Climate Change Consensus?

[Guest rattler]

How can anyone even say "Clinton and Sarah" in the same sentence? I mean, politics is politics but the two are light years apart in capability and intelligence not to mention politics. Sarah talks of armageddon (offering her home state of Alaska as THE refuge for Those Who Will Be Saved when Armageddon opens up the earth to swallow the rest of us - see the you-tube video), but accuses pro-climate changers of "promoting doomsday scenarios"? She's a whacko.

It isn't "climategate" or newly-minted waterfront property that worries me. It is the fact that the United States could actually, possibly elect Sarah Palin as a refuge from intelligent leadership from a man who actually makes sense and who doesn't believe that the world was made in six thousand years. She is Dark Ages material.

It will be interesting for those who label the media "socialist", to watch how the mainstream media slowly line up behind this Republican Dream Candidate as 2012 approaches. The US media knows which side its bread is buttered on and it isn't by the left wing.

And Clinton says, "kneel before me and taketh my manhood into your mouth" This is a statesman in action?????

PS I have very little respect for either but am somewhat puzzled as to how Clinton has evolved into an "Elder Statesman".

[Mitch Cronin]

Rattler? Are you joking? The man's sexual habits define him? You'd have to downgrade an awful lot of history's finest men if you used that same yardstick everywhere.

Back on topic....kinda-sorta... I have a challenge for you, or Woxof, or anyone else who want's to take it... watch this video, http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2...95060267517042# ...and tell me what, if anything, is wrong with the gist of what it's saying (I know there are some specifics that likely aren't accurate, but you can mentally delete those scenes)?

[Guest woxof]

Today was the last day of the CPH conference. How appropriate with record cold in Britain to welcome back Gordon Brown, the man so eager to pay billions to cool down his country.

Well he can relax. The record cold has just cost his debt-laden government 100 million pounds for Cold weather payouts for pensioners and the vulnerable. A program started ten years ago.

What happened to all those green protesters? Inside using some carbon to stay warm no doubt.

Woxof.....time now to go freeze my butt here in our cold snap.

Record cold weather payouts triggered as temperature hits -11C

"Cold weather payouts for pensioners and the vulnerable reached record levels today after Britain’s deep freeze plunged temperatures as low as minus 11C. Forecasters warned that tonight will be even colder.

The Government’s bill will rise over £100 million as Londoners become eligible for the payment for the first time since the scheme was introduced a decade ago.

This morning, the thermometer reached minus 10C in Farnborough, Hampshire and minus 11C in parts of Scotland, which is colder than areas of Greenland and the Antarctic. The Met Office said it expected temperatures to go another degree colder tonight.

The bitter cold has left pavements coated in ice and driving conditions treacherous across the country. Thousands of motorists were left stranded in the busiest day of breakdowns in five years yesterday. The AA and RAC said they had responded to more than 40,000 call-outs over the past 36 hours.

Related Links

Big freeze means an extra day’s holiday

A magical winterland

Tomorrow is going to be positively Arctic

The weather will be good news for some people as more than four million vulnerable people are now eligible for a £25 cold weather payout. The payment is triggered when the average temperature in a district remains below zero for seven days.

The cold weather payment, which goes to pensioners, severely disabled people and families on benefits with a young or severely disabled child, was trebled this year from £8.50.

James Purnell, Work and Pensions Secretary, said: “We don’t want people to worry about turning up their heating when it’s cold.”

A £15 million payout now expected for people in London comes on top of 3.7 million payments totalling £93 million already triggered this winter at 48 of the country’s 76 weather stations, from Bedford in south-east England to Aviemore in the Scottish Highlands.

As the cold snap continues to bite, icy conditions have lead to a surge in car accidents all over Britain.

Moira Koune, 30, from Spalding, Lincolnshire, died yesterday when her car was struck by a train after she skidded on ice and became trapped on rails at a level crossing near her home.

The teaching assistant tried desperately to escape but the barriers came down and a police spokesman said the frozen conditions did not allow her to drive away.

The largest increase of breakdowns were recorded in the Bristol, Bournemouth, London and Birmingham areas. An RAC spokeswoman said: “It’s been our busiest day in five years.”

Among the victims of perilous driving conditions was a female cyclist who sustained serious injuries when she was run over by a Land Rover which skidded on ice in Clevedon, Somerset.

