Tag: klima

Ytringsfrihed for alle?

… undtagen for dem, der har noget at sige, åbenbart.

Dette har Nastja Arcel en fremragende klumme om i dagens MetroXpress:

Hvornår mistede Danmark viljen og evnen til at kende forskel på en fredelig aktion og en voldelig terrorhandling?

De kongelige sikkerhedsfolk på den røde løber overfaldt Nora fra Greenpeace i samme sekund, hun, som den lille dreng i ‘Kejserens nye klæder’, sagde, hvad hun mente: »Politicians talk, leaders ACT,« stod der på det gule skilt, hun foldede ud. Rigets mænd handlede hurtigt – førte hende væk, og hun kiggede lidt forvirret rundt, inden hun forsvandt bag de kongelige fløjdøre.

Det var om aftenen den 7. december, og der var klima-gallamiddag på dronningens slot i riget, hvor ytringsfrihed har samme status som kronjuvelerne – dog særligt, når den nævnes i samme åndedrag som ‘flæskesteg’.

I ‘Kejserens nye klæder’ råbte drengen: »Han har jo ikke noget tøj på!« da den nøgne konge gik forbi, og folk råbte det samme i kor. Men ingen af gæsterne ved klima-middagen nåede at opdage eller støtte Nora – for hun og det gule skilt blev gemt væk, inden hun nåede at åbne munden.

Senere skete der det samme for hende, som for den unge mand med sandhedstalen i filmen ‘Festen’. Hun blev straffet. 20 dage i fængsel, med et enkelt besøg af sine to børn.

Hvordan kan vi fortælle verden om ytringsfrihed og demokrati i den ene tale og i den anden forsvare 20 dages fængsling af en fredelig aktivist?

Link: ‘Ytringsfrihed for alle’ (tak til Amila for tippet).

Tilbageholdelse af klimaaktivister julen over var ren chikane

… som også beskrevet i danske aviser. Greenpeace opsummerer situationen på deres klimablog:

Did Danish authorities really hold our activists in prison for 20 days because they were diligently investigating how they got onto a red carpet at a state dinner during the Copenhagen climate conference? New evidence suggests not.

To non-violently paraphrase Michael Corleone, “If history teaches us anything, it’s that you can get past security anywhere.” But here’s a fact: it really, really, pisses them off.

And that, it would appear, is the real reason that our Red Carpet Four activists were held without a trial in Denmark. Let’s be clear: they had a message to deliver. It wasn’t their intent to make monkeys of a security force that was set up to protect the 120 most powerful people on the planet, along with the Queen of Denmark. But yes, they did that when, with a few smart-looking cars in a “motorcade” marked with the Greenpeace logo, a Tuxedo, an off-the-rack evening dress and a flashing blue light bought on the internet, they managed to get into the Parliament and deploy, in full view of the world’s leaders and the gathered press, banners demanding action on climate change.

Now the REASON the police claimed they needed to hold our activists, without visitation rights, for 20 days over Christmas and New Year’s, without trial, was that they were “investigating” the incident.

We offered to help early on. We provided full details and an open invitation to the police to ask us anything. Clearly, security could be better, and we don’t mind letting them know how they can improve it — we’re non-violent, but not everyone with an interest in getting to world leaders can make the same claim.

Yet we weren’t asked a single question until a couple days ago, when police asked for the names of those who were in the three cars in our “Motorcade.” (The individuals voluntarily came forward).

When we (and a judge) were told that the activists needed to be held until the ongoing investigation was complete, we presumed that meant there was an ongoing investigation. Surely the activists themselves were under daily interrogation behind bars.

But no. Nora, Juantxo, Christian, and Joris have just told us they were interviewed only twice: on their arrest and for 15 minutes a few days ago. The cars which were impounded were not even fingerprinted immediately; one car was returned with fingerprint powder on the 30th of December, another car was fingerprinted today, and the police have not started on the third.

