Climate Change Consensus?

[boestar]

I think perhaps that global warming is being accelerated by all the CO2 being exhausted by the blow hards at the conference.

Or

Perhaps the over population of the planet is causing it due to the excessive body heat created by population desities increasing.

Or

Its me after all thos Nachos and Beer the other night...

[Moon The Loon]

The one-child policy of Mao's has proven to be disastrous in China. There are entire towns, cities with 1 female per 100 males. Had the policy not encouraged the widespread infanticide of female babies, perhaps it would have worked.

[DEFCON]

Steam

Thanks for posting the article. It was interesting, but I thought it lacked the balance the author suggests others are guilty of?

For instance, there's no mention of it, but what will become of the natural environment? The article appears to 'assume' we humans will do all the right things? as the human population grows.

What do you call 40 - 75 million Chinese males between 18 and 25 years of age that have no hope of ever finding a mate within their own borders?

An Army with a mission.

[Canus Chinookus]

Sorry Defcon, you're getting off topic. This thread is about Climate Change, not about the Environment! If Copenhagen was about the environment, there would be far different arguments being presented. Let's not stray, shall we?

[Guest rattler]

Sorry Defcon, you're getting off topic. This thread is about Climate Change, not about the Environment! If Copenhagen was about the environment, there would be far different arguments being presented. Let's not stray, shall we?

The meeting is only about the exchange of money!

[Canus Chinookus]

The meeting is only about the exchange of money!

Well, I meant the 'official' reason, not the real reason.

[Guest rattler]

[mo32a]

What do you call 40 - 75 million Chinese males between 18 and 25 years of age that have no hope of ever finding a mate within their own borders?

Horny!

[Moon The Loon]

Horny!

FINALLY. After 25 pages, the thread moves towards the only real thing pilots know anything about, and are really, REALLY good at.

[Guest rattler]

Much ado with very little result.

But at least it looks like there is also little "treasure" transfer....

December 19, 2009

Copenhagen ends with a deal surrounded by confusion

Ben Webster and Philippe Naughton in Copenhagen

The United Nations climate change summit at Copenhagen drew to an unsatisfactory close last night, with negotiators only able to secure a non-binding agreement between the developed and developing nations.

President Obama said that a “fundamental deadlock in perspectives” had overshadowed the negotiations. He said that a climate deal had been reached with India, China and South Afrrica, but admitted that it was not enough to fight global warming. He added: “We have much further to go.”

In its statement, released at 10.30pm the White House described the agreement as meaningful.

“No country is entirely satisfied with each element but this is a meaningful and historic step forward and a foundation from which to make further progress,” it said.

Related Links

Leaders cut safeguards to salvage Copenhagen deal

Multimedia

LIVE: latest updates from Copenhagen

The deal did not include emissions reduction targets, only an over-arching aspiration to limit the temperature rise to 2C.

A draft text leaked this afternoon did not include figures for binding commitments by developed nations to cut their greenhouse gas emissions in the next decade. At the insistence of China, it also featured watered-down language on the need for verification of action taken by emerging economies.

The most recent draft did not include a commitment for the parties to meet again in the next six to 12 months to agree a full international treaty.

British officials said that there had been “real movement” during the evening and that the negotiations would continue into early next year.

It had been a day of tension, elation and snubs. US negotiators were taken aback that the Chinese leader sent his deputy to the main negotiations. Wen Jiabao, the Prime Minister, was said to have taken offence at President Obama’s speech to delegates not to agree on “empty words on a page”. World leaders began leaving the summit before anything was signed.

The Kenyan delegation expressed horror that President Chávez of Venezuela had been given the opportunity to grandstand from the podium denouncing “the Yankee empire”.

Drafts of the “Copenhagen accord” were leaked every couple of hours, each one sacrificing another commitment in the desperate scramble to achieve a compromise. And despite two years of negotiations, the key sticking points — emissions cuts, monitoring of emissions and the legal nature of the deal — all re-emerged in the final hours.

Commenting on the draft Copenhagen Accord, the Greenpeace climate campaigner Joss Garman said tonight: "This latest draft is so weak as to be meaningless. It’s more like a G8 communiqué than the legally binding agreement we need.

"It doesn’t even include a timeline to give it legal standing or an explicit temperature target. It’s hard to imagine our leaders will try to present this document to the world and keep a straight face."

[Guest woxof]

This is excellent news. WOXOF is very happy today. I think I had influence on the conference .

