Subject:  Viridian Note 00009: The Science Press on Global Warming, 
Rewritten

Key concepts:  global warming, Intergovernmental Panel on 
Climate Change, Kyoto Protocol, United Nations Framework 
Convention on Climate Change, Viridian rhetoric

Attention Conservation Notice:  contains a violent 
partisan attack; is almost 1,600 words long

Sources: NATURE Vol. 395, 22 October 1998, page 741

Links:  www.nature.com
www.well.com/user/jonl/viridian/txt
(Viridian Notes 00001-00006)

In this Note, I am translating the "Commentary" article 
from Nature that was presented in Viridian Note 00008.
Instead of remaining a sniveling emanation  of obscurantist
climate bureaucrats, it will be re-presented to the public 
in a lucid, vigorous Viridianese.

   My rewrite appears in the customary (((triple 
parentheses))).

"Adapting to the Inevitable"

((("Our Timid Attempt To Avert Total Failure")))

"Greenhouse-gas emissions targets to be discussed in 
Buenos Aires next month will have little effect on the 
potential impacts of climate change.  We should be 
exploring ways of adapting to impacts, some of which are 
inevitable."

((("We'll be wasting everyone's time next month in Buenos 
Aires.  Instead of expecting us to carry out our duty and 
avert global climate disaster, you'd better rustle up some 
civil engineers and build a lot of dams.")))

     "In Kyoto last December, at the third conference of 
the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, 
targets were agreed for reduction in greenhouse-gas 
emissions.  On 2 November in Buenos Aires, negotiators 
will reconvene at the framework convention's fourth 
conference to agree the mechanisms and a timetable for 
implementation.  We shall be hearing a good deal about 
trading permits, compliance and enforcement in the weeks 
to come."

((("Believe it or not, we are every bit as bored by this 
legalistic nonsense as you are.  More so, because we have 
to help negotiate it, even though we know full well that 
it's a useless sham.")))    

"But in reality, the control of global warming achieved is 
very limited."

((("Luckily, 'reality' is poorly understood by people who 
don't read NATURE.  Otherwise we IPCC experts would be 
risking arrest for criminal negligence.")))

     "The Kyoto Protocol is an agreement to a 5.2 percent 
reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions by about 2010 
(relative to 1990), and constant emissions thereafter."  
((("In other words, we've somehow agreed that it makes 
sense to spew trash into the atmosphere at the levels of 
1988.  Every year from now on. Forever.")))

  "But these targets only relate to the so-called annex 1 
countries (38 industrialized nations).  These countries 
together account for about 57 percent of present global 
carbon emissions, but will produce only about 25 percent 
of the emissions growth over the next 20 years."

   ((("We live in a country that's Annex 1.  It makes 
political sense to get our beloved Albion off the hook by 
blaming all the new guys for our problem.  Note the slick 
way we conflate *actual emissions* with emission *growth 
rates.*  Scientific diplomacy never fudges -- see, it's 
all right there in the statistics.")))  

   "Most future growth in emissions is expected to occur 
in the fast-developing regions of Asia and Latin America, 
which are not signatories to the framework convention."

    ((("This just in!  Fantastic news!  Massive financial 
collapse in the formerly 'fast-developing regions' makes 
it mostly our responsibility after all!")))

    "As a consequence, the Kyoto target itself does 
relatively little to combat the rate of climate change.   
The warming expected by 2050, without any deliberate 
mitigation, is estimated by the Intergovernmental Panel on 
Climate Change (IPCC) at 1.4 degrees C with respect to the 
1961-90 average.  About 0.25 degrees C of this has already 
been realized by the 1990s."

   ((("Enjoying this year's droughts, storms and blazing 
rain forests?  We're less than one fifth of the way to the 
brave new world of 2050.")))

   "Our model prediction suggests that fully implemented 
Kyoto targets would reduce this global warming by 2050 by 
only about 0.05 degrees C.  Even more radical targets, 
such as a 20 percent reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions 
from annex 1 countries, would reduce it by only a further 
0.1 degrees C by 2050."  ((("The term 'radical' is best 
employed when discussing schemes for cutting CO2. 
Putting the planet at risk by  burning everything we can
get our hands on  -- well, that's just not 'radical.'")))

    "These minor reductions in the expected warming mean 
that the projected impacts of change are barely affected.  
The global number of people put at increased risk of 
hunger, water shortage or coastal flooding during storms 
as a result of projected climate changes is hardly touched 
by the targets under discussion in Buenos Aires, even if 
full implementation of the targets is agreed there."  
(...) 

