So Lima produced another “accord” of late night unenforeceable nothingness. They pumped out gloom and doom, and trumpeted the $12 billion in funds pledged to the Green Climate Fund. But only a few years ago in Cancun they were aiming for $100 billion. A grand failure as the world grows more skeptical.
But as long as these UNFCCC mega-junkets occur at all, it is still a win for the Green Blobby. Blob-science and the renewables industry still got $12 billion more than skeptical scientists. And 11,000 potential lobbyists got a two week junket in South America, mixing with friends, and hearing how virtuous and important they are. That’s bound to pump up the science-activists — at the very least, they’ll be motivated to make sure they don’t miss out on next year’s two-week junket, or the year after that…
For scientists, this is rock star treatment. Is there any other branch of science which gets a regular paid two-week long international trip to an exotic location year after year? In what other career could B-grade researchers — whose computer simulations fail on every measure — get the red carpet rolled out and lauded as people “trying to save the world”?
Meanwhile the headlines rolled around the world, repeated variations of the last 20 years of pro-forma alarm. How much did each western government spend to make this glorious Olympic junket occur? No one seems to be able to tell us, but it’s pretty clear the amount of private money is negligible and all dollars were involuntarily given. Time to shut down the UNFCCC.
Beware the voluntary soft option
Obama is aiming for a “politically binding” agreement instead of a legally binding one, which he cannot do because US voters didn’t vote for representatives like Obama. So he promised in August that he would try to get around Congress to get a global Climate Accord in Lima. Voluntary agreements sound so pointless, but in the end there is no global police force to enforce a legal agreement (and we pray there never will be), so all agreements legal or not, are subject to the political will of the players. Is there much difference between political and legal deals on this international scale?
What are the options if Spain owes Russia billions at the end of the day and won’t pay? That depends on who has the biggest army and willingness to use it, and the most friends, just like international treaties, deals and agreements always have. Will a country support trade embargoes as a punishment? That depends on political will.
So the soft option is to ask everyone to agree to something voluntary, which seems fairly easy to agree too, then ramp up the political pressure after the deal is done. In its wildest dreams the UN would prefer the legal type of deal, but a “voluntary” deal is still worth a lot of PR, scores headlines, and provides leverage for hounding and hassling weak nations later.
If the citizens of the free world hate the deal, it’ll be ignored and all that political pressure will amount to nothing in the face of the vote-killing potential. But PR like this softens up the citizens; if they are not paying attention it helps create the belief that global carbon deals are inevitable. If domestic politics is distracted by other issues (and that’s the case in nearly every opinion poll in the West) then voters may elect soft governments who use the voluntary deals to justify their moves.
Obama’s plans are shamefully undemocratic
NY Times Aug 26, 2014 WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is working to forge a sweeping international climate change agreement to compel nations to cut their planet-warming fossil fuel emissions, but without ratification from Congress.
In preparation for this agreement, to be signed at a United Nations summit meeting in 2015 in Paris, the negotiators are meeting with diplomats from other countries to broker a deal to commit some of the world’s largest economies to enact laws to reduce their carbon pollution. But under the Constitution, a president may enter into a legally binding treaty only if it is approved by a two-thirds majority of the Senate.
Note the punishment is to “name and shame”:
To sidestep that requirement, President Obama’s climate negotiators are devising what they call a “politically binding” deal that would “name and shame” countries into cutting their emissions.
Naming and shaming only works if people buy into it. It falls apart if people laugh at the labels.
But it has already begun:
A Climate Accord Based on Global Peer Pressure
NY Times
… the driving force behind the new deal was not the threat of sanctions or other legal consequences. It was global peer pressure. And over the coming months, it will start to become evident whether the scrutiny of the rest of the world is enough to pressure world leaders to push through new global warming laws from New Delhi to Moscow or if, as a political force, international reproach is impotent.
“If a country doesn’t submit a plan, there will be no punishment, no fine, no black U.N. helicopters showing up,” said Jennifer Morgan, an expert on climate negotiations with the World Resources Institute, a research organization.
Instead the architects of the plan, including top White House officials, hope that the agreement will compel countries to act to avoid international condemnation.
“It relies on a lot of peer pressure,” Ms. Morgan said.
The structure of the deal is what political scientists often call a “name-and-shame” plan.
Under the Lima Accord all countries must submit plans that would be posted on a United Nations website and made available to the public
What do we take from this? We have to keep up the information campaign direct to voters and politicians. We need to name and shame the unskeptical scientists and the freeloader financials and industrialists who profit from the scare. But we especially need to name and shame the gullible journalists — the media IS the problem. If we had a better media we’d have better policies and better politicians.
It makes the new media and channels of communication all the more important. We need the blogs, letter to editors, and emails to representatives. Peer group pressure works. The difference between skeptics and unskeptics is that the one side has logic and data, and the other has billions of reasons.
Just received my copy of “Climate Change – the facts 2024” from the IPA. I note a certain Joanne Nova is one of the authors. Can’t wait to get into it. A copy has been sent to all politicians; should constitute obligitory holiday reading. Perhaps next year, as temperatures drop, the heat will go out of all this nonsense.
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I meant 2014 – clumsy fingers!
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No problem with 2024. With these people we fight the climate facts for 2024 might be exactly what they are in 2014 and the IPA might still be trying to set the record straight a couple of decades from now.
50
Just received my copy too.)
30
Received my copy free. Never contributed and was going to buy it.
Oh well.
10
Just received my copy of “Climate Change – the facts 2024″ from the IPA
Now that should guarantee a necessary “junkit”!
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You are scum.
31
Actually, I always though it was from below the bottom of the barrel.
The ooze that sinks to the bottom of a fetid stagnation of mind.
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Yep, you always did consider real facts to be junk.
Always one for the fabrication.
I’m guessing you live your life in pure fantasy as well.
41
The political Agenda is Global Socialist Government/International socialism that is embedded in the proposed climate treaty., since Copenhagen 2009. This will not end if UNFCCC flops also political. They will just find another “problem” that suits their endgame solutions?
41
These jamborees are becoming increasingly absurd and ridicule is the only rational response.
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I think I beat everybody to that for this conference. 🙂
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Nice pun, but I was expecting Lemmings.
80
It’s all monkey business.
90
They do look intelligent and extremely focused.
KK
50
“They do look intelligent and extremely focused”
Compared to the climate glitteratia, that’s for certain!
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AUDIO 52 mins: 15 Dec: Corbett Report: Interview 980 – Tim Ball Lets the Hot Air Out of the Lima Climate Deal
http://www.corbettreport.com/interview-980-tim-ball-lets-the-hot-air-out-of-the-lima-climate-deal/
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jo says –
“It makes the new media and channels of communication all the more important”
14 Dec: NYT Dot Earth: Andrew C. Revkin: At Climate Talks in Lima, Not ‘Same as it Ever Was’?
On Monday I’ll be posting reflections from a batch of climate-policy analysts, climate campaigners and others with a range of viewpoints on what was, and wasn’t, a significant step on the path to an international climate agreement at next year’s negotiations, in Paris. I’ll weigh in tomorrow, as well. An excellent starting point is today’s post by Robert Stavins at Harvard (link)
To begin, here’s a “Your Dot” reflection on the Lima talks from James Fahn, the executive director of Internews’s Earth Journalism Network and a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, Graduate School of Journalism. (He previously wrote for Dot Earth from Bhutan.)
Fahn was in Peru to lead the annual Climate Change Media Partnership, which brings groups of journalists – this year, mostly from Latin America, but also from China, India and Nepal – to cover the negotiations. (Full disclosure: I led a workshop at the 2010 climate meeting in Cancún, Mexico, for this group, which I’ve hailed as a valuable network for sharing coverage and journalism tips.)
Here’s his piece:…
At Climate Talks in Lima, Only the Arguing Remains the Same
By James Fahn
Flash forward 17 years to Lima, where Kerry, now with considerably more authority as Secretary of State, gave a riveting speech that was one of the highlights of COP20…
The science behind human-induced global warming is far stronger, as documented by the latest assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change…
But perhaps most importantly, the economics have changed…
The real game changer could be the plan by China to launch a national carbon market in 2016-17…
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/12/14/at-climate-talks-in-lima-not-same-as-it-ever-was/?_r=0
LinkedIn: James Fahn, Journalism Lecturer at UC Berkeley
I teach a graduate level course in international environmental reporting and oversee the Earth Journalism Scholars program.
Previous: Ford Foundation
NOAA, Research Intern
I helped lead the US government review of the 3rd IPCC assessment report
Nation Multimedia Group(Thailand)- Environment Editor
Executive Director, Earth Journalism Network 2004-present
I run a non-profit project that connects and supports over 4,500 journalists around the world, aimed at helping them cover environmental issues. We carry out training programs, support local networks of environmental journalists, build GeoJournalism platforms and provide small grants and Fellowship opportunities.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesfahn
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Ah! John Kerry. What a prat!
In May of 2010, as part of the Obama Administration, then Senator Kerry and Independent Joe Lieberman sponsored a huge new (Climate Change) Bill, The American Power Act, a 987 page Bill which sank almost without trace after debate.
My site’s owner asked me if I’d like to have a look at it and see what it all meant. That led to a series of Posts on what it proposed.
Part One of that series is at this link, and while it may look like I’m shamelessly linking into one of my own Posts, read it though carefully, and I wonder if it might sound somewhat familiar.
While the Bill in the U.S. failed pretty miserably really, it got a reprise, and as you read through the Post, it may become obvious, as the Australian Government based its Carbon (Dioxide) Tax around it, and it’s all but a (dare I even say it) carbon copy of that U.S. Bill.
You’d almost think that The Democrats would by now get the message, what with the Clinton Administration failing so miserably to get the Kyoto Protocol passed when (then) VP Al Gore was asked by his boss to take it to his friends in the Senate, only to find it couldn’t even get one vote there.
Then President Obama asked John Kerry to sponsor this failed Bill.
So, as a present, John got a promotion and got to play on the big stage at the UN.
Nice hair though!
Tony.
351
Tony,
In California the price of electricity is going up, up and up because the Legislature thinks it’s going to save the world from climate change. So I’ve begun to be very aware of things that use electricity and what the impact of losing that nice convenient power source would be.
Remember that when Obama was campaigning in 2008 he announced his intention to bankrupt the coal fired power producers and of course, the coal industry along with it. He used exactly the word bankrupt.
Judging from the fact that he was elected no one believed him. Maybe more accurately, no one understood the huge energy consumption of America and what its loss would mean.
Our dependency on electricity is largely hidden, not that we can’t see it but the power demands of various things aren’t readily apparent. How many people have a way to grasp the power required to run their air conditioning compressor for instance? And even if they can do that, how many can translate that back to how fuel hungry the generators are? Not many.
Have a flat panel TV? They supposedly use less power than the old boob tube, right? But some recent looking into the relative power consumption I read (and can’t locate again) showed that it might be nearly as bad as the boob tube. The comparison was for equivalent size TV sets, not the computer monitor type and the conclusion was that the electronics for the TV functionality were a significant contributor to the overall power consumption. I can find several more general comparisons but not the one I went looking for.