The third world is trying to extort money out of us. The far left is part of the bandwagon in an attempt to weaken the west and for the far left...destroy capitalism. All on what has turned out to be terrible science with the scientists in on the scam.

The U.S. called China's bluff by saying....we will participate in your plan as long as your actions are independently verified. Of course lying China refused.

For those foolish enough to believe in this Cap and Trade idea....Here is how it would work in reality with a present case example of a factory closed in Britain and moved to replacement factory in India putting out the same carbon.

Cap and Trade in Practice

How to get paid for laying off workers.

The world's carboncrats are beavering away this week on a vast new global cap-and-trade scheme that President Obama wants the U.S. to join. But before we do, maybe Americans should understand how this already works in practice. Union workers, take note.

The Kyoto Protocol of 1997 required signatories to reduce their carbon emissions, and the European Union in 2005 launched its own cap-and-trade system. The program sets a limit on carbon emissions, and companies are issued free carbon allowances that they can buy or sell based on their emissions needs.

Fast forward to this month's news that Corus, Europe's second-largest steel producer, is shuttering a giant U.K. steelmaking plant at Redcar, cutting 1,700 jobs. Corus blames the recession that has cut steel demand and says the British government hasn't done enough to help it.

Whatever the truth of that, there's little doubt that cap and trade made the closure much easier. The decline in steel production means European steelmakers have surplus carbon allowances. According to Carbon Market Data, a European research firm, in 2008 Corus had the second largest surplus of EU carbon allowances—7.5 million.

The EU is looking for ways to drive today's depressed allowance price of about $21 apiece back up to former highs of about $50, so Corus has the potential for a $375 million windfall. By closing Redcar's annual capacity of three million tons of steel, Corus will produce six million fewer tons of CO2. That means more carbon allowances, which could translate into about $300 million a year if credits hit $50. Corus is essentially being paid to lay off British workers.

Corus will also profit if it moves the production to India. As part of Kyoto, the United Nations created the Clean Development Mechanism to encourage Western companies to invest in developing-world factories. Participants are financially rewarded based on the amount of carbon they "save" with more efficient plants.

Corus was bought in 2007 by Tata, India's largest steel company. The Indian steel industry is set to more than double production to some 124 million tons a year by 2011-2012. Were Corus to move production to a "clean" Indian factory, it could receive hundreds of millions of dollars annually from the Clean Development Fund. The kicker is that none of this results in fewer carbon emissions. A Corus plant in India might be more efficient by Indian standards, but it will be no more efficient than Redcar.

We should add that all of this is precisely what Kyoto envisioned. The idea is to tax Western industry and then send the proceeds to developing countries as an incentive to join the anticarbon crusade. But unless governments close their borders to foreign investment, business will flow to where the carbon tariff is least punishing. China and India understand this, which is why they won't agree at Copenhagen to anything that reduces this advantage.

The Corus story also shows that cap and trade isn't really a free market. Markets develop to efficiently allocate resources and capital. Carbon cap and trade is a government-rigged market, in which carbon allowances are dispensed based on political influence. Such a system is ripe for manipulation, and Corus is merely the latest example.

To summarize: Cap and trade is a scheme that would impose heavy carbon taxes and allowances on U.S. industries, which would then have an incentive to move overseas themselves, or to sell those allowances to overseas companies that could use them to become more competitive against U.S. companies. Like the 1,700 Brits at Redcar, American workers would be the big losers.

Woxof...saving high paying jobs in Canada.

[Moon The Loon]

WOXOF is very happy today. I think I had influence on the conference .

(Withdrawn)

Why do I bother....

Way to go, Penfolds...

[Guest woxof]

Just having a little fun Mr. Moon.

But we could go back to the seriousness of the fear-mongering and lies. Now the latest is....a 2°C rise could flood wide areas of the entire planet or as our gullible or conspiring media puts it in the article "could be enough to commit the planet to inundation". So now we are all going to drown. Here are the associated stories beside the main article in the Gazette, all just as the leaders arrive in CPH with the media trying to influence.

More on This Story

Climate deal remains elusive as clock tics away in Copenhagen

Giant iceberg spotted south of Australia

Canadian species among most threatened by climate change

Arctic ice meltdown remains severe: Scientist

Hungry polar bears turn to cannibalism

Last decade warmest on record: weather chief

Too much crying "wolf" I'd say and less and less people are believing the hype.

But thankfully for Moon...Woxof saved the planet this week....again.

