The attempt to blame rich "developed" countries for global warming (and the real joke -- climate change) and extort money from them is coming to an end. They say it is because nobody can agree on who is rich and who is poor. Could it be that nobody really believes the ridiculous, absurd, and scientifically, morally, and financially corrupt concept that fossil fuel-related carbon dioxide is causing global warming?
Hopefully this grand hoax championed by no less than Nobel Prize winner and genius Al Gore, is coming to an end. Billions if not Trillions of dollars have already been squandered. It is past due time to end this fiasco and stop the monetary bleeding. The world is facing far greater challenges. Peter
Is China poor? Key question at climate talks
Is China a developing country? Key question unresolved in latest round of climate talks
By Karl Ritter, Associated Press | Associated Press – 12 hours ago
View Photo
FILE- Smoke billows from a chimney of a heating plant as the sun sets in Beijing in this file photo dated Monday, Feb. 13, 2012. U.N. climate talks being held in Bonn, Germany, are in gridlock Thursday May 24, 2012, as a rift between rich and poor countries risked undoing some of the advances made last year in the two-decade-long effort to control carbon emissions from fast-growing economies like China and India as well as developed industrialized nations that scientists say are overheating the planet.(AP Photo/Alexander F. Yuan, File)
BONN, Germany (AP) -- Another round of U.N. climate talks closed without resolving how to share the burden of curbing man-made global warming, mainly because countries don't agree on who is rich and who is poor.
China wants to maintain a decades-old division between developed and developing countries, bearing in mind that, historically, the West has released most of the heat-trapping gases that scientists say could cause catastrophic changes in climate.
But the U.S. and Europe insisted during the two-week talks that ended Friday in Bonn that the system doesn't reflect current economic realities and must change as work begins on a new global climate pact set to be completed in 2015.
"The notion that a simple binary system is going to be applicable going forward is no longer one that has much relevance to the way the world currently works," U.S. chief negotiator Jonathan Pershing said.
Countries like Qatar and Singapore are wealthier than the U.S. per capita but are still defined as developing countries under the classification used in the U.N. talks. So is China, the world's second largest economy.
Finding a new system that better reflects the world today, while also acknowledging the historical blame for greenhouse gas emissions, is the biggest challenge facing the U.N. process as it seeks a global response to climate change.
"That is a fundamental issue," said Henrik Harboe, Norway's chief climate negotiator. "Some want to keep the old division while we want to look at it in a more dynamic way."
The U.N. climate talks are based on the premise that industrialized countries must take the lead on climate change by committing to reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. They are also expected to provide money to help poor countries grow in a sustainable way and to protect the most vulnerable nations from rising sea levels, droughts and other consequences of a warming world.
Disputes on how to categorize countries going forward was behind much of the procedural wrangling that slowed down the talks in Bonn. Delegates failed to agree on an agenda until the last day, leaving most of the work for a bigger summit in Qatar in November.
A separate dispute between developing countries delayed the appointment of officials to steer the talks. That stalemate was also unlocked on the last day.
The slow pace frustrated climate activists who fear that there won't be enough political will to rein in emissions to avoid dangerous levels of warming in coming decades.
"The talk here doesn't match the action that science says is required," said Mohamed Adow, senior climate change adviser at Christian Aid.
China's lead negotiator Su Wei told The Associated Press that the proposed new deal, which would have binding commitments for all countries after 2020, must be based on the principle of "common but differentiated responsibility" enshrined in previous climate agreements.
"That means we still would continue the current division between developed and developing countries," Su said.
He said China is still a developing country because if you look at wealth per capita, it barely makes the world's top 100. More than 100 million Chinese live below the poverty line, which Beijing has defined as about $1 a day.
Still, Western officials say China's fast-growing energy needs and rising emissions mean it can no longer be off the hook in climate negotiations.
"We need to move into a system which is reflecting modern economic realities," EU negotiator Christian Pilgaard Zinglersen said.
In the early 1950s, China accounted for just 2 percent of global emissions while the U.S. accounted for more than 40 percent, according to Climate Analytics, a climate research group based in Potsdam, Germany.
Today China's share of global emissions exceeds 25 percent, while the U.S. share has fallen toward 20 percent.
