By Andrew L. Urban
If I were a journalist attending the closing press conference at COP 21* next month, I would be asking the following questions of the spokesman or woman for the delegates:
Q: Can COP 21 confirm that the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is still 0.04%?
Q: What is the % of this 0.04% in the atmosphere that is contributed by human activity? How was it measured?
Q: What should it be – that is, by what % or by how many degrees would that reduce global warming – and for how long?
Q: Given that there has been no global warming for the past 18 + years, despite increased CO2 emissions, how can we measure the impact of reduced C02 levels on global warming, if any reduction were achieved?
Q: In view of the fact that the computer models which have predicted catastrophic warming (and used to support scientific theories about global warming) have been proved wrong by empirical evidence, why should we take any notice of such models now or in the future? What purpose would they serve?
Q: Do COP 21 delegates (any of them) have a view as to what constitutes scientific evidence that human activity is contributing to global warming and, importantly, to what extent?
* The 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP 21or CMP 11 will be held in Paris, from November 30 to December 11. It will be the 21st yearly session of the Conference of the Parties to the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the 11th session of the Meeting of the Parties to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The conference objective is to achieve a legally binding and universal agreement on climate, from all the nations of the world. The overarching goal of the Convention is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to limit the global temperature increase to 2 °C above pre-industrial levels.