Global Warming/Climate Change

[Holly Stick]

UN Conference on Climate Change is next week:
 
http://unfccc.int/conference_programme/items/5999.php
 
Guardian about Canada omitting some emissions data from its report to the UN:
 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2011/jun/01/canada-tar-sands-carbon-emissions
 
Hat tip: http://impolitical.blogspot.com/2011/06/worst-ever-carbon-emissions-in-2010.html
 
ETA: Don Braid argues the report to the UN does not cover anything up:
 
http://www.calgaryherald.com/business/Braid+Oilsands+coverup+claim+credible/4865574/story.html

[Holly Stick]

New Environment Canada climate change plan:
 
http://www.climatechange.gc.ca/Content/4/0/4/4044AEA7-3ED0-4897-A73E-D11C62D954FD/COM1410_KPIA%202011_e%20-%20May%2031%20v2.pdf
 
posted by MP Megan Leslie (Halifax, NDP) who points out it was tabled same day as the Throne Speech, with no press release:
 
http://twitter.com/#!/MeganLeslieMP/status/76991520556847104
 

[Holly Stick]

Death threats against climate scientists in Australia:
 
http://theconversation.edu.au/universities-seriously-concerned-by-death-threats-against-climate-scientists-1686
 
http://news.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/climate-scientists-receive-death-threats-20110604-1flwf.html
 
 

[Antonia]

Long story short. I blogged it because it never ran in the paper. 

Enough with the greenwishywashing, more and more scientists are saying. Well-known American environmentalist and activist Bill McKibben founded the grass-roots group 350.org, which attempts to get people all over the world agitating for laws, regulations and policy aimed at reducing GHG (greenhouse gas emissions) reductions.
“We need to do (civil disobedience) on a mass scale," McKibben, author of many books including Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, tells me. “We need to do it in a way that makes one thing clear to all onlookers: in this fight, we are the conservatives. The radicals are the people who want to alter the composition of the atmosphere.”

The idea is spreading.

“Non-violent civil disobedience is justified when there is a history of long-standing harm or violation of people's fundamental rights; when legal and policy means have failed to reduce the harms and violations; and when there is little time remaining to address the problems,” University of New England professor John Lemons and Penn State’s Donald Brown wrote in last month’s Journal of Science and Environmental Politics.
“Simply put, people do not have the right to harm others who have not given their consent to be harmed, and this is exactly what the USA and other countries continue to do,” Lemons told me.
(For more on the theories of justice and civil disobedience, read this. And then read this, the case of one US activist who faces a possible 10 year sentence and up to $750K in fines, even though he never hurt a fly.)

[Holly Stick]

Good stuff. What a shame it didn't get into the paper.

 
ETA: more about death threats to Australian climate scientists:
 
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/06/australian_climate_scientists.php
 
And another Deltoid post about hate mail from Feb 2010:
 
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/02/the_hate_mail_campaign_against.php

[Antonia]

What a shame it didn't get into the paper.

 

 

[Holly Stick]

More in the NYT about climate change and the world changing, a column by Friedman:
 
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/08/opinion/08friedman.html?_r=2&ref=opinion

[Antonia]

It's may run on Saturday. 

[Debra]

 

[lagatta]

In the meantime, the Formula 1 Grand Prix (which we jokingly mispronounce Grandd Pricks in the manner of clueless USian tourists) is running here in Montréal this weekend. Some of us organising a "festive protest picnic" on Sunday, but alas it seems it will rain all day, making protest rather less festive and picnicky. At least the Pricks will get rained on as well.

[Alison]

may run on Saturday

. 
 
A timely link you may wish to include:
 
 Canada confirms it will reject new Kyoto Protocol

[sparqui]

may run on Saturday

. 
 
A timely link you may wish to include:
 
 Canada confirms it will reject new Kyoto Protocol

  for this first part and  for the Contempt Party.

[Antonia]

Well, first let's see if they will run it for sure. I won't believe it until I see it on my front step.

[Antonia]

I knew Canada would embarrass itself.

OTTAWA — Foreign diplomats bombarded Canadian climate change negotiators with questions Thursday in Bonn, Germany, as they challenged the Harper government's transparency and policies to fight global warming.
In the wake of media coverage highlighting missing and conflicting information in an Environment Canada submission to the United Nations, officials from Australia, China, Lebanon, the United Kingdom and the Philippines questioned government policies regarding fossil fuel subsidies and the Alberta "tarsands," a lack of investment in clean energy and the scientific evidence used to determine its greenhouse gas emissions target.
The not-so-diplomatic discussion took place during a United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change negotiating session. Canada is one of about 200 members of the treaty, which calls on its members to stabilize the concentration of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere to prevent dangerous changes to the earth's climate and ecosystems.

Read more: http://www.canada.com/news/Harper+government+receives+diplomatic+spanking+over+climate+policies/4921908/story.html#ixzz1Oq8oqsQf

[Antonia]

TA-DA!