China and its supporters reject blame for stalling the climate talks, saying it is the U.S. and other developed nations that are unwilling to live up to their obligations to cut carbon emissions.
The U.S. refused to join the only binding accord to limit emissions — the 1997 Kyoto Protocol — partly because it didn't include China.
Seyni Nafo, spokesman for a group of African countries in the climate talks, noted that the U.S. also said that joining Kyoto would harm the U.S. economy. Years later, the U.N. climate effort still has little support in the U.S. Congress, which includes outspoken climate skeptics.
"We are hoping that they will get on board this time, which is not a given," Nafo said.
The following article accurately sums up the sad state of affairs surrounding the entire sordid man-caused global warming fiasco. It has and is costing humanity dearly. Let's hope we wake up in time to recover. I have been preaching and pleading for people to listen to these truths for years. Peter
The Greying of Green?
Posted By David Solway On May 16, 2012 @ 12:30 am In "Green" tech,economy,Elections 2012,Politics,Science & Technology,US News | 11 Comments
It has been reliably estimated by many researchers into the subject of “Global Warming” (or any of the other sobriquets by which it is known) that in fulfilling the draconian prescriptions of the Kyoto Accord or its successors, such as the United Nations IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report, millions of jobs will be lost in the developed world, the quality of life in the industrialized nations will sink to substandard levels, and the inhabitants of the Third World will be deprived of the minimal immunities, comforts, and amenities to which they aspire.
Fiona Kobusingye, coordinator of the Congress of Racial Equality Uganda, has vehemently denounced the attempt to impose energy restrictions on African nations in the name of fighting global warming. “These policies kill,” she writes. As for the combustible Al Gore, he “uses more electricity in a week than 28 million Ugandans together use in a year.” Her conclusion: “Telling Africans they can’t have electricity—except what can be produced with some wind turbines or little solar panels—is immoral. It is a crime against humanity” (Townhall.com., July 29, 2009). Her article is a must read. Graced with common sense and logical reasoning, it is one of the best puncturings of the hot air balloon in the relevant literature.
H. Sterling Burnett, a senior fellow at the nonprofit National Center for Policy Analysis, would clearly agree. He correctly argues that recommendations based on “flawed statistical analyses and procedures that violate general forecasting principles” should be taken “into account before enacting laws to counter global warming—which economists point out would have severe economic consequences.” Such consequences are already in evidence. Benny Peiser, editor of CCNet science network, speaking at the Heartland Institute’s 2009 climate conference in New York, sounded the death knell of the green movement in Europe owing to huge costs and minimal results (Climate Realists, March 11, 2009). Environmentalist Lawrence Solomon quotes Spanish economist Gabriel Calzada, whose studies show that “every green job created ploughs under 2.2 jobs elsewhere in the economy” and that green jobs are proving to be unsustainable since the creation of even one such job costs $1 million in government subsidies (National Post, March 31, 2009).
These are costs that may be suffered in other, frankly ludicrous, ways as well. The United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) in its 2008 Annual Report, published in 2009, jubilates over the replacement of motorized vehicles by “bicycle rickshaws”—which, it must be admitted, will certainly help to decongest metropolitan traffic. That it would reduce America and the West to Third World Status does not trouble UNEP overmuch. Perhaps that is the plan.
The much-ballyhooed T. Boone Pickens strategy of introducing large-scale windmill technology is now proving to be a similarly quixotic project, unsightly, land-consuming, bird-killing, neurosis-inducing, expensive and totally inadequate to its declared purpose of meeting even a fraction of our electricity needs. Alex Alexiev of the Hudson Institute has laid the cards on the table for all to read: green electricity bills are rising exponentially; Europe is gradually abandoning many of its green energy programs as cost-ineffective and injurious to both wildlife and human health; and, as of the end of 2008, American solar and wind-power stocks had lost 80% of their value (FrontPage Magazine, March 31, 2009). Rhode Island’s Public Utilities Commission has rejected a deal to build an offshore wind farm that would have entailed “hundreds of millions of dollars in additional costs…” (The Providence Journal, March 31, 2010). New Zealand has repealed its carbon tax scheme and Australia’s opposition party is vowing to follow suit.