    "The convention calls on signatories to take action to 
safeguard food security, ecosystems and sustainable 
development from dangerous levels of climate change.  But 
the current target does not do this.  This does not mean 
that we should despair, but it emphasizes two things."

((("Well, let us be a little clearer about that statement 
== yes, we ARE despairing.  Despite its colorless tone, 
this Commentary of ours is a blatant counsel of despair.  
The best scheme we could possibly negotiate will shelter 
you not at all.  Government has entirely failed this 
critical challenge.  International authority has failed.  
Science has failed.  Diplomacy has failed.  Everything has 
failed but the insupportable, unsustainable, lethally 
dangerous status quo.  We were all sitting there on the 
IPCC blue-ribbon panel, and we are boldly confessing to you 
right here in NATURE that we have failed you, and that we 
see no real way forward. If you expect anything better 
from us in Buenos Aires, you must not be listening. Kyoto 
is a fraud, a political fig-leaf.  It's precisely 0.05 
degrees C better than nothing at all.")))

    "First, Kyoto and Buenos Aires are only the first 
steps in a process that must involve much greater 
reduction in emissions and also, crucially, the 
participation of developing countries."  ((("If there's 
anything left of them by then.")))

  (...) "Second, mitigation by reducing greenhouse-gas 
emissions cannot be the entire response to the threat of 
climate change.  Given the long history of past emissions 
and the inertia of the climate system, we will experience 
a substantial amount of further climate change even if we 
make huge cuts."  ((("In other words, we're sunk already.  
We're gonna catch it big-time.  We'd have been better off 
if we'd turned over every country on Earth to hippie
fanatics back on Earth Day 1970. They probably would have 
made LSD mandatory, but at least they wouldn't have 
drowned London, San Francisco and Tokyo in pursuit of a 
fast buck.  One of their many Cassandra eco-assumptions 
is finally coming true.  It'll be as real as a baling-
bucket full of floodwater in your face.")))

    "We should, therefore, be thinking seriously about how 
we can best adapt to climate change."  ((("We treasure the 
illusion that other fields of human endeavor have more 
clout and competence than us meteorologists."))) (...)  

    "Adaptation has received very little attention  
compared with mitigation.  That may be partly because to 
admit the need to adapt sounds defeatist to negotiators,"

((("Do we have to SCREAM IT to you people?  We signed the 
IPCC report, we wrote it ourselves!  We're DEFEATED!  
We've accomplished nothing of substance!  The peace and 
happiness of billions are at stake, but we scientists are 
having about as much effect on the course of events as 
Einstein did at Chernobyl.  You're on your own, 
suckers.")))   (...) "and also because adaptation seems 
more complicated than mitigation (emission sources are 
relatively few, but the array of adaptations is vast)."  
((("For example, traffic laws are difficult to pass and 
enforce, but there are literally thousands of ingenious 
ways to pry the injured and dead out of flaming multi-
car pileups.")))  

    "Yet to ignore mitigation is both unrealistic and 
perilous."   ((("People will somehow be able to ignore 
blue skies that turn brown and gray, but their attention is 
sure to be keenly focussed on our well-meant civil-defence 
lectures.")))  

   (...)  "About 640 million people are at risk of hunger 
now.  Poverty is the root cause, but much of the year-to-
year variability is due to drought.  By droughtproofing 
those at risk now we could secure their present livelihood 
and reduce the impact of future climate change."  ((("More 
dams, that's the secret.  We'll gloss over the fact that 
curtailing water supplies means species extinctions at 
unheard-of levels.  When we think of those legions of 
little kids lined up with their penny jars hoping they'll 
still have  a panda -- well, maybe we can teach them that 
it was a clever tech-fix to concrete the Yangtse.")))  

    "There are many kinds of such 'win-win' solutions that 
serve both our present and future needs, such as 
increasing irrigation efficiency, breeding more drought-
resistant crops and developing buffer stocks of food."  
((("Get those civil contractors, xeno-biologists and 
genetic engineers on the job.  We climate types have shot 
our bolt.  We're next to useless.")))   (...)

     "There is a risk that negotiators have lost sight of 
the ultimate objective of the convention which is to avoid 
dangerous levels of climate change."  ((("As for us, we're 
even worse off -- we've lost sight of our reason to live.  
Luckily, it's not permitted to sob aloud in a scientific 
document.")))  "Current mitigation targets will not 
achieve this and should not be mistaken for effective 
climate management."  (("It's hard to mistake 'effective 
climate management' == because that's a chimera, a ludicrous 
neologism.  No group of  human beings has ever 'managed' the 
weather, and at the rate we're going, no one ever 
will.")))

Bruce Sterling (bruces@well.com)