nuclear disaster officials say not to panic is pollution in these deep in the soil offers of help and condolence have been pouring in from around the world. as russia is struggling with fire and drought the country's brain export has been temporarily stopped to secure domestic needs there's fears that more crops could be lost to the heat in flames prompting global grain prices to skyrocket meanwhile millions in india are going hungry while stocks are rotting in temporary storage. and al qaida could be making a comeback in iraq by attracting former u.s. sympathizers with the promises of high wages and now believed to be targeting a sunni group that aligned itself with the coalition forces during the two thousand and three conflict militia leaders say it is capitalizing on u.s. troop withdrawal and continuing political instability. the global debate continues on the issue of climate change with both sides of the argument expressing heated opinions it's coming your way next on cross talk with host peter lavelle here on

r.t. . and you can. still. follow and welcome to cross talk i'm peter lavelle hard realities or convenient lines the world will be watching closely the u.s. senate as it debates new climate change laws are these laws based on real science are hyped up myths and if scientists can't agree what are the rest of us to think. you can. start. to discuss the political climate of global warming i'm joined by lord christopher monckton in london he's

a writer and former policy advisor to british prime minister margaret thatcher in washington we have jason kowalski a policy coordinator at one sky campaign and also in washington we have young miller a senior policy associate at the environmental and energy study institute and another member of our crosstalk team on the hunger lord christopher monckton if i could go to you first. going from copenhagen last year to today or approximate what's going to be happening in the u.s. senate about climate change laws what progress is the world made and the progress of the discourse on climate change is a gotten better or worse more intense thinner how would you describe it. i think what's happening is that climate change is rapidly fading from the headlines in most western countries certainly simply because it's become blindingly obvious after the third very cold winter in a row that global warming simply isn't happening there hasn't really been any in

any six in any statistically significant sense for the last fifteen years or so and what's more it's now becoming increasingly apparent that there's not going to be very much i attended a conference in washington washington it's all in chicago just literally two days ago at which eight hundred scientists from all around the world attended virtually none of whom believed that global warming is or could ever be a global crisis and a lot of new scientific evidence was presented to show that by measurement rather than by the mere computer models on which the existing cases based the effect of c o two on temperature although not negligible is so small as to be harmless and beneficial and frankly it's now scientifically clear that we do not have a problem. and if i can go to you in washington would you agree with what we just

heard. i'm kind of incredulous that what i just heard. i'm tempted to ask lord monckton if he was at a casino rolling loaded dice and they kept coming up craps you know loses losses for him if he would he came up with a couple of you know even bets you know the temperatures stay the same if he would continue to bet all these always dollars i mean i live in the north northern part of the united states and climate change is happening it's happened it's been happening for decades the fact that we have a couple of cold years or a leveling off of a short term trend is hardly grounds on which to throw out what has been a long term trend in what people are still projecting is a long term trend so i think it's amazingly short sighted and i think it's a very weak case on which to sort of say we're going to take the take apart this whole apparatus we're not going to care about clean energy and you more which has by the way lots of other benefits other than then. dealing with climate change but

i'm just incredulous that what i just heard and i'm i'm supposed to be the even handed one here but we we deal in information and facts and we we try and separate . the sort of the extremes from from the reasonable and what i heard i thought was was very extreme ok jason how about what i do is i speak to the scientists all right laurie decide let's bring that's ok mr monckton all right jason you go ahead and well mr monckton would have us believe that the vast majority of climate scientists are incorrect well climate scientists based on thousands upon thousands of peer reviewed reports all of which are suggesting that human made carbon emissions are having a profound impact on the global climate fifteen. and i know that in the last few decades. going to also. occur in the last two decades we're seeing profound effects on the natural unnatural systems melting glaciers melting sea ice droughts floods yet the climate denial industry continues to chug on