There’s hardly a device in my house that doesn’t depend on electricity. And those that don’t plug into the wall have batteries in them. My KwH meter reads out the current demand and I’ve never seen it below 385 Watts. With A/C running it’s above 4 kW, sometimes above 5 kW depending on what else is running. And these days everything uses standby power so your remote control can turn it on and off. Even a thermostat, which once needed no power to do the job, now has a microprocessor in it and derives power from the furnace, which also has a microprocessor in it where there once was no standby requirement either. Each device uses only a few watts on standby. But a few plus a few plus… …a few adds up to something significant. And it suddenly gets much larger when the device gets turned on.
Multiply my demand by all the other about 200 homes in this one tract alone and you’re already out of the average man’s reckoning by a long way.
It’s not just the demand for power but the rate at which demand is increasing that’s going to crash our power system eventually, whether Obama succeeds with his intentions or not.
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Re: Kerry
If nice hair was worth something then John Kerry would be worth something. And we both know what it’s worth. 😉
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One utility item that is often overlooked in the energy picture is water. Much of the cost of water is the energy needed to pump it from source to consumer. Look for that to “skyrocket,” too.
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California has always been a bit weird.
I guess the price of electricity ( among other reasons ) going up is why many businesses are leaving and moving interstate….becasue of high taxes, excessive regulations, forced unionism, and bloated public sector…which sounds like typically inept Socialism….
Soon all you will have will be alternative religious cults, the movie industry, IT companies and prius drivers….
What a mix….
20
If the current trend continues there won’t be enough wealth producers left to support the government and then the madness will stop, one way or another.
The price of everything is climbing except natural gas which seems to be abundant enough to keep the price reasonable. But there isn’t a thing a consumer in california needs that isn’t dependent on either electricity or those evil fossil fuels, so when either one suffers inflation, so does everything else.
I suspect they’ll find an excuse to regulate the price of natural gas upward soon enough. After all, it’s a fossil fuel too.
Weird isn’t the beginning of how to describe California. Outside barking at the moon all night is closer to the truth.
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Let’s hope the New Media remains free and equal for all:
http://www.savetheinternet.com/sti-home
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EarthJournalism.net: COP20
This year, with the summit being held in Peru, we’ve concentrated on bringing journalists from Latin America, although among our group of a dozen participants we’ll also have Fellows China, India and Nepal. Funding for this year’s program comes from the European Climate Foundation, the Marisla Foundation, the Skoll Global Threats Fund and the Flora Family Foundation…
About EJN
Sponsors
The activities of the Earth Journalism Network have been funded by the Marisla Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation, the V. Kann Rasmussen Foundation, the Robert & Michelle Friend Foundation, the Germeshausen Foundation, the Flora Family Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Heising-Simons Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, the Kendeda Fund, the Christensen Fund, the Oak Foundation, the Smart Family Foundation, the Edgerton Family Foundation, the European Commission, the UK Department for International Development, the Swedish International Development Agency, the United Nations Foundation, CIFOR, the World Bank, the European Commission, the Alumni Fund of the Philanthropy Workshop West at the Tides Foundation and numerous individual donors
EJN in Numbers:
4,500 member journalists
3,300 journalists trained in EJN activities
4,500 stories published (Resulting direct from activities)
links above available from here…
http://earthjournalism.net/projects/cop-20/
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Instead the architects of the plan, including top White House officials, hope that the agreement will compel countries to act to avoid international condemnation
In another statement, hope is also expressed that Muslim terrorists will share a bacon butty with the Israeli army.
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yep, and the Iranians have ceased spinning their centrifuges.
80
Hell will freeze solid before that happens.
But this part of it has some chance, maybe not large, but a chance of influencing some leaders.
40
rather than
A politically binding agreement can only be between individuals, and not countries, so it is only binding for as long as both (or all) the parties agree.
I cannot think of any “politically binding” agreement that has lasted longer than a few months. They don’t die with a fanfare, they simply wither away.
It is the agreement you have when you are not having an agreement.
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As a CAGW sceptic, my philosophy for years has been that I will know that it is a real, serious and urgent problem the day that Climate Change conferences are done on Skype to save on CO2 emissions. I’m not anticipating this happening soon. As long as they insist on flying round the world to stay in expensive hotels then I know they don’t take it seriously. So why should I?
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ROFLMAO !! beautifully said. !! 🙂 🙂
CO2 emissions are a tool to these tools, nothing more nothing less.
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Well, you been trolled! Obviously by someone hoping to join the gravy train.
I wonder how long “Climate Change” would last if all delegates had to pay out of their own pocket?
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Alex, you’ve just got to wonder who twitched over the red button. I do wish those one thumb wonders would come out of their sanctimonious closet and reveal all.
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39
HYDRO POWER !!
Solid reliable…. requiring massive dams.
Also Nuclear power.
NOT wind and solar.
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FIN,
surely you didn’t actually fall for that.
Tony.
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Yep.. he sure did ! 🙂
He is the third character in “Dumb and Dumber.” !
41
Well you know how it is with Fin, his reasoning progresses along these lines:
1 – Is it what I want to hear
2 – Does it match my beliefs
If 1 and 2, or either 1 or 2, then according to Fin it just has to be true, otherwise it’s just a conservative lie or some other rationalization of why it can’t be true. He’s very binary.
80
So, at least a 16.6% increase in CO2 output over 5 years.
Good, the atmosphere needs it ! 🙂
71
And 5.000 of the 10.000 that participated in Lima where members of the NGO’s. Or as I call them ECO Jugend?
40
Listen to the sound of one hand clapping. It is the end for Climate Change. 11,000 people to come up with a name and shame agreement? Where was the compelling science, the riveting data, the undeniable logic, the campaign of fear? How does climate change come wholly and solely from man made CO2 emissions when they do not even affect temperature? Can no one explain it or is it just not true and never was?
Dress it up as they might with announcements, Lima is a Lemon, a monumental failure at a conservative cost of $250,000,000. Next to Mexico city, Lima must be the National Capital least threatened by rising sea levels. Why not Amsterdam after Paris, or is Paris the fin de siecle for the IPCC and their absurd and massive waste of the planet’s resources? The IPCC is not sustainable. Close it now. It is the most expensive failure in the UN’s history.
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The Gilbert & Sullivan scientific spectacles would be funny if they were not such a waste of money, and what a waste!
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As some day it may happen that a scapegoat must be found,
I’ve got a little list — I’ve got a little list
Of political offenders who might well be underground,
And who never would be missed — who never would be missed!
There’s environmental scientists who write long nomographs,
All rabid green campaigners, that will screw you just for laughs,
All climate conference attendees, who first-class fly about,
Then wonder, when the wind don’t blow, why all the lights go out,
And all third persons who on green taxation do insist,
They’d none of ’em’ be missed — they’d none of ’em be missed!
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The ‘topsy-turvy’ genius of Rereke Whakaaro, thank you sir. 🙂
40
“He polished up the handle of the big front door
I polished up that handle so carefully
That now I am the Ruler of the Queen’s Navy”
😉
30
I hope so!
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You must be kidding!
Hot air balloons burn fuel to keep airborne. This lot burns other people’s money to keep afloat.
Until the money supply is turned off, there will be annual conferences all over the place.
Mind you, Paris in December with the current climate cooling might not be that popular. All they’ll do is switch to tropical cities. Timbuktu perhaps?
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Well, according to their very own models and predictions they should be able to enjoy a nice temperate climate at McMurdo Station by now and can arrive in non-fossil fuel sail powered style through ice free oceans. Delegates can live in state-of-the-art tents (made from used water and detergent bottles) and instead of pub crawling and club hopping (with taxpayer funded morally ambivalent companions) in less exotic locations like Paris and Lima they can make snow angels then count penguins and seals for fun and to help out fellow researchers by generating REAL data. (Seminars will need to be offered on how to count and measure things that are not inside a
video gamecomputer model.)Cuisine and catering be rotated through Ameriqual, Wornick, Sopako, the ADF and Vestey and will save big money since they already produce large military orders. That also creates a big advantage… being able to keep unused food stored for the next conference will save even more (MRE, CR1M and GP rations last much longer when refrigerated… that’s cheap year ’round storage in Antarctica.)
I figured to start at McMurdo since it’s big and then they can switch it up the following years as attendance drops to the point that the few people who show up can easily find an extra patch of snow at Mawson or Rothera.
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Just a thought.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if France shut down their nukes, and the Paris conference had to rely on wind power. ! 🙂
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Great sentiment, but the conference hall probably will have back up diesel generators.
Of course, the irony of that would be lost on the faithful.
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TdeF, why stop at the IPCC, shut down the whole UN..and they can take their agenda 21 with them.
Amen.
251
Yes, there is that temptation, to write off the UN, but after WWI and WW2, there is always the hope that a forum for the world’s countries might coordinate efforts to prevent and deter war. There are also the hundreds of thousands of good brave people in blue helmets who have policed the world’s trouble spots with little recognition and the work of the doctors and scientists of WHO and other agencies.
It is tragic that the money, industry and time wasted on Global Nonsense could have helped so many people in so many countries, but the UN does have a real function, not least as a forum. It is just not man made Climate Change, the reason the IPCC was formed and its whole raison d’etre, its reason for existence was man made Climate Change. Then it became a useful tool for the infiltrated and popular Green parties to control so many world governments. No, just close the IPCC. It has done immense harm and no good for anyone, except the Green carpetbaggers and the Profits of Doom.
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I kind of.. no, I completely disagree. I think the fact that the UN has coddled, supported, empowered and elected so many truly evil tyrants over the years has made it far worse than the outright conflicts it purports to prevent. Terrorists and thugs hide behind those blue helmets not to mention the massive corruption in UN forces as well. Politically biased meddling and appeasement empowers the bad at the expense of the good. Coddling bullies and giving them “authority” through the UN has caused far more destruction than the productive side of the balance sheet will ever show. The UN needs to be gone and countries need to talk to each other, not through a rat’s nest of bureaucratic Socialists living off the hard work of the world’s productive population.
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Most people have had nothing to do with the UN. Those who do talk of corruption at the top where UN bureaucrats fly into disaster zones first class and stay at the best places and visit in helicopters. At the danger end, real people do really good work, say after the tsunami disaster in Indonesia where I heard these stories. So it is any more corrupt and spoiled than many government agencies, where the people at the bottom do all the hard work? (Who has ever heard of thugs in blue helmets? This is new)
So where will the villains and tyrants meet anyone else, if not at the UN? Who will pressure them to at least pretend to behave? What about the slow rehabilitation of Myanmar, for example?
Sure 75% of the world’s governments are military dictatorships pretending to be democracies, but at least they are pretending and the more they engage with the rest of the world, the more the walls come down as in Myanmar. Before we knock things down, propose alternatives. It is possible many of the UN agencies are working well.
There is just no need for the IPCC. The clue is in the name. Meteorology has nothing to do with the UN. The world already has a meteorological society, but the UN wanted to grow and the meteorologists wanted recognition at the UN, so they had to create this idea where government cooperated to change the climate and save the planet.
From this simple idea we saw the immediate invention of CO2 driven Global Warming arose. In 1988 they had no choice. Someone had to come up with a man made Global weather problem which would justify billions and they did, immediately. Man Made Global Warming. Too bad any warming stopped in 1998. It was only ever a self justifying invention of the IPCC. The UN has real functions on which it needs to coordinate international cooperation, like the control and spread of Ebola. The IPCC is a fraud and a waste and unnecessary and always was. Close the IPCC.
