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AFL-CIO Unions in Poland for U.N. Climate Change Conference |
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Some 8,000 delegates and observers from around the world are gathered in Poznan, Poland, for the 12-day United Nations Climate Change Conference (UNCCC). This ministerial meeting will build upon the framework negotiated in Bali, Indonesia, a year ago. Of the nearly 100 union delegates, more than 20 are from North America, including Bob Baugh, executive director of the AFL-CIO Industrial Union Council and co-chair of the AFL-CIO Energy Task Force. Baugh sends us the first of a series of posts by members of the labor delegation.
The December 2007 climate change meeting in Bali marked the first time the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) achieved nongovernmental organization (NGO) status for the ongoing climate change negotiations.
With NGO status, ITUC representatives were recognized as official delegates and could participate directly in key working sessions of the conference. The Bali meetings helped put a negotiating framework in place for developing a new set of strategies to replace the current agreement on reducing global warming—known as the Kyoto Protocol—which expires in 2012. The target for achieving a new international agreement is 2009 in Copenhagen, Denmark.
This year, the U.S. union delegation will have a broad representation of AFL-CIO, affiliates: AFSCME, ATU, IUE-CWA, IAM, IBB, IBEW, USW, TWU, Utility Workers, UMWA and the Industrial Union Council.
The meeting in Poznan, set to run through Dec. 12, is the 14th meeting of the worldwide parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change since it was negotiated in 1992. Under the Kyoto Protocol, negotiated in 1997 as an amendment to the 1992 treaty, industrialized nations agreed to legally binding reductions in greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide. However, the United States has never ratified the Kyoto Protocol.
The Poznan meeting will focus on the tough issues shaped by the Bali framework agreement. These include emission-reduction targets, identifying the differentiated responsibilities of all nations, technology transfer, financing change, financial assistance for developing nations and green jobs.
The targets issue is a controversial one. The 2020 recommendations of the U.N. intergovernmental panel for carbon emission reductions by developed nations far exceed the standards suggested in the most recent U.S. legislation and are not seen as technically achievable. However, there is much agreement on what steps we should be taking to invest in renewable technologies, clean coal and energy-efficiency measures that create good jobs.
During the week, the U.S union delegation plans to meet with the U.S. congressional delegation and negotiators to learn about the state of negotiations and discuss our interest in job creation, industrial revitalization, border adjustment, investments in clean energy, transparency and workers’ rights.
We also will be participating in the ITUC task forces on deforestation, mitigation, just transition and more. The work groups will participate in specific ministry-related meetings prior to the general sessions. AFL-CIO delegates also will participate in a side event with the Environmental Defense Fund to present our new study, “Manufacturing Climate Solutions.”
There is a great deal of speculation and excitement about where the United States is headed under the Obama administration. With China newly installed as the No. 1 emitter of greenhouse gases and the United States now in second place, both nations are at the center of any accord. The role of the developing world is a new chapter for climate accords. The Kyoto Protocol had focused on developed nations to the exclusion of the developing world. That is no longer viewed as viable.
The challenge for the climate change negotiating process is to find a way forward with all nations moving together to make changes that are measurable and verifiable and that work for workers and their communities.
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With all those delegates I hope they can finally figure out there is nothing we can do about the cycles of the sun.
Oh, door, that’s a good one! you crack me up. I didn’t know you were a scientist too! wow. so, tell me about your extensive research into this theory about the sun you have. I’m dying to hear it, although most of my colleagues, who are also SCIENTISTS and who actually do the work that you aren’t apparently capable of understanding, wouldn’t bother giving you the time of day. But that’s okay, those hundreds of thousands of scientists are just involved in a giant conspiracy anyway - all that data, all that research, all those independent people coming to the same conclusions. yea, a conspiracy to get research money, that makes a lot more sense than actually examining the data.
How could little ol’ humans be responsible for anything that we do? I mean, its not like we’re responsible for the extinction of thousands of species of animals worldwide or anything, but I guess that was just natural selection. NO, humans don’t have that kind of influence over the natural world, not at all. It’s just the sun somehow adding tons more CO2 into the atmosphere in the last 150 years than ever before. Sure, I believe you. good theory…
okay, now to be serious. For anyone out there who still has doubts about global warming, let me explain something about the scientific method and how the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reaches its conclusions.
In order for a scientist to be taken seriously, he or she has to be published in scientific journals. Each paper that is published is reviewed through a process called “peer review” in which a panel of experts in that field give an impartial evaluation of the research (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer_review). If it doesn’t pass peer review, it isn’t published. Even if a paper is published, it does not automatically mean it is accepted by the scientific community. Other researchers may see the paper and dispute the results, the methods, or the interpretations and publish their own research that shows a different conclusion. This goes on over and over and over for years and years until the holes in the hypotheses are slowly filled or until the theories are thoroughly discredited or debunked. (The first studies showing evidence of global warming were published in the 1960s and by the late 80s, there were very few scientists still doubting it’s existence).
There are literally hundreds of thousands of scientists reviewing each others work all the time, and no, we don’t all know each other. And even if we did, the competition is so stiff that nobody gives anybody a “free pass”. You make your name by doing groundbreaking work and finding a new angle, or new approach, or new explanation. It’s a cutthroat discipline in many ways.
Now, it should be pretty obvious that the scientific process is a very CONSERVATIVE one. Not just any ol’ nutjob can claim some wild theory and be taken seriously. It takes years of hard, diligent work.
The IPCC consists of hundreds of scientists from around the world from hundreds of disciplines (see
http://www.ipcc.ch/about/index.htm). For any conclusions, or results, to be reported by the IPCC there has to be overwhelming consensus of all the scientists involved. Can you imagine how hard that is? Now, before that report can go public, every country (that means political operatives and administrations) in the IPCC has to agree on EVERY SINGLE CONCLUSION in the report, which is why countries like the US and China are able to hold up the entire process in order to take out or water down conclusions that are not politically palatable.
So, since the only results that are presented are those that EVERYONE can agree on, those conclusions and predictions about global warming are the most CONSERVATIVE estimates out there. In other words, when these scientists say that we are going to see a 2-3 degree Celsius rise in temperature, there is a LOT of evidence that it in fact will be quite a bit more. There are just too many scientists (or countries) holding out still to say it will be higher. But you can bet that there is next to know chance that temperature rise will be less. It is for this reason that when you look at all four IPCC reports, starting with the first one in 1990, you see that most predictions get progressively worse because each year more and more research comes out reinforcing the earlier, less confident predictions.
Folks, as a researcher of the impacts of global warming, let me tell you that it is by far worse than anything you are being told through the regular media, or the IPCC reports. People who are still skeptics are no different than those who thought the world was flat or that the Sun revolved around the Earth.
Its past time to stop “debating” and start DOING.
So what your saying is the sun’s cycles have no effect on our solar system? You are also saying that there is no truth to the evidence that the planet has been cooling for the last 9 years or so and the polar ice cap has been growing, OK.
Geologist Jim Berkland was suspended from a California Government Geology Job when he made a prediction that a major quake would occur during the 1989 World Series in the Oakland Bay Area. It hit and the government told him to not make any more predictions. Now that he is retired, he publicly states quake windows. Mr. Berkland uses tidal flooding tables based upon Lunar Perigee (time when the moon is closest to earth to affect more gravitational pull on the earth). I suppose the moon as well as the sun have little influence on our planet.
I am not a scientist but I did sleep at Holiday Inn Express last night