" and which still lacks enough ratifying nations for implementation six years after it was signed. McCain-Lieberman was rejected, too -- in part because of Inhofe's strenuous efforts as chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee.
One of the themes being promoted by Greens at this conference is that the American people want Kyoto-style measures to cut greenhouse gas emissions and that the close vote on McCain-Lieberman proves it. Wednesday's issue of ECO, the daily conference newsletter backed by WWF International, Greenpeace and other environmental groups, refers to "mounting anger at home" to President Bush's stance on climate change. "The American public is catching on to this charade," claims ECO.
But several times this week, Inhofe has patiently explained the real arithmetic behind the Senate vote. First, it was 16 votes short of the 60 effectively needed for passage under Senate rules. Second, it was riddled with concessions to win votes. Without the amendments, Inhofe figures only 32 Senators would have backed it. Finally, the bill was sold under a claim that it would cost only $20 per household per year. A study commissioned by TechCentralStation and performed by Charles River Associates, the respected economic research firm, found that the costs would be at least 17 times that much.
Inhofe heads a congressional delegation of eight Republicans in Milan. The others are Sens. Larry Craig (Idaho), Craig Thomas (Wyo.) and Jeff Sessions (Ala.) and Reps. Chris Cannon (Utah), Fred Upton (Mich.), Chris Shays (Conn.) and Jim Greenwood (Pa). There are no Democratic members of Congress here but plenty of Democratic staffers.
I sat down with Inhofe at breakfast at his hotel in Milan Thursday morning. Considering the fact that nothing much has been happening at COP-9, the ninth United Nations conference of the parties to the 1992 Rio agreement on the environment, I started by asking why he was here.
"I'm here," he said, "to show that we are not going to ratify Kyoto."
That's Inhofe at his finest. Straight talk. No nonsense.
Unlike some other members of Congress, who accept the scientific basis for Kyoto but say that the treaty costs too much and exempts developing countries, Inhofe disputes the science. He knows the studies, and he recognizes that the tide has turned in the past few years.
"Virtually all of the research since 1999 has been refuting [the theory of human-caused global warming]. It is ludicrous that Kyoto can be as damaging economically as it is when there is no science to justify it."
New research, for example, has challenged Michael Mann's "hockey-stick" formula, which asserts that temperatures have risen sharply, in an unprecedented fashion. In fact, warming was worse centuries ago, before industrialization and automobiles.
The delegation met Wednesday with counterparts from Europe, and Inhofe and many of his colleagues were shocked at the Europeans' refusal even to consider scientific research that casts doubt on predictions of cataclysmic warming. "They just don't want to talk about the science," said Inhofe. "They don't want to listen. They were Zombies" -- unlike "real people in the U.S." Those Americans, said Inhofe, "we are turning around" with the recent research.
Some members of the delegation have been as forceful as Inhofe on the subject of climate-change science. For example, in 1998, with Bill Clinton in the White House, Sen. Larry Craig said, "As more and more American scientists review the available data on global warming, it is becoming increasingly clear that the vast majority believe the commitments for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions made by the administration in the Kyoto Protocol are an unnecessary response to an exaggerated threat the vice president himself [i.e., Al Gore] is caught up in making."
The talk of the conference has been Russia. Will the Russians ratify Kyoto? The treaty requires the votes of nations producing 55 percent of all emissions from developed countries. Currently, the tally is 44 percent, so the Russians, with 17 percent, hold the key.
Inhofe says that some Russians see negotiations on ratification "as a way to make some money. They want to see how big the bribe will be." But, in the end, he thinks the Russians will reject Kyoto, for reasons of science and economics, just as Bush rejected it as shortly after his inauguration.
"I'm proud of Putin for having the courage to look at the science," said Inhofe, referring to the Russian president. "In this environment, it takes courage."
Inhofe also agrees with the assessment that this has been a particularly depressing conference for the Greens. The plenary sessions are only about half-full, and "there was no enthusiasm in the room."
Meanwhile, Inhofe points out, the United States is shelling out $4.7 million, footing the bill for about one-fourth of the cost of the U.N.'s extravaganza. But the price may be worthwhile, if only because Inhofe is getting his message out. He's teaching the value of straight talking to the Europeans and the Green NGO officials who, for a long time now, have assumed they can set the world's agenda. This year, with Kyoto on its deathbed, they're learning otherwise. It's delightful to see.
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