One activist, Joris Thijssen, was not arrested on the red carpet, but picked up at a restaurant by police acting, we’re told, on information that Joris was an organiser of the action. What made them think that? It’s because they tapped his and two other Greenpeace phones. (Danish media are reporting that 15 other Greenpeace phones were tapped on the day of the action, and police lawyers were not even consulted on those.)

But what exactly did they do with all that information? If the phone taps had told them everything they needed to know, they would presumably have stopped the action. If the phone taps didn’t tell them everything they needed to know, why did they not ask Joris, who would have been happy to tell them? And if they weren’t going to ask him anything useful, then why on Earth did they put him behind bars for 20 days claiming he was being held while the investigation continued? (Asked on release if he would have done anything differently as a result of his prison experience, Joris replied “I would have brought a book.”)

Even more amazing, Danish newspaper Nyheder reports that the police’s own lawyers had recommended the immediate release of the four – a recommendation which the Chief of Police chose to ignore.

Greenpeace International Executive Director, Kumi Naidoo, said on their release that “When the history of climate change is written, the criminals will be exposed, and these four people are not the criminals.”

Our legal systems should not treat those who choose peaceful acts of civil disobedience over inaction as if they are terrorists or criminals. They are neither. They are the voices of society’s conscience. The longer the world defers delivering a fair, ambitious, legally binding treaty to stop global warming, the louder those voices will grow. (You can add yours here.)

There are not enough prisons in the world to hold us all.

It’s time to stop jailing us, and listen.

Global opvarmning – hvordan kommer man i gang?

Jeg tror, der er mange, der hurtigt kan blive forvirrede over diskussionen om global opvarmning, især hvis bølgerne begynder at gå højt fra diverse “klimaskeptikere” (læs: konspirationsteoretikere). Hvor finder man reel oplysning om, hvad der er op og ned? Klimadebat.dk er et dansk bud. Men læser man engelsk, har RealClimate.org det ultimative bud på, hvordan man kommer i gang, up to speed og ud i overhalingsbanen – også selv om man ikke ved specielt meget i forvejen.

Denne liste er ordnet efter hvor man er og hvad man har brug for:

For complete beginners:

NCAR: Weather and climate basics
Oxford University: The basics of climate prediction
Pew Center: Global Warming basics
Wikipedia: Global Warming
NASA: Global Warming update
National Academy of Science: Understanding and Responding to Climate Change
Encyclopedia of Earth: Climate Change Collection
Global Warming FAQ (Tom Rees)
Global Warming: Man or Myth? (Scott Mandia, SUNY Suffolk)

There is a new booklet on Climate Literacy from multiple agencies (NOAA, NSF, AAAS) available here (pdf).

Those with some knowledge:

The IPCC AR4 Frequently Asked Questions (here) is an excellent start. That covers:

We’ll link to the individual pages once the report is available in html.

RealClimate: Start with our index

Informed, but in need of more detail:

Science: You can’t do better than the IPCC reports themselves (AR4 2007, TAR 2001).

History: Spencer Weart’s “Discovery of Global Warming” (AIP)

Art: Robert Rohde’s “Global Warming Art‘

Informed, but seeking serious discussion of common contrarian talking points:

All of the below links have indexed debunks of most of the common points of confusion:

Link: RealClimate: Start here

Brev fra fængslede klima-aktivister

Fra Climate Justice Action – tak til Arash Sharifzadeh Abdi:

Copenhagen, January 1st 2010

Something is rotten (but not just) in Denmark. As a matter of fact, thousands of people have been considered, without any evidence, a threat to the society. Hundreds have been arrested and some are still under detention, waiting for judgement or under investigation. Among them, us, the undersigned.

We want to tell the story from the peculiar viewpoint of those that still see the sky from behind the bars.

A UN meeting of crucial importance has failed because of several contradictions and tensions that have shown up during the COP15. The primary concern of the powerfuls was the governance of the energy supply for neverending growth. This was the case whether they were from the overdeveloped world, like the EU countries or the US, or from the so-called developing countries, like China or Brazil.