Two-degree temperature rise could flood wide areas of planet, study says

A team of geophysicists is warning that the massive polar ice sheets are even more vulnerable to global warming than previously believed, and could trigger a sea level rise of six to nine metres.

The scientists from Princeton and Harvard universities say that just two degrees Celsius of global warming, which is now widely expected to occur in coming decades, could be enough to commit the planet to inundation.

"The time to avoid disastrous outcomes may run out sooner than expected," says Princeton's Michael Oppenheimer.

He is co-author of a ominous new report on what happened the last time global temperatures rose a couple of degrees — the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets melted away so extensively that sea level rose between 6.6 and 9.4 metres.

If emissions of greenhouse gases are not reduced soon, they scientists say the planet could be committed to comparable melting, which might be unstoppable.

They say low-lying regions around the world could be inundated by more than a metre of sea level rise this century, followed by many more metres in coming centuries. Low-lying areas like Bangladesh and Florida would be hard hit, and Canadian communities from Tuktoyaktuk to Vancouver to Charlottetown could all expect to see waters rise. A one-metre rise in sea level would immediately affect 145 million people around the world.

The geophysicists' report in the journal Nature Thursday is a new — and much more "startling," according to a commentary accompanying the report — assessment of what occurred the last time polar temperatures were three to five degrees Celsius warmer than today. The so-called "last interglacial stage" 125,000 years ago is considered an analogue or guide to what might happen if global warming continues on its current path.

The new assessment is based on sea level indicators such as coral and beach records as well as changes to Earth's gravity and surface as massive ice sheets melted away. It concludes that during the last interglacial, global sea level peaked more than 6.6 metres higher than today and may have risen 9.4 metres. That is higher than previous estimates, and indicates much of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets melted away.

The "disconcerting message" is that the planet's response to 1.5-2 degree C of global warming could be an increase in sea level of seven to nine metres, Peter Clark at Oregon State University writes in a commentary.

Given current rates of fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, Princeton co-author Robert Kopp notes that Earth is on track to have "significantly more warming by the end of century than occurred during the last interglacial."

The researchers caution that it is not clear from their study how long temperatures had to stay high to commit the planet to six to nine metres of sea level rise last time around.

Despite the uncertainties, Oppenheimer says the findings should send a "strong message" to the governments negotiating in Copenhagen about the need to reduce emissions.

http://www.montrealgazette.com/technology/...9236/story.html

[Moon The Loon]

Don't disagree with some of that. Melting sea ice will have zero to negative effect on current sea levels. Melting ice caps, perhaps. I'm still leaning towards the displacement (Archimedes) idea that building undersea land mass by volcanic activity is displacing the current sea level upwards.

[Check Pilot]

However, the politicians, being what they are, finally got down to disagreeing with this whole Copen in the Hagen deal. I posted this on the "junior" site just a little while ago:

"Thank goodness that the "climate change" rumble in Copen in the Hagen finally collapsed into the dismal pile of disagreeable sh!t that it should have been all along.

Thankfully Canada didn't sign on to some lunatic left wing "send us money because we won't work" agreement. It's over for now and hopefully for a long time down the road. Too bad for all the greenies. I feel your pain. Now get on with protesting something else like stopping solar coronal mass ejections that are getting attracted by the Earth's magnetic field because we have too much magnetic attraction caused by all our power generation plants."

Hopefully we can get back to H1N1 immunization failures now.

[Fido]

The insulting attitude of the media is just too much.

In the same newscast they refer to 'The fact of man-made Global warming' whereas in the next sound bite they refer to 'The alleged infidelity of Tiger Woods'.

[Mitch Cronin]

I'm still leaning towards the displacement (Archimedes) idea that building undersea land mass by volcanic activity is displacing the current sea level upwards.

To fully grasp that mechanism, you'd have to take into account other things as well... like the fact that the Atlantic is widening due to continental drift... as well as changes in subduction zones - such as near Japan as the pacific plate rams itself under the Eurasian plate. I'd be surprised if, overall, there could be any appreciable net change in ocean area.

The biggest chance for sea level rise, I think, is the possibility of the Greenland ice sheet melting... and obviously areas of the Antarctic ice sheets as well... though I don't think anyone is saying that's happening yet.

To my mind, the sad thing is that no matter what is truth, those with the most money to gain (or lose) will be the ones to decide what action is or isn't taken. As with so many other aspects of life, the extreme short sightedness of the dollar will reign. I think the best we can hope to do for our later generations is to slightly minimize the damage we're causing to our environments with our wastes.