The writing is on the wall in majuscule[1]. The Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) has closed shop, putting an end to its estimated $10 trillion carbon trading scheme. In August 2011, President Obama’s pet green project, the California-based Solyndra solar plant, filed for bankruptcy, costing the U.S. $535 million in wasted stimulus funds and 1,100 jobs (NBC Bay Area, August 31, 2011). Other such futilities are impending. The Beacon Power Corp, recipient of a $43 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy, has filed for bankruptcy after being delisted by the NASDAQ (Moneynews, October 31, 2011). The solar cell company Spectrawatt, recipient of a federal stimulus boost, and Nevada Geothermal, which profited from Federal DOE and Treasury Department subsidies, are on the brink of failure (FrontPage Magazine, January 26, 2012.) Ener 1, which received a $118 million stimulus grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to develop lithium storage batteries for electric cars, has filed for bankruptcy protection (Bloomberg Businessweek, February 2, 2012). This is bad news for the plug-in Chevy Volt, the president’s car of choice, which is beset with problems anyway; GM had to suspend production to cut inventory owing to anemic sales (Left Lane Online, March 2, 2012).
Abound Solar, which makes cadmium telluride solar modules to the tune of a $400 million federal loan guarantee, has laid off 300 workers, amounting to 70% of its workforce (New York Post, March 10, 2012). And now the electric vehicle battery company A123 Systems, beneficiary of $300 million in Obama’s Recovery Act funds and $135 million in state tax credits and subsidies, courtesy of Michigan’s former Democratic governor Jennifer Granholm, is about to go belly up—another instance, to use Michelle Malkin’s term, of a smart grid, crony-inspired “enviro-boodle” (National Review Online, March 30, 2012).
The reason for many of these failures in green energy-production companies is simple. As noted environmental consultant and author Rich Trzupek explains, the energy density of convertible wind and solar is risibly low and dispersed, which renders electricity-generating power plants, whether large or small, “the most inefficient, least reliable, and expensive form of power we have” (FrontPage Magazine, March 23, 2012). As happened in Spain, Europe’s bellwether country for climatophrenic ruination, Obama’s “solar alchemy,” which demonizes traditional forms of energy extraction and application, has become a recipe for an American economic debacle.
Finnish professor Jarl Ahlbeck, a former Greenpeace member and author of over 200 scientific publications, points out that “real measurements give no ground for concern about a catastrophic future warming.” Contrary to common belief, he continues, “there has been no or little global warming since 1995” (Facts and Arts, November 25, 2008). His findings have been supported by many other studies. To adduce just a few instances: geophysicist Phil Chapman, basing his results on careful analyses from major weather-tracking agencies, reports that global temperature is “falling precipitously” (The Australian, April 23, 2008); geologist Don Easterbrook, associate editor of the Geological Society of America Bulletin, Professor Emeritus at Western Washington University and former U.S. representative to UNESCO, is also convinced that recent solar changes suggest the advent of a new cooling cycle which could be “fairly severe” (GlobalResearch, November 2, 2008); and a new study conducted by three Norwegian scientists, Jan-Erik Solheim, Kjell Stordahl and Ole Humlum, indicates that the next solar cycle, which is imminent, will see a “significant temperature decrease” over and above the current decline (Climate Depot, March 7, 2012).
Moreover, as Robert Zubrin has decisively shown in his recent Merchants of Despair[2], there exists robust scientific proof derived from ice core data and isotopic ratios in marine organism remains that Earth’s climate is a stable system, (I've been saying this for years now, Peter) that CO2 emissions create surplus plant growth that in turn absorbs atmospheric carbon dioxide, thus restoring climate equilibrium over the long haul, and that under cyclical conditions of global warming agricultural productivity naturally increases and human life immensely improves.
In a brilliant article for the Financial Post (April 21, 2012) analyzing the eleven logical fallacies on which the argument for man-made climate change rests, Lord Christopher Monckton, known for tracking and exposing scientific hoaxes, has effectively proven that the anthropogenic thesis has absolutely no basis, neither in fact nor in theory. So-called climate skeptics need nerves of steel to oppose the reigning ideology. It takes no less courage and perhaps even more for a climate “Warmist” to buck the trend, as culture-hero James Lovelock has recently done. Lovelock, who in his 2006 The Revenge of Gaia[3] prophesied the charring of the planet, now admits he had been “extrapolating too far.” Despite predictably hedging his bets and deferring catastrophe into the indefinite future, he avers that “we don’t know what the climate is doing” and disparages his previous work, including Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth[4] and Tim Flannery’s The Weather Makers[5], as “alarmist” (MSNBC.com, April 30, 2012).
