Talking with Tanaka and the Rebound Effect - an audio blog post

Today's blog was "phoned in" by Sean Cuthbert, one of the Lloyd's Register Group's leading climate change experts. Here is the audio file to listen to Sean's recap of the IEA meeting and his discussions with Executive Director Tanaka, as well as Head of the IEA Energy Efficiency Unit, Dr Jollands and Mr Kerr, the Senior Energy Analyst with their Energy Technology Policy Division at the IEA.
Here is the transcript of Sean's phone blog.

IEA Briefing and the Rebound Effect
Sean Cuthbert

Good morning I’m Sean Cuthbert from Lloyd’s Register Energy. And this morning I attended the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) morning session with regards to renewable energy, the energy outlook to 2050 and essentially a summary of their technology outlook reports as well.

Skeptics, Standards, and Peak “Everything”

“… No debate can be considered ‘healthy’ without an equal voice given to both sides. “ Such was my thought as I read about the recent meeting of global warming skeptics. However, the article quickly dispelled the notion that the climate change skeptics would put forward a convincing argument for their denial of a warming planet. The article portrayed an almost comical scene where the small number of delegates debated the various aspects of their theories and data without giving a cohesive view that would balance the ‘warming planet’ COP15 consensus.

A little less or more Hopenhagen!

When I reported yesterday that the Chinese, UK and US delegations were publicly criticising each others proposals, Xie Zhenhua, the head of China's delegation and deputy chairman of the Chinese National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) had not given his Reuters interview. It seems that my comments yesterday were somewhat understated. 

CCS and the Crystal Ball

As with Dr. Warris, the one question that is asked most frequently as the world watches the developments leading up to the COP 15 negotiations is, “What do I think will happen in Copenhagen?”

Both the mainstream media and alternative media outlets provide a plethora of different views and prognostications on the outcome of the latest round of climate change negotiations. But the main question for me is not “What will be the outcome?” but “Is our global climate changing?”.

I am a strong believer in fundamentals. Many sceptics push the view that our biosphere has natural warming and cooling cycles, and that currently we are entering a warming trend.