The world leaders who met at the United Nations to discuss climate change on Tuesday are faced with an intricate challenge: building momentum for an international climate treaty at a time when global temperatures have been relatively stable for a decade and may even drop in the next few years.
The plateau in temperatures has been seized upon by skeptics as evidence that the threat of global warming is overblown. And some climate experts worry that it could hamper treaty negotiations and slow the progress of legislation to curb carbon dioxide emissions in the United States.
Scientists say the pattern of the last decade — after a precipitous rise in average global temperatures in the 1990s — is a result of cyclical variations in ocean conditions and has no bearing on the long-term warming effects of greenhouse gases building up in the atmosphere.
But trying to communicate such scientific nuances to the public — and to policy makers — can be frustrating, they say.
Mojib Latif, a prize-winning climate and ocean scientist from the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at the University of Kiel, in Germany, wrote a paper last year positing that cyclical shifts in the oceans were aligning in a way that could keep temperatures over the next decade or so relatively stable, even as the heat-trapping gases linked to global warming continued to increase.
But Dr. Latif, who gives about 200 talks to the public, business leaders and officials each year, said he had been met with confusion and even anger when he tried to describe this normal variation in climate while at the same time conveying the long-term threat of global warming.
“People understand what I’m saying, but then basically wind up saying, ‘We don’t believe anything,’ ” he said in a telephone interview.
Other climate researchers dispute Dr. Latif’s forecast, saying that climate cannot be reliably predicted on such a short time scale, though even they agree that sooner or later, cool stretches are inevitable.
Underscoring just how little clarity there is on short-term temperature fluctuations, researchers from Britain’s climate change office, in a paper published in August, projected “an end to this period of relative stability,” with half the years between now and 2015 exceeding the record-setting global temperatures of 1998.
Whatever the next decade may hold, critics of global warming have lost no time in using the current temperature plateau to build their case.
“I think it supports the arguments of those who’ve said, ‘What’s the rush for policy on this issue?’ ” said Patrick J. Michaels, a climatologist affiliated with George Mason University and the Cato Institute, a group opposing most regulatory solutions to environmental problems.
The recent stability of global temperatures makes regular appearances in blog postings disputing the reality of global warming and is frequently invoked by pundits who oppose the climate bill that passed the House this year and is pending in the Senate.
Advocates of such regulatory measures are equally vehement. In a post last week on his blog, Climate Progress, Joseph Romm, a physicist and energy expert affiliated with the liberal Center for American Progress, wrote that statements by climate skeptics about planetary cooling were “nonsense.”
“We need all the unmuffled warnings we can get given that humans are not like slowly boiling frogs, we are like slowly boiling brainless frogs,” he wrote.
The recent spate of years with stable temperatures is particularly noticeable because it followed a seesawing from unusually cool temperatures to unusually hot ones in the 1990s, said Vicky Pope of Britain’s climate agency, called the Met Office.
The 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines had a cooling influence, as the volcano threw off veil-like emissions. Then, in 1998, an El Niño episode in the Pacific Ocean set off a record-setting hot spell.
The global average temperature is now only 0.13 degree Fahrenheit higher than it was in 1999, according to the British meteorology office.
A series of unremarkable storm seasons followed the string of destructive storms in 2004 and 2005 that included Hurricane Katrina. And in the Arctic, an extraordinary summer retreat of sea ice in 2007 has been followed by less substantial losses and projections by some researchers of a possible, if temporary, recovery.
Most climate scientists stand firm in their projections of centuries of rising seas and other disruptive effects of a warming planet if humans take no steps to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases.
In an address to world leaders at the climate summit meeting on Tuesday, Rajendra K. Pachauri, the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which has advised the world’s nations on climate issues for 20 years, described the mounting risk and said, “Science leaves us no space for inaction now.”
A clearer view of whether the recent temperature plateau undermines arguments for dangerous climate change in the long run should come in a few years, as the predictions made by the British climate researchers are tested. Their paper appeared in a supplement to an August issue of The Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.
While the authors concluded that there was a 1 in 8 chance of having a decade-long pause in warming like the current plateau, even with rising concentrations of greenhouse gases, the odds of a 15-year pause, they wrote, are only 5 in 100. As a result, the next few years of observations could tip the balance toward further concern or greater optimism.
