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Kyoto Gets a Slap in the Face From Canada    [

    Climate Scientist Says "Kyoto" Barred
    By Jim Erickson
    The Rocky Mountain News

    Monday 11 December 2006

Investigators eye censorship claims about White House.

    A federal climate scientist in Boulder says his boss told him never to utter the word Kyoto and tried to bar him from using the phrase climate change at a conference.

    The allegations come as federal investigators probe whether Bush administration officials tried to block government scientists from speaking freely about global warming and attempted to censor their research.

    The Kyoto Protocol is an international agreement - never ratified by the United States and opposed by the Bush administration - that requires nations to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for global warming.

    Pieter Tans, a senior scientist at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Boulder laboratory, said the ban on using the word Kyoto was issued about four years ago.

    "We were under instructions not to use the word Kyoto, which of course is absurd," said Tans, who measures levels of carbon dioxide at NOAA's Global Monitoring Division. He has worked for the agency since 1990.

    Tans said the order was issued verbally by his boss, David Hofmann, the division director. Another senior researcher at the Boulder laboratory, NOAA physicist James Elkins, said Hofmann told him the same thing.

    Elkins studies greenhouse gases and has worked at NOAA for more than 20 years. He said he can't remember when the directive was issued, but it was "probably in 2000 or 2001."

    "When I asked why we weren't supposed to use Kyoto, I was told that we're not supposed to use it in the policy context," Elkins said. "I'm not supposed to be talking about policy."

    Hofmann, however, called the allegations "nonsense" and said there was no ban on using the word Kyoto.

    "I never said it specifically in those words," Hofmann said. "I probably said that since the Kyoto Protocol is not ratified - is not part of the U.S. program - stay away from talking about Kyoto when you give a presentation."

    "It has nothing to do with the science we're doing here," Hofmann said of Kyoto.

    The Kyoto Protocol was negotiated in Kyoto, Japan, in December 1997 and went into effect in February 2005, following ratification by Russia.

    Elkins said the prohibition against using the word was lifted after Russia ratified the protocol.

    "Once Russia signed Kyoto, it was a done deal," he said.

    Last month, Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., announced that inspectors general from NASA and the Commerce Department - NOAA's parent agency - had launched "coordinated, sweeping investigations of the Bush administration's censorship and suppression" of federal research into global warming.

    Auditors from the inspector general's office at Commerce have been interviewing NOAA employees, agency spokesman Jordan St. John said Thursday. At the same time the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, is conducting a separate review, St. John said.

    Tans said he welcomes the investigations.

    "I tell the truth," he said. "Whatever the consequences are, I will tell them (investigators) what my experiences have been. Period. Whether anyone likes it or not, I don't care.

    "There is suspicion at the moment," Tans said. "And that detracts from my credibility as a scientist because people might now think, well, can we trust this guy or is he just saying things that are officially approved?"

    Tans stressed that no one has ever tried to alter or suppress his research results. But besides the use of the word Kyoto, there was a second incident with Hofmann, he said. It occurred in late 2005, while Tans was organizing the Seventh International Carbon Dioxide Conference in Broomfield.

    Hofmann called Tans into his office before the September conference and told him the words climate change could not appear in the titles of any of the presentations, Tans said. The incident was reported by The Washington Post in April.

    Carbon dioxide is produced by the combustion of fossil fuels and has been linked to human-caused climate change.

    Hofmann said Tans misinterpreted what he said.

    The words climate change were not barred from presentation titles, Hofmann said. But the focus of the conference was global carbon dioxide measurements, not climate change.

    Hofmann said he told Tans that the presentations should stick to that topic and that organizers should "not let the conference get involved with climate change and so on."

    But Tans said it makes no sense to bring together the world's leading experts on carbon dioxide measurements, then refrain from discussing the link between the greenhouse-gas buildup and climate change. Tans said he ignored Hofmann's instruction and included presentations with titles that contained the words climate change.

    A schedule posted at the conference Web site shows that the presentations included one by D.G. Victor entitled Climate Change: Designing an Effective Response.

    "If we as scientists neglect, systematically neglect, to mention in public that there is a link between our emissions and potential climate change, I think we are really depriving the public of essential information," Tans said.

    "I am a public servant," he said. "I have to say it. If not, I am irresponsible."

    In February, congressional leaders asked NASA to guarantee its scientific openness. They complained that an agency public affairs officer changed or filtered information about global warming and tried to limit reporters' access to James Hansen, a prominent NASA climate scientist.

    The public affairs officer, George Deutsch, resigned.

    Hansen said his NOAA colleagues were experiencing even more severe censorship.

    "It seems more like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union than the United States," he told a New School University audience in New York, according to The Washington Post.

    In response, NOAA Administrator Conrad C. Lautenbacher Jr. sent an agency-wide e-mail to employees stating, in part, "I encourage our scientists to speak freely and openly."

    Tans said those words don't square with Hofmann's actions. But Tans blames the Bush administration, not local NOAA officials.

    "They don't want to hear what the reality is about climate change," Tans said of administration officials. "They only want to hear what they want to hear."