Nevertheless, the Global Warming meme continues to circulate in defiance of the accumulating evidence, which leads one to wonder who the real “deniers” are. In my own country of Canada, “Warmist” foundations are determined to continue issuing environmental fatwas, in particular to tie up state-of-the-art, economically productive oil pipelines in endless litigation. That such a move would impact national revenues and cost thousands of potential jobs is a matter of no concern.
But the problem does not extend only to adversarial institutions and fellow-traveling NGOs. In other respects, Canadian governing parties, on both the federal and provincial levels, have not yet caught on to the perilous, impractical and pixilated nature of the Green crusade. Unsightly, government approved wind farms, for example, are literally driving people crazy and adding steeply to electricity bills.
Despite being hyped by the left-leaning CBC News (May 22, 2008), solar energy installations and SpongeBob-looking photovoltaic panels disfiguring the landscape do not seem like a reasonable prop
osition in a country already burdened by a dark, six month winter, as the Ontario Power Authority will shortly discover. Government and industry supporters, to cite the enthusiastic CBC report, base their projections on the presumed success of the German model. But there is a slight hitch, namely, the German solar experiment is a possible “government boondoggle,” is “cost-inefficient,”[6] will soon be obsolete, and has become “debatable” (MIT Technology Review, July/August, 2010). Indeed, it is now being phased out (Slate, February 18, 2010).
And then we have the soon-to-be-mandated mercury-laden CFLs, an undoubted domestic hazard, that are replacing standard light bulbs. Like many of my fellow citizens, I am assiduously hoarding incandescents in my basement, enough to see me through at least five years of environmental madness. Perhaps by that time, Green may have greyed sufficiently to be put out to pasture. One can hope.
Hopefully the myth of man-caused global warming/climate change will die a quick death now that is being exposed as the complete hoax that it has always been. It won't be painless, and many proponents of the myth and Al Gore true believers will continue to resist in their ignorance. After all, they're desperately trying to protect their livelihoods, all that taxpayer money they've grown fat on. I know this to be true because I get to read the comments here from the delusional Internet trolls who launch personal attacks on anyone who dares question the status quo. It would be funny if it weren't so serious. I don't think the waste of Billions of taxpayer dollars is the least bit humorous, even if Al Gore is a laughable joke.
It will never cease to amaze me how many people mindlessly follow the herd, or the "consensus", or those who are content to "appeal to authority". Are they afraid of the truth, or are they just lazy? They certainly surrender any kind of liberty gained by independent thought.
So I'm publishing the following very well written and researched article in it's entirety, with comments by me in parentheses and italics. Give credit to Peter Ferrara the author. He sums up the current status of the global warming/hoax I have been blogging about for years now. Peter
'Fakegate' Follows 'Climategate'
By Peter Ferrara
3/7/2012
About every four years, the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) produces a voluminous Assessment Report (AR) on the state of global warming science, such as it is. Two years after each AR, the IPCC produces an updating Interim Report.
In 2008, The Heartland Institute, headquartered in Chicago, began organizing international conferences of scientists from across the globe who want to raise and discuss intellectually troubling questions and doubts regarding the theory that human activity is causing ultimately catastrophic global warming. Six conferences have taken place to date, attracting more than 3,000 scientists, journalists, and interested citizens from all over the world.
(Full disclosure: I am a Heartland Senior Fellow, one of several affiliations I have with free-market think tanks and advocacy groups.)
In 2009, Heartland published Climate Change Reconsidered: The Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC). That 860-page careful, dispassionate, thoroughly scientific volume, produced in conjunction with the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) and the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, explored the full range of alternative views to the UN's IPCC. Two years later, Heartland published the 418 page Climate Change Reconsidered: The 2011 Interim Report of the NIPCC, which updated the research regarding global warming and "climate change" since the 2009 volume.
