Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-12-04-Speech-4-026"
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"en.20081204.3.4-026"2
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"Mr President, we are undoubtedly facing the greatest crisis that I have seen in my lifetime, but the threat is posed not by global warming but by our policy responses to global warming. It is certainly true that the earth has warmed slightly and intermittently over the last 150 years, but that change is entirely consistent with well-established, long-term natural climate cycles established over thousands of years. We have seen the Holocene Maxima, we have seen the Roman Optimum, we have seen the Medieval Warm Period. It now appears we are moving into a new 21st century climate optimum.
The fact is that the sea level is rising no faster today than it has been for centuries. The fact is that total global ice mass is broadly constant. The fact is that extreme weather events are no more frequent today than they were a hundred years ago, and that the polar bear, far from being threatened as a species, has in fact shown a dramatic increase in population over the last few decades.
It is true that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, although a much less important greenhouse gas than water vapour, but the effect of CO
climate forcing is non-linear. It is a law of diminishing returns. From the current level of about 380 parts per million in the atmosphere, further CO
increases will have a trivial effect.
Meantime our policies will have a devastating economic effect. The damage will be vast. Our unachievable renewables targets, especially with regard to wind energy, actually threaten to cut off supplies of electricity.
The policies will fail as Kyoto has failed. Even if the West cuts emissions, clearly the emerging markets of China and India will not. CO
levels will keep rising for at least half a century. The fact is that 1998 was the hottest year in living memory and for the last ten years the world has become cooler. The measures we are debating today represent the greatest collective flight from reality that we have ever seen."@en1
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"2"1
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