Global Warming Science - www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming

Oxfam Wants Your Money

[last update: 2009/07/12]

Suffering the Science -- Oxfam is on the global warming rent-seeking bandwagon.

On July 6, 2009, Oxfam published its latest rent-seeking briefing paper: “Suffering the Science” [http://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/bp130-suffering-the-science.pdf]. The goal is of course, to get some of that money that the rich countries owe to the poor countries.

The report states: “beginning immediately, developing countries will need at least $150 billion a year to cope with the effects of climate change … The nations that made themselves wealthy by burning fossil fuels are largely those that will, initially, suffer least from the effects of climate shift. … In the temperate zones, for instance, rich countries are buffered by their wealth, and here climate change’s impacts may result in milder or even beneficial weather conditions for a brief period. It is in the tropics where the bulk of humanity lives – many of them in poverty – that climate change is hitting now and hitting hardest.”

They refer to these poor countries affected by global warming as being in the tropics / subtropics. But they don’t mention that the tropics have had virtually no warming. The following figure (top) is from the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) Figure 9.6 (2007). It shows the change in temperature (C per decade) by latitude. The black line shows the observed temperature, the blue band shows the output of the computer models including only natural factors, whereas the pink band shows the output of computer models including anthropogenic CO2. Notice that the models without CO2 (blue shaded area) can explain all of the warming for most of the world including the tropics and subtropics. The bottom figure shows the global tropics temperature anomaly for the complete satellite data record (1979 – 2009) (figure from http://climate4you.com/). 

 “Climate change is damaging people’s lives today. … Some of the most worrying new science focuses on the likelihood of more extreme droughts as a result of global warming, and of large-scale and possible abrupt changes in arctic, mountain, and tropical forest ecosystems. … Oxfam’s experience in nearly 100 countries is definitive: hundreds of millions of people are already suffering damage from a rapidly changing climate, which is frustrating their efforts to escape poverty” They conflate individual cyclones / hurricane events as being caused by global warming. They use anecdotal stories of individual farmers instead of science. That’s because: “This paper is about the impact of climate change on humans. It does not seek to debate the science behind this or objectively review it. Much of the existing science is complex and by its nature speculative”. In other words the paper does not purport to be objective, but to tug at the money strings.

Oxfam invokes the Lord – Stern, that is: “Lord Stern, former chief economist to the World Bank, says there is ‘a big probability of a devastating outcome’ and that ‘the likelihood of global warming in the 21st century even beyond the threshold of a 2.4°C increase is dangerously high’.”

But they failed to mention Stern’s conflict of interest. Having produced the apocalyptic “Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change” for the UK government in 2006, Stern is Vice Chairman of the IDEAglobal Group. According to the Financial Times: “Lord Nicholas Stern … will launch a new carbon credit ratings agency on Wednesday, the first to score carbon credits on a similar basis to that used to rate debt. Lord Stern, the former World Bank chief economist whose landmark report on the economics of climate change warned the world risked plunging into economic depression if action was not taken urgently on greenhouse gases, said carbon trading was a “key plank” in dealing with climate change. The agency, run by the IdeaCarbon group of which Lord Stern is vice-chairman, said it would offer investors a guide to the quality of credits and the likelihood that they would be delivered. Sellers of carbon credits would have to pay to have their products rated, while buyers would also pay to gain access to the ratings. London has maintained its dominance of the global carbon trading market, worth $64bn last year, a report to be published today by International Financial Services London, the company that promotes the City, has found” [http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/897fc1b4-4219-11dd-a5e8-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1] The IDEAglobal Group’s IDEAcarbon’s Managing Director (Samuel Frankhauser) served on the 1995, 2001 and 2007 assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). These conflicts of interest never seem to be news. (See: http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/CarbonMonetization.htm for more details on the people behind the money scam of global warming).