Leave the weather to the planet, unless someone has a God complex, like ex Vice President Al Gore.
60
Tdef, you have clearly never seen the movie The Whisleblower – a true story exposing the sordid depths these “blue helmets” can go to whilst the UN knowingly turns a blind eye. I say shut down the UN, that are a pox on the planet!
60
“Whistleblower” sorry, typo
10
I take it you are not a fan, then?
50
Who, Al Gore? Man bear pig? (South Park ridicule episode). No. He can cosy up to his $1Bn and multiple houses and lecture the rest of the world on doing the right thing by others and decrease his own carbon footprint. It has always been puzzling that the leaders of doomsday sects and cults always live such lavish lifestyles on other people’s money while espousing personal sacrifice. You wonder that the devout acolytes in hessian cloth with dirty feet cannot see the hypocrisy.
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Neither am I, as you might have guessed from my previous rants.
The UN is a “Band-Aid” organisation, it aims to curtail or cure NOTHING.
The UNHCR for example is in the business of ensuring refugees are well treated, and provides some logistical support after a fashion, but hand in glove with that does it’s level best to ensure that there is an endless supply of refugees for it to support. If you doubt that, then look to Australia’s refugee situation, where they have helped left wing governments ensure an ongoing active trade in the human misery of people smuggling is facilitated, not curtailed or blocked in any way, and they do everything in their power to exert influence to stop operations such as ‘Sovereign Borders’ which were designed to break this evil trade.
Then you have UN “Peace Keepers” in Rwanda, who gun in hand stood by and looked on passively while people in the hundreds of thousands were butchered because of an edict from above- not to blame the hapless foot soldier, but certainly the UN as an organisation was entirely and completely culpable by inaction in genocide it did nothing to prevent.
Then you have the IMF, actively acting as a neo-colonialist pirate by debt-enslaving poor countries, paying off the leadership to maintain their corrupt grip on the country, and then setting the groundwork for multinational corporate takeover of developing world resources under the guise of “helping them”.
Sorry, TdeF, the UN represents the very worst of humanity, in spite of the undoubted well meaning foot soldier shouldering the burden of conscience and responsibility, but the organisation itself is a parasitic and degenerate monster, and needs to be dismantled and GONE! The UNIPCC is merely another manifestation of its innate and inherent corruption, another head of an evil Hydra.
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I take your points, but despite the failures of the UN, they have a useful role and in some cases it has been successful.
Realistically asking for the closing of the IPCC is the easiest way to a resolution of the Global Warming gravy train than asking for the closure of the entire UN. It is an achievable aim and a simple practical focus for Jo’s suggestion of continuing blogs and complaints and media stories. If there is no Man Made Climate Change, we do not need the IPCC. Closing it would also end these self perpetuating junkets where 11,000 people are paid to travel on jets to discuss in person what could be discussed over the internet, if in fact there was a problem in the first place. Where is the international Ebola conference?
Closing the entire UN and all its departments will take longer, but it would be better if they actually did their jobs properly, which is something they are paid to do. The world said nothing about Rwanda. It was not just the UN. My view is that the world’s cares nothing about places which are not tourist spots with beaches, so no one seems to care about the Ukraine despite the civil war raging and the suffering of so many people. It is so easy to blame Russia and Putin, but the Ukraine is a mess anyway and they need help, not military help.
21
I would agree TdeF that it would be ideal to have an honest supranational organisation that helped defray issues of poverty, hunger, war and disease in a non-partisan way, and the UN should be the organisation to do so.
Unfortunately, human nature gets in the way, power corrupts and centralised power renders one dictatorial, totalitarian and ineffectual all at the same time. Governing by committee, with pigs in the trough up to their little trotters and unelected unrepresentative faceless bureaucrats are never going to deliver on anything like what you envisage, because they are NEVER accountable to the people who have skin in the game- like you and I and the other 6 billion of us who are trying to eke out a living and hope to leave society better for our existence and input. They are not the solution, they are the problem.
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In June 1967 there were UN forces ‘protecting’ Israel. The Arabs, in particular President Nasser of Egypt, demanded the UN to remove themselves. They obeyed. This was to clear the way for the quick destruction off Israel. Alas, the Arabs were beaten hands down in less than 1 week. So much for the peace keeping UN force.
50
We have to rid ourself with UNEP, IPCC and UNFCCC. And no more NGO’ s into an UN conference.
40
28
Fin,
yeah!
All of it Hydro.
Tony.
90
All that yummy CO2 to make all that cement for all those dams 🙂
51
If 800 – 1000 gigawatts is around 20% of power produced, then logically the total amount of power produced is around 4000 – 5000 gigawatts.
So in other words, by 2030, China will produce around 3200 – 4000 gigawatts annually from (mainly) coal fired power stations, which is (according to the White House item quoted above) at least 4 times more than China’s current production from (mainly) coal fired power stations.
Thanks FIN – very interesting post.
60
And all of those large scale coal fired power plants have a projected life span of 50 years.
Tony.
100
would the eager “journos” brought to Lima by EJN bother to look into who is funding the trip and indoctrination?
European Climate Foundation ECF): Supervisory Board:
Chair, Caio Koch-Weser
Caio Koch-Weser (Chair)
Vice Chairman of the Deutsche Bank Group. Former Vice Minister in the German Federal Ministry of Finance. Previously served in senior positions at the World Bank…
Before his governmental duties, Mr. Koch-Weser spent 25 years at the World Bank, most recently as Managing Director of Operations, based in Washington. He was also Chair of the World Bank Policy Committee and a member of the Executive Management Committee. Currently, he is Vice-Chairman and senior adviser with Deutsche Bank…
John McCall MacBain (Founding Chair and Vice-Chair)
Founding Chair of the ECF Supervisory Board. President, McCall MacBain Foundation and Pamoja Capital, its investment arm. Trustee of the Rhodes Trust (Oxford) and member of the Yale Advisory Board of the Center for Environmental Law and Policy…
He is Chairman of the Trudeau Foundation and a founder and the Founding Chair of the European Climate Foundation…
Susan Bell (Vice-Chair)
Senior Advisor at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. Former Vice President of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Serves on the advisory board of the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University…etc
http://europeanclimate.org/home/who-we-are/board/
link from above to the Leadership Team, which includes:
ECF Leadership Team:
Dr. Johannes Meier is CEO of the European Climate Foundation, which is focused on policies that mitigate climate change and drive the transition to a low-carbon economy.
Prior to joining the ECF in February 2011, Johannes was a partner with McKinsey & Company, executive board member of the Bertelsmann Foundation in Germany, and CEO of GE CompuNet Computer AG.
Christoph Wolff is Managing Director of the European Climate Foundation. In this role, he heads up the European Climate Foundation’s power sector decarbonisation, low-carbon transport and energy efficiency programmes.
A mechanical engineer by training Christoph was senior partner at McKinsey for 16 years heading the global work in logistics and infrastructure…He has been the CEO of companies in the renewable energy sector, namely Novatec/ABB GmbH and Solar Millennium AG, and acted as Board Advisor for Flagsol/Ferrostaal in the renewable division. Christoph is on the board of several new energy start-ups and faculty at the Institute for Energy Economics in Cologne.
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The specious politicism of climate change appears unnerving because on the one hand it defies sustained, critical scrutiny and on the other, it very successfully utilised an implicit term that is predicated on catastrophic human interference in the natural order for which there is only one final solution, think ‘coal trains’ or if you have trouble with that, think ISIS. These climate desperati do not offer ‘salvation’. They most emphatically will not ‘save the planet’. They offer only mindless revolution and impoverishment. They, and everything they stand for is politically, economically, socially and morally unacceptable. As Jo so aptly says, “If we had a better media we’d have better policies and better politicians. It makes the new media and channels of communication all the more important.”
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‘But we especially need to name and shame the gullible journalists — the media IS the problem. If we had a better media we’d have better policies and better politicians.’
Indeed, aunty in particular needs to be dressed down for being a major contributor to mass delusion. Friends and family divided over dodgy science, its a disgrace.
Jo is right in suggesting we continue in our efforts to get a rational discourse happening within the MSM, but ultimately there needs to be a nasty change in the weather and a steep drop in temperatures before the media would take any notice.
The pause cannot last forever, so I’m looking at the weather for triggers and signals to add weight to our argument that CO2 isn’t the driver.
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I think we have to wait until this second peak in SC24 drops, plus a bit of lag as the world systems dissipate energy over the next few years.
These smaller peaks seem to extend the solar cycles, pushing the drop in temps out a bit further than initially expected.
Look for the real drop off in temps to start late 2015, with SC25 being a minimal peak and cooler conditions until mid century at least.
I just wish raised CO2 levels did provide some warming, but I reckon we lucked out on that! 🙁
All you inner city Melbourne, left-wing, climate-change-gullible,latte sippers…… Queensland beckons….
…. but Qld does NOT want you !!
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‘I just wish raised CO2 levels did provide some warming, but I reckon we lucked out on that!’
The big plus is that the planet will be a lot greener.
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We already have far too many of them up here. Demanding daylight savings etc, just like they have down south.
Plus QLD politicians and the Unis up here have done far too much damage to our economy and our scientific representation to be proud of it. Oh for the days of Joh, at least the brown paper bags back then were recyclable.
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El Gordo,
I agree. The climate record demonstrates variability at all time scales. Therefore the “PAUSE” cannot last.
Are you are expecting that the warming will resume?
I suspect that we are at the top of a short warming phase. I am expecting temperatures to go down from here.
It is a bit frustrating to have to wait as we age. I expect an answer within 5 years and I hope it is less.
151
‘Are you expecting that the warming will resume?’
Its possible that we havn’t reached the end of the Modern Climate Optimum, after a decade of moderate cooling similar to 1945-76, temperatures could pick up again in a decade or two depending on Sol.
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Jo is right in suggesting we continue in our efforts to get a rational discourse happening within the MSM, but ultimately there needs to be a nasty change in the weather and a steep drop in temperatures before the media would take any notice.
Ain’t gunna’ happen! The delusion of denial writ large!
013
So show us your proof that “it ain’t gunna’ happen”, you can’t because you a) have none, b) don’t know, and c) are once again at a complete loss of how to replay in any other manner.
I will say it again, though I know it will once again go right over your head, it is people like you that are why so many people are tired of hearing about AGW/Climate Change and simply don’t care anymore.
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The bravado of denial: no substantiation, no evidence, no theoretical backing. Merely the continuation of unscientific BS! Even with the current lack of substantial warming (the so-called “hiatus’) there is no statistical evidence for a reversal in trend Niamh Cahill of the School of Mathematical Sciences, University College Dublin.
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Stats are OK but observations outweigh your argument. The point is, how long before the Great Pause terminates?
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/clip_image0021.png
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The “Great Pause” in context
please try again!
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Very amusing, do try and take this debate seriously. Here is a projection by looking back over my shoulder.
William Bradley on board HMS Sirius.
“New Year’s Day 1788 was greeted by another storm and very cold weather around Tasmania, with reports of snow.
“More violent winds and storms lasting 10 days lashed the fleet as they sailed up the east coast.”
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Only a total ignoramus doesn’t recognise that climate is not linear except over short periods.
These periods are separated by events such as the 1998 El Nino.
Since that event finished at the start of 2001, there has been NO SIGNIFICANT WARMING in any of the four main data bases.