Through these activities and more like them, Heartland has become the international headquarters of the scientific alternative to the UN's IPCC, now providing full scale rebuttals to the UN's own massive reports. Any speaker, any authority, any journalist or bureaucrat asserting the catastrophic danger of supposed man-caused global warming needs to be asked for their response to Climate Change Reconsidered. If they have none, then they are not qualified to address the subject.
This is the essential background to understanding "Fakegate," the strange and still being written story of the decline and fall of political activist Peter Gleick, who had successfully engineered a long career posing as an objective climate scientist. Gleick, who has announced he is taking a "temporary, short-term leave of absence" as president of the Pacific Institute, also served until recently as chairman of the science integrity task force of the American Geophysical Union. (I could care less whether Peter Gleick goes to prison or not. I want it revealed what a hoax the entire global warming/climate change issue has been. Peter)
Al Gore lying to the world, totally straight-faced, laughing all the way to the bank.
Gleick has publicly confessed that he contacted The Heartland Institute fraudulently pretending to be a member of the Board of Directors.(Any scientist who behaved this way in the private sector would be fired immediately, without remorse! Peter) Emails released by The Heartland Institute show that he created an email address similar to that of a board member and used it to convince a staff member to send him confidential board materials. Gleick then forwarded the documents to 15 global warming alarmist advocacy organizations and sympathetic journalists, who immediately posted them online and blogged and wrote about them.
Their expectation apparently was that the documents would be as embarrassing and damaging to the global warming skeptics as were the emails revealed in the "Climategate" scandal to the alarmist side. The Climategate revelations showed scientific leaders of the UN's IPCC and global warming alarmist movement plotting to falsify climate data and exclude those raising doubts about their theories from scientific publications, while coordinating their message with supposedly objective mainstream journalists. (Climategate revealed the people writing the reports for the UN were not climate scientists, but "political scientists". I'd call them comparable to Lenin's "useful idiots" supporting a socialist agenda. Peter)
But the stolen Heartland documents exonerated, rather than embarrassed, the skeptic movement. They demonstrate only an interest at Heartland in getting the truth out on the actual objective science. They revealed little funding from oil companies and other self interested commercial enterprises, who actually contribute heavily to global warming alarmists as protection money instead. The documents also show how poorly funded the global warming skeptics at Heartland are, managing on a shoestring to raise a shockingly successful global challenge to the heavily over funded UN and politicized government science.
As the Wall Street Journal observed on Feb. 21, while Heartland's budget for the NIPCC this year totals $388,000, that compares to $6.5 million for the UN's IPCC, and $2.5 billion that President Obama's budget commits for research into "the global changes that have resulted primarily from global over-dependence on fossil fuels."(Can anyone comprehend spending $2.5 Billion based on a vague theory like man-caused global warming, and AFTER learning it is all based on fraudulent science? What would happen to a CEO who wasted that kind of shareholders money? They would be part of disgraced history. I predict that will ultimately be Obama's legacy. Peter) That demonstrates how an ounce of truth can overcome a tidal wave of falsehood.
Maybe that is why Gleick or one of his coconspirators felt compelled to go farther and composed a fake memo titled "Confidential Memo: 2012 Heartland Climate Strategy." Whoever did it understood that a document composed on his computer and distributed online would contain markings demonstrating its source and confirming the forgery, so they printed it out and scanned it to hide its digital trail. The scanned document itself, however, contained evidence that allowed even amateur sleuths to trace it back to the Pacific Institute's offices, as explained in an article by Megan McCardle, a senior editor for The Atlantic. (McCardle, incidentally, is highly sympathetic to global warming alarmism.)
The forged cover memo, not the actual stolen document, contains language mirroring Climategate. It discussed fabricated projects that are not activities of Heartland, and references a $200,000 Koch Foundation contribution for climate change activities that doesn't exist. The Koch Foundation confirms that it gave Heartland only $25,000 in 2011, earmarked for health care policy projects and not climate change, an amount equal to only 0.5% of Heartland's 2011 budget. By contrast, as the Journal also observed, the budget last year for the Natural Resources Defense Council was $95.4 million, and for the World Wildlife Fund $238.5 million. (Any one doubting the power and influence of these "environmental" groups, read those dollar numbers and gasp, or choke. And these two organizations are just the tip of the ice berg! Peter)
Heartland President Joe Bast said in a statement on the episode, "The stolen documents were obtained by [a then] unknown person who fraudulently assumed the identity of a Heartland board member....Identity theft and computer fraud are criminal offenses subject to imprisonment. We intend to find this person and see him or her put in prison for these crimes."