Meanwhile, social scientists who study the way people understand and respond to environmental problems say it is not surprising that the current temperature stability has created confusion and apathy.
Getting people to care about a climate threat that is decades away is hard enough, they say, without adding in the vagaries of natural climate cycles.
At best, said Robert J. Brulle, a sociologist at Drexel University, global warming remains an abstraction for many people.
“It does not have the direct visual or emotive impact of seeing seabirds covered in oil from the Exxon Valdez oil spill,” he said.
WASHINGTON --
Americans seem to be cooling toward global warming. Just 57 percent think there is solid evidence the world is getting warmer, down 20 points in just three years, a new poll says. And the share of people who believe pollution caused by humans is causing temperatures to rise has also taken a dip, even as the U.S. and world forums gear up for possible action against climate change.
In a poll of 1,500 adults by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, released Thursday, the number of people saying there is strong scientific evidence that the Earth has gotten warmer over the past few decades is down from 71 percent in April of last year and from 77 percent when Pew started asking the question in 2006. The number of people who see the situation as a serious problem also has declined.
The steepest drop has occurred during the past year, as Congress and the Obama administration have taken steps to control heat-trapping emissions for the first time and international negotiations for a new treaty to slow global warming have been under way. At the same time, there has been mounting scientific evidence of climate change - from melting ice caps to the world's oceans hitting the highest monthly recorded temperatures this summer.
The poll was released a day after 18 scientific organizations wrote Congress to reaffirm the consensus behind global warming. A federal government report Thursday found that global warming is upsetting the Arctic's thermostat.
Only about a third, or 36 percent of the respondents, feel that human activities - such as pollution from power plants, factories and automobiles - are behind a temperature increase. That's down from 47 percent from 2006 through last year's poll.
"The priority that people give to pollution and environmental concerns and a whole host of other issues is down because of the economy and because of the focus on other things," suggested Andrew Kohut, the director of the research center, which conducted the poll from Sept. 30 to Oct. 4. "When the focus is on other things, people forget and see these issues as less grave."
Andrew Weaver, a professor of climate analysis at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, said politics could be drowning out scientific awareness.
"It's a combination of poor communication by scientists, a lousy summer in the Eastern United States, people mixing up weather and climate and a full-court press by public relations firms and lobby groups trying to instill a sense of uncertainty and confusion in the public," he said.
Political breakdowns in the survey underscore how tough it could be to enact a law limiting pollution emissions blamed for warming. While three-quarters of Democrats believe the evidence of a warming planet is solid, and nearly half believe the problem is serious, far fewer conservative and moderate Democrats see the problem as grave. Fifty-seven percent of Republicans say there is no solid evidence of global warming, up from 31 percent in early 2007.
Though there are exceptions, the vast majority of scientists agree that global warming is occurring and that the primary cause is a buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels, such as oil and coal.
Jane Lubchenco, head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told a business group meeting at the White House Thursday: "The science is pretty clear that the climate challenge before us is very real. We're already seeing impacts of climate change in our own backyards."
Despite misgivings about the science, half the respondents still say they support limits on greenhouse gases, even if they could lead to higher energy prices. And a majority - 56 percent - feel the United States should join other countries in setting standards to address global climate change.
But many of the supporters of reducing pollution have heard little to nothing about cap-and-trade, the main mechanism for reducing greenhouse gases favored by the White House and central to legislation passed by the House and a bill the Senate will take up next week.
Under cap-and-trade, a price is put on each ton of pollution, and businesses can buy and sell permits to meet emissions limits.
"Perhaps the most interesting finding in this poll ... is that the more Americans learn about cap-and-trade, the more they oppose cap-and-trade," said Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., who opposes the Senate bill and has questioned global warming science.
Regional as well as political differences were detected in the polling.
People living in the Midwest and mountainous areas of the West are far less likely to view global warming as a serious problem and to support limits on greenhouse gases than those in the Northeast and on the West Coast. Both the House and Senate bills have been drafted by Democratic lawmakers from Massachusetts and California.
One of those lawmakers, Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, told reporters Thursday that she was happy with the results, given the interests and industry groups fighting the bill.
"Today, to get 57 percent saying that the climate is warming is good, because today everybody is grumpy about everything," Boxer said. "Science will win the day in America. Science always wins the day."