repeating the same worn out talking points and cherry picking individual pieces of data acting like that undermines the entire scientific consensus around this imminent problem ok look so two against one here it is lord going on sorry christopher go ahead please go ahead yes science isn't done by consensus whenever you hear somebody saying there's a consensus of scientists you know they're running for cover because they haven't got a scientific case the truth of the matter is this it only takes one paper to disprove a so-called consensus it's happened time and again in the history of science that's how science advances that one paper has arguably now been published and it's by professor richard lindzen of mit and his colleague young saying choice they have measured directly the relationship between changes in sea surface temperature down here and changes in the amount of outgoing radiation escaping to space up at the top of the atmosphere as measured by the earth radiation budget experiment satellites and what they have found is that the radiation is scaping to space very

much as it always has it is therefore not staying down here therefore can't be causing very much in the way of global warming and the result is that they've calculated that the global warming we'll get from a doubling of c o two concentration later this century will be under one celsius degree a similar conclusion has recently been come to by dr roy spencer and his colleagues in a paper just about to be published it just passed peer review analyzing the clouds and showing once again that there has been a prodigious exaggeration in the models and what we're now getting is an increasingly well in the literature based on the measurement of what's going on in the real climate rather than speculation for instance if we measure what's actually happening to see ice there has been no significant change in global sea ice extent throughout the thirty years of the satellite record i've lived for the moment ok go ahead i'm still here go ahead. i would like to you know i didn't

come here a long time familiar with with your work and i actually didn't come on this program to. expecting to refute i share some of your concerns about how we deal with this in a deliberate and reasonable way but your first statement there that it's not happening in their short term trend short term variation negates a long term trend i just i just found all right you have problematic i mean let me ask you a question let me ask let me ask everybody let me ask everybody a question here because you know i i'm not heavily involved in this issue like the three of you are ok but it seems to me that one side gets their scientists together then the other side gets its scientists together and what am i supposed to think because it looks like well you know what you should do is scientists have not been participating in the rigorous peer review process that the rest of the world scientists you know just amazement that is a record fine that all of that is. reviewed by the usual process

and in the leading journals i'm not going to have this kind of childish mischaracterization on the air the fact is all the studies i have cited are fully peer reviewed and that by some of the most eminent scientists in the world professor lindzen has for thirty five years been the professor of atmospheric and planetary sciences at mit dr roy says there remains that there isn't isn't any of the measurement of analysis of measuring claimed otherwise satellites and these therefore are leading scientists publishing in leading peer reviewed journals and their conclusions by measurement are at odds with the models on which the united nations climate panel seeks unfortunately so heavily to rely in the end of the rule in science with a you like it or not is that measurement trumps models the models cannot tell us what's going to happen the measurements can't tell us what is actually happening what is actually happening is the radiation is getting out into space it's not staying down here it's there for current cause very much in the way of warming and

that's the end of the story get used to it all right jason you want to say something go right ahead. absolutely well the vast majority of climate scientists would disagree with that climate science is based on thousands upon thousands of reports that all point to the fact that human based carbon emissions are changing the global climate natural impacts of this right now near one reply oil fires drought flood name one will resemble a sheltie ice name one report while there are thousands of reports the names of other name regularly or by the international community the international panel you have you written one example of a consensus report with thousands of authors and thousands of reports feeding into it these are folks who look at different pieces of data put it together and that seems to be the logical consensus after years of studying this much because two third one third of all the documents cited by the un's climate panel which you

refer to there are not peer reviewed you've just said you know what you asked me to use peer reviewed reports you are using a document one third of its sources are not peer reviewed and those those that are peer reviewed a lot of them are saying there isn't a problem there's a paper for instance by mckittrick on temperatures showing that the been heat island effect has distorted the temperature record that was mentioned in the i.p.c.c. report it does not agree with the so called consensus many of the other peer reviewed reports in that document don't agree with the consensus and most importantly the peer review documents that are calculating the effect of c o two and other greenhouse gases by measurement rather than by modeling coming very close to unanimity on the fact that what they're observing is a very small change indeed attributable to c o two and the mere fact of warming if and when it resumes does not indicate that we are to blame for that all right all right gentlemen we're going to have some going to have to jump in here after a short break we'll continue our conversation on u.s. climate change to stay with our.

