Richland woman bound for Denmark climate conference

By John Trumbo, Herald staff writer

RICHLAND � Ellyn Murphy of Richland is preparing to join 8,000 other concerned world citizens in December at the Climate Change Conference scheduled in Denmark.

The conference, with representatives from 192 countries and many nongovernmental organizations, could produce a global agreement to set limits on human-produced greenhouse gas emissions, primarily carbon dioxide, or CO2.

Murphy's going has nothing to do with her day job as a researcher at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, which involves sequestering CO2 deep underground within basalt.

Rather, this trip is to represent the League of Women Voters' Task Force on Climate Change. She is one of eight task force members who are taking personal time off and paying their own way.

The league agreed last year to support cap-and-trade regulation as a method of reducing CO2 emissions. So does Murphy, but her main reason for going is to learn as much as she can about the big picture of global warming and how to avoid the results.

"It will be an educational experience so I can talk to people in this community about curbing emissions worldwide," she said.

While climate change has been a hot issue for researchers for more than a decade, convincing the public that global warming isn't a hoax hasn't been easy, Murphy said.

"There's still a segment of the population who doesn't want to do anything about it," she said.

Earlier this week, news agencies in the U.S. said Congress may probe whether prominent climate research scientists at England's University of East Anglia who are advocates of global warming theories misrepresented the truth about climate change.

The researchers' e-mails, which were found and leaked by hackers, discussed how to manipulate data that does not support global warming.

Such allegations of tainted and unsettled science have dogged the global warming controversy for years.

Still, Murphy says public opinion seems to have shifted from people being wary of human-caused global warming to a general awareness today that it is a serious problem that needs to be addressed globally.

The goal of the conference is a Copenhagen Protocol in which signatory nations would agree to impose policy actions, such as cap-and-trade limits or a carbon tax that would regulate how much CO2 could be emitted. It would replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. The U.S. did not sign the Kyoto pact, but Murphy hopes it will sign at Copenhagen.

Beyond the protocol, Murphy says there may be another equally important benefit.

"One of the biggest benefactors of cap-and-trade will be the nuclear industry. ... It will be easier to get the financing to build the plants," said Murphy, who calls herself pronuclear and a moderate on the league's task force.

Her personal schedule prevents her from attending the conference's first week, when President Obama will address the assembly, but she'll arrive Dec. 13 for its last half.

"I expect to learn about the issues other countries are facing," she said, including China, which has surpassed the U.S. in CO2 emissions.

She said China is concerned about sulfur oxide and nitrogen oxide pollution in its own country, while carbon dioxide is not yet a high priority.

But when Chinese officials decide to act, it will happen faster because it is a dictatorship, she said.

China already is moving aggressively into manufacturing solar and wind technologies aimed at the U.S. market, Murphy said.

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Saturday, Nov. 28, 2009

Richland woman bound for Denmark climate conference

By John Trumbo, Herald staff writer