While I am not a scientist, and write primarily on economics, tax policy and budget issues, I have been fascinated over the years by Heartland's work on climate change. I've attended the Heartland global warming conferences and read through the organization's publications on the issue. What has fascinated me is how the objective, dispassionate scientific presentations so thoroughly demolish the intellectual case for catastrophic man-caused global warming. In contrast, as the comments to this article will no doubt show, the case for catastrophic global warming is no more than appeals to authority ("the United Nations says it's true!") or ad hominem attacks. (Ad hominem tactics are a common legal trick to discredit a witness when the witness' facts are unassailable. This only shows how empty are the positions of the global warming alarmists that they have to resort to personal attacks. Peter)
The bottom line is that the temperature records are not consistent with the theory that human "greenhouse" gas emissions are the primary cause of global warming.(The climategate emails revealed every effort was made to "hide the decline" in global temperatures. Peter) Those records do not show temperatures rising in conjunction with such ever rising emissions as the globe increasingly industrializes. Instead, the temperature record shows an up and down pattern that follows the pattern of natural influences on global temperatures, such as cyclical sunspots and solar flares, and cycles of ocean churning from warmer to colder temperatures and back, such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO).
Moreover, the incorruptible and objective satellite temperature records show only modest warming starting in the late 1970s, which stopped roughly 10 years ago, with more recent declines. That is consistent with temperature proxy records found in nature, such as tree rings and ice cores. But that diverges significantly from the corruptible and subjectively compiled land based records, the repeated manipulation of which has prompted several prominent climate scientists to call for an investigation. Perhaps Gleick's skills in falsification can be found more broadly among his colleagues.
In addition, the work of the UN's IPCC is based on numerous climate models that attempt to project temperatures decades into the future. Those models are all based on the circular assumption that the theory of man caused global warming is true. As 16 world leading climate scientists recently reported in a letter to the Wall Street Journal,
"[A]n important gauge of scientific expertise is the ability to make successful predictions. When predictions fail, we say that the theory is 'falsified' and we should look for the reasons for the failure. Shown in the nearby graph is the measured annual temperature of the earth since 1989, just before the first report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Also shown are the projections of the likely increase of temperature, as published in the Summaries of each of the four IPCC reports, the first in the year 1990 and the last in the year 2007.
"From the graph it appears that the projections [of the models] exaggerate, substantially, the response of the earth's temperature to CO2 which increased by about 11% from 1989 through 2011. Furthermore, when one examines the historical temperature record throughout the 20th century and into the 21st, the data strongly suggest a much lower CO2 effect than almost all models calculate."
Seems like the models have been falsified. (Seems like? (Understatement of the year. Peter)
The likely reason for that failure is that while the models recognize that increased CO2 itself will not produce a big, catastrophic increase in global temperatures, the models assume that the very small amount of warming caused by increased CO2 will result in much larger temperature increases caused by positive feedbacks. The real, emerging science, as the Heartland publications indicate, is that the feedbacks are more likely to be offset by negative feedbacks, resulting in a much smaller net temperature change. Scientists have pointed out that much higher CO2 concentrations deep in the earth's history, as shown by proxy records, did not result in catastrophic temperature increases, a very powerful rebuttal to the idea today's relatively low CO2 levels could trigger catastrophic global warming. (Geologists, this one included, have pointed out these facts as soon as they realized the magnitude of the hoax of man-caused global warming being used to manipulate people's thinking. Remember, geologists are the first "climate scientists" and historians. The history of the Earth is recorded in fossils and sedimentary rocks, all affected by climate change, from the beginning of time. Peter)
The results of the latest, most advanced data collection also suggest that CO2 is not responsible for the modest global warming of the late 20th century. The UN models agree with established science that if human greenhouse gas emissions were causing global warming, there should be a hot spot of higher temperatures in the troposphere above the tropics, where collected concentrations would have the greatest effect, and the warming would show up first. This is known in the literature on climate science as "the fingerprint" for man caused global warming. But data from global weather satellites and more comprehensive weather balloons show no hotspot, and no fