Mixed media: Climate change already too late?

DIRE WARNINGS BUSINESS NEWSPAPER: Scientists said technology alone could not solve the problem. "We do not have time to wait for new technologies. We need to act now," said Peter Challenor of the Southampton Oceanography Centre.

In the end, participants could agree with Bush on only one point: that business had a central role to play. "The business community is what is going to push this [Bush] administration or the next one into international action, because it will make sense for them to do so [or be overtaken technologically by industries in nations that are limiting carbon use]," argued Stephen Schneider of Stanford University in the US.

* Financial Times, London

ECOLOGY WEBSITE: A new report suggests that computer models can now calculate specifically how much the risk of events such as the deadly European heatwave of 2003 has been elevated by global warming.

This data could potentially be used by victims of extreme weather events to sue global warming polluters for their role in causing these events. No such suits have been filed yet, but the study raises the question of whether prudent companies shouldn't act now to reduce their exposure to global warming liability.

* Michael (link below)

AMERICAN BLOGGER: The current global-warming problem is an artefact of technology (though not of the newest technology), which has not only made carbon the basis of most of our energy but has contributed to a great increase in the number and wealth of people, and hence to a great increase in the demand for energy. But technology may bail us out, either by developing feasible, economical substitutes for carbon-based energy sources or by advances in nanotechnology (molecular-scale engineering), creating carbon-dioxide devouring nanomachines to cleanse carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Unfortunately, as is so generally the case, technology has a downside; for example, concern has been expressed that the weaponisation of nanotechnology could further destabilise the geopolitical system, and even that nanomachines might accidentally be created that were incredibly voracious self-replicators - superweeds that might devour all organic matter on the planet.

* Visit American blogger's website below

AUSTRALIAN WEBSITE: We cannot escape two conclusions about global climate change. First, very large numbers of scientists do consider that warming has occurred in the last few decades, that it is global in extent and rapid, is likely to continue and is caused mainly by human activity. Attempts to show that locally there were warmer periods 100 or 500 years ago somewhere or other are not evidence that recent warming has not occurred. Propositions that other factors such as sunspot activity can explain global warming have been traversed in the last 10 years and discounted. The sceptics' theory that climate feedbacks will eliminate any CO2 warming effect has not been substantiated by either observations or modelling.

* Australian online opinion

SCARE STORY BRITISH SCEPTICISM: The eco-doomsters are currently having a grand time, following the publication of a report insisting that global temperatures must not rise by more than a few degrees, and a computer simulation published in the journal Nature reportedly "predicting" temperature rises five times greater than this. In fact, the Nature paper did no such thing. Rather, it reported the outcome of an ingenious method for finding out just how sensitive computer climate models are to the assumptions built into them.The fact is that no one knows with any certainty what global warming will do.

* Robert Matthews in the Sunday Telegraph

FALSE BLAME: A meeting, organised by the lobby group the Scientific Alliance, was billed by organisers as "a valuable opportunity for debate on a topic frequently obscured by angst and alarmism". Climate change, they said, was a topic "that has been subject to widespread misrepresentation and politicisation".

One speaker, Dr Benny Peiser, a social anthropologist at Liverpool John Moores University, said catastrophic climate change was falsely blamed for everything from the fall of the Mayan civilisation to extreme weather events such as the 2003 summer heatwave. "It's important for people to know there are eminent scientists who don't share this viewpoint," he said. Famine, war and disease were bigger threats to civilisation.

* The Guardian, London

WELSH BUSINESS VIEW: Politicians acknowledge the importance of changing consumer behaviour but few have a convincing agenda or the courage to do so. Business is responsible for the innovative policy ideas that have a chance of helping solve the problem. Everybody agrees that it is technology that will reduce dependence on fossil fuels and it is business that is leading the way on bringing these to market.

It is vital that politicians at all levels of government counter attempts by environmentalists to scapegoat business by highlighting company contributions to resolving environmental problems.

* Welsh Business Review