Internet Video Conferencing

“The U.N.’s ‘Bali High’ .December 2007 witnessed 15,000 climateers and media descend upon the paradise island resort of Bali for the 13th annual U.N. global warming meeting. The reason for much jet and limo travel — and other prodigious greenhouse gas generating activity associated with such a mega-conference — is relatively modest: setting the agenda and timeframe for a post-Kyoto treaty. Sure seems like something that could have been handled in a less carbon-intensive way — either by Internet and video conferencing or, if meeting is necessary, somewhere in North America or Europe where most key attendees are based.

The 15,000 politicians, activists, MPs, journalists, and civil servants from 180 countries who traveled to Bali for the talks emitted between 60,000 and 100,000 ton of carbon dioxide, according to estimates. This is not far short of what a country like Malawi or Chad emits in a year, the UN said yesterday. The greatest emissions resulted from flights to and from Indonesia, but extra air conditioning and car travel during two weeks of meetings added significantly to the carbon budget.
While all UN delegates and most European government delegates had their flights offset with financial investments in ‘schemes’ which buy up greenhouse emissions, it is not known how many other attendees tried to lessen their impact.”
They might have scored some credibility points by organizing their meetings for tele-conferencing. Committee/breakout sessions….etc.
The same way that many large corporations do it!
Face it….. they could have done things differently…..while helping the environment AND $$$Millions!!
Actually, I do have experience with large conferences. The media….I believe… has considerable experience using the internet.
Do you think for a moment that a 15,000 video-conference can’t be organized?
Well Crabby…. I guess you told me!! I didn’t realize that the fossil-fuel industry had published the Bali-Conference-pollution observations!

In any event, judging by the defensive nature of some of the responses, the Bali-Conference-pollution issue was/is a sensitive issue.

Daily Press Victorville,ca 2-28-08
CO M M E N TA RY
Cold water on ‘global warming’
THOMAS SOWELL

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His Web site is www.tsowell.com.

It has almost become something of a joke wh e n s o m e “ g l o b a l war ming” conference has to be cancelled because of a snowstorm or bitterly cold weather.
But stampedes and hysteria are no joke — and creating stampedes and hysteria has become a major activity of those hyping a global warming “crisis.”
They mobilize like-minded people from a variety of occupations, call them all “scientists” and then claim that “all” the experts agree on a global warming crisis.
Their biggest argument is that there is no argument.
A whole cottage industry has sprung up among people who get grants, government agencies that get appropriations, politicians who get publicity and the perpetually indignant who get something new to be indignant about. It gives teachers something to talk about in school instead of teaching.
Those who bother to check the facts often find that not all those who are called scientists are really scientists and not all of those who are scientists are specialists in climate. But who bothers to check facts these days?
A new and very different conference on global warming will be held in New York City, under the sponsorship of the Heartland Institute, from March 2 to March 4 — weather permitting.
It is called an “International Conference on Climate Change.” Its subtitle is “Global Warming: Truth or Swindle?” Among those present will be professors of climatology, along with scientists in other fields and people from other professions.
They come from universities in England, Hungary and Australia, as well as from the United States and Canada, and include, among other dignitaries, the president of the Czech Republic.
There will be 98 speakers and 400 participants.
The theme of the conference is that “there is no scientific consensus on the causes or likely consequences of global warming.”
Many of the participants in this conference are people who have already expressed skepticism about either the prevailing explanations of current climate change or the dire predictions about future climate change.
These include authors of such books as “Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years” by Fred Singer and Dennis Avery, and “Shattered Consensus,” edited by Patrick J. Michaels.
This will be one of the rare opportunities for the media to hear the other side of the story — for those old-fashioned journalists who still believe that their job is to inform the public, rather than promote an agenda.
The subtitle of the upcoming conference — “Global Warming: Truth or Swindle?” — is also the title of a British television program that is now available on DVD in the United States. It is a devastating debunking of the current “global warming” hysteria.
Nobody denies that there is such a thing as a greenhouse effect. If there were not, the side of the planet facing away from the sun would be freezing every night.
There is not even a lot of controversy over temperature readings. What is fundamentally at issue are the explanations, implications and extrapolations of these temperature readings.
The party line of those who say that we are heading for a global warming crisis of epic proportions is that human activities generating carbon dioxide are key factors responsible for the warming that has taken place in recent times.
The problem with this reasoning is that the temperatures rose first and then the carbon dioxide levels rose. Some scientists say that the warming created the increased carbon dioxide, rather than vice versa.
Many natural factors, including variations in the amount of heat put out by the sun, can cause the earth to heat or cool.
The bigger problem is that this has long since become a crusade rather than an exercise in evidence or logic. Too many people are too committed to risk it all on a roll of the dice, which is what turning to empirical evidence is.
Those who have a big stake in global warming hysteria are unlikely to show up at the conference in New York, and unfortunately that includes much of the media.
SOWELL
aaww Crash, that’s disappointing and enlightening at the same time.