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back. welcome back to crossfire computor live well to remind you we're talking about the debate around u.s. legislation on climate change and its worldwide importance.

before which have a look at russian attitudes towards global warming the globe is getting warmer and the issue is rising with the average temperature is not all among scientists but governments and corporations shaping policy to combat global warming in the u.s. president barack obama has introduced a climate bill as a cornerstone of his administration's environmental policy however in russia entity would divide it towards global warming according to a public opinion survey only forty two percent anxious about climate changes forty percent expressed indifference on global warming while fifteen percent do not believe in global warming at all and one percent of respondents said they welcomed rising temperatures peter. ok you know i'd like to go to you know. is the

united states setting a good example now in dealing with climate change the senate bill that's going to be debated. historically the united states has been seen as being behind the curve when it comes to dealing with the climate is he getting ahead of the curve now. well i think it's still playing catch up. there are lots of reasons that we want a clean energy bill and a clean energy economy in the united states as you know we're just like the rest of the world we're dealing with severe economic recession a lot of unemployment and we're looking for the growth industries of the twenty first century and just like china and europe we're trying to participate in what we think is the next. you know boom industry which is clean energy and there's been reasons that we've wanted to move towards renewable energy sources that don't run out that give you domestic energy security we don't have the we

don't pay or import. fossil fuels from parts of the world that are unfriendly and unstable. so we can save money there's really an economic case for this so climate change and especially the debate about the science can be a distraction to that because there's public health and economic and national security reasons that we're doing this the united states and unfortunately we didn't use the resources that we had in the wealth that we had for the last thirty years to get on that future so we're still playing catch up but in terms of policy we're trying to reassume a leadership position because realize that without the united states and china the two biggest emitters and the two biggest economies. you know leading on this we're not going to we're not going to the rest of the world will be in a tough place ok lord christopher do you think that the the u.s. is on the right track in dealing with climate change obama as well no not if you think it's very unlikely from from my information from inside the senate that they're going to get this bill through it's now very widely realized that what has

happened is a stitch up between the obama administration and the utility companies so that they will be allowed under this new bill to add two hundred fifty billion dollars over the next twenty years to the price of electricity and gasoline without having to pass that on to the u.s. government that's the bribe that's being offered to them it's a very large one to get them to knuckle under and agreed to this entirely pointless legislation of course china has declared over and over again in her annual statistical communiques and if a dictatorship says these things it tends to mean it that it is not going to cut its emissions it's going to build another two coal fired power stations every week from here indefinitely until every part of china has electricity and that's the right thing to do if you want to lift your people out of poverty and stabilize their population for that's the only way you can do it by lifting them out of poverty and that's the way ultimately to reduce the total environmental footprint of humankind and there's nothing dirty about carbon dioxide this clean energy

phrase is very costly and totally inappropriate carbon dioxide is a naturally occurring trace gas which seven hundred fifty million years ago was present in the atmosphere at seven hundred twenty three times its present concentration and yet life on earth survived grew and flourished so the idea that carbon dioxide in the tiny additional amounts that we are capable of liberating is somehow going to be dangerous or unhealthy or for that matter to cause very much warming is simply spurious this bill that's trying to go through the senate which won't get through the senate is simply a way of taking money from working people and try. ferring it to the rich it's unspeakable for a democrat administration that ought to be representing working people to try to present such a bill particularly when there is no scientific or economic case for so doing ok jason we just heard from lord christopher that obama is in endeavors are pointless do you agree with that go ahead jason. i couldn't disagree more at this bill and

