France is preparing to host the major international conference on climate and greenhouse gas reduction in December, but it is also the only country in the world still debating human responsibility for the current warming. At the same time, President Obama is telling the US military that climate change is a major security threat and that we must prepare for combat.
The monthly magazine La Recherche and the website lemonde.fr reveal that climate sceptics are currently nesting at the Academy of Sciences. This major French academic institution is responsible for issuing an opinion on global warming. It so happens that during this work, a notorious climatoskeptic, Vincent Cortillot, who is close to Claude Allègre, succeeded in sowing doubt and trying to have a text annexed to the report questioning human responsibility and the role of greenhouse gas emissions in global warming. Never before seen, not only in the annals of Quai Conti, but also at the global level! The monthly magazine La Recherche writes: "No great academy in the world has to date given such a gift to the deniers of human responsibility for global warming". Enough to achieve world renown for this venerable institution, but unfortunately not for the quality of its work.
Vincent Cortillot, of the Academy of Sciences
In thirty years of existence, the deniers have never exceeded a tiny fraction (3%) of the international scientific community. The timing is bad because, as the host country of COP 21, France will be the world's focal point in the battle against global warming.
How did it come to this? Research explains that Vincent Courtillot's maneuvers and Claude Allègre's recovery from health incidents that kept him away from public debate for a while find a sympathetic ear at the very heart of the Academy's governance. One of its two permanent secretaries, Catherine Bréchignac, did not hesitate in January 2015 to assert from the top of her authority that global temperatures had not changed for seventeen years. A short-sighted point of view that was widely controversial by the entire scientific community. A pathetic academic dispute in which peremptory assertions make their honey. The geomagnettist Vincent Cortillot thus puts back the need to force countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions since he says "climate change does not exist or is not due to human emissions of greenhouse gases".
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At the same time, on the other side of the Atlantic, President Barack Obama, addressing an audience of US military officers, said: "Science is indisputable (...) The planet is getting warmer... Denying climate change or refusing to deal with it is a threat to our national security". Quoted by AFP, President Obama hammers: "You are part of the first generation of officers who will begin to serve in a world where the effects of climate change are clearly felt.
Cautioning against the cost of future changes, he cited an estimate that a 30-centimetre rise in water levels by the end of the century could cost the United States $200 billion.
The White House says the Defense Department has launched a study to assess the vulnerability of some 7,000 U.S. Army bases and facilities. "Along our coasts, thousands of miles of highways, roads, railroads and energy facilities are vulnerable," he said May 20.
Barack Obama goes on to warn that "Around the world, climate change is increasing the risk of instability and conflict and the number of climate refugees. No nation is spared. Make no mistake, it will have an impact on the way our military must defend our country, organize, train, and protect its infrastructure.
With the Paris Conference in prospect, the American president declared himself optimistic that the international community could reach an "ambitious and lasting" agreement to limit the increase in global warming to +2°C compared to the pre-industrial era... Provided that the eminent scientists on Quai Conti do not come to stir up trouble.
Sources : Research, lemonde.fr, AFP
