Posted by
BLOGASSAULT on Tuesday, December 08, 2009 8:01:02 PM
Right out of the box the Saudi's question man-made global warming by bringing up
climategate at the climate summit in Copehagen..
I never would have thought that the Saudi Arabia would be my hero. Well, maybe not my hero, but at least they brought it up.
The "Climategate" row took centre stage on the opening day of the Copenhagen climate summit today as the world's leading oil exporter intervened to question the scientific consensus on man-made global warming.
As 15,000 delegates from 192 nations began what was billed as the "last, best chance" to avert a catastrophic rise in sea and air temperatures, Saudi Arabia's chief climate negotiator, Mohammed al-Sabban, spoke from the floor to say that e-mails hacked from a UK research centre had shaken trust in the work of scientists.
Al-Sabban also said:
"In light of recent information ... the scientific scandal has assumed huge proportion," he said. "We think it is definitely going to affect the nature of what can be trusted in the negotiations."
Good for them. But the IPCC started out the talks by stressing the fact that the emails were taken by an "illegal act".
Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Nobel prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said the hackers had been trying to undermine the work of his organisation.
But he said that the science as presented in the IPCC's last assessment report two years ago was clear and incontrovertible and covered water shortages and rising sea levels.
"Given the wide-ranging nature of change that is likely to be taken in hand, some naturally find it inconvenient to accept its inevitability," Dr Pachauri said.
"The recent incident of stealing the e-mails of scientists at the University of East Anglia shows that some would go to the extent of carrying out illegal acts, perhaps in an attempt to discredit the IPCC.
"But the panel has a record of transparent and objective assessment stretching over 21 years performed by tens of thousands of dedicated scientists from all corners of the globe."
Let's hope some determined countries and their negotiators keep the heat on. We need to get to the bottom of this before we start signing away what stability we have left of our economy's.