I'm hoping that one day in the not too distant future, as our understanding of physics grows, we'll find ways to vaporize all the chemical stews we currently spew into our atmosphere and seas... Heck, maybe we'll even find ways to generate power while we do it!?

[Guest woxof]

The insulting attitude of the media is just too much.

In the same newscast they refer to 'The fact of man-made Global warming' whereas in the next sound bite they refer to 'The alleged infidelity of Tiger Woods'.

Much of the media is in on it. The BBC is bad. Many of them refer to the CPH meeting as a meeting to save the world as if the world will be destroyed if we don't do something.

Not ten minutes ago on the CBC news, they were talking about the failure of CPH and quoting the Sudan delegation about how this is suicide of the world imposed by developed nations. You remember Sudan of course....the ones with the genocide in Darfur after similar in the south part of their country. Yet the CBC just quotes them as legitimate. More cuts please Mr. Harper.

It appears that the media is infested with socialists. With occasional exceptions like Fox News that are infested with bible-thumping neo-cons.

[Kip Powick]

To be really honest...I am sooooo tired of this topic .....but decided to drop this in..cause...well ...we all know Sarah

CNN)– In a late night posting on her Twitter feed, Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin continued to blast climate change believers Friday, calling the talks in Copenhagen, Denmark a representation of man's "arrogance," for believing people have an impact on nature.

"Arrogant&Naive2say man overpwers nature," Palin tweeted.

"Earth saw clmate chnge4 ions;will cont 2 c chnges.R duty2responsbly devlop resorces4humankind/not pollute&destroy;but cant alter naturl chng," the former Republican vice presidential nominee wrote.

Palin's latest comments come after weeks of tangling over climate change with California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, former vice president Al Gore, and President Obama.

In an op-ed in the Washington Post, Palin urged the president to boycott the climate talks, calling his presence at the conference a "political move."

"The last thing America needs is misguided legislation that will raise taxes and cost jobs – particularly when the push for such legislation rests on agenda-driven science," Palin wrote. "Without trustworthy science and with so much at stake, Americans should be wary about what comes out of this politicized conference. The president should boycott Copenhagen."

When Schwarzenegger questioned Palin's stance on climate change, Palin quickly hit back saying the actor-turned-governor was acting "greener than thou."

And when former vice president Al Gore dubbed her a climate change "denier," Palin hit back at him too, accusing him of promoting "doomsday scenarios."

"Climate change is like gravity – a naturally occurring phenomenon that existed long before, and will exist long after, any governmental attempts to affect it," Palin wrote on her Facebook page.

During the vice presidential debate last year, Palin said she was for capping carbon emissions but did not elaborate on how she would do that.

[Mitch Cronin]

Who wants to bet that she won't be the first female president of the US of A?

That unbelievable twit has captured the minds of everyone of average intelligence and below...., and the notion that anyone is interested in her, at all, has captured the minds of almost everyone of above average intelligence!

They elected Reagan for pity sakes! ....just watch.

[Guest rattler]

Mitch, re Regan

Not everything was wrong with Regan, I would take him in a heartbeat over Clinton and Sarah....... but not being an American, I can only comment from "

afar".

As president, Reagan implemented sweeping new political and economic initiatives. His supply-side economic policies, dubbed "Reaganomics," advocated reduced business regulation, controlling inflation, reducing growth in government spending, and spurring economic growth through tax cuts. In his first term he survived an assassination attempt, took a hard line against labor unions, and ordered military actions in Grenada. He was reelected in a landslide in 1984, proclaiming it was "Morning in America." His second term was primarily marked by foreign matters, namely the ending of the Cold War, the bombing of Libya, and the revelation of the Iran-Contra affair. Publicly describing the Soviet Union as an "evil empire", he supported anti-Communist movements worldwide and spent his first term forgoing the strategy of détente by ordering a massive military buildup in an arms race with the USSR. Reagan negotiated with Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, culminating in the INF Treaty and the decrease of both countries' nuclear arsenals.

Not too shabby for a simple move star.

[Mitch Cronin]

Not too shabby for a simple move star.

He did what he was told Rattler. He was a flippin' actor.

[Guest rattler]

He did what he was told Rattler. He was a flippin' actor.

But who told him? Perhaps those who he appointed?????

[Moon The Loon]

But who told him? Perhaps those who he appointed?????

GHB

[Fido]

"greener than thou."

..ain't that the truth.......