At odds, hundreds of delegates and thousands of people in the streets have raised the issue that the rationale of life must be (and actually is) opposed to that of profit. we have strongly affirmed our will to stop anthropic pressure on the biosphere.

A crisis of the energy paradigm is coming soon. The mechanisms of global governance have proven to be overhelmingly precarious. The powerfuls failed not only in reaching an agreement on their internal equilibrium but also in keeping the formal control of the discussion.

Climate change is an extreme and ultimate consequence of the violence of the capitalistic growth paradigm. People globally are increasingly showing the willingness of taking the power to rebel against that violence. we have seen that in Copenhagen, as well as we have seen that same violence. Hundreds of people have been arrested without any reason or clear evidence, or for participating in peaceful and legitimate demonstrations. Even mild examples of civil disobedience have been considered as a serious threath to the social order.

In response we ask – What order do we threaten and who ordered it? Is it that order in which we do not anymore own our bodies? The order well beyond the terms of any reasonable “social contract” that we would ever sign, where our bodies can be taken, managed, constrained and imprisoned without any serious evidence of crime. Is it that order in which the decisions are more and more shielded from any social conflicts? Where the governance less and less belongs to people, not even through the parliament? As a matter of fact, non-democratic organisms like the WTO, the NB, the G-whatever rule beyond any control.

We are forced to notice that the theater of democracy is a broken one as soon as one approaches the core of the power. That is why we reclaim the power to the people. We reclaim the power over our own lives. Above all, we reclaim the power to counterpose the rationale of life and of the commons to the rationale of profit. It may have been declared illegal, but still we consider it fully legitimate.

Since no real space is left in the broken theater, we reclaimed our collective power – Actually we expected it – to speak about the climate and energy issues. Issues that, for us, involve critical nodes of global justice, survival of man and energy independence. We did marching with our bodies.

We prefer to enter the space where the power is locked dancing and singing. We would have liked to do this at the Bella center, to disrupt the session in accord with hundreds of delegates. But we were, as always, violently hampered by the police. They arrested our bodies in an attempt to arrest our ideas. we risked our bodies, trying to protect them just by staing close to each other. We value our bodies: We need them to make love, to stay together and to enjoy life. They hold our brains, with beautifull bright ideas and views. They hold our hearts filled with passion and joy. Nevertheless, we risked them. we risked our bodies getting locked in prisons.

In fact, what would be the worth of thinking and feeling if the bodies did not move? Doing nothing, letting-it-happen, would be the worst form of complicity with the business that wanted to hack the UN meeting. At the COP15 we moved, and we will keep moving.

Exactly like love, civil disobedience can not just be told. We must make it, with our bodies. Otherwise, we would not really think about what we love, and we would not really love what we think about. It’s as simple as that. It’s a matter of love, justice and dignity.

How the COP15 has ended proves that we were right. Many of us are paying what is mandatory for an obsessive, pervasive and total repression: To find a guilty party at the cost of inventing it (along with the crime perhaps).

We are detained with evidently absurd accusations about either violent actions that actually did not take place or conspiracies and organizing of law-breaking actions.

We do not feel guilty for having shown, together with thousands, the reclamation of the independence of our lives from profit’s rule. If the laws oppose this, it was legitimate to peacefully – but still conflictually – break them.

We are just temporarily docked, ready to sail again with a wind stronger than ever. It’s a matter of love, justice and dignity.

  • Luca Tornatore, Italian social centres network “see you in Copenhagen”.
  • Natasha Verco, Climate Justice Action
  • Johannes Paul Schul Meyer
  • Arvip Peschel
  • Christian Becker
  • Kharlanchuck Dzmitry
  • Cristoph Lang
  • Anthony Arrabal

Politistatens maske falder: Pinligt, eller bare pinligt?

