Tag Archives: Environmental Issue

by | February 4, 2010

ClimateGate: India leaves U.N. forms new climate change body

If all else fail, bail. It sounds to me that perhaps people are finally realizing that global warming is the single biggest hoax perpetrated on mankind. Ed.

India has established its own body to monitor the effects of global warming because it “cannot rely” on the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the group headed by its own Nobel Prize-winning scientist Dr R K Pachauri

The Indian government’s move is a significant snub to both the IPCC and Dr Pachauri as he battles to defend his reputation following the revelation his most recent climate change report included false claims that most of the Himalayan glaciers would melt away by 2035. Scientists believe it could take more than 300 years for the glaciers to disappear.

The body and its chairman have faced growing criticism ever since as questions have been raised on the credibility of their work and the rigour with which climate change claims are assessed.

In India the false claims have heightened tensions between Dr Pachauri and the government, which had earlier questioned his glacial melting claims. In Autumn, its environment minister Mr Jairam Ramesh said while glacial melting in the Himalayas was a real concern, there was evidence that some were actually advancing in the face of global warming.

Dr Pachauri had dismissed challenges like these as based on “voodoo science”, but last night Mr Ramesh effectively marginalised the IPC chairman even further.

He announced the Indian government will established a separate National Institute of Himalayan Glaciology to monitor the effects of climate change on the world’s ‘third ice cap’, and an ‘Indian IPCC’ to use ‘climate science’ to assess the impact of global warming throughout the country.

“There is a fine line between climate science and climate evangelism. I am for climate science. I think people misused [the] IPCC report, [the] IPCC doesn’t do the original research which is one of the weaknesses … they just take published literature and then they derive assessments, so we had goof-ups on Amazon forest, glaciers, snow peaks.

“I respect the IPCC but India is a very large country and cannot depend only on [the] IPCC and so we have launched the Indian Network on Comprehensive Climate Change Assessment (INCCA),” he said.

It will bring together 125 research institutions throughout India, work with international bodies and operate as a “sort of Indian IPCC,” he added.

The body, which he said will not be rival the UN’s panel, will publish its own climate assessment in November this year, with reports on the Himalayas, India’s long coastline, the Western Ghat highlands and the north-eastern region close to the borders with Bangladesh, Burma, China and Nepal. “Through these we will demonstrate our commitment to climate science,” he said.

The UN panel’s claims of glacial meltdown by 2035 “was clearly out of place and didn’t have any scientific basis,” he said, while stressing the government remained concerned about their health of the Himalayan ice flows. “Most glaciers are melting, they are retreating, some glaciers, like the Siachen glacier, are advancing. But overall one can say incontrovertibly that the debris on our glaciers is very high the snow balance is very low. We have to be very cautious because of the water security particularly in north India which depends on the health of the Himalayan glaciers,” he added.

The new National Institute of Himalayan Glaciology will be based in Dehradun, in Uttarakhand, and will monitor glacial changes and compare results with those from glaciers in Pakistan, Nepal and Bhutan.

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by | February 4, 2010

Obama Snubs Sarkozy and Merkel


What else would we expect from Barack O’Blunder? The man can barely form a cognitive sentence without reading it first from a teleprompter. Obama snubbing other world leaders is no big deal. Its probably for the best. Had Obama Showed up, he would have bowed to them, further embarrassing the United States. Ed.

PARIS (AP) – French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel brushed off President Barack Obama’s decision not to attend an annual summit with European leaders while stressing Thursday the importance of Russia as a European partner.

A U.S. State Department deputy briefing reporters made the announcement Monday that Obama would miss the EU-U.S. summit in May that will take place in Spain, which now holds the rotating EU presidency.

Since then, European media have been awash with commentary wondering what the White House’s snub means for Europe as it struggles to find a united voice in foreign affairs following the creation of the new posts of EU president and foreign minister.

“With the United States, I don’t understand the debate,” Sarkozy told a news conference with Merkel after a joint meeting of the entire French and German governments in Paris.

“Where is the drama? Is that our only problem in the world today?” he continued.

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero also expressed understanding Thursday for Obama’s decision, telling a meeting of the Atlantic Council in Washington that European leaders “do not think he has lost interest in the EU.”

Obama already had miffed Merkel by skipping the ceremonies marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in November, and she was more taciturn. She said that along with Sarkozy and other EU leaders, she would discuss the issue at an informal summit in Brussels next week.

Sarkozy indicated that Obama might choose to meet with European leaders in the fall when the U.S. president would be expected to attend the annual NATO leaders summit which this year is in Portugal—a combined solution the French leader said was a “rather good idea.”

“If the summit is in November instead of May, it truly doesn’t matter. My feeling is that there are too many summits. There are too many trips. There is too much time lost,” Sarkozy said.

Zapatero, who spoke briefly with Obama earlier Thursday echoed that idea, indicating the timing of the next summit would be based on “content” and not a specific date.

“We will be holding an EU-U.S. summit when the agenda so allows,” Zapatero said. “By that I do not mean dates, I mean the content.”

The U.S. leader traveled to Europe half a dozen times last year and met European leaders at other international venues, including at the United Nations.

Sarkozy and Merkel stressed the importance of their relationship with Russia. Both Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin are scheduled to visit France in coming months.

The French leader said that he wanted France and Germany to be in total harmony regarding relations with Russia, while Merkel said Russia’s relationship with Europe was a “central question.”

“We have to end the Cold War,” she said.

Sarkozy and Merkel were meeting for the first time with their entire governments since the German leader’s re-election. They outlined a roadmap for bilateral relations until 2020, aiming to strengthen their joint leadership role in Europe.

Most of the proposals concerned economy, education, climate change, civil affairs and immigration. The two countries pledged greater cooperation on Afghanistan, fighting nuclear proliferation and transatlantic security.

Concerning the biggest issue of the day, however, the fate of the financing of the A400M military transport plane that is over budget and behind schedule, both leaders said only that a solution would be found.

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