Earlier polls, from different organizations, have not detected a growing skepticism about the science behind global warming.
Since 1997, the percentage of Americans that believe the Earth is heating up has remained constant - at around 80 percent - in polling done by Jon Krosnick of Stanford University. Krosnick, who has been conducting surveys on attitudes about global warming since 1993, was surprised by the Pew results.
He described the decline in the Pew results as "implausible," saying there is nothing that could have caused it.
Associated Press Writers Seth Borenstein and Kevin Freking contributed to this report.
By David Dizon, abs-cbnNEWS.com | 06/17/2009 11:15 AM
The US State Department on Wednesday placed the Philippines in its watchlist of countries suspected of not doing enough to combat human trafficking.
The State Department's annual "Trafficking in Persons Report," the first released since US President Barack Obama took office, said the Philippines is a "source, transit and destination country for men, women and children trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation and forced labor."
It said a significant number of Filipino men and women who migrate abroad for work are subjected to conditions of involuntary servitude in places such as Bahrain, Brunei, Canada, Cote d’Ivoire, Cyprus, Hong Kong, Japan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Malaysia, Palau, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, Taiwan, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.
"Filipinas are also trafficked abroad for commercial sexual exploitation, primarily to Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, and countries in Africa, the Middle East, and Western Europe," the report said.
The US State Department said the Philippines was placed on the Tier 2 watchlist this year for failing to "show evidence of progress in convicting trafficking offenders, particularly those responsible for labor trafficking." The Philippines was previously ranked Tier 2 for the years 2006 to 2008.
"Although there was an increase in the number of trafficking cases filed in court, only four trafficking convictions were obtained under the 2003 anti-trafficking law during the reporting period, and there were no reported labor trafficking convictions, despite widespread reports of Filipinos trafficked for forced labor within the country and abroad," the report said.
It also noted the low number of convictions of sex trafficking offenders in the Philippines "given the significant scope and magnitude of sex trafficking within the country and to destinations abroad."
Inclusion on the watchlist for two consecutive years means that the country can be subject to US sanctions including a ban on non-humanitarian and trade-related aid.
US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the global financial crisis has increased the worldwide trade in trafficked persons with at least 12.3 million adults and children falling victim to forced and bonded labor and sex slavery each year.
"This is modern slavery, a crime that spans the globe, providing ruthless employers with an endless supply of people to abuse for financial gain. Human trafficking is a crime with many victims: not only those who are trafficked, but also the families they leave behind, some of whom never see their loved ones again," Clinton remarked during the release of the report.
Weak justice system, corruption
The report, meanwhile, said an inefficient judicial system and endemic corruption is hampering the Philippine government's campaign against human trafficking.
"Despite a 2005 Department of Justice circular instructing that all trafficking cases receive preferential attention, trials often take years to conclude because of a lack of judges and courtrooms, high judge turnover, and non-continuous trials, which cause some victims to withdraw their testimony. A high vacancy rate among judges significantly slowed trial times further," the report said.
In 2008, the Philippine Overseas Employment Agency (POEA) filed 318 administrative cases against licensed labor recruiters who used fraudulent and deceptive offers to entice job seekers abroad or imposed inappropriately high or illegal fees on prospective employees. Of the 318, only seven received convictions under the illegal recruitment law in 2008.
The report said corruption among law enforcement agents "remained pervasive, and some law enforcement and immigration officers were complicit in trafficking and permitted organized crime groups involved in trafficking to conduct their illegal activities."
It said that during the reporting period, there were even reports of immigration officials being involved in the trafficking of Filipinos overseas.
It noted that in September 2008, an immigration officer was apprehended for her alleged role in aiding the trafficking of 17 Mindanao children to Syria and Jordan "but charges against her were dropped due to insufficient evidence."
One case, involving a police officer charged with allegedly trafficking minors for commercial sexual exploitation at his night club in Manila, remained pending four years after the charges against the police officer were filed.
