carbon limited

The first volume summary of the fourth IPCC Assessment Report is out today and its conclusions are that there’s a greater than 90% likelihood that human activity is warming the planet and that global average temperatures will rise by between 1.8° and 4.0° this century. Importantly, the report will form the basis for negotiations to the successor of the Kyoto agreement which expires in 2012.

The Bush team are taking a two pronged approach. The first is to deny there’s a problem. Their scientific hit squad at the AEI have offered $10K plus expenses to scientists to undermine the conclusions of the IPCC report, funded by money from Exxon Mobil.

The second approach is to appear outwardly to accept that climate change is a genuine threat but to propose technological solutions that will put money in the pockets of allies. One proposal is the increase in the proportion of biofuel required in gasoline in the US as highlighted in the state of the union address. This is a politically safe and environmentally damaging subsidisation of the US farming industry, which will have no effect on climate change. Another proposal is launching billions of reflective balloons into the upper atmosphere to reduce the solar radiation reaching the earth, replacing one catastrophic climate experiment with another. Good work team.

So expect to see what looks superficially like a debate over the results of the IPCC report, but it’s likely that if you take a closer look you’ll see that the one side is made up of the usual very small well-funded vocal minority. Unfortunately if the IPCC is right about the scale and timing of climate change, when confronted with the usual shit from the US, soon enough we’ll just be able to point out the window.