Dansk politi har i går anholdt Tadzio Müller, som er koordinator for mange af demonstrationerne i forbindelse med klimatopmødet i går – tilsyneladende uden andet at have det i, end at han har været med til at arrangere dagens store march mod Bella-centret.

The Guardian beretter:

Tadzio Mueller, a spokesman for the umbrella group Climate Justice Action (CJA), was arrested today by plainclothes police as he left the Bella centre, where the official climate talks are taking place. The police are holding him at the Retorvej detention centre, and he will be charged in court tomorrow morning. The police refused to say what charges will be brought.

Kevin Smith, an organiser for activist group Climate Camp, said: “It’s unbelievable that in a supposed democracy, undercover police are silencing spokespeople that are criticising the climate talks. How far are the Danish authorities prepared to go to stop tomorrow’s protest from going ahead?”

Mueller’s arrest comes on the eve of a Reclaim Power action that aims to “disrupt the sessions and open a space inside the UN area to hold a people’s assembly” from 10am tomorrow.

Smith added: “The Danish government knows just how embarrassing it will be when hundreds of delegates walk out tomorrow to join us in the protest tomorrow against the climate talks, and it is trampling over all manner of civil liberties to try and prevent that from happening.”

På The Independent har man også bemærket dansk politis noget brutale fremfærd mod alt, hvad der ligner ridser i lakken på byens fine konference-image:

The demonstration will put added pressure on the conference organisers, who have been struggling to cope with the sheer number of people descending on the site each day. Yesterday, hundreds of delegates, NGO representatives and journalists were left standing outside in freezing temperatures for up to nine hours after the UN’s accreditation system broke down.

Police have adopted a zero-tolerance approach to the activists, handcuffing anyone who commits minor misdemeanour and sitting them on the street for at least an hour. Yesterday morning, they persevered with this pre-emptive policy, pulling over cars and bicycles on the main routes into the city and searching them.

En af de anholdte fra i lørdags er Emily Apple, som beskriver sin oplevelse i en kommentar til The Guardian, hvor hun opfordrer til, at man ikke finder sig i det:

Mass repression requires mass resistance and we have to be able to say no when dealing with large policing operations such as this. Many people understandably looked terrified, and for a large number, it was the first time they had been arrested. However, arrests on this scale required co-operation from arrestees – people were not actually physically forced to sit in lines, they could have moved. Where we were, detainees vastly outnumbered the police, and they would not have been able to handle large numbers of people being incompliant, and there certainly would not have been the resources to arrest so many people.

Spirits in the steel holding cages were high and resistance was in the air. Some broke down the doors of their cages, and the large warehouse echoed to caterwauling and chants of “No justice, no peace! Fuck the police!” The police nearly lost control of the situation, being forced to send in riot police and dogs, and it showed what could have been possible if more had resisted.

Unfortunately, we are too often the agents of our own repression. The culture of obedience and fear of reprisals is often too much for people to challenge. However, the rewards and sense of empowerment that come from refusing to co-operate far outweigh any consequences.

I Danmark er folk med forstand på jura og borgerrettigheder heller ikke imponeret over politiets strategi eller deres nye beføjelser. Forsvarsadvokat Thorkild Høyer siger til Politiken, at anholdelsen af Tadzio Müller er “langt ude” og en trussel mod ytringsfriheden:

Ifølge forsvarsadvokat Thorkild Høyer er ingen personer tidligere i Danmark blevet varetægtsfængslet på det grundlag, som politiet forsøger at bruge i sagen mod den tyske klimatalsmand Tadzio Müller.

Tyskeren er talsmand for netværket Climate Justice Action, og blev anholdt af politiet kort efter en tale på FNs klimatopmøde COP 15 i dag i Bella Center.

»Når man læser de udtalelser Tadzio Müller er kommet med i pressen, så har han klart understreget, at han går ind for, at der skal være fredelige demonstrationer. Der skal ikke være nogle konfrontationer med personer«, siger advokaten.