The US State Department recommended several steps to boost the Philippine government efforts to fight human trafficking, namely:
- Significantly improve efforts to prosecute, convict, and punish trafficking offenders, including officials complicit in trafficking;
- Dedicate more resources to efforts to prosecute trafficking cases;
- Assess methods to measure and address domestic labor trafficking;
- Implement antitrafficking awareness campaigns directed at domestic and foreign clients of the sex trade in the Philippines;
- Dedicate increased funding for the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking (IACAT) and improve anti-trafficking coordination between government agencies;
- Disseminate information on the 2003 law throughout the country; and
- Train law enforcement officers and prosecutors on the use of the 2003 law.
| US downgrades RP efforts to fight human trafficking By Jose Katigbak (The Philippine Star) Updated June 18, 2009 12:00 AM |
WASHINGTON – The US State Department has downgraded the Philippines from a list of nations making significant efforts to combat human trafficking to a watch list of problem nations.
After three years of being ranked in a “tier 2” category of countries making significant efforts to fully comply with minimum standards to fight trafficking, the Philippines was dropped to the “tier 2 watch list” because it did not show evidence of progress in convicting trafficking offenders, particularly those responsible for labor trafficking.
The State Department said countries on the “tier 2 watch list” for two consecutive years, beginning with the 2009 Trafficking in Persons report, would be demoted to the “tier 3“ category and could be barred from receiving non-humanitarian, non-trade-related foreign assistance unless the US President waives application of this provision.
A significant number of Filipinos who migrate abroad for work are subjected to conditions of involuntary servitude in Bahrain, Brunei, Canada, Cote d’Ivoire, Cyprus, Hong Kong, Japan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Malaysia, Palau, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, Taiwan, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates, the State Department report released on Tuesday said.
Filipinas are also trafficked abroad for commercial sexual exploitation, primarily to Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, and countries in Africa, the Middle East, and Western Europe, the report added.
The Philippines is one of the world’s biggest labor exporters. Last year about 11 million overseas Filipinos worldwide sent home more than $16 billion in remittances.
The State Department report covering 175 countries over a one-year period from April 2008 to March 2009 is the most comprehensive worldwide report on efforts of governments to combat human trafficking. Its findings are aimed at spurring countries to take effective action to defeat the scourge.
The report noted an increase in the number of trafficking cases filed in courts in the Philippines but said only 12 people have been convicted of trafficking – all for sex trafficking offenses – since the passage of the country’s 2003 anti-trafficking law which criminally prohibits trafficking for both sexual and labor exploitation.
The number of convictions for sex trafficking offenders is low given the significant scope and magnitude of sex trafficking within the country and to destinations abroad, the report said.
It said only four trafficking convictions were obtained during the latest reporting period and there were no reported labor trafficking convictions, despite widespread reports of Filipinos trafficked for forced labor within the country and abroad.
Of the four individuals in three cases of sex trafficking convicted, one was sentenced to life imprisonment and the remaining three were sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment, in addition to fines and damages.
Philippine law enforcement agencies reported 168 alleged trafficking cases to the Department of Justice in 2008, the report said, and prosecutors initiated prosecutions in 97 of the cases, an increase of more than 60 percent over the previous year.
The remaining cases remain under preliminary investigation or were dismissed for lack of evidence or witnesses, or on other grounds.
If the Philippines is to make more progress towards compliance with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking, it has to achieve more tangible results in convicting trafficking offenders and in investigating and prosecuting officials complicit in trafficking, the report said.
In the new listing, 28 countries whose governments fully comply with international efforts to fight human trafficking are classified under “tier 1.” They include Britain, Australia and New Zealand.
Seventy-six countries are listed in “tier 2” including ASEAN members Brunei, Indonesia, Laos, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
With the Philippines in the “tier 2 watch list” category are 51 other countries, including Cambodia.
In “tier 3” are 17 countries whose governments do not make any significant attempts to fight human trafficking, including the remaining ASEAN members Malaysia and Myanmar.
Palace reaction
Palace deputy spokesperson Lorelei Fajardo said steps have been taken by the government to address the problem.
“The Philippine government recognizes that human trafficking is a problem that befalls developing countries the most,” she said.
“It is with this belief that the government created the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking (IACAT) to coordinate and monitor the implementation of Republic Act 9208, otherwise known as the Anti-Trafficking on Persons Act of 2003,” she said.
“We reiterate that our government is prepared to work with the international community to address the human trafficking problem,” Fajardo stressed. “We will do all that needs to be done to make sure that no Filipino falls victim to this most terrible fate.”
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