As I mentioned in an earlier post, I had some interesting talks with US experts and journalists on a study tour to Hamburg and Copenhagen recently.
I put some of what I learned from them into a report.
There’s a short version on this week’s edition of Living Planet:
Sign of hope in US?
After the announcement that Yvo de Boer is resigning, it’s also been announced the next round of preparatory talks for the big Mexico summit at the end of the year have been brought forward to April. I’m not surprised they’re moving earlier, but it doesn’t make me feel any more optimistic.

Somehow I wasn’t really surprised to hear yesterday that Yvo de Boer, who has headed the UNFCCC, the climate secretariat, since 2006, was resigning as of July 1st.
I can remember interviewing him when he first came to Bonn and having the feeling this man was a professional eternal optimist and, of course, a born diplomat. The diplomacy stayed – most of the time – but the optimism couldn’t last. Although he’s too loyal to say it – I’m sure the collapse of the Copenhagen climate conference must have been the last straw after years (he worked on climate for the Dutch government and the EU beforehand) of struggling to bring about climate agreements in the face of all the international wrangling and power games.
You really can’t blame him for giving up and switching to private industry, although it will be hard to find a suitable successor at this critical time in the negotiations, with the next big conference in Mexico at the end of the year, the Kyoto Protocol running out in 2012 and the world wondering whether the UN is the right forum for the negotiations after the Copenhagen flop.
Yvo de Boer and his team were sidelined in the final phase of Copenhagen, while the USA and China fought out their battle for influence. The “Copenhagen Accord” is a toothless document that wasn’t accepted by everybody and binds nobody.
Of course the UN climate chief has to take some share of the blame for the Copenhagen fiasco. Preparing that conference was his job as well as the Danish government’s.
Nevertheless, it’s a shame to see him leave like this.
Remember the Bali conference 2 years ago, when de Boer left the room in tears at a point where it appeared the conference might fail? A lot of people thought that would be the end. But the conference achieved results after all and he carried on and was widely regarded as the “human face” of climate politics.
Now he’s finally had enough, and is leaving the UN climate ship in very troubled waters, with the economic crisis, Obama crippled by domestic problems and the Chinese determined to develop at all costs and reject any international control.
The chances of a binding post-Kyoto agreement being achieved or even set on the right track at the Mexico conference at the end of this year are slim. And time, the scientists tell us – and Yvo de Boer was convinced of it – is running out.

(Pictures taken in Hamburg last week)
With the snow still high and temperatures down to a chilly minus 15 (cold for these parts) again last night, I have been hearing a few of those comments about global cooling again over the past few days…
But Professor Hartmut Graßl from the Max Panck Institute for Meterology in Hamburg has been putting the story right in interviews with news agencies: It’s a long winter and a cold one, he says, but nothing out of the ordinary.In fact some northern parts of the globe are experiencing unusually mild temperatures.
And the long cold spell in our part of the world is definitely not a sign that global warming is not happening, he says, and refers to a study indicating the decade from 1997 to 2007 was the warmest decade ever.
The geese who live near my office hear in Bonn are still a bit sceptical. But if you look carefully, there is a bit of green coming through the melting snow..

A poll conducted recently for the BBC indicates that the number of people in the UK who are sceptical about science has risen. Of the 1,001 adults who were questioned, 25% said they did not think global warming was happening. BBC news says this shows an increase of 10% since a similar poll in November.
The percentage who accepted climate change as a reality apparently fell from 83% in November to 75% in the latest poll, and only 26% of those interviewed said they believed climate change was happening and “now established as largely man-made”.
The poll was conducted by Populus, the same group who carried out a similar poll for the Times paper in November 2009. At that time, 41% agreed climate change was happening and was largely the result of human activities, so that would appear to be a considerable drop.
Although these polls refer to the UK – home to the University of East Anglia, at the centre of the leaked emails controversy – I feel sure the trend will not be limited to that country.
Populus poll for bbc results
It appears to confirm my fear that the email scandal and the faults in IPCC reports have seriously damaged the credibility of climate science.
The failure of the Copenhagen summit after all the hype could also have made a lot of people doubt the seriousness and urgency of the climate change issue.

Apologies for blog-silence. I had a few days off thanks to the “Karneval” holidays in Germany, so I resisted the temptation to sit down and blog.I have been doing a lot of reading though, trying to get to the bottom – or at least fairly deep down into – the controversy over the IPCC figures, the emails leaked towards the end of last year etc. I have strong feelings about people illegally hacking into other people’s emails. However, I must admit to being very disturbed by what I have read recently about the background to this whole affair.
In a comment posted on the Ice Blog Victoria Quade says she thinks “the emphasis on exact figures is a distraction when talking about global warming.” She continues:
“The only thing we can say with certainty is there is sufficient evidence that industrialized society is having a detrimental effect on the environment, one of which appears to be global warming. For me this is enough of a reason to support efforts aimed at reducing human behaviour that contributes to global warming.”
Victoria, I agree with the spirit of what you say. Too much nit-picking about details is distracting and doesn’t change the general trend. There are too many people who will use this kind of thing as an excuse for not changing that behaviour contributing to global warming.
But at the moment I’m worried about the effect on the credibility of scientists. The IPCC reports are based on the “peer review” process, which should mean papers are reviewed anonymously and independently. If it is true that some influential scientists are blocking the publication of research which doesn’t fit in with theirs or the mainstream view, then we have a real problem.
I come back to the talk I had with Professor Adil Najam, IPCC lead author, a couple of weeks ago. He stresses that, unfortunately, because of the huge implications for human society, climate science is being argued out in detail in our “everyday” media, where in other branches of science, the experts will conduct their debates in scientific journals without being constantly in the spotlight. At the same time he says a lot of politicians “hide” behind this scientific to-ing and fro-ing, using it as an excuse for inaction.
Let me finish for today by directing your attention to an article by climate scientist Dave Stainforth from the
Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
Climate science in the spotlight – on GUARDIAN website
He says we have to distinguish between “school” science and “research” science, with the latter being constantly in progress.He says whatever the disputes over details and the impossibility of exactly how and to what extent climate change will affect particular regions at particular times, there should be no disputing the fact that greenhouse gas emissions are changing the climate and we would do well to do something about it.