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Exhibit A
http://www.bom.gov.au/fwo/IDY65100.pdf
The Roaring Forties clearly illustrated, noting unnatural happening.
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The Klimatariat say the pause will soon end global warming will commence again, but others strongly disagree.
‘Average global atmospheric and oceanic temperatures will drop significantly beginning between 2015 and 2016 and will continue with only temporary reversals until they stabilize during a long cold temperature base lasting most of the 2030’s and 2040’s.’
David DuByne
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Another SCIENCE group predicts cooling.
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For the Griss: his elucidation and education
04
UK temperatures have been fairly flat.
http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c01bb07c3e254970d-pi
To get a glimpse of a precipitous drop in temperatures the UK is probably the best place to watch. At the moment the NAO is positive and if it remains that way over the next few months then Britain should enjoy a mild winter.
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Nice cherry picking. Next time try from the 1930s.
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“For the Griss: his elucidation and education”
Yet again, you post meaningless pages, empty of any substance what-so-ever.
No wonder your education and understanding is so limited.
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Good, again where is the evidence? That’s a graph, it has no formulas, no explanations, nothing. It is just a picture, Doesn’t mean a damn thing.
So when are you going to admit to your denial? We aren’t in denial of a thing, that is your own projection.
Theoretical backing? Who the hell are you trying to kid? There is far more understanding of the physics and dynamics involved in any skeptic paper than anything I’ve seen from those riding the gravy train. Now we realize you aren’t competent or intelligent enough to actually understand the math or the logic behind it so you will accept anything that fits what you want to hear, but the rest of us aren’t mental serfs like you and we can reason through what is happening and it certainly isn’t the picture you try and paint.
You are beyond pathetic. I feel sorry for your parents, no one should have to admit they had anything to do with the way you turned out.
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And it uses Gistemp (LOL), highly adjusted to create a trend.
A meaningless and trivial graph, showing absolutely nothing about anything. !!
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Well it’s UNFCCC adjusted and conform?
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The solution is simple – stop being a denier. You are a minority here.
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‘Ain’t gunna’ happen! The delusion of denial writ large!’
Global warming has stopped and shows no signs of resurrection, so all we have to do is wait another decade and it will be a climate trend, officially endorsed by 97% of atmospheric scientists.
Of course we may not have the luxury, if you show me signs of regional warming I’ll show you my cooling signals?
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***a global accounting of co2 emissions for the purpose of trading co2 (think derivatives) is the Lima success story for the likes of Harvard’s Stavins, whose piece was the first linked at Revkin’s Dot Earth:
14 Dec: Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center: Assessing the Outcome of the Lima Climate Talks
by Robert Stavins:
The Lima Accord
By establishing a new structure in which all countries will state (over the next six months) their contributions to emissions mitigation, this latest climate accord is important, because it moves THE PROCESS in a productive direction in which all nations will contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions…
The expanded geographic scope of the Lima Accord and thereby the incipient Paris agreement – and the emerging architecture of a pragmatic hybrid combining bottom-up “Individually Nationally Determined Contributions” (INDCs) with top-down elements for reporting of contributions by the UNFCCC Secretariat – represents the best promise in many years of a future international climate agreement that is truly meaningful…
Under the Lima Accord, within the next six months the other industrialized countries will announce their own contributions, and — more importantly – so will the other large, emerging economies – India, Brazil, Korea, South Africa, Mexico, and Indonesia.
***Coverage of 80% to 90% of global emissions can be anticipated…
http://www.robertstavinsblog.org/2014/12/14/assessing-the-outcome-of-the-lima-climate-talks/
Erwin Jackson, whose time at Greenpeace is never mentioned in profiles either at Lowy or at the Climate Institute, is also salivating over precisely the same point, & says it’s locked in no matter what happens in Paris.
also, for Jackson, like Stavins it’s all about “THE PROCESS”
btw Australia exporting fossil fuels is “diplomacy”!!!
15 Dec: Lowy Interpreter: Lima climate deal: It’s ugly, but it’s progress
by Erwin Jackson, Deputy CEO of The Climate Institute
The Lima climate summit wasn’t pretty and the outcomes weren’t perfect, but they do represent progress…
Draft climate contributions from all major emitting nations are expected to be on the table around mid-2015, and Australia has committed to meet this deadline.
These commitments will continue to provide an impetus for domestic action regardless of the details of any Paris agreement…
What about Australia and its interests? This depends on how you define them. But it’s clear that unless the Government starts to realign its position, it is going to continue to face domestic and international challenges from THE PROCESS to Paris and beyond…
It is understandable that the export revenues of fossil fuels are an important factor in Australia’s diplomacy. But this and other ideological barriers are limiting Australia’s worldview…
As the World Bank notes, our current climate change trajectory threatens to set back decades of development among vulnerable countries. Asia and the Pacific, in particular, will not be immune…
Being at the table to help develop innovative and sustainable sources of public and private finance, as Australia was during the development of the Green Climate Fund some years back, allows Canberra to maximise the efficiency and value for money from these finance flows…
Money talks, and investors are increasingly looking at whether a nation has a credible decarbonisation pathway before making decision on major capital investments…
http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/2014/12/15/Lima-climate-deal-Its-ugly-but-its-progress.aspx?COLLCC=1742754372&
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The only thing I could find to disagree with in Jo’s article was the description of Lima as being ‘exotic’. As a city, it is a dump, something which have upset many of the delegates.
The scary part is the deviousness of the Obama administration’s in its intention to circumvent the Senate and House of Congress, which would quite rightly tell him where to stick his climate policies. Obama is a lame duck president, who now only has the one goal of leaving “a legacy”, which is the reason why he is increasingly using his ‘executive authority’ to impose unpopular and dangerous policies on the US.
I think this has now become a classic case for the need for his impeachment.
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The Democrats desperately want the Republicans to try and impeach the p.o.s. then they can cry racism pointing their fingers at the Republicans as the bad guys for attacking their savior. The media will spin it to paint the Democrats as victims and on and on. They need to neuter him some other way. Not that Obama actually has a pair but you know what I mean.
As much as I’d like to see the bastard impeached that would leave us with Biden as CIC. Not a good alternative really and it would create a major mess politically. The Republicans, or the independents, would be better off to get their respective kaka together and find a solid candidate for the next presidential race and start putting together a cohesive plan. Unfortunately from their performance over the last couple of elections I’m not sure they can all get on the same page long enough to do so.
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I understand your position, Robert. But could Biden even remotely do a worse job than Obama? And what does it matter anymore who’s a racist? We all are. Just listen to Al Sharpton if you don’t believe me.
Impeachment would tear apart the country but it’s already torn apart. And it would also get the matter of who stands where out in the open for all to see. The MSM would have no choice but to cover it and all the articles of impeachment would at last have a chance to be put squarely in front of everyone, not just those who pay attention. And it would be a long, damning list.
There might just be a net gain to be had. And Biden has no chance of being reelected in 2016.
It’s probably wishful thinking since Republicans don’t have the stomach for it. And I admit, it is a bit of a chance to try it.
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This they better do or retire to history’s dustbin.
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That is very funny, to me at least. The word kaka means hair in Maori. And with John Kerry …
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I suppose this doesn’t really need saying but if the colloquial use of kaka that I know is what was intended then the implication for John Kerry’s head is right to the point. We don’t even have to call him names anymore. It’s done for us if we just speak Maori.
Ain’t coincidence wonderful? 😉
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Hi Robert
I believe that the Republicans are quite happy for Obama to dig a deeper hole so that can totally smash the Dumbocrats at the next presidential election. The Republicans need to their voter base to get angry so that they go along to vote.
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I agree, I know there are a number of Republicans that do not wish to see an impeachment called for the reasons I stated as well as others. The Democrats would love it to happen so they could try and create some backlash which they could leverage off of.
Unfortunately the media is their mouthpiece as anyone actually paying attention here has seen. If a Democrat is caught at something it is a minor news story if we even hear about it, if a Republican does the same thing it will be headline news for as long as they can drag it out.
Also unfortunately our younger voters have been so poorly educated about our political system and so deluged with media vitriol towards conservatives that none of them realize Obama should have been impeached in his first term. Were it to happen they wouldn’t understand the constitutionality of it, it would just turn into a name calling circus where they claim anyone supporting the impeachment is racist.
Now as to the term “kaka” I was referring to the term used to describe excrement in the movie “Caveman” with Ringo Starr. So loosely following the prior comments, if one were to refer to Kerry as a “kaka head” I would have to agree, but it wouldn’t have a thing to do with hair. 🙂
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Not totally understanding U.S. politics, isn’t his legacy his ‘failed Obama-care’?
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There is no excuse why aunty can’t run this good news.
BBC – 15 December 2014
Arctic sea ice volume holds up in 2014
Arctic sea ice may be more resilient than many observers recognise….
…..”So, what may be occurring here is a decline that looks a bit like a sawtooth, where we can lose volume but then recover some of it if there happens to be a shorter melt season one year,” she told BBC News.
The British researcher is presenting her work this week at the American Geophysical Union’s Fall Meeting in San Francisco……
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-30399079
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More than what El?
010
Melting sea ice is a very popular scare. Many people believe instinctively that if sea ice melts, the sea levels will go up. No one on ABC Science says it is not true. Where is the children’s friend Dr. Karl with his colourful shirts to correct this? Acidification of the oceans is another deliberate deceit as all the oceans are basic? Where is the ABC Science team to correct such a wrong statement as ocean acidification?
Wildlife populations normally go up and down, sometimes violently, but if they go down, that is always Climate Change, not disease, predators, bad weather, bad luck, accidental loss or just bad accounting. Recovering wildlife populations are never mentioned. The destruction of the Great Barrier Reef has been a very popular story for generations in Australia. You would also think coral did not like warmer water. No, there is no good science news on the ABC. They all vote Green and the Greens are the caring people, not democracy hating communists with secure public service incomes and no accountability to anyone except their friends. So ABC Science says nothing. Sell the ABC. They betray a trust.
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Holy ice cube! Can it be true? The north polar ice cap ebbs and flows over time. Who’d a thunk it?
I keep wondering when they’re going to start taking readings of the water temperature under the ice and mapping out how the currents change as the water temperature changes. Water has a huge specific heat per unit volume advantage over air as a warming or cooling agent.
Just sayin…
And now someone will accuse me of saying the oceans have been warming. But sorry, there’s no evidence of that. I just take notice of the known fact that ocean currents change their routing from time to time. I might add, without asking humans for permission or advice.
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Would it not be advantageous to know the answer to the unasked question?
I think so. Don’t you?
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The inconvenient omissions (from your link):
“You might think, for example, that wind conditions would be important because they can pile the ice up and make it less susceptible to melting, while at the same time exposing more water to freeze,” the University College London researcher explained.
“But we’ve looked at this and other factors, and by far the highest correlation is with temperature-driven melting.”
Long term that looks bad for the Arctic because average temperatures are climbing.
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Yep, looking very bad.
In fact, the last 2 Arctic summer melt seasons have had the shortest periods above zero°C on record.
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And in the Antarctic, the Sea Ice has melted slowly and is the same level as last year’s RECORD HIGH sea ice area.
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It would be wonderful if all the arctic ice melted in summer! Unlike Antarctica, it does reach 25C. What exactly is the problem and please no sob stories about the happy Polar Bears who have to sit out every summer conspicuous on the brown dirt anyway. They are not vegans and not half as pretty covered in seal blood.