In Dorset, a man escaped injury after his BMW 325 convertible spun off the road and hit a telegraph pole near Bournemouth International Airport. In Devon and Cornwall, police warned drivers to delay journeys after seven crashes this morning including two multi-car collisions.

The Met Office issued a severe weather warning for London and east and south-east England as gritters were deployed across the country.

Temperatures reached minus 11C in Aboyne in north-east Scotland and Shap in Cumbria in the early hours of this morning. A spokesman for MeteoGroup said many parts of England remained below freezing until noon. “The situation could remain largely the same until Sunday,” he added. “We have not seen such a cold start to the year in some time.”

The cold snap also caused havoc for homes and businesses which suffered frozen pipes. Many schools have been forced to send their pupils home.

Bourton-on-the-Water Primary School, in Gloucestershire, suffered when water from burst pipes flooded a classroom and caused the staff room ceiling to collapse.

In Carmarthen County, West Wales, the local council closed Tregib Secondary School, Ysgol Gyfun Bro Myrddin and Queen Elizabeth High School due to “inclement weather”.

A number of schools in Berkshire were forced to ask pupils to stay at home as the freezing temperatures caused heating problems.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weat...icle5459012.ece

[Mitch Cronin]

Woxof, watch this: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2...95060267517042# and tell me what you think, will you?

[Moon The Loon]

Rattler? Are you joking? The man's sexual habits define him? You'd have to downgrade an awful lot of history's finest men if you used that same yardstick everywhere.

Back on topic....kinda-sorta... I have a challenge for you, or Woxof, or anyone else who want's to take it... watch this video, http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2...95060267517042# ...and tell me what, if anything, is wrong with the gist of what it's saying (I know there are some specifics that likely aren't accurate, but you can mentally delete those scenes)?

Mitch: I watched 30 seconds, saw DiCaprio's name, watched the video then lost interest.

Give us a book report to this emotional diatribe...

[Mitch Cronin]

Basically Moon, - and I mean no offence - it says that attitude needs to change... and it describes why it prevails, and why it needs to change.... and discusses what it's been costing us so far... and potential costs of not changing it.

I think you could safely strike every reference to global warming, and take nothing away from the meat of it. ....and I'm not at all sure you'd disagree with it either.

[Guest woxof]

With my slow connection and lack of interest in DiCaprio, I'll wait for a text summation of the video.

But at least I have a daily update on.....

What Copenhagen exposed

As I have intimated before, I am not without hope for this "earth summit." I see more and more evidence that people -- "electorates" in all the western countries, where we do have elections, and can throw the bums out, which is about the only pleasure we have as "electors" -- have seen through this imposture completely. My column today cannot be the best one on this subject. For that, I must refer the same reader to the London Telegraph, and Gerald Warner's column from yesterday. Rather than trying to improve upon it, let me quote his own "lead graf":

"When your attempt at recreating the Congress of Vienna with a third-rate cast of extras turns into a shambles, when the data with which you have tried to terrify the world is daily exposed as ever more phoney, when the blatant greed and self-interest of the participants has become obvious to all beholders, when those pesky polar bears just keep increasing and multiplying -- what do you do?"

He goes on to examine a farce-within-the-farce, an attempt to "leak" -- through Greenpeace, no less -- an already much-circulated "secret document" from the usual UN press-releasers, suggesting global temperatures may rise "even higher" than the delegates are already shouting from under Copenhagen's blanket of snow. As Warner says, it was a crass trick, but, "the climate alarmists are no longer in a position to pick and choose their tactics."

But as I say, this gives me reason for hope. The environmentalists have taken the "global warming" imposture so far, have pushed it with claims so ridiculous, and are by now so well exposed, that some real good is being achieved.

The participants in Copenhagen may or may not succeed in burning through another trillion or five in borrowed money, to fuel new environmentalist bureaucracies. At the moment of writing, it appears even this accomplishment will be denied to them, for they are falling out among themselves, and Barack Obama's big galvanizing speech has impressed nobody.

But even if they are able to stitch up a plastic-surgical agreement, we may well be experiencing, in Copenhagen, the event that puts an end to environmental scare-mongering for a generation. The perpetrators of this scare-mongering (and I have listed so many earlier examples in previous columns) have finally overplayed their hand.