    In September, the journal Nature said that NOAA officials on the East Coast blocked the release of a fact sheet that discussed purported links between global warming and stronger hurricanes. NOAA denied the allegation.

    That prompted New Jersey's Lautenberg and 13 other Democratic senators to request that the inspectors general from the Commerce Department and NASA take a look.

    Hofmann said that he and other NOAA division directors were asked last month to provide the inspector general's office with information about the agency's news media policy, climate-related news releases, and the allegedly suppressed hurricane fact sheet.

    "It was basically information related to NOAA's policies or procedures related to media issues, whether there were any difficulties with doing press releases on certain subjects," Hofmann said. "And quite a few requests for information on the hurricane fact sheet."

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    The Associated Press contributed to this report.

 

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    Go to Original

    Kyoto Gets a Slap in the Face From Canada
    By Stephen Leahy
    Tierram rica

    Monday 11 December 2006

    Toronto - Much to the surprise of most Canadians and the world community, Canada is reneging on its international commitments under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which could weaken an international agreement to fight climate change after Kyoto expires in 2012.

    Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, elected early this year, and the new environment minister, Rona Ambrose, have dismissed Canada's Kyoto commitments for reducing greenhouse gases as impossible to achieve.

    They have also cancelled a five-million-dollar pledge to help least developed countries adapt to the impacts of climate change and have withdrawn Canada's participation and funding of the Kyoto Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).

    "That's totally irresponsible ... It's a slap in the face to the people of small island states and Inuit people of the North," said Enele Sopoaga, permanent representative of Tuvalu to the United Nations. His small island country in the South Pacific is experiencing flooding due to rising sea levels.

    "I am extremely frustrated by the double standards of industrialised nations. Canada criticises other countries about their human rights policies or about the death penalty while they are playing with the lives of island people and the Inuit," Sopoaga said in a Tierram rica interview.

    In an unusual move, Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme chastised Canada in the news media.

    Appealing to the Canadian business sector, Steiner said that backing away from Kyoto would harm the country's economy, and business would be left out of the international greenhouse gas emissions trading system that may be worth 100 billion dollars by 2016.

    Ironically, Canada had been a champion of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change to reduce emissions that contribute to the atmospheric greenhouse effect. Under Kyoto, 35 industrialised nations, including Canada, are obligated to reduce their emissions by 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-2012.

    But Canada's emissions have risen 30 percent since 1990, mainly due to a booming oil and natural gas sector. By comparison, U.S. emissions rose 16 percent in the same period.

    At the recent XII UN Conference on Climate Change, in Nairobi, Environment Minister Rona Ambrose publicly blamed the previous Canadian government for inaction on the matter.

    Ambrose was widely criticised for that statement. Sopoaga says such attitudes undermine the basis for international cooperation: "You can't have a group of cowards come into power and say we're not going to keep international commitments made by a previous government."

    Canadians widely support the Kyoto Protocol and want action on climate change. A public opinion poll taken Nov. 10-16 by Ipsos Reid found that Canadians place climate change as a top issue of concern, more important than jobs, the economy or healthcare.

    "The climate change issue could bring down the government, (which) is not listening to the people," Johanna Whitmore, of the Pembina Institute, a Canadian environmental group, told Tierram rica.

    In fact, most Canadians did not vote for Harper. Canada's multi-party system allowed the Conservative Party to win with just 36 percent of the popular vote. As a result, the Harper administration needs the cooperation of at least one other party to stay in power.

    Canada's oil, coal and gas sector is making the country rich. That sector is responsible for much of the increase in emissions, and the previous and current governments are reluctant to do anything that might slow the energy boom.

    As an alternative to Kyoto, the Harper government's "Made-in-Canada climate plan", announced last month, set a goal of cutting emissions of greenhouse gases 45 to 65 percent below 2003 levels by 2050. Such a long-term goal allows the current government to postpone action on climate change indefinitely, says Whitmore.

    Unfortunately the Kyoto agreement doesn't have any financial penalties for failing to meet the emissions reduction target. All that happens is that countries have to make up for their shortfall plus an additional 1.3 percent penalty in the next reduction commitment period of 2013 to 2018.

    In fact, the Harper government has cut funding for environmental programmes designed to reduce Canada's greenhouse gas emissions.

    "By its actions, Canada's government shows that it doesn't think climate change is a real issue," Whitmore said.

    Canada's Inuit people, who live in the far north and Arctic areas, know it's a real issue.

    "We see signs every day up here. It's quite obvious," said Duane Smith, president of the Inuit Circumpolar Council - Canada, from Inuvik, a small town 200 km north of the Arctic Circle.

    "Winter starts later and leaves sooner, there are changes in the sea and river ice, we get more snow - and it's affecting all the wildlife," Smith told Tierram rica.

    Scientists have also documented a wide range of changes due to climate change. Neither Harper nor Ambrose have visited Canada's far north to see the impacts first hand, according to Smith.

    "I believe very strongly that Canadians want more aggressive action on the issue," he added.

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    Stephen Leahy is an IPS correspondent. Originally published December 1 by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierram rica network. Tierram rica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Environment Programme.