Articles Tagged "Newspaper Article"

Prince Charles launched a fierce attack on climate change sceptics yesterday, accusing them of peddling 'pseudo science'.

The Prince of Wales said those who question whether human activity is causing global warming and climate change are intimidating governments into not 'adopting the precautionary measures necessary to avert environmental collapse'.

Those who have expressed doubts include former Conservative chancellor Lord Lawson and environmentalist and broadcaster David Bellamy.

In a speech to world business leaders at St James's Palace the Prince did not mention sceptics by name but said: 'People have heard the climate sceptics and attempted to listen to the kind of pseudo science they are peddling. I have endlessly been accused of peddling pseudo science, for most of my life - just think about the strange irony.'

Just three years ago the politics of global warming was enjoying its golden moment. The release in 2006 of Al Gore’s Oscar-winning film, An Inconvenient Truth, had riveted global audiences with its predictions of New York and Miami under 20 feet of water. Within 12 months, leading politicians with real power were on board. Germany’s Angela Merkel, dubbed the “climate chancellor” by her country’s press, arranged a Greenland photo op with a melting iceberg and promised to cut Europe’s emissions by 20 percent by 2020. British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who called climate change a scourge equal to fascism, offered 60 percent by 2050. In December 2007, the world got its very first green leader. Harnessing the issue of climate change, Kevin Rudd became prime minister of Australia, ready to take on what he called “the biggest political, economic, and moral challenge of our times.” Now, almost everywhere, green politics has fallen from its lofty heights.

Following two of the harshest winters on record in the Northern Hemisphere—not to mention an epic economic crisis—voters no longer consider global warming a priority. Just 42 percent of Germans now worry about climate change, down from 62 percent in 2006. In Australia, only 53 percent still consider it a pressing issue, down from 75 percent in 2007. Americans rank climate change dead last of 21 problems that concern them most, according to a January Pew poll. Last month Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper, blasting climate change as a “sideshow” to global economic issues, canceled the meeting of environment ministers that has preceded the G8 or G20 summit every year but one since 1994. Merkel has slashed green-development aid in the latest round of budget cuts, while in Washington, Barack Obama seems to have cooled on his plan to cap emissions. In perhaps the most striking momentum reversal for environmental politicians, last month Rudd became the first leader to be destroyed by his green policies. Flip-flopping over planned emissions cuts as the opposition exploited Australian voters’ flagging support for climate measures, he was finally ousted by party rebels.

Unafraid, questioning minds are central to the pursuit of truth and democracy

AT Easter, the official Greenpeace website carried a blog written by Gene Hashmi, communications director of its affiliate in India. Hashmi pointed his finger at sceptics who fuelled "spurious debates around false solutions" and concluded with the not too subtle threat: "We know who you are. We know where you live. We know where you work. And we be many but you be few."

Welcome to a world where the term sceptic has acquired the meaning usually associated with a Dark Age heresy.

Fearing a backlash to a statement that most normal readers would interpret as an incitement to violence, Greenpeace pulled the blog from its site.

It defensively justified its act of self-censorship on the ground that it was very "easy to misconstrue" the statement.

Stating that the IPCC will make efforts to ensure that its fifth assessment report carries no errors, its chairman R K Pachauri has ruled out stepping down even if the UN-constituted review committee finds faults in the procedures followed by the climate panel.

"Certainly not. But we will certainly implement any constructive recommendations that we get. As matter of fact, I would be responsible for implementing the recommendations. How can I walk away from that?" Pachauri said.

He was asked whether he would consider stepping down if the UN-constituted Inter-Academic Council review was to come to the conclusion that procedures have not been followed.

Accepting moral responsibility for the error in the fourth assessment report which had claimed that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035, Pachauri said he also accepts the responsibility placed on him by the world governments by electing him as Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IIPC).

Is climate change a serious threat to humanity or a scam trumped up by agenda-minded activists?

Even the nation's TV weathercasters can't agree on that scientific dilemma, according to the largest survey of the profession to date released Monday by George Mason University's Center for Climate Change Communication.