Strange to say, my delight in this is mixed. For the planet has real "environmental issues" that have gone unaddressed at Copenhagen, and will now be harder to address in light of the fallout.

The creation of new "carbon credit" schemes to reduce "greenhouse gas emissions" was not going to alleviate any of these problems. It was only going to line the pockets of some of the world's most corrupt bureaucrats and businessmen. Their pockets were already well-lined, and if they can't profit from Copenhagen deals, they will find other ways to be paid for useless services, and continue living like Al Gore. We needn't pray for them too earnestly.

But we do need to think about ways to reduce our actual "environmental footprints," strange as this must sound coming from me. We do have major pollution problems, coming out of China and through all the "third world" as massive populations are raised out of abject poverty, wherever old-fashioned capitalism is permitted.

For the most part, even the most primitive of "third world" dictators saw through the Copenhaggling immediately, and joined in only as a way to board the latest gravy train of western guilt money. This is by now a venerable suckering operation, that began the morning after each backward country became nominally independent. It has kept their politicians rich and their peoples poor.

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/health/What+C...0783/story.html

Woxof...Eager to help the environment, opposed to hoaxes.

[Moon The Loon]

Where would this debate be without input from Canada's Conscience?

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinio...article1406080/

Rex Murphy

Published on Friday, Dec. 18, 2009 8:23PM EST

Last updated on Saturday, Dec. 19, 2009 8:27AM EST

When you're getting lectures on “aspiring to misrule” from despot Robert Mugabe, you may conclude you've stepped through Alice's looking glass.

The gathering at Copenhagen was huge, 34,000 by some reports. A few strange outbursts would be par for the course. But Mr. Mugabe, who more or less single-handedly has brought Zimbabwe to ruin, giving the world lectures on “misrule” and deploring “arbitrary power and governance systems” – well, this is hypocrisy on a galactic scale. Zimbabwe can lay claim for a near non-existent carbon footprint only because its geriatric dictator has despoiled his country, when he hasn't been busy racking up abuses of basic human rights.

Forget all the CO2 Jeremiahs flying in on their private jets, forget the fleet of 1,200 limousines and every other excess, if you're looking for the gold standard for moral hypocrisy, ask why Mr. Mugabe was even allowed in a room with other human beings – never mind being given a microphone to wax sanctimonious to the world.

[see rest of article online]

[Moon The Loon]

This series of videos is brilliant. You'll get the gist of his presentation in the first part (1 of 4). But watch them all if you can.

[Guest woxof]

Where would this debate be without input from Canada's Conscience?

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinio...article1406080/

Rex Murphy

Published on Friday, Dec. 18, 2009 8:23PM EST

Last updated on Saturday, Dec. 19, 2009 8:27AM EST

When you're getting lectures on “aspiring to misrule” from despot Robert Mugabe, you may conclude you've stepped through Alice's looking glass.

The gathering at Copenhagen was huge, 34,000 by some reports. A few strange outbursts would be par for the course. But Mr. Mugabe, who more or less single-handedly has brought Zimbabwe to ruin, giving the world lectures on “misrule” and deploring “arbitrary power and governance systems” – well, this is hypocrisy on a galactic scale. Zimbabwe can lay claim for a near non-existent carbon footprint only because its geriatric dictator has despoiled his country, when he hasn't been busy racking up abuses of basic human rights.

Forget all the CO2 Jeremiahs flying in on their private jets, forget the fleet of 1,200 limousines and every other excess, if you're looking for the gold standard for moral hypocrisy, ask why Mr. Mugabe was even allowed in a room with other human beings – never mind being given a microphone to wax sanctimonious to the world.

[see rest of article online]

Oh here...I'll post the rest...I just can't resist.

Forget all the CO2 Jeremiahs flying in on their private jets, forget the fleet of 1,200 limousines and every other excess, if you're looking for the gold standard for moral hypocrisy, ask why Mr. Mugabe was even allowed in a room with other human beings – never mind being given a microphone to wax sanctimonious to the world.

