Wednesday, December 9, 2009

The former Danish primeminister Anders Fogh Rasmussen on an earlier climate conference in Copenhagen in 2009: "Well, I like to challenge scientists ...
... because I know that they always operate within margins of insecurity, or risk, but the margins you provided me with is much smaller than what I’m used to in politics, so I’m not scared about it. But understand me correctly; at the end of the day, here in Copenhagen, we have—as politicians—to make the final decision, and to decide on exact figures, I hope. And this is a reason why I would give you the piece of advice, not to provide us with too many moving targets, because it is already a very, very complicated process. And I need your assistance to push this process in the right direction, and in that respect, I need fixed targets and certain figures, and not too many considerations on uncertainty and risk and things like that."


see: Environ. Res. Lett. 4 (2009) 020201 (13pp) doi:10.1088/1748-9326/4/2/020201
EDITORIAL: Dialog on Science and Policy to Address the Climate Crisis to conclude the International Association of Research Universities Climate Congress, Copenhagen, Denmark

2 comments:

Eric Hansen said...

excellent highlight

This reminds me of my own software business. In order to win a deal sales people often make promises that the developers often can't keep.

Everybody loses when politicians ask scientists to do the impossible. The scientists hopefully, will feel sufficiently confident in their research & process that they tell Rasmussen that "it is what it is" and that he and the rest of the politicos can take it or leave it.

Anonymous said...

Data are coming in from all over the world challenging the way CRU and others have adjusted raw temperature data from the GHCN; data accessible to everyone. See wattsupwiththat and others on Australia, New Zealand, Sweden. More questions than answers re we know too little of the histories of the various stations or how CRU and others did their calculations. Nevertheless the IPCC clearly has manipulated data from Australia and New Zealand in it's official report.

For some news:
check www.copenhagenclimatechallenge.org
141 prominent climate and climate related scientists have signed a very strong statement
on the present UN/IPCC position.

H Hak