Opinions Clash at Climate Conference

The International Conference on Climate Change was held recently in New York.  The 500 delegates came from a great diversity of professions meteorologist, geologists, biologists and astrophysicists.

Most are so-called global warming sceptics -- none of them sceptical of climate change, but rather the extent to which carbon dioxide drives warming -- and perhaps appropriately, the first day of the conference was unusually cold even for New York.

There was diversity of opinion among delegates as to the causes of global warming and also little consensus regarding the future of fossil fuels.

Benny Peiser from Liverpool University in the UK acknowledged that governments worldwide had no real solutions to rising emission levels but that solutions would come through geo-engineering and the development of solar energy.

In contrast, Michael Economides from the University of Houston in the US suggested this was a pie in the sky fantasy.  He said the world was likely to continue to source most of its energy from fossil fuels for the foreseeable future.

President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus, said "the dream" to reduce emissions in the European Union by 70 per cent in the next 30 years could only be achieved if there was a dramatic de-industrialisation of Europe 00 likely associated with a dramatic drop in gross domestic product, a drop in population, or a technological revolution.

President Klaus went on to suggest that the imposition of carbon rationing through emissions trading was reminiscent of communist era European politics where radical economic change was imposed from above.

A highlight of the conference was polar bear expert, Mitch Taylor, who told about his work in the Arctic field sampling using mark-recapture techniques.

These studies indicated at least two subpopulations of polar bears in the Arctic had a constant population size, that two were increasing in number and that two were in decline -- one from over hunting and another from climate change, in particular a reduction in the amount of sea ice in Hudson Bay.

Given the success of the first conference, the plan is to hold an annual conference of sceptics with the next conference likely to be in London.

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