It's an incidental question, but did the multitude of posturing environmental groups think to offer Mr. Mugabe – maybe make a special presentation – one of their ludicrously over-hyped fossil-of-the-day awards? Maybe David Miller, Mayor of Toronto, who volunteered to accept one “on behalf of Canada” – I know Toronto is important, but Mr. Miller really should curb his delusion that it is “all” of Canada and he our spokesman – could have offered to accept one on behalf of the Mugabe government as well. I mean, if you're going to self-appoint yourself as plenipotentiary, why stop at your own country?

But I forget. Global warming is a capacious umbrella and if Mr. Mugabe is one with the cause, perhaps everything else on his record can, for the moment, be pushed to one side.

Mr. Mugabe's presence was the most egregious dissonance at Copenhagen, but it was not the most central. Let's offer a Test Tube of the Day to how a conference that essentially aimed at reordering the world energy economy gave such scant attention to the reasonable doubts about the scientific process opened up by Climategate.

What the hacked or leaked e-mails from the University of East Anglia told us is that there was a very narrow funnel for official science on global warming. They revealed a pattern of gate-keeping, of (quite non-scientific) hostility to contrary or dissenting opinions, attempts at controlling the much-touted peer-review process, and perhaps most disturbing of all a pronounced tendency to point the data toward the hypothesis rather than the hypothesis toward the data. Such data, of course, as still exist – the loss of the primary data concerning the world's temperature over the last century and a half being not the least of Climategate's astonishing revelations.

East Anglia is not some way station. As the Times of London put it, its Climate Research Unit “is the world's leading centre for reconstructing past climate and temperatures.”

If the hard science of global warming, or at least as much of that emergent discipline that may be called hard science, is to be the factual and scientific fulcrum on which policies for the world's energy are to be decided, then it logically follows that such science must be absolutely untainted. That it not be infused with the activist spirit, that advocacy follows the science, not that science seeks to comport with advocacy. It is really impossible to read some of those e-mails and not to take, from both their tone and their substance, that the necessary neutrality and disinterest of true scientific enterprise – the essential virtues of science – have been severely disobliged.

Has the science been tainted, is the question of our time. Has the authority and prestige of scientific practice been invoked at the very moment when its methods – its practice – has been, to any degree, corrupted or degraded? This would be a reasonable question – and let me stress it is still a question – even if the project or subject was one of far less consequence and scope than the planet's climate and its economic practice.

That question is not being asked with the rigour we should expect. There is something about the great cause of global warming that tends to disarm scrutiny, to tamp down the normal reflexes of tough questioning and investigation that the press brings to every other arena. The great conference at Copenhagen seems to have whistled by the quite momentous challenge that the East Anglia e-mails presents to the centrality of the claims made by the global warming cause. Lots of fossil-of-the-day moments – not many hard press conferences.

Apart from all other considerations, the world is in a drastic recession right now, routinely described as the most turbulent since the Great Depression. If we are to reorder our economies at so critical a time, then first things first. Determine if the science is science, not a partnership with advocacy.

[Guest woxof]

This series of videos is brilliant. You'll get the gist of his presentation in the first part (1 of 4). But watch them all if you can.

My computer is a bit slow these days. Maybe Mitch can watch for me and post on the details.

Thanks Mitch.

[Mitch Cronin]

This series of videos is brilliant. You'll get the gist of his presentation in the first part (1 of 4). But watch them all if you can.

That was interesting. Thanks for that Moon.

[Hadji Ramjet]

Rattler? Are you joking? The man's sexual habits define him?

It IS a bit of a hypocrisy that as Commander-in-Chief of the US Armed Forces, his sexual habits constitute an offense under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

On the other hand, it was those habits that directly led to him being impeached and disbarred, so perhaps there is a little justice.

At least there won't be a second coming of Dan Quayle.

[Guest rattler]

Rattler? Are you joking? The man's sexual habits define him? You'd have to downgrade an awful lot of history's finest men if you used that same yardstick everywhere.

Based on my code of moral standards, they certainly do.

[Guest woxof]

One day after the conference and.....

Cold snap wreaks havoc across Europe

Snowstorms and sub-zero temperatures have killed at least 19 people across Europe as well as severely disrupting air, rail and road transport.

At least 15 people froze to death overnight in Poland as temperatures dipped way below freezing. In southern Germany a figure of -33C was recorded.

Flights have been cancelled and Eurostar passenger trains are still not running after electrical failures.