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OK Silly. One more time — if you say temperatures are climbing, please tell us where that’s happening, how those temperatures are measured and who is doing the measuring.
If you make the assertion and don’t back it up with the information necessary to confirm what you say, you’re just blowing smoke.
It would be helpful if you could include the measurement error and the history of warming, year by year in degrees C.
I’m betting you can’t do it. In fact I’m betting you won’t do it or will provide a link to something like skepticalscience which has used up its credibility many times over already.
10
WOAH! Climate change is hitting! There is going to be a heap of snow on Christmas Day in Sydney!
http://www.aerology.com/?location=Australia&mapType=Snwd&date=12%2F25%2F2014
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With a site named Aerology, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
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He’s a regular here and no one is ever skeptical. You’d be the third by my count.
16
Would that be “Dr. Smith” we are talking about? If that the case it isn’t that no one is ever skeptical, we just learned to ignore him.
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If you look over previous posts there has been a lot of ignoring by green thumbs and affirming discussion
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A single green thumb and replies from you don’t exactly make your point. Not going to waste my time going through the whole site but going back the last 5 or so threads I would hardly say he’s been getting affirming discussion and a lot of green thumbs.
Unless perhaps you do troll math ala Terry Pratchett where your counting set goes 1, 2, 3, many…
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Seriously.. WT* are you on about this time ???
Your comments are making less and less sense.
Stay off that green leaf stuff, dude !!!
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“Time to shut down the UN
FCCC.” There, a multitude of problems fixed.Fast forward a decade or three, same setting, same people, just change the wording: UN Freezing Cold Cimate Convention.
What’s more scarce than hen’s (or for the sexist nazis,) or roosters teeth? – Professionalism in journalism.
In today’s society, sadly, journalism is more accurately described as professional activism. Don’t believe me? Tune into their ABC.
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“…If a country doesn’t submit a plan, there will be no punishment, no fine, no black U.N. helicopters showing up,”
How about cancelled military cooperation treaties, central bank loan impediments and trade sanctions?
Just sayin’.
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It could happen. But the counter argument is to look at what happened when the UK tried to sanction countries by forbidding landing rights to their air carriers if their CO2 emissions weren’t up to (down to?) par. As I said below, it can work but it can also backfire.
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The United Nations was a purely Europe-centric body created after the war. The Middle East recognised advantage in joining it. And the name has simply confused everyone else into wanting to be part of it. Everyone wants to be on the good side of what is expected to become the one world government. So joining early gives one an advantage if and when it does become a governing body.
In the end, it is a power struggle. Each nation seeking its own advantage by placing itself on the world stage, and each delegate seeking their own advantage by placing themselves in a world political body. There is no happy ending however, it can only end badly, for everyone.
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The head butting of one group or idea with another is inevitable, Greg, no matter how you stack it or what you call it. I suppose I could be wrong but one body accumulating more and more power, even if the head butting continues within that body, looks like the more dangerous road by far.
The power struggle has always been there and the UN was supposed to keep the playing field level for everyone, not grab control for itself or favor one member state over another.
Since there’s no stopping the head butting perhaps the nations that have managed to be relatively good citizens of this world should remember that they’ve played a valuable role and stick to it instead of believing everything Obama spits out.
We could dump the UN and be better off.
Just my 10 cents worth but I think it’s pretty accurate.
In the end, nothing is going to be foolproof. Maybe that’s why nations must rise and fall again. Maybe it’s something built into the universe. Or maybe it’s just built into the nature of the human being.
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I don’t think a bad end is inevitable, even if it seems the more likely outcome at this point. We’re beginning to wake up and if that keeps up…
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I think it is inevitable, mostly because it’s an unelected, unaccountable governance body, who have demonstrated in recent years a hunger for money and power and a supreme ignorance of sensible anything.
Simply look at any dictatorship, Royal bloodline, Empire throughout history. They go on for some years well enough, but inevitably somebody gains power whom should not be given such power. They are fools, and a danger to everybody under them.
I believe it is inevitable that someone will gain control who should not. Current US PotUS is an example, Vlad the Impaler is another, Perhaps Nero, and obviously the more recent WW instigators.
You and I may not see it, but it is inevitable.
You and I may not see it, but it is inevitable.
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You don’t leave any room for doubt, Greg. And frankly, I have no way to refute you. But for the sake of my son, grandson and possible great grandchildren I’d like to see some hope for a decent world where the worst danger to Travis Jason Hogue — arriving in March if the doctor is correct — will be falling off his bicycle some day, not ending up in some shootout or hostage to terrorists.
As I look back it’s clear that the world has always been a dangerous place and as time passed I simply became more aware of the dangers. But then arrived Barack Obama, terrorism, the rise of gangs, drug cartels And the list could go on. I look at the situation and ask myself, how much better could we do if we made the effort? And the answer I get back is, a whole lot better.
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I meet a lot of people here in Australia who have made a choice to remove themselves from what they perceive as a “less than desirable location”, and come to live in Australia.
You’re right of course; we “could” do a whole lot better. And the common man understandds what that would be. It’s the politicians I have no faith in, and certainly less than no faith in the proposed world governance.
Hope is nice, but it doesn’t ensure anything. Money makes things easier to bear, but location, location, location for a safe place to raise a family.
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Greg,
The safe locations are becoming fewer and fewer. Sydney comes to mind as a place now perceived as less secure than it was only two weeks ago.
Hope provides a basis for action. And action is what we need. Without hope we’re paralyzed and don’t act. So I prefer hope.
My son and his wife live near a military base. And it’s not just any old military base either. It has strategic importance for U.S. defense. The small town atmosphere in which they live will not guarantee that some idiot will not bomb a shopping mall or shoot up a crowded theater with the pretty certain knowledge that he’ll take out some military personnel and their families along with them, just as my family happens to be there.
This battle is personal for all of us, American, Australian, European and every last decent person on Earth.
10
***keep in mind the lunatics got a reference to net zero emissions etc into the final draft! the public has no clue how mad these people are, and the MSM is not about to inform them. i can’t recognise the reports on the outcome of Lima as bearing any resemblance to the reality.
BBC’s Matt McGrath began with “scientists say” blah blah “extreme weather events” blah blah in Lima, nations have unanimouslly agreed a blueprint for Paris 2015.
multiple links in the following:
14 Dec: CarbonBrief: Briefing: Lima Call for Climate Action lays out policy options for new global deal
•Contains reference to ensuring the world has net-zero emissions by 2050
We’ve analysed an unedited version of the Lima text to explore what it may mean for a new global deal. This text appears to agree with the final agreed text, but we will update this briefing as required…
This is far from being a final, agreed text. Some clauses still have as many as 11 different options, for example.
But that was always going to be the case. The Lima document is meant to provide a “vaguely comprehensible” text ahead of next year’s crunch talks, climate news and analysis website RTCC observes…
***Campaigners also wanted a reference to ensuring the world would have net zero emissions by 2050. It seems they have got their way. The mitigation section of the draft text states countries must aim for “a long-term zero emissions sustainable development pathway” that is “consistent with carbon neutrality / net zero emissions by 2050, or full decarbonization by 2050 and/or negative emissions by 2100.”…
The EU wants countries’ commitments to be enshrined in law as it believes countries a binding deal makes it more likely countries meet their commitments. The Small Island Developing States bloc is also in favour for the same reason.
But the US is adamant this can’t be the case, as it would then have to get Congress to agree to the deal, which is very unlikely. The world’s largest emitter, China, is unlikely to sign anything that doesn’t include the US, so the legal status of the agreement has become something of a deal-breaker.
That could explain why Australia, which is broadly hostile to international climate policy – is pushing for a legally binding deal. Pushing for legally binding goals could be the easiest way to make negotiations collapse, the Conversation argues…
The London School of Economics’ Grantham Institute says there are good reasons for countries to move away from common but differentiated responsibility. It finds that countries basing their commitments on equitable burden sharing or a ‘right to emit’ often means their goals are relatively unambitious. Instead, countries should make contributions based on opportunities to develop in a low carbon way, it says…
(OH NO!)Lima was high profile, but it is not countries’ only chance to lay the groundwork for a deal before the Paris meeting.
Negotiators are set to convene again after countries have submitted their INDCs at a meeting in Bonn in June. Climate change is also likely to appear on many international meetings’ agenda between now and next December, as the deadline for a new deal looms into view…
http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2014/12/briefing-lima-call-for-climate-action-lays-out-policy-options-for-new-global-deal/
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since Climategate, scizzorbill has commented a few times on CAGW sceptic websites re:
“A climate gate (2) email from an agent of the World Bank to Phil Jones at the CRU East ‘ the agenda will continue regardless of the science’”
does anyone have that email?
reminders:
The House of Commons Science and Technology committee hearings re Climategate:
Feb 2010: UK Parliament: Memorandum submitted by Dr Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen (CRU 26)
3 My Understanding of the Issue
3.1 I have no reason to believe that most of the scientists involved in the CRU affair (and this a group reaching beyond the UK) did anything but act in good faith, doing their duty to science, bureaucracy and the public as they saw it and as they were funded to do. It is important, however, for you check my observation, that most climate change since the late 1980s has been government- and grant- funded with the clearly stated objective that it must support a decarbonisation agenda for the energy sector.
3.2 Scientific research as advocacy for an agenda (a coalition of interests, not a conspiracy,) was presented to the public and governments as protection of the planet. This cause of environmental protection had from the start natural allies in the EU Commission, United Nation and World Bank. CRU, working for the UK government and hence the IPCC, was expected to support the hypothesis of man-made, dangerous warming caused by carbon dioxide, a hypothesis it had helped to formulate in the late 1980s and which became “true” in international law with the adoption of the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change.
3.3 This treaty and its protocol does not define “climate”, and applies only to anthropogenic warming assumed to be dangerous. In persuading policy makers and the public of this danger, the “hockey stick” became a major tool of persuasion, giving CRU a major role in the policy process at the national, EU and international level. This led to the growing politicisation of science in the interest, allegedly, of protecting the “the environment” and the planet. I observed and documented this phenomenon as the UK Government, European Commission, and World Bank increasingly needed the climate threat to justify their anti-carbon (and pro-nuclear) policies. In return climate science was generously funded and required to support rather than to question these policy objectives. This policy was of course challenged by those unhappy with the proposed government-stimulated replacement of carbon fuels, but this need not concern this Committee beyond noting that it increased the anger of climate “sceptics” who saw science misused for policies they doubted. Others liked the policy and kept quiet. Opponents were gradually starved of research opportunities or persuaded into silence. The apparent “scientific consensus” thus generated became a major tool of public persuasion…
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/memo/climatedata/uc2602.htm
Nov 2011: WUWT: World Bank, Global Warming, Journals, and CRU
Gail Combs writes in comments:
Oh, BOY ~ I think I may have struck GOLD!…
At http://foia2011.org I searched for worldbank.org and found 32 e-mails going back as far as 1998. I have only looked at three so far. Looks like the good old World Bank may be something of a puppet master…ETC
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/24/world-bank-global-warming-journals-and-cru/
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If domestic politics is distracted by other issues
Obama has got this bit secured with the CIA report and his speech on the serious racial problem in the US,with demos and calls for dead cops.
70
Peer pressure? Seriously? They can’t actually expect this to work.
