Evidently our friends at the UN are holding a “Global Warming” summit in Copenhagen this week. Ok, that’s good. So, the wonderful folks in the media start an article on this event as:
The worst-case scenarios on climate change envisaged by the UN are already being realised, say scientists at an international meeting in Copenhagen.
OK – I think we know where this conference is going. Folks have their mind made up and all 2500 of them are just going to spend our money to rattle off our sound bites.
In a statement outlining their six key messages to political leaders, they say there is an increasing risk of abrupt or irreversible climate shifts.
Even modest temperatures rises will affect millions of people, particularly in the developing world, they warn.
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The meeting was also addressed by Lord Stern, the economist, whose landmark review of the economics of climate change published in 2006 highlighted the severe cost to the world of doing nothing.
He now says the report underestimated the scale of the risks, and the speed at which the planet is warming.
He urged scientists to speak out and tell the politicians what the world would be like if effective measures against global warming were not taken.
He said that if the world was to warm by 5C over the next century there would be dramatic consequences for millions of people. Rising seas would make many areas uninhabitable leading to mass migrations and inevitably sparking violent conflict.
“You’d see hundreds of millions people, probably billions of people who would have to move and we know that would cause conflict, so we would see a very extended period of conflict around the world, decades or centuries as hundreds of millions of people move, ” said Lord Stern.
“So I think it’s very important that we understand the magnitude of the risk we are running.”
So here’s the deal, in my simplified engineer’s mind. Climate change has been with this planet since it’s inception. It is incredibly arrogant of humans to believe that we are the cause of climate change. AND it is potentially disastrous for us to believe that we can change the cycle. The bulk of the scientific community is in a circular argument that is based completely on terrestrial events and approaches.
There really is not a damn thing we can do about extra terrestrial events (solar activity, etc) that could be a major cause of climate change. But if the cause is not human activity then why would we try and change human activity to solve the problem. Hence, the scientists tend to make the data say what they want it to say and they do not look at data that says, “Yo, the SUN has a major contributing factor here”.
Message 1:
- Don’t treat the symptom, find the cause and treat it. If not treatable, cope with the situation and implement gradual change.
In my professional life, Organizational Change Management is a key to success. I look at events like this climate conference and I see a disaster.
Message 2:
- Guys if you want to implement change come up with a realistic plan that takes measured steps that show verifiable improvement. Implement those steps, then communicate the results build enthusiasm by showing success. Getting on the grand political stage and calling a natural climate cycle a catastrophe is not a recipe for success.
Oh, by the way, what happened to that Ice Age that we were on the brink of in the 70’s. Did I fall asleep and miss something?
BBC article is here