action on this issue is long overdue the science has been clear for years and we're wasting a trillion dollars a year on fossil fuels here in the u.s. that's more than we're spending on our military on our education and that's money we're just burning that we could be saving investments in clean energy or creating more jobs than the dirty incumbent industries of the past not to mention the fact that our reliance on dirty fuels has become appallingly visible in this country in the last few weeks with the oil spill in the gulf people are seeing firsthand that fossil fuels have the potential to devastate coastal economies fishing tourism not to mention the potential of clean energy countries that are ahead of us are exporting their technology to the u.s. as we're trying to catch up we want to be in a position to lead and that means passing strong legislation that will put a price on carbon and incentivize clean energy well it won't happen ok you want to explain why lord christopher won't want to yes it won't happen simply because there

are not enough votes in the senate to push this through obama is going to do its best to shove it through not because he knows that the midterm elections are coming and that the tea party movement which thinks global warming is nonsense is putting it's kind of into the republican party and that it's good that he's going to lose the house and possibly. lose the chance to get sixty votes in the senate on any measure in the future so he's of course going to try to shove it through quickly not under the wire as it were but he's not going to succeed nor does he deserve to succeed for all the pious rhetoric about well the economy is going to rules and clean energy and all these things every time somebody talks about creating green jobs they ought to refer to the study that's been done in spades where every so-called green job ought to be created by the fia to have a boss the government has now destroyed two point two jobs in the private sector so green jobs is the news or mr monckton there's no way the i mean it's. going to

jason jump in there go ahead jason go ahead. yeah the more we invest in dirty energy like oil and coal infrastructure and the more we're dependent on it and the more the price goes up these are scarce resources that are getting scarcer and people are realizing that if we keep going along this road we're going to waste more money on it clean energy however the more we invest the more we build out clean renewable energy like wind power the cheaper it gets and we don't need to buy fuel for these resources ok. i mean we know yeah well you know beyond washington please go ahead go ahead. ok i guess. lord monckton. you think that. coal and oil aren't are cheap is that is that your premise is that we we where we should say. no there's no harm to those things whatsoever aside from nuclear. or the color of the only mass

form of energy that can supply anything like a modern economy in the quantities required wind power can't do it as denmark and spain have both discovered denmark having built up a capacity theoretically of twenty percent of its total grid with wind trying to take five percent without destabilizing the grid and it has to export the rest at very very cheap in lovemaking rates to other countries there's a very strict limit that wasn't my question lorrimore you can generate likewise with solar power that has to be collected at places that are often a very long way from the centers of population where the power is needed and that causes enormous environmental disfigurement with long transmission lines and of course the accompanying transmission losses so there are no easy fixes in the new technologies and every time i hear somebody saying let the taxpayer be made to pay to pick winners in new technology i run for my hat because i know that yet another boondoggle and unless you get another failed project will happen ok you are not

good and you know we don't we are if you want to go ahead jump in there responded i go right in lord lord monckton we agree that the government is not a good picture of winners and losers we are trying to internalize what are now external costs to fossil fuel energy and i mean i live in that i live near eastern united states we get all we are the tailpipe of the nation all the cold and mercury the lead the sulfates acid rain they all land in my backyard i have a body load of lead in work yury at this moment because of coal fired power plant this is personal to me as well as i'm trying to do something for my country so there are reasons that we. want to do this independent of climate change science and i just can't be more clear about that there are reasons well as you know if you care about what we've done in the next series or let me say just to install flu gas scrubbers to take out the elements that might be poisonous to humans but we don't need to take out carbon dioxide because as you know perfectly well it is harmless

to humans even in quite large wells and traces so the fact is you know i'm successful teen energy changing to fossil fuels like but make sure that you use them in a clean and efficient way as we do here in europe you've got to catch up with your flue gas scrubbing techniques and you'll fly ash trapping and your fluid dies so there are combustion techniques if you if you get rid of your old coal fired power plants and allow the new ones to be built which other modern technologies rather than stopping them and relying on the old ones then you went out a large mine to look at it looks like you got the last word and you got the last word here many thanks to our guests today lord christopher monckton and jason put in thanks to our viewers for watching us here at r.t. see you next time and remember cross talk rules. if you. want

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