The majority — 63 percent — say global warming is caused "mostly by natural changes in the environment" compared with 31 percent who blamed the phenomenon on "human activities." More than a quarter said they agreed that the phenomenon is "a scam."

Another 48 percent said global warming should be a "low" priority for President Obama and Congress; one out of three felt is should be given "medium" priority; 23 percent felt is was of "high" importance.

The group is well aware of dissent in the research community as well: Sixty-one percent said there is "a lot of disagreement among scientists" about the issue.

But should climate change and global warming be a subject for their own broadcast coverage? Two-thirds said yes — though three-fourths also felt the subject was better suited for online discussions, "as many report concern about audience 'backlash,'" the survey said.

Some prominent weathermen, however, are not buying into the theory.

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LONDON -- Apocalyptic visions and the muscular language of religious fervor are invading the climate arena, replacing issues of fact with those of faith and bringing high emotion into science -- an area where it should have no place -- politicians and religious leaders complain.

People who say human-induced climate change is a fact that demands urgent action are described as "believers" or "climate evangelists," while those who reject the concept are "deniers," "skeptics" or "atheists." Those in the middle who say they are unconvinced either way are "agnostics."

"The use of this language has become increasingly an issue," said Colin Challen, chairman of the United Kingdom's All Party Parliamentary Climate Change Group, a committee of U.K. lawmakers studying the global climate phenomenon.

"Some people would like that to happen, because in some eyes proving that climate change is man-made becomes as difficult as proving the existence of God," he told E&E.

Environmentally aware consumers are more likely to lie, cheat and be unkind than regular shoppers, a study suggests.

Researchers say that people have a limited stock of goodwill and that being virtuous in one part of life leads to meanness in another. The phenomenon - dubbed ' compensatory ethics' - came to light in a series of experiments carried out by psychologists at the University of Toronto.

Nina Mazar, who led the study, said: 'People act less altruistically and are more likely to cheat and steal after purchasing green products as opposed to conventional products.'
Her team paid 90 volunteers $5 to take part in an experiment designed to find out whether green consumption affects morality.

The students were split into two groups and told to buy goods in either a normal online store, or an internet store selling environmentally friendly products. The green consumers were found more likely to cheat at a simple computer game than those who used the conventional store. And when they were invited to take a certain amount of money from an envelope as their reward, the green shoppers tended to take more cash than they were entitled too.

The authors report in the journal Psychological Science: 'The halo associated with green consumerism has to be taken with reservations. 'While mere exposure to green products can have a positive effect by inducing prosocial and ethical acts, purchasing green products may license indulgence in self-interested and unethical behaviours.'

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THE chairman of the ABC, Maurice Newman, has told about 250 leading journalists, program-makers and managers at the ABC that the media had displayed "group-think" on the issue of climate change in a speech that led to a feisty exchange with senior journalists and forced managing director Mark Scott to try to smooth the waters.

Describing himself as an agnostic on climate change, Mr Newman said climate change was an example "of group-think where contrary views have not been tolerated, and where those who express them have been labelled and mocked".

He warned ABC staffers that he would not tolerate anyone suppressing information, citing the fact that a BBC science correspondent knew for a month before the scandal broke of damaging emails at the University of East Anglia in Britain highlighting the politicised nature of climate science but did not report them.

Mr Newman said the Guardian newspaper had noted that the moment climatology is sheltered from dispute, its force begins to wane.

"Which raises an important question for a media organisation," Mr Newman said in the speech obtained by The Australian. "Who, if anyone, decides what to shelter from dispute? And when?

Some top officials of a Nobel Prize-winning climate-science organization are acknowledging the panel made some mistakes amid a string of recent revelations questioning the accuracy of some of the information in its influential reports.

Officials of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations-sponsored network of scientists whose reports strongly influence global policy on greenhouse-gas emissions, initially played down some of the allegations and criticized those who called them important. Increasingly, however, they are acknowledging the panel's mistakes and saying it needs to tighten its procedures.

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