Skeptics challenge Copenhagen global warming summit

08 December, 2009, 13:08

On the second day of the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen, a group of skeptics is meeting in the Danish capital to counterbalance the main event.

The group has laid down the gauntlet to the intergovernmental panel on climate change, saying that: if is the world is warming because of manmade factors, if the glaciers are melting and the sea level is going to rise – then prove it using the science you have come up with and we will counter it with our science.

The purpose of the forum is to reach a political agreement to cut global emissions on greenhouse gas by 2020. The major sticking point is the role poor countries will play and how they will purchase the new technologies needed to cut emissions.

There is still time to strike a deal, as the conference will last for another couple of weeks, but some are not in the Danish capital to support the deal.

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Professor Cliff Ollier, a Professor of Geology from the University of Western Australia who focuses on ice caps and glaciers, came to Copenhagen to have his say on the connection between glaciers and the rising sea level.

“The whole mechanism of glacial flow has nothing to do with the rising temperature or carbon dioxide,” says the professor.

Lord Christopher Monckton is yet another one of the skeptics. He has been talking to the delegates to think again about the facts surrounding climate change.

“What I am already doing is talking to individual delegations here in Copenhagen and saying to them: Look, whatever pressure you are under from your environmental groups and your younger people and your governments, pay heed to the science and not the propaganda, except that there is no climate problem caused by humankind and go home without any agreement,” stresses Monckton. “In particular, don’t you dare set up a world government or anything like it and don’t you dare to impose worldwide rationing and taxing in trading, because that would amount to the biggest tax in human history and we do not want that,” he says.

Earlier, RT spoke to one of the skeptics, Craig Rucker, from the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow.

He outlined the claims put forward by those who say global warming is a natural phenomenon, not caused by man.

“We are asking for a complete investigation into the Climategate issue,” Rucker said.

In the meantime, Stephan Singer, WWF energy programme leader, told RT only ignorant people question the conclusions reached by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which has recently been at the centre of the Climategate scandal.

“Scientists from the industrial side have agreed – and this was a consensus agreement – that action has to be taken immediately to curb emissions. Of course, there are a couple of skeptics and a couple of folk that still believe that the earth is flat," he said.

Meanwhile, the US Environmental Protection Agency has formally declared that greenhouse gases threaten public health.

The declaration allows it to regulate carbon emission gases without needing extra legislation from Congress – such as where President Obama's plans to fight global warming have stalled.

It boosts the prospects of delegates at the UN's climate conference in Copenhagen reaching an agreement to supplant the current Kyoto deal to curb carbon emissions, which expires in 2012.

While UN officials are optimistic about the summit, the critics there say they want more science – and less politics.

Still, on Monday the Saudi Arabian delegation referred to e-mails leaked from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, saying that episode has shaken trust in climate change science.

Global warming vs Cooling heads: 'Climategate' Crosstalk