Adolescents and children might be persuaded to act by peer pressure but it is ludicrous to think that international diplomacy — which is conducted by hard-bitten, cynical adults — can be influenced by peer pressure.
Try applying peer pressure to Vladimir Putin, Robert Mugabe or Kim Jong Un. “Everybody else is modifying their economy because of climate change, why aren’t you, nyah nyah nyah.” How effective is that going to be?
My conclusion: the delegates know that the talks have utterly failed and there is no way forward. This peer pressure thing is a desperate attempt to save face. And keep the gravy train puffing along.
100
Unfortunately it does work. Courts in the United States have based decisions on the popular opinions and policies of foreign nations instead of U.S. law and the Constitution. The rather contentious issue of capital punishment is one thing where courts have considered what other countries do instead of what the Constitution clearly mentions as a possible penalty — one not considered as cruel or unusual and also very customary in cases of murder and treason at the time the Constitution and it’s Bill of Rights were ratified.
So yes! It can work. It may not be as reliable as the force of a treaty agreement but it can work.
Note: I’m not advocating capital punishment but merely using it as an example where peer pressure has (improperly) influenced events in this country,
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The only reason it works is that almost every member of the political “class” is an egotistically spineless narcissist, rudderless and adrift in a sea of self indulgent vainglorious pseudo-achievements whose only celebrated “successes” come from the recognition and accolades of others like them. It would not work with a guy like Putin. I don’t like him or agree with him but he has many of the qualities of a good leader making him somewhat immune to political “injury.” Very, very unlike our current
kingpresident here in theBanana Republic of theUnited States who has no discernible leadership qualities or skills other than Teleprompter reading and galactic scale hypocrisy. The mere threat of a pre-teen like embarrassment is more than adequate cause for him to change course.120
Vlad Putin may be a decent enough chap- maybe not! But a country sometimes needs an autocratic leader,sometimes at the expense of political pluralism.Russia has had a rough past,but has also pressed its power on weaker states.As for the USA I acknowledge them as a generally benign state,but I would not trust them always to do the right thing.one thing for sure – our polity is weak and we probably have to re-think how our system can operate into the future.
80
the lunatics are in “high” places. recall Kim was talking at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington DC, tho RTCC doesn’t care to mention that fact or provide a link for Kim’s quote:
8 Dec: RTCC: World Bank chief calls for “zero net emissions” climate goal
Jim Kim joins growing momentum behind drive to ensure 2015 climate deal will wipe out fossil fuel use
In a speech in Washington DC Jim Kim said a proposed global climate agreement should “provide a clear pathway to zero net emissions before 2100.” …
And he called on “all countries” to commit to pricing carbon, “a necessary, if not sufficient, step in any journey to zero net emissions.”…
Achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 “is very likely” to be achievable, said the authors of the New Climate Economy, a study led by former World Bank chief economist Lord Stern. UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon added his backing in September at the end of a world leader’s climate summit in New York…
But in an interview with the Financial Times, Khalid Abuleif, Saudi Arabia’s lead climate negotiator said he felt it unlikely his country could ditch fossil fuels by 2050.
“We really don’t think it’s realistic at this stage with the current technology and current economic model base we have,” he said…
Jonathan Grant, director of sustainability and climate change at PwC said “many” in the industry and energy sectors did not believe a 2050 goal was plausible.
“The scale of technological change, the speed of deployment and the need for global coordination all suggest that the target is not credible,” he said.
http://www.rtcc.org/2014/12/09/world-bank-chief-calls-for-zero-net-emissions-climate-goal/
remember, too, that Nicholas Stern was the Chief Economist and Senior Vice-President of the World Bank from 2000 to 2003, and his brother, Richard, is a former Vice-President of the World Bank.
Jan 2014: Richard Stern Becomes President and Chief Executive Officer of the Partnership for Transparency Fund
Richard Stern, born in the UK, has served on PTF’s Board of Directors and in its executive management team. He is a development economist by training and worked for more than three decades at the World Bank rising to the position of Vice President…
http://ptfund.org/2014/01/richard-stern-becomes-president-and-chief-executive-officer-of-the-partnership-for-transparency-fund-2/
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“The plans of mice and men oft go astray”
There is just one single basic, major fault in every single aspect of every prediction from the climate alarmists, the skeptics, the fence sitters and most notably, the green fascists,
As well as the renewable energy rip off merchants and carpetbaggers and the politicals of every possible shade and description who believe they have all the answers to the man made global warming created potential catastrophe.
The single common to all assumption is quite simply that everything as in everything, is going to keep right on doing what it has been doing all along and will still continue on into the far distant future along the exact same path doing what it has been doing for all those years past.
It can’t.
It won’t
The events and forces of the future will be continually changing from the here and now. The future is totally unpredictable especially so in politics and climate.
What will change, how it will change, when it will change I haven’t the foggiest idea.
Nor has anybody else despite their over heated self deluding delusions of grandeur as climate and political prophets and seers along with their chicken entrails in a modelling bucket as the predictors of great catastrophes of the future.
A new technology for energy production such as maybe Rossi’s E-cat or Lockheed Martin’s Skunkworks reactor or another of the many working on fusion energy production, if any one of them succeed will change the world in ways we cannot even begin to dream of.
Nobody as in nobody anywhere foresaw America becoming the largest producer of oil in the world once again. In fact every single prediction was for oil prices to continue to rise and the world to run short of oil.
And the fraking of tight oil has only just begun and hasn’t got past the kindergarten stage in technology yet and thats only all still in the USA
Like wise with gas.
The Japanese are on the point of extracting the menthane from the deep ocean methane hydrates at the edges of the Japanese Continental shelf.
Nobody foresaw or realised the extent of the brewing and now rapidly developing, developed world economic and political crisis as nations appear to be getting harder and harder to govern.
Nobody foresaw or predicted the rise of the increasingly powerful internet and the World Wide Web communications system where even in some of the remotest parts of the planet the locals now carry mobile phones trending towards smart phones, the very cheap cast off models of the western consumer.
Nobody knows and few have bothered to try and estimate the longer term effects this spread of ready access to the global knowledge base will have on local, national and global political and economic systems or the consequent changes in the attitudes of the populace.
Nobody foresaw and few have even commented on the rise of the urban hives, the concentration and increasing societal stratification of mankind that in about 500 generations has gone from roaming, hunting family groups and clans of a dozen or perhaps a couple of scores of individuals to a situation where over half the 7.2 billions of humans on this planet now live in cities of over 100,000 population on up.
We are now rapidly becoming a urban hive dwelling species with, like all other hive living species increasing stratification of the status and every other aspect of our species as the developing species of hive dwellers.
The consequences of this as most of humanity locked up for life in their urban hives of tens of millions of individuals loses all contact and all appreciation of the real out there Nature and it’s role in our continued existence is of immense consequences with every likelihood that the understanding of what is natural and what is Nature taking on some strange far removed from reality vision which will be the guiding principle towards Nature and natural events with likely catastrophic consequences as Nature just doesn’t bother to take any notice of the mankind’s beliefs and ideologies.
We don’t know when a major war might break out destroying the entire many decades long since WW2, political and national structures of so many nations. We might already be in a third World War. It’s just that we haven’t recognised it yet because each war is different to the last one . And the politicals and generals start off by fighting the previous war until they learn or are defeated.
We cannot predict say a major disruption of the now partially locked but pressure building Earthquake zone in the Bay area of Cailfornia which will likely be a massive quake when it lets go, not if it lets go.
We cannot predict or guess at the consequences of such a major quake in one of the America’s major economic and industrial centres and the consequent political fallout both in america and globally as a super power reels under the impact of losing a large part of it’s economy..
We can never guess the Black Swan events, say an invasion of South Korea by a desperate North with the full scale use of nuclear weapons .
We can’t even guess at what a series of mass coronal ejections from the Sun all striking the planet in a sequence over days or months leading to the total destruction of most of the global electrical power grid and the entire global communications network with a consequent destruction of the global food supply system that feeds the billions in our urban hives.
We are after all a totally energy dependent, energy driven, energy maintained civilisation, the first such civilisation that has ever existed.
And our numbers are only what they are because of our global energy systems. Without energy, cheap, readily available , always there totally reliable energy in colossal amounts our civilisation collapses.
They are only a very few of the potential major changes, few if any will ever happen as written, along with the totally unforecastable impact on the economic, political and societal structures of our civilisation that will invariably lead to shifts and changes far beyond what any today can even imagine let alone plan for some entirely natural event that they have not thoroughly researched, don’t know if it actually exists, seemingly are incapable of comprehending the scale they are trying to futilely work on with a capricious unpredictable Nature that flexes, changes, reacts, adapts but above all never repeats itself.
Climate science has become a futile oxymoron run by moronic scientists who continue to make totally spurious predictions,spurious predictions based solely and entirely on the belief that nothing else anywhere else other than the climate and CO2 will change in any way for far into the future.
141
A fair enough synopsis ROM.Its a busy little planet .
70
The quote is actually “The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley” – a fellow called Robert Burns – trust me, I am (was) Scottish.
60
“gang aft agley”
semi-translates as… oft go astray. !!
51
“The best laid schemes o’U&N oft go astray.” 😉
50
Now there’s an absolute impossibility.
Putting a price on Carbon (Dioxide) to end the emissions of Carbon. (Dioxide)
Do you seriously think that the people making so much money out of it will actually allow that to stop?
Tony.
122
Oh Toney! You weren’t supposed to notice that Government’s taxing something to discourage it gives that same government a big incentive to keep it going. No, no, no! You’re not supposed to be clever enough to figure that out.
It’ll work about as well as taxing tobacco has worked. And there it will sit forever, sucking the lifeblood out of the people.
101
Cardinal Fang, fetch… The Fluffy Cushions.
80
Now, with a Senate owned by Republicans, no agreement Obama can sign dealing with climate change mitigation will ever be ratified. We must remember that a treaty, no matter the subject must be ratified by the Senate or it’s just so much paper. 🙂
The thing for the U.S. to fear is what Obama may do using the EPA. Or maybe we have even more to fear if Republicans are fearful of flexing their newfound muscles. Either or both lead to big time 🙁 It’s ugly to even contemplate.
71
Yes, so he will just use the Clean Air Act to regulate green house gas emissions from power stations to the extent that the U.S. will never build another coal power station.
42
The CO2 increase is a good thing not a bad thing. We need to a frank and open discussion concerning AGW madness and the problem that we have run out of money.
The climate ‘change’ agreement is not an ‘agreement’ in the normal sense of the word (i.e. where there is a logical course of action to address a problem that needs to be solve and the parties agree to the logical action to address the problem), the climate change ‘agreement’ is that some countries will do what every they want, other countries will attempt to destroy what is left of their economies by forced spending on green scams that do not work, and some countries promise to send tax payer money which they do not have to the UN, where it will be absorbed by middle man, bureaucrats, and corrupt governments. What money that remains after UN waste/developing country corruption will be spent on green scams that do not work.
Churchill: ‘when we run out of money we need to think’
Light bulb time: The developed countries have run out of money. The developing countries never had any money to run out of, they were broke in the past and they are still broke.
Wasting trillions of borrowed dollars on green scams that do not work, to address a problem that is not a problem is madness.
