Copenhagen strives to forge climate change agreement
President Dmitry Medvedev is preparing to join over a hundred leaders at the UN Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen, which was stalled for nine-hours on Wednesday due to wrangles over the text to be used for the talks.
As has become obvious during the Copenhagen climate change conference, the issue of global warming has really divided opinion, with a lot of controversy and even scandal.
The main sticking points are still those of reducing carbon gas emissions and financial aid for poorer nations, to assist them in making cuts.
Meanwhile, there's growing doubt that world leaders at the UN Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen will reach a new deal by the end of the conference on Friday. Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of the Danish capital, claiming not enough progress is being made – and around 200 have been arrested.
On Tuesday, President Dmitry Medvedev spoke with top academics at the Russian Academy of Sciences, with climate change issues naturally topping the agenda.
And on Wednesday, during a meeting with foreign envoys, the Russian President said that the Copenhagen conference is important regardless of its results.
“I am convinced that, regardless of what the result will be, the fact that heads of states and governments of about 120 countries will gather together to discuss new and, I hope, effective ways of further cooperation, is of the principal significance,” Russian leader said.
He added that providing ecological safety is an important task for the international community, adding that there must be a balance to make sure that political motivations do not get in the way of addressing the issue.
Meanwhile, Lars Seier Christensen, the founder and co-CEO of Danish SAXO Bank, shared with RT that we all are the victims of climate change hysteria.
Christensen said that “Currently we are hearing only a part of the debate and that is concerning. We are making very big decisions in terms of economy and personal freedom and we need to hear both sides of the argument.”
“Some kind of decision will be reached [in Copenhagen], because there are a lot of very high-level politicians there and there is a lot at stake in terms of personal agendas and ambitions and proving the deal can be reached,” predicted Christensen.
He concluded that “I do not think we should overdo reactions now. I’m not saying we should not take it very seriously, but I think people need to show some restraint and not do too much at this point when we know too little.”
Kenneth Green, an environmental scientist from the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, also says there is little chance the leaders will reach any kind of serious agreement at the summit.
As for climate change, he has doubts in the concept of global warming:
“I don’t believe we can predict the future. Almost all of these predictions are based on computer models that can’t actually represent the climate we’ve seen. For example, the last ten years of non-warming temperatures – none of the models predicted a period of ten years of flat or even declining temperatures.”
Green explains the continuous research in this field by two reasons – first, because “it’s a huge source of funding” and second, because “scientists, like anybody else, want to be engaged in the decision-making process.”
Martin Agerup, President and CEO of the Centre for Policy Studies, based in Copenhagen told RT that “we should not confuse climate and weather”.
“The world leaders are about to try to reach an agreement [on climate change] with the wrong approach,” insists Agerup, “They want to commit themselves to some firm targets about how to reduce emissions. I think this is wrong. We need to look on putting a price on carbon and than see how much reduction we get out of that.”
Agerup believes that it would be inconceivable for leaders to end the conference without any agreement so “they are going to celebrate some kind of agreement.” It is going to be more costly than what the world will get out of it “but this is the way things are,” says the economist. Agerup adds that other pressing issues need to be taken into account.
“It’s not the end of the world, it is not the world’s biggest problem, millions of people die of all kinds of diseases… Poverty is the main issue we have to deal with.”
Meanwhile it is unnatural -22C in Moscow, leaving Russians wondering about the global warming and climate change.
Nick Rees, managing director of Star Search Russia, who has lived in Moscow for 15 years, told RT about the real cold he experienced when on his first visit to Russia he was sent to Siberia, the first words le learnt in Russian was “minus sorok shest which means it’s minus forty-six, as it was -46 Celsius there and that was really cold.”
British businessman and political activist Stuart Wheeler calls the concerned environmentalists “alarmists” and says he has no trust for their figures.
“1998 was the hottest year we’ve had for an extremely long time. At that time all the alarmists were predicting that it would go on getting hotter, but in fact it's gone either steady or down. It has been getting colder for the last 11 years and there is not the slightest reason to think that it will be getting hotter,” Wheeler told RT.
Nick Griffin, the British National Party leader and Member of the European Parliament, blamed climate change activists for the food shortage the planet is facing at the moment.
“Last week we had the University of East Anglia's reputation drastically tarnished, this now is the Hadley Centre. There are also four sources for the data used by the IPCC, and two of them are now tainted by sleaze or fraud,” Griffin told RT, adding “I have previously called climate change a hoax and still am calling it so now. Those who support it are unwitting mass-murderers. Already, by insisting that the world has to go on bio-fuels on a massive scale, they have taken one-third of US agricultural land out of fruit production. It is the consequence of that, that there are people in third-world countries who are starving right now”.
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