»Jeg synes, det lugter for meget af, at politiet bruger den stemning, der er i øjeblikket og den medvind lømmelpakken har givet dem til at begrænse de folkelige organisationers mulighed for at indtage debatten«, siger han.

»At begynde at fængsle folk på noget de ikke har gjort endnu, hvor man ikke engang ved, om det indebærer en overtrædelse af straffeloven, det er fanme langt ude. Og det må du gerne citere mig for«, siger Thorkild Høyer.

Og når andre fredelige aktivister begynder at klage over konsekvent forfølgelse og chikane fra politiets side, begynder billedet at blive klart. Danmark er ikke så rart et sted, som det har været. Det er et sted, hvor man kan blive anholdt for at sige sin mening, og hvor politiet uhæmmet bruger sine beføjelser til at slå ned på al modstand. I det mindste begynder folk nu at få øjnene op for det også uden for landets grænser.

“Climategate” – anatomy of a myth

Her er to udmærkede små film om det videnskabelige indhold af “climategate”-kontroversen samt om fup-debatten “for og imod” global opvarmning.

Den øverste indeholder en overordnet gennemgang af den videnskabelige “forvirring” på området, og den nederste forklarer, hvorfor sagen om de stjålne britiske emails ikke rokker ved de videnskabelige forklaringer, forskerne diskuterer i de berørte mails. En glimrende gendrivelse af hele “Climategate”-postyret.

Læs også:

•  Klima: Det er altså ikke rocket science
•  Klimadebat, CO2 og miljø
•  Klima versus vejr – hvorfor vejrets uforudsigelighed ikke hindrer forudsigelsen af global opvarmning
• Jyllands-Postens uhæderlige klimadebat

Klima: Det er altså ikke rocket science

Hvis der er nogen, der bliver forvirrede over al talen om “klimaskepsis” og om der er grund til at tage  klimaforandringerne alvorligt, så her:

CO2 er en drivhusgas. Drivhusgasser virker sådan, at de absorberer en del af den varmestråling, der ellers ville blive udstrålet. Det vil sige, at hvis der er mere drivhusgas i atmosfæren, vil mindre varme blive udstrålet, mens den samme varme stadig modtages, f.eks. fra solen.

Ergo: Hvis der kommer mere CO2 i atmosfæren, bliver det varmere. Det er ikke svært at forstå, det er nemt. Drivhuseffekten blev påvist af John Tyndall i 1858. At menneskeskabt afbrænding af CO2 kunne føre til højere temperaturer på Jorden blev foreslået af svenskeren Svante Arrhenius i 1896.

Denne video fra BBC har et meget simpelt eksperiment, der viser, hvordan CO2 virker som en drivhusgas.

På grafen herunder ser man atmosfærens indhold af CO2 de sidste 10.000 år og de sidste hundrede år (indsat):

Bemærk den voldsomme stigning de sidste hundrede års tid. Mon det har noget at gøre med menneskets aktiviteter i det 20. århundrede?

Og hvad vil vi forvente at se, når vi husker at CO2 er en drivhusgas? Bingo (desværre).

Hvis du har lyst til at gå nærmere ind i det, kan jeg anbefale IPCCs seneste rapport (den fra 2007). Det er digre værker, men alt kan downloades som PDF-filer, og det indeholder også intromateriale og masser af henvisninger.

Og i øvrigt står der ingen steder i disse rapporter, at klimaændringerne kun er menneskeskabte. Til gengæld er der analyser af betydningen af forskellige bidrag. Men det følger af ovenstående graf at det faktisk gør en stor forskel, om man bliver ved med at udlede hvor mange drivhusgasser.

Jamen, hvad så med alle klimaskeptikernes indvendinger, hvis det er så simpelt? Nogle mennesker vil vel helst tro, hvad de gerne vil tro. Men det er vanvid at sige, at indholdet af CO2 i atmosfæren ikke har nogen betydning for klimaet, eller at menneskeskabte udledninger ikke gør en forskel – se blot grafen herover.

Hat-tip hr. k.

•  Klimadebat, CO2 og miljø
•  Klima versus vejr – hvorfor vejrets uforudsigelighed ikke hindrer forudsigelsen af global opvarmning
• Jyllands-Postens uhæderlige klimadebat

Vi er tættere på at løbe tør for olie, end de tør indrømme

Men det er i hvert fald noget sludder alt sammen. Der er masser af olie, og der vil altid blive ved med at være masser af olie, og hvis det en dag ser ud som om, vi begynder at løbe tør, kommer oliefeen og lægger noget mere under vores hovedpude. Tivertifald!

Sådan taler altså en ansvarlig økonom.

Virkeligheden er dog en ganske anden, skriver The Guardian:

The world is much closer to running out of oil than official estimates admit, according to a whistleblower at the International Energy Agency who claims it has been deliberately underplaying a looming shortage for fear of triggering panic buying.

The senior official claims the US has played an influential role in encouraging the watchdog to underplay the rate of decline from existing oil fields while overplaying the chances of finding new reserves.

The allegations raise serious questions about the accuracy of the organisation’s latest World Energy Outlook on oil demand and supply to be published tomorrow – which is used by the British and many other governments to help guide their wider energy and climate change policies. […]

“Many inside the organisation believe that maintaining oil supplies at even 90m to 95m barrels a day would be impossible but there are fears that panic could spread on the financial markets if the figures were brought down further. And the Americans fear the end of oil supremacy because it would threaten their power over access to oil resources,” he added.

A second senior IEA source, who has now left but was also unwilling to give his name, said a key rule at the organisation was that it was “imperative not to anger the Americans” but the fact was that there was not as much oil in the world as had been admitted. “We have [already] entered the ‘peak oil’ zone. I think that the situation is really bad,” he added.

Men hvordan dealer vi mon bedst med den situation? Selvfølgelig ved at stikke hovedet ekstra langt ned i busken. Isbjerg, hvilket isbjerg? Hvis nu bare det skide orkester ville spille lidt højere.

Link: Key oil figures were distorted by US pressure, says whistleblower

Miljøaktivister forhindret udrejse efter terrorloven

Terrorlovgivningen er åbenbart først og fremmest ment som et påskud for at fratage folk deres borgerrettigheder, så man kan gribe ind mod lovlig politisk aktivitet, som man ikke bryder sig om.

Se blot Arbejderens historie om den britiske klima-aktivist Chris Kitchen, der blev forhindret i at rejse til København – man ved jo aldrig, hvad sådan en aktivist kan være ude på:

Den 31-årige britiske klimaaktivist Chris Kitchen og hans kammerat fik sig en overraskelse, da de onsdag klokken 17 sad i en bus på vej fra Storbritannien til København. Her skal de deltage i weekendens internationale møde i Climate Justice Action – et globalt netværk af klimaaktivister, der mobiliserer græsrødder til aktioner ved FN`s klimakonference i december.

Men i byen Folkestone ved tunnelen under Den Engelske Kanal – blev bussen stoppet af britisk politi. Politiet gennemgik samtlige passagerers pas. Herefter hev de Chris Kitchen og hans ven ud af bussen, og tog dem med til forhør.

– Politiet spurgte ind til min familie, mit arbejde og tidligere politiske aktiviteter. De vil også vide, hvad jeg skal i København, fortæller Chris Kitchen til Arbejderen.

Politiet henviser til den britiske terrorlov, der giver grænsepolitiet ret til at stoppe og visitere individer for at fastslå, om de har forbindelse til terrorisme. Chris Kitchen gør det klart overfor betjentene, at miljøaktivisme ikke er terrorisme. Men han får blot besked om, at ‘terrorisme kan betyde mange ting’.

Link: Miljøaktivister stoppet af terrorlov