The planet resists forcing changes rather than amplifies forcing changes which explains why there has been no warming for 17 years, plants’ response to an increase in CO2 is increased growth (big surprise plants eat CO2) and plants respond to increased CO2 by producing less stomata, which enables them to make more efficient use of water (roughly 40% increase in growth for a doubling of CO2, there is unequivocal observational evidence of reduction in desertification due to the modest recent CO2 increase).
http://news.yahoo.com/belgium-cut-off-world-national-strike-153831826.html
http://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21577348-gloomy-convincing-account-developed-worlds-problems-horror-story
92
A Climate COP down by the sea,
Draws Warmists like nectar the bee.
They argue and moan,
Till it’s time to go home,
Then agree to agree to agree.
111
So before the ink is dry in Lima, 25% of their “fund” just went the way of an oral agreement – http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/12/15/fight-looms-over-3-billion-obama-administration-payment-to-un-linked-climate/
It remains to be seen if the other 75% are as smart.
70
The Conversation deceives it’s readers.
Carbon emissions still growing when they must fall: report
https://theconversation.com/carbon-emissions-still-growing-when-they-must-fall-report-20412
It’s time for environmentalists to give nuclear a fair go
https://theconversation.com/its-time-for-environmentalists-to-give-nuclear-a-fair-go-35488
Note the photo of the same type of ‘smoke stacks’ for two different energy sources?
Make the mistake once, ok.
Twice?
Consistently?
80
Those “smoke stacks” are not chimneys. They are cooling towers, and what comes out is water vapour. Both coal and nuclear energy rely on creating steam that drives steam turbines that create the electricity.
But, water vapour is still a green house gas. So it does make a point, except that nobody has figured a way to tax clouds … yet.
71
Taxing clouds, are you cirrus?!!
70
Hi RW
When you burn brown coal most of the emissions coming out of the chimney is water vapour from the moisture in the brown coal.
30
Daily Telegraph, Andrew Bolt, today Tuesday;
Uhlmann: “Will you campaign to reinstate a carbon price at the next election?”
Shorten: “Labor believes that, in 2009, the parliament …”
Uhlmann: “So you’ll campaign for an emissions trading scheme at the next election?”
Shorten: “I’ll try to be as concise as I can, but it’s an important issue and I think all of Australia wants to see us move beyond 10-second sound bites …”
Uhlmann: “So, to be clear on that, you will campaign at the next election to introduce a carbon price by way of an emissions trading scheme?”
Shorten: “Yes,”
110
The bottom line with all the blatherings of the UN-IPCC is that they believe humans are not part of nature and its processes, I believe the contrary.
Humans, and all that humans do, is natural and is part of the natural order and natural process.
80
“…but in the end there is no global police force to enforce a legal agreement (and we pray there never will be)…”
Per the draft Copenhagen agreement, there would have been both consequences for non-compliance and the necessary mechanisms to enforce the agreement:
From Page 74, ibid: From Page 74:
Basically, the agreement, once signed, would have given the UN the power to do whatever they deemed necessary to achieve their aims. But there was no limit to their power, if all of the right weasel-words were implemented. Note the multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blanks approach they used in the draft. The plan was apparently to eliminate sovereignty, then loot the developed countries without restriction.
80
I can still see in my mind the image of a shocked man, then PM Rudd at Copenhagen with his enormous number of Australian delegates present when the agenda failed to be passed. He was prepared to sell Australians out and for personal gain, the UN position he so desperately wants, and his Christian Socialist Fabian comrades one world government agenda.
90
15 Dec: Huffington Post: How Peer Pressure Brought Australia on Board Climate Fund
by Michaael Shank, Ph.D., Adjunct Faculty at George Mason University’s School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution
This (???)superb analysis by Guy Ragen, a campaigner with the Australian Conservation Foundation, gives critical insight into how the international community can make sure Australia — and other big carbon emitters like it — come on board the path towards Paris in 2015. Take a look…
(Guy Ragen) The Australian Government’s surprising $200 million commitment to the Green Climate Fund (GCF) is a significant reversal for Prime Minister Tony Abbott..
So this news while ***modest…
The Government was wrong-footed by the joint US-China announcement to curb emissions, which was three days before the G20, and by a speech made from President Obama in Brisbane… At Lima during the past fortnight there have been reports of Australian officials getting the cold shoulder from international counterparts, and the possibility that Australia would be removed from the board of the Green Climate Fund if it didn’t make a contribution.
Suddenly the Government got a taste of the type of pressure that is going to build as the world looks to Paris for an agreement in 2015…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-shank/how-peer-pressure-brought_b_6329558.html
***$200mn, the per capita equivalent of the US’s announced but not yet approved $3bn, is “modest”. US/China announcement meant nothing, BO’s speech ditto, but this is a “superb analysis” says Shank.
Shank, from HuffPo profile, is also Director of Media Strategy at Climate Nexus in New York City.
Shank doesn’t disclose Ragen’s history as an adviser to Greg Combet & as senior research associate, Hawker Britton.
Shank was Senior Policy Advisor to Democrat Congressman Michael Honda of California, who this year authored the Climate Change Education Act H.R. 4461 to authorize NOAA to establish a Climate Change Education Program. it apparently has nil chance of getting enacted.
according to his own bio, Shank’s Ph.D. from George Mason University’s School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution is on Climate Conflict.
40
I understand that the Australian Government deducted the amount from the foreign aid budget, not new money or additional cost to budget.
60
It’s a sleight of hand well executed by the government.
50
Màybe, but symbolically it stinks. Australia was sending the right message until Julie talked them into this BS.
Now Australia is playing the deception game along with everyone else
30
How are small nations expected to stand up to UN bullying with no example of a big country to look up to ? Well none anymore apart from China, India & Russia.
30
15 Dec: Bloomberg: Gaps Between Rich and Poor Slow Race to a Climate Deal
By Alex Morales, Alex Nussbaum and Ewa Krukowska
“The 2-degree target is gone in the sense of it being delivered in Paris by this process,” said Yvo de Boer, now head of the Global Green Growth Institute in Seoul. Even so, de Boer said envoys are in “a much stronger situation,” than in recent years.
For one thing, the text that lays the foundation for a Paris accord is only 37 pages at the moment. Two months before the 2009 UN Copenhagen meeting, envoys were grappling with 200 pages, much of it filled with bracketed material signifying a lack of agreement…
For Laurent Fabius, the French foreign minister who will preside over the Paris meeting, the envoys are headed for success because everyone knows there “is no planet-B” they can escape to.
“For years and years there was what I call ‘the ghost of Copenhagen,’” Fabius said. “ But now the mind has changed.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-12-15/-monsters-divide-rich-and-poor-on-road-to-climate-deal.html
15 Dec: Financial Times: The long road from Lima to a global climate deal
Conference leaves hopes alive but many questions still unanswered
The biggest step taken in South America was that all the participating countries agreed to submit national plans for curbing carbon emissions by the end of March. These documents should set out figures for base emissions and annual targets. It may not sound like much. After all, there is no compulsion to do much more than generate some numbers, nor are their provisions even set for regular review…
Their commitments will not just be filed away in some dusty cabinet in Bonn, home of the UN climate change secretariat. They will be published by the organisation, along with an assessment of whether their cumulative effect is sufficient to meet the UN’s objective of limiting future temperature rises to no more than 2 per cent…
The relative poverty of emerging economies does not absolve them of responsibility, especially not fast-growing countries such as India and China…
Unless countries such as India accept some share of the burden, a deal in Paris will remain beyond reach.
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/5f72e8b4-8453-11e4-bae9-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3M122VMyL
31
I see Fabius has already grasped the baton of self delusion early, for his round of COP in Paris next year.
30
From the ashes of Copenhagen, to the ashes of Cancun, Durban, Doha, Warsaw, Lima, Paris, the World.
30
read it all…
15 Dec: WaPo: Dana Milbank: The new climate denialism: More carbon dioxide is a good thing
“CO2 is basically plant food, and the more CO2 in the environment the better plants do,” proclaimed Roger Bezdek, a consultant to energy companies, at an event hosted Monday by the United States Energy Association, an industry trade group.
The session, at the Ronald Reagan Building in downtown Washington, was devoted to demonstrating that “CO2 benefits clearly outweigh any hypothesized costs.” And though Bezdek is an economist, not a scientist, he played one on Monday — showing a PowerPoint presentation that documented a tree growing faster when exposed to more carbon dioxide…
***I’m neither a scientist nor an economist, but I’ve heard that correlation is not the same as causation…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-the-new-climate-denialism-carbon-dioxide-is-good-for-you/2014/12/15/beaafc72-8499-11e4-b9b7-b8632ae73d25_story.html
***how funny Milbank should bring up the correlation is not causation in this case!
71
Good catch Pat and this caught my eye.
“CO2 increases over the past several decades have increased global greening by about 11 percent,” the consultant said. Higher carbon levels in the atmosphere will boost worldwide agricultural productivity by $10 trillion over the next 35 years, he added.’
Another good news story which won’t be seen on our ABC.
60
15 Dec: AP: Seth Borenstein: Study: Your all-electric car may not be so green
People who own all-electric cars where coal generates the power may think they are helping the environment. But a new study finds their vehicles actually make the air dirtier, worsening global warming.
Ethanol isn’t so green, either.
“It’s kind of hard to beat gasoline” for public and environmental health, said study co-author Julian Marshall, an engineering professor at the University of Minnesota. “A lot of the technologies that we think of as being clean … are not better than gasoline.”
The key is where the source of the electricity all-electric cars. If it comes from coal, the electric cars produce 3.6 times more soot and smog deaths than gas, because of the pollution made in generating the electricity, according to the study that is published Monday by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. They also are significantly worse at heat-trapping carbon dioxide that worsens global warming, it found…
“Unfortunately, when a wire is connected to an electric vehicle at one end and a coal-fired power plant at the other end, the environmental consequences are worse than driving a normal gasoline-powered car,” said Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution for Science, who wasn’t part of the study but praised it…
***Still, there’s something to be said for the idea of helping foster a cleaner technology that will be better once it is connected to a cleaner grid, said study co-author Jason Hill, another University of Minnesota engineering professor…
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SCI_CLIMATE_FUEL_EFFECTS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
41
Just a heads up for everyone here that there are massive snow falls predicted for most of New South Wales on New Year’s Day. Details here:
http://www.aerology.com/home?location=Australia&mapType=Snwd&date=01/01/2015
30
It’s summer down under now isn’t it?
10
We have had snow in unusual places at Christmas before, so it is possible, just very unusual.
Some years ago it snowed in a little town called Eudlo in the Sunshine Coast hinterland. I remember seeing it in a news article, though Google can’t find it now. It has never snowed in Eudlo at any time of the year ever, yet there it was.
Still, I personally would discount that prediction until it happened. It’s just too far “not normal” to accept at this point in time. If the weather changes as we get closer then I’ll start to believe it might happen.
10
Never mind their b£@@d¥ conference. The rest of Europe is relying on those French nuclear stations , to cover their embarrassment for failing to maintain robust energy supply of their own.