Moscow said it was deploying 9,000 snow ploughs to clear the city's streets.

More than 2,000 people were trapped on the trains in the Channel Tunnel for up to 16 hours after condensation caused a series of electrical failures on Friday night.

EUROSTAR ADVICE

If your journey is not essential, do not travel

A full refund will be offered to those whose journeys have been affected

Passengers whose journeys were severely disrupted on Friday or Saturday will also be given £150 compensation and a free return ticket

Hotels will be offered for those who had wanted to travel on Sunday

All updates will be posted on the Eurostar website and given out to news outlets

Eurostar suspends services again

Are you affected by cold weather?

It is currently unclear when services will resume. Eurostar is running tests on the line on Sunday.

Two people were reported dead in Austria's southern province of Styria as they tried to get home after nights out.

In France, 40% of flights out of Paris's Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports were cancelled as a second wave of snowstorms hit northern France.

Germany's third largest airport - in Duesseldorf - was also closed because of heavy snow, authorities said.

In Belgium, the three biggest airports - Brussels, Charleroi and Liege - were completely shut. Severe delays and cancellations were reported at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport.

In Britain, officials at Manchester Airport - the busiest outside the London area - suspended flights for 90 minutes as staff moved snow and de-iced a runway.

Rail traffic has been affected from Belgium to Italy.

[Fido]

......Oh but we didn't mean 'Global Warming' when we said global warming. We meant Climate Change, because then whatever weather comes your way we can say ..... "See. it is all man-made".

[Moon The Loon]

This will prove interesting. A fitting post-script to Copenhagen, perhaps?

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/...article1406803/

Bullit Marquez

LEGAZPI, Philippines — Associated Press

Published on Sunday, Dec. 20, 2009 10:26AM EST

Last updated on Sunday, Dec. 20, 2009 10:35AM EST

The Philippines' most active volcano could have a huge eruption within days, officials warned Sunday after detecting a drastic surge in earthquakes and eerie rumbling sounds in surrounding foothills. Tens of thousands of villagers have been evacuated as a precaution.

Scientists raised the alert level for the Mayon volcano after 453 volcanic earthquakes were detected in a five-hour span Sunday, compared to just over 200 Saturday, said Renato Solidum, chief of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology.

The five-step warning system was raised to level four, meaning a hazardous eruption “is possible within days.” Level five is when a major eruption has begun.

Army troops and police will intensify patrols to enforce a round-the-clock ban on villagers moving within a eight-kilometre danger zone around the 8,070-foot mountain, said Governor Joey Salceda of Albay province, about 340 kilometres southeast of Manila.

[view complete article online]

[13820]

The Philippines' most active volcano could have a huge eruption within days

Makem pay!!!!

[Kip Powick]

[Guest rattler]

Kelly McParland: Copenhagen's clowns of climate change

Posted: December 21, 2009, 1:25 PM by NP Editor

Kelly McParland, Full Comment Canadian politics

It turns out Canada's position on climate change wasn't crucial to reaching an agreement of sorts at Copenhagen.

Canada, despite assurances to the contrary, is not an international pariah, an embarrassment on the global stage, a laggard holding back the forces of progress, a lonely dissenting voice raised against a world determined to march courageously into the brave new world of emissions reduction. All that talk -- so eagerly embraced by those who wished it to be true -- was just so much, how do they spell it? Oh yeah... BS.

Turns out Stephen Harper probably could have stayed home from the big climate conference, which was likely his preference, and would have been the beneficial thing to do. Because the deal struck in Denmark didn't require the presence of Canada or most of the rest of the emissions-spewing leaders and the circus of hangers-on that trailed them to the Danish capital.

In the end, the deal that was made was the necessary one. Barack Obama and Wen Jiabao got together and worked out an agreement both could live with, then brought India and South Africa on board, and that was that. Together China, the U.S. and India produce almost half the world's emissions; together they focused on what was possible, instead of the utopian dreams on offer from the array of fantasists who overwhelmed the Danish capital with their limos, silly stunts and wild predictions. Canada, producing something less than 2% of emissions, wasn't in the room and didn't need to be. The deal could have been reached by speakerphone, and probably should have been. The planet would have been better off if it had.