In April 2008 Stern said the United States should cut its emissions by 90 percent by 2050. "We badly underestimated the degree of damages and the risks of climate change … All of the links in the chain are on average worse than we thought a couple of years ago." [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/stern-warns-that-climate-change-is-far-worse-than-2006-estimate-810488.html] Perhaps he is referring to the fact that global temperatures have been falling while CO2 continues to increase thus increasing the risks for global warming scammers such as IDEAcarbon. (The following figure is from http://icecap.us/images/uploads/8YearTemps.jpg)

Oxfam blames it all on the “nations that made themselves wealthy by burning fossil fuels” since these countries have caused global warming resulting in “hundreds of millions of people already suffering damage from a rapidly changing climate, which is frustrating their efforts to escape poverty”.

This typical international blame scam neglects these facts:

Al Gore – “An Inconvenient Truth”: Page 227: “Almost 30 % of the CO2 released into the atmosphere each year is a result of the burning of brushland for subsistence agriculture and wood fires used for cooking.” … Page 230-231 shows a “six-month time lapse image of the world at night” from satellite imagery, in which “Africa stands out partly because of the prevalence of wood fires for cooking.”

Greenpeace: “Global emissions from tropical deforestation alone contribute up to 25% of total annual human-induced CO2 emissions to the atmosphere.” [http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/international/press/reports/carving-up-the-congo-exec.pdf]

United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO): “Most people assume that global warming is caused by burning oil and gas. But in fact between 25 and 30 percent of the greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere each year – 1.6 billion tonnes – is caused by deforestation. … Delegates of the 46 developing countries present at the Rome workshop signalled their readiness to act on deforestation, 80 percent of which is due to increased farmland to feed growing populations. … But they also stressed that they needed financial help from the developed world to do the job.” [http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2006/1000385/index.html].

United Nations Office of Humanitarian Affairs: "People often do not take into account the main driver of deforestation, which is very different in Africa, where it is the need for fuel wood," said Kevin Conrad, director of the Coalition for Rainforest Nations at the Earth Institute of Columbia University. … Deforestation is responsible for 1.6 billion tonnes of carbon emissions every year, amounting to one-fifth of the global total, and to more than the combined total contributed by the world's energy-intensive transport sectors, according to the Indonesia-based Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR). "Deforestation contributes almost as much to climate change as does US fossil fuel use," said Conrad. "Yet deforestation was specifically excluded from the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, which failed to address this significant source of carbon emissions." [http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75868]

Mongabay: “Sub-Saharan Africa has long been considered one of the poorest regions on earth despite its rich biological diversity and mineral wealth. The poor turn to the forests for subsistence agriculture, the collection of fuelwood, and the poaching of forest animals for food. The rapid population growth of the region—among the highest in the world—combined with high rates of urbanization have promoted these unsustainable activities by creating demand for bushmeat, fuelwood, and other forest products. Fuelwood makes up more than 8o percent of the total roundwood produced in the region.” [http://rainforests.mongabay.com/20afrotropical.htm]

Rapid overpopulation resulting in deforestation – the neglected story of greenhouse gas.

See http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/Deforestation.htm for more details on this.

The Oxfam report is full of bogus science. Here is a typical example of the effects of global warming already affecting the world:

“The USA, already in ‘water deficit’, will become increasingly dependent on the resources of Canada.164” (p.44)

The reference cited is “Climate Change and Security: Risks and Opportunities for Business” Lloyds of London 360 Risk Analysis, Lloyds and IISS 2009 [http://www.lloyds.com/NR/rdonlyres/0C6F0662-5B98-49E1-A224-2D3E830947B6/0/Climatechangeandsecurity_200904.pdf]

The following figure is from the cited reference, which states: “It is easy to imagine escalating American demands on the major fresh-water system that the US shares with Canada in the Great Lakes region, since the entire western half of the US is already a water-deficit area”

Newsflash for Oxfam: the area indicated as having physical water scarcity has had a shortage of water since anyone has observed the deserts of the southwest US (that’s why they call it a desert). Thus somehow, the original report which inflates the deserts of the southwest to “the entire western half of the US”) suddenly becomes the entire USA already in water deficit in the Oxfam report. And the Great Lakes region (“that the US shares with Canada”) becomes the resources of Canada.

Oxfam is “suffering the science” because the science doesn’t match their rent-seeking goals. We are suffering their lies. The only truth in the Oxfam report is: “This paper … does not seek to … objectively review [the science]. Much of the existing science is complex and by its nature speculative”.