20
This was reply to 8.3
00
16 Dec: News Ltd: Three nations whose survival depends on a climate change solution
DROUGHT, storm surges, failing harvests and potential wars. From African deserts to South American jungles, the news from the climate change front lines is increasingly desperate…
Here’s what three of them, from three parts of the world that are highly vulnerable to changes in the climate, said to GlobalPost…
Sadok Elamri, from the Sahara and Sahel Observatory, a Tunisian non-profit…
Shuuichi Endou, Japanese photographer based on the tiny Pacific island nation of Tuvalu, which he also represents as environmental goodwill ambassador…
Maria Lopez, indigenous Yanesha leader, from the Peruvian Amazon…
This article originally appeared in the GlobalPost and was reproduced with permission.
http://www.news.com.au/travel/world-travel/three-nations-whose-survival-depends-on-a-climate-change-solution/story-e6frfqai-1227157972930
the Global Post article was by Simeon Tegel & was dated 12 Dec, so why is News Ltd. even carrying it today?
Pulitzer Center: Simeon Tegel
Simeon Tegel is a British journalist based in Lima, Peru.
He is a Principal Correspondent for GlobalPost and his work also regularly appears in the British newspaper The Independent. His writing in Spanish has been published in magazines, newspapers and websites in Latin America and Spain, including El País.
He previously was a staff writer at the Press Association, in London, where he covered the Pinochet saga …
Simeon has an interdisciplinary MA in Latin American Studies from ***UC Berkeley ..
http://pulitzercenter.org/people/simeon-tegel
remember James Fahn/EJN/UC Berkeley/Revkin/NYT stuff. well, i can’t open these tweets, but u can see how the alarmism gets around in the MSM. Tegel has also written for The Guardian, and his Global Post articles get published on Progressive Left website Salon.com.
ASProxy: Tweets about #cop20 hashtag on Twitter
freedom.somee.com/surf.aspx?dec=1&url…
Oct 4, 2014 – #EJN #climate Pls RT @earthjournalism · Expand Collapse … Simeon Tegel @SimeonTegel Sep 29. Q&A with chair of next UN climate summit …
ASProxy: Tweets about #cop20 hashtag on Twitter
freedom.somee.com/surf.aspx?dec=1&url…
Oct 4, 2014 – James Fahn @JamesFahn Oct 1 · #LatinAmerica #journalists invited to … Simeon Tegel @SimeonTegel Sep 29. Q&A with chair of next UN
30
Goldenberg is on her next crusade, trying to pre-empt what India might do when the great CAGW saviour Obama visits:
15 Dec: Guardian: Suzanne Goldenberg: US and India to announce joint climate change action during Obama visit
Obama hopes to sustain global warming momentum next month
Initiatives will not be on scale of US-China climate change accord
America and India will unveil joint efforts to fight climate change when Barack Obama visits New Delhi next month, as the US tries to keep up the momentum of international negotiations…
The announcement in the works for Obama’s visit to Delhi will be modest in scale – nowhere near last month’s milestone agreement between the US and China to cut their carbon pollution…
“I am expecting a useful meeting but we don’t have anything in the works of the kind that we were involved with in China,” Todd Stern, the State Department climate change envoy, said…
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/dec/15/us-india-joint-climate-change-action
yet she was on Progressive Left’s “Democracy Now” yesterday, alongside India’s Business Standard’s Nitin Sethi. how differently they saw Lima!
VIDEO/TRANSCRIPT: 15 Dec: Democracy Now: Emissions-Cutting Deal Reached at COP 20 Lima, But Will It Help Prevent Catastrophic Climate Change
NITIN SETHI: I think one of the things that’s rather clear out of what’s happened at Lima is that the developed countries have promised to renege on all their existing commitments
and are working already, even before we hit the negotiations for the 2015 agreement, into passing on their obligations into a new era where the burden gets shifted onto the
shoulders of larger developing economies. And I think that’s the trend we saw through the fortnight, which is why we had this huge stalemate, which is why we saw this attempt to
bring out the secret document, but eventually failed because a lot of developing countries—Africa Group and LMDCs and others—came together to defend what they think is most essential: survival…
SUZANNE GOLDENBERG: Well, the Lima Accord is important, basically, because it keeps moving things forward towards Paris, and we now—and because it begins to shape the deal
that we’re going to see at Paris…
I can’t say that this is a great agreement. No one’s going to say that. But I think it keeps things moving forward. And I think it keeps some important principles alive. One is that we are all
in this together, everybody’s got to do their part; two, that, you know, we have to help everybody out, including those most vulnerable states, like Tuvalu…
And, three, I think it’s important that even the leaders here acknowledged that there’s not very much in the way of teeth in this agreement. It depends on something they’re calling peer pressure. And I think that gives a really big role to the public to put pressure on these leaders and show that they have to do something.
AMY GOODMAN: Nitin Sethi, you’re shaking your head in New Delhi. Can you talk about India’s particular role and Suzanne Goldenberg’s assessment?
NITIN SETHI: I see—I see slightly different from Suzanne in the sense what we really saw was a passing of burden away from developed countries to developing countries,
and not even a sense of evolving common but differentiated responsibilities.
Let me suggest the three things that I witnessed. One was a complete passover on the conversation on finance; two, a reference to loss and damage in the preamble
section which just says, “Ooh, we remember last year we talked about loss and damage, we shall continue to talk about it next two years”; three, absolute
red line saying the phrase, “Equity should not enter any dialogue in the future on climate change”; four, absolute red line saying, “Intellectual property
rights and how to look at reducing the costs of green technologies for the poor countries cannot be mentioned in any new agreement.”
Now, what it suggests to you is that developed countries do not wish to really either part with finances or technologies, but they do want to part with their existing
commitments and pass it on to the post-2020 era, where the developing countries also take it, as Asad was saying.
There is no action that’s going to happen between now and 2020. All of that was to be done by the developed countries.
They basically have just said at Lima that “we are not going to do any more than what we’re doing so far, and the burden can shift onto the post-2020 era, where other developing countries have to share it.”
So, to me, it indicates really negotiation in bad faith.
http://www.democracynow.org/2014/12/15/emissions_cutting_deal_reached_at_cop
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Nitin Sethi’s latest:
15 Dec: Business Standard India: Nitin Sethi: India’s gain at Lima: A more united front of developing nations
Also, a reminder of the binding force and negotiating power of LMDC grouping, with China very much there, too
India’s biggest gain at the Lima climate change conference was renewed solidarity among the 134-country developing economies group, still termed G77, and China. And, successful strategising by the Like Minded Developing Countries (LMDC) grouping, of which it is a member, as is China.
India had gone there after firmly anchoring itself in the latter grouping. On reaching Lima, the group suffered a somewhat expected setback when Philippines, reportedly under pressure from developed countries, moved out.
G77 operates at the climate talks more like an umbrella for the developing countries, with most nations taking varying positions, contradicting each other under smaller groupings. India, too, operates not only within G77 but also as partner in BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, China and India) and LMDC.
By the end of the meet, the loss of Philippines in the LMDC was more than made up when several other groups aligned with LMDC on the last designated day. That unity had not been seen in recent years between developing countries at the climate conference. Country groups such as the Least Developed Countries, the Alliance of Small Island States and the Africa Group all came together towards the end, demanding more parity in the agreement that was to be signed. The united front ensured the draft was rewritten and many of the issues raised by the developing countries were brought back to the table…
“Negotiations for the new climate agreement were to be held next year. Some developed countries tried to get that to happen this year. We blocked it in a manner that sent a strong signal: You cannot ride roughshod over the most fundamental interests of the developing countries,” said an Indian negotiator, speaking minutes before the Lima conclusion…
“It’s good that this battle has happened a year ahead and we have been able to show what a more united developing country block can achieve. It will help maintain a balance during the tough rounds of negotiations next year,” the Indian delegate said…
The meeting also helped dispel concerns in the Indian camp that China would move closer to the developed world at the UN talks, after its joint announcement in November with the US on emission reduction targets. This was realised by other developing countries as well.
“To me, it seemed like China has come back with renewed vigour, after dispelling the notion that it is reluctant to fight climate change. Had China not stood as strong, the story of Lima would have been very different,” acknowledged an African country delegate to Business Standard at the end of the meeting…
India’s and China’s ministers might have taken a politer route to end the talks but the role of the two countries in working as power-horses of LMDC was not lost on the gathering.
http://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/india-s-gain-at-lima-a-more-united-front-of-developing-countries-114121400581_1.html
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Jo
FYI. Not Lima though
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2014/12/14/olduvai-theory-success-as-failure-and-yet-another-malthusian-mistake/#comments
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just for the fun of it!
10 Dec: Politico: How Green Is Barack Obama?
Nineteen thinkers(???) on which of his climate moves really matter.
Bill McKibben is co-founder and president of 350.org
Unfortunately, President Obama’s most lasting environmental impact is probably overseeing the rise of America as the world’s greatest oil and gas power, surpassing even the Saudis and Russians. And opening up vast quantities of new federal land for coal mining. Obama has done more on climate than his predecessors, but he has also presided over (and aided) an unprecedented carbon binge. I mean, he’s even the guy who opened the newly melted Arctic to oil drilling. He’s the guy who takes up jogging, but accompanies it by developing a two-pack-a-day habit…
Bjorn Lomborg, director of the Copenhagen Consensus think tank and author of Cool It and Skeptical Environmentalist.
The biggest U.S. environmental impact of the Obama era is the one that nobody (not the president, not Congress) envisioned. It is the shale gas revolution that was made possible by the United States spending $10 billion on R&D to develop hydraulic fracturing over the past 30 years.
Over the past five years, this investment has made gas much cheaper, allowing a significant shift in electricity production from coal to gas. Since gas emits less than half the carbon dioxide per energy unit than coal does, this means that in 2012, when adjusting for more wind and lower economic output, the gas switch reduced U.S. emissions by about 300 million metric tons of CO2, causing emissions to hit lowest level since 1994. At the same time, it is estimated that the economic benefit to the United States is about $283 billion per year. This compares favorably to all of Europe’s wind and solar energy, which reduces CO2 emissions by about 91 million metric tons and cost about $40 billion annually…
(THE FOLLOWING TWO THINKERS(???) PRETTY MUCH CAPTURE THE REST OF THE CONTRIBUTIONS!)
Kate Gordon, vice president and director of the Energy & Climate Program at Next Generation
That’s why I’m so impressed by the climate agreement forged between the United States and China during President Obama’s recent trip to Beijing…
Robert Stavins, Albert Pratt professor of business and government and director of the Environmental Economics Program at the Harvard Kennedy School
But more importantly, China’s and America’s commitments create a sufficient foundation for meaningful future steps among the entire global community, beginning with the 2015 Paris agreement that is being drafted in Lima over the next two weeks…
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/12/how-green-is-barack-obama-113397.html?hp=m6
what would ABC/Fairfax make of McKibben’s remarks? LOL.
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Antarctic ice core study reveals Australia’s 39 year mega drought
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2014/s4149586.htm
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Just watching Tony Robinson Explores Australia part 2. Hes in the middle of painting a very bleak picture of the first 5 years of settlement in terms of weather. To quote Tony, “the weather was wild and unpredictable and droughts common place”.
https://shop.abc.net.au/products/tony-robinson-2dvd-explores
Surprised the ABC is selling it. Must have slipped past the censors.
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” Is there much difference between political and legal deals on this international scale? ”
You can always get a UN Resolution, to blow the bejeezus out of a country that doesn’t conform to the legal, and is small enough, isolated enough & weak enough to be bullied.
UN bureaucrats aren’t to be trusted with a force of Law though, because they largely come from countries where the Law is used as a tool
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