David Miller, the Toronto mayor who made a spectacle of himself, trailing around Copenhagen apologizing for Canada and playing kissy-face with environmental groups, should have stayed in Toronto. The mayor has only 11 months left before he steps down, and doesn't represent anyone other than the city that elected him, but insisted on aiding self-declared "activists" in belittling his country with their tired, predictable antics. Anyone in doubt about the high cost and questionable benefits of the green agenda just needs to visit Toronto after six years of David Miller to have their worries confirmed.

The environment ministers from Ontario and Quebec should have stayed home too. Other than wasting energy, the only thing they accomplished by jetting to Denmark was to ignite a new and totally unnecessary argument with Alberta. When are these people going to get it through their heads that Canada needs the jobs and economic strength we get from Alberta's energy industry, and that dumping on it is a self-defeating and wholly irresponsible exercise in pointless political posturing? Quebec thinks that because much of its power comes from hydro-electricity, it's free to pontificate on the evils of oil, ignoring the effect the demise of the oil industry would have on the annual welfare cheques Quebec gets from Ottawa. Ontario -- well, who knows what Ontario is thinking? One year into have-not status and the government of Dalton McGuinty still can't come up with a policy better than blaming other governments for its problems.

Al Gore could have, and should have, stayed home. He made himself look foolish with his false claim that the Arctic ice cap could be melted away within five years. The pack of developing countries that showed up, determined to add to their billion-dollar aid transfers from the wealthier world, could have stayed home. The Group of 77 developing countries has legitimate concerns about global warming and its potential impact, but whoever decided it was a good idea to pick Sudan's Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping as their chief spokesman should be put on a melting iceberg and shoved out to sea. Sudan's government has spent the past five years prosecuting a genocidal war against its own people in Darfur. So what does Di-Aping do when asked about the draft accord but compare it to the Holocaust:

"It is asking Africa to sign a suicide pact, an incineration pact in order to maintain the economic dependence of a few countries," he declared. "It's a solution based on values that funnelled six million people in Europe into furnaces."

Way to go Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping. Any sympathy Europe or the western world had for the group of 77 just went bye-bye, whooshing out the window like so much escaping gas. Sudan's government is clearly better at murdering Darfurians than it is at public relations.

The sad-sack activists who infest this issue and these conferences should have stayed home as well. With nothing of importance to share, they busied themselves with the usual stunts and antics, handing out silly awards, climbing flagpoles, yelling at police, then tearfully describing their suffering when the police pushed back. What is it with environmental activists anyway? Do you have to fail a maturity test to become a member?

Robert Mugabe should have stayed home. Hugo Chavez should have stayed home. Whoever invited those two tinpot autocrats should have stayed home. You want the world to take you seriously and you haul out Robert Mugabe, whose most noteworthy contribution to his country this year was a cholera epidemic? Good thinking.

The whole thing was an epic display of international grandstanding. The result was predictable, and was predictably denounced by the usual crew of zealots in the green camp, who could have typed out their remarks and stuck them in the mail months in advance, for all the originality they contained. Nothing short of an overthrow of the world's economy would satisfy Greenpeace or the Sierra Club or the climate action networks of the world, and thank God none of the few serious folks in Copenhagen were willing to take that gamble. The green camp would like you to believe that the world is clamouring for radical action on greenhouse emissions, but they have nothing but some carefully-worded polls to back them up. Everyone is in favour of an environmental clean-up, as long as they don't have to pay for it. Add the expected cost of the clean-up to the polling questions, and watch the clamour fade.

The best that can be said for the efforts of the past two weeks is that it takes the political pressure generated by such gatherings to force reluctant leaders into taking action they'd prefer to avoid. Perhaps to that extent something was accomplished. But Canada had already committed itself to such measures in any case. Other than acting as a voice of reason amid the cacaphony of overblown demands, we didn't need to be there.

National Post

Read more: http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/f...x#ixzz0aLuzPDAE

The National Post is now on Facebook. Join our fan community today.

[Check Pilot]

I just knew it had to happen. As we lurch from one crisis to the next, this one is a new one for me.

We just got over Flopenhagen and the dire effects of our "carbon footprint" and the scaremongers come up with the dire effects of our "water footprint".

As posted on the Globe and Mail website:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/techno...article1397818/

And here I was just worried about the Large Hadron Collider putting us all into a teeny, tiny black hole.

[Steam Driven]

""I genuinely don't understand the editorial focus on the 'global warming' issue," stated Frank Hilliard. "You reported that the data set of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia had been compromised, but you continue to report on this conference as if it still has a basis in reality.

"It's over," he added. "The anthropological global warming plane has crashed. Start looking into the wreckage instead of pretending it's still up in the air going somewhere."

"

National Post - Opinion

[Guest woxof]

I am aware of how many AEF'ers hang on my every post and opinion . So here is today's daily update. The last paragraph gives a realistic and possible explanation on how Canada was able to win so many fossil awards. I'm not normally a conspiracy theorist, but the idea of a socialist plot being enmeshed in this whole man-made global warming theory seems to get stronges as time passes.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/blogs/spect...article1406872/

No one’s blaming Canada for Copenhagen

Reviewing the press today, I could not find a single reference to Canada being responsible for an agreement described, on the front page of the Independent as a “historic failure that will live in infamy” by British Greenpeace activist Joss Garman. Instead, the U.S. and China are coming in for most of the blame — with the latter tagged for having insisted that a target date for negotiation of a legally binding text be dropped.

Asked by the Observer who was to blame for blocking the introduction of controlled emissions, the director general of the Swedish environment protection agency, Lars-Erik Liljelund, replied: "China. China doesn't like numbers." On the other hand, Britain’s former deputy PM and Kyoto negotiator, John Prescott, writes in the same paper "President Obama's speech blaming China didn't help."

The Guardian also reports this fascinating exchange from inside the negotiations:

“Around 8 pm, after the second of these bilateral meetings, Obama returned to the negotiating room saying he had secured an agreement from Wen on the key issue of how promises to cut emissions would be verified by the international community. But a new fight then erupted in which China bizarrely insisted that Europe lower its targets for greenhouse gas emissions.

"Merkel wanted to set a target for developed nations to cut emissions by 80 per cent by 2050, but in the last gasp, China declared this unacceptable. This astonished many of those present: China was telling rich nations to rein back on their long-term commitment. The assumed reason was that China will have joined their ranks by 2050 and does not want to meet such a target. 'Ridiculous,' exclaimed Merkel as she was forced to abandon the target."

In the Independent, a European official explains China’s strategy:

“The Chinese were happy as they'd win either way. If the process collapsed they'd win because they don't have to do anything and they know the rich countries will get the blame.

"If the deal doesn't collapse because everyone is so desperate to accommodate them that they water it down to something completely meaningless, they get their way again. …It was extraordinary to see, and incredibly worrying for what it bodes for the future of our planet in this century. China is not going to get less powerful, and if this is the way that it's going to behave, then we have problems."

In U.S. papers, too, you can read plenty of criticism of China’s tactics. The New York Times, for example, reports: “Twice during the day, Mr. Wen sent an underling to represent him at the meetings with Mr. Obama. To make things worse, each time it was a lower-level official.” But there’s also lots of criticism of the unwieldy process at Copenhagen that proved a tough nut for President Obama to crack, which suggests that the Americans have a new process in mind in future — perhaps the major emitters group, perhaps the G2 of itself and China.

In the dozen or so papers I read today, I found only one defense of China — apart, that is, from Xinhua, the state news agency of China which was quoted in a Times of London report. And it’s that defense of China in Le Soleil by a Canadian, Steven Guilbeault — formerly Greenpeace’s Québec spokesperson and now a consultant with environmental groups who was very present in Copenhagen — which perhaps explains why Canada received so many fossil awards despite not having been responsible for the “historic failure that will live in infamy” described by British Greenpeace activist Joss Garman.

[mo32a]

I just knew it had to happen. As we lurch from one crisis to the next, this one is a new one for me.

We just got over Flopenhagen and the dire effects of our "carbon footprint" and the scaremongers come up with the dire effects of our "water footprint".

As posted on the Globe and Mail website:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/techno...article1397818/

And here I was just worried about the Large Hadron Collider putting us all into a teeny, tiny black hole.

Fortunately I live on the wet coast and our problem is more to do with how to get rid of water.

[mo32a]

National Post - Opinion

I love that quote!! Beauty.