So what happened to global warming?

It’s not just that it’s disappeared from media headlines this year - shoved off by the credit crunch and natural disasters, for example. It can’t be ignored that 2007 came and went as another very warm year - the 7th hottest on record since 1850 according to the World Meteorological Organization.

But it wasn’t a record. In fact that was 1998, a full 10 years ago — the year of an exceptional El Nino, a Pacific weather pattern which heats the whole globe. So is global warming not living up to the hype?

Two weeks ago Leibniz Institute’s Noel Keenlyside stirred an academic hornet’s
nest by saying that we may have to wait longer - a decade or more - for another
peak year, because a natural weakening in ocean currents may be cooling sea
temperatures.

Many scientists flatly rejected the idea, saying Keenlyside had over-estimated the effect. But some pointed out that a recent switch in a weather pattern called the North Atlantic Oscillation could indeed cool temperatures globally.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said last year recent warming was
“unequivocal” and most of it ”very likely” manmade. And almost all scientists in the latest debate, including Keenlyside, agree that any temporary cooling doesn’t alter that - blips due to natural effects are to be expected.

But how long is a blip? No-one knows.

It could be many years before there’s an El Nino as bad as 1998, scientists say. And in the meantime the doubts will grow, just as policymakers try to negotiate one of the most complex global treaties ever. A new Kyoto Protocol will affect issues of equity and poverty: in the case of poor countries the right to grow, for island states perhaps the right to exist, and for rich countries the right to compete on a level economic playing field.

Meanwhile one or two doubters are already saying the present lull in warming
casts doubt on just how far manmade greenhouse gases are influencing the climate. MIT’s Richard Lindzen reckoned that if it was as bad as all that temperatures would be rising faster.

What do you think?

A plan by President George W. Bush to set a distant 2025 ceiling for rising U.S. greenhouse gases has triggered criticisms by Germany that he is coming up with a “Neanderthal” solution to the problem – too little too late.

Most other delegates at 17-nation U.S.-led climate talks in Paris on Thursday and Friday have been far less damning, welcoming the fact that Bush is setting a ceiling for emissions, albeit one that will be a generation after most other rich nations.

German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel’s office called it a plan for losers rather than leaders and denounced it as ”Neanderthal”.

But who is right? 

The United States is isolated among developed nations in opposing the Kyoto Protocol, under which 37 countries are trying to cut emissions by at least 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12. Global warming, we are always told, will only be contained if all countries work together.

“Neanderthal” was obviously meant as an insult but it strikes me that a Neanderthal solution is what the world needs — global warming was not a problem back in the Stone Age when people relied on renewable energies such as burning wood.

So who has the best strategy to fight global warming? — Bush with his belief in heavy investments in new technologies? Or Kyoto-style cuts embraced by the rest of his industrial allies? And how will the U.S. approach change after Bush steps down in 2009?

What’s in a name? 

Will the next international deal for combating climate change be called the “Copenhagen Protocol”, consigning the “Kyoto Protocol” to history?

Who would want the name of their favourite city linked to a treaty about global warming? It may be a momentous step towards a clean energy future but, if Kyoto is anything to go by, will also be hated by many. The poor “Little Mermaid” statue in Copenhagen harbour already suffers enough from protests, like red paint thrown by vandals last year (right).

A new U.N. pact for fighting global warming is meant to be agreed at the end of 2009 at a conference in the Danish capital and, by normal international practice, it would then be called the “Copenhagen Protocol”. 

Denmark has been adamant that a baby shouldn’t be named before it is born so I was surprised this week when Polish Environment Minister Maciej Nowicki, on a visit to Oslo, spoke repeatedly about the planned “Copenhagen Protocol” as if it were already decided.

The name “Kyoto” is badly tarnished by years of disputes between U.S. President George W. Bush, who dismissed the pact as “fatally flawed”, and his industrial allies who are implementing Kyoto’s curbs on greenhouse gas emissions running to 2012.

Of course Shakespeare wrote that “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet”. And the U.S. Senate was not swayed by Kyoto’s name — it voted 95-0 in 1997 against key principles before the treaty was either named or agreed.

So the suggestion may make the world’s lawmakers sound daft but maybe, just maybe, small things like names do have an influence? 

Companies, after all, often carry out massive research before naming products to try to make them attractive. And how many oil companies have put their names on their tankers since the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska?

One leading environmentalist once said — only half jokingly – that the next climate deal should be called the “Los Angeles Protocol” to make it attractive to Americans and a follow-up around 2020, when more action to curb greenhouse gases will be expected of developing nations, the “Beijing Protocol”.

U.N. officials, meanwhile, prefer to say that Copenhagen will agree ”the second period of the Kyoto Protocol”, upset by the suggestion that Kyoto will somehow ”run out” at the end of 2012 or — even worse – “expire”.

So what should any new climate treaty be called? 

Maybe some corporate branding experts should be hired to come up with a name that perhaps has nothing to do with the city where it is agreed?

Or maybe the United Nations should have an international naming competition?

Perhaps most crucially, would a pact called something other than “Kyoto” have a better chance in the U.S. Senate?

Perhaps 50 million people took part in a global Earth Hour campaign to turn out the lights for an hour at 8 p.m. on Saturday to put attention on global warming, organisers said. Did you?

    In Australia, one survey showed that more than half the adults turned off the lights, they said. Bangkok saved 73.3 megawatts, or the equivalent of switching off 2 million fluorescent lights, and organisers said electricity use dropped 8.7 percent in Toronto, Canada.

    You don’t have to be a tree-hugging socialist to see that it makes sense to turn off unnecessary lights and electrical appliances, although it obviously only makes sense if you do so all the time and not as a gimmick one Saturday night a year.

     You can choose from many reasons - you may be worried about climate change, you may want to end a national addiction to oil with prices at $100 a barrel, or curb a dependence on foreign energy supplies.

    Still, I wonder how you estimate how much electricity was “saved” on Saturday. Electricity use typically declines as the evening goes on and people go to bed, starting with kids around 8 p.m., so it may be easy to overstate ”cuts” at 8 p.m. 

    I had a look at the power consumption figures from the Nord Pool exchange for Denmark, a country heavily involved in Earth Hour to try to find out: electricity use did seem to fall faster than normal.

     The Tivoli funfair, the royal palace and the opera house all turned off the lights at 8 p.m. for an hour — there were so many lights out that you could see stars shining from the centre of Copenhagen. The Danish capital will host of a U.N. conference at the end of 2009 meant to agree a new global climate treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, so many people got involved.

    The country’s electricity consumption fell 6.5 percent in the hour from 8 p.m. compared to use the previous hour, more than a decline of 4.7 percent the same hour a week earlier. And it then fell 5.5 percent in the hour from 9 p.m., faster than 5.0 percent on March 22. Less electricity was consumed from 8-9 p.m. than on any other Saturday night this month.

    OK, so there might have been other factors like the temperature steering power use over an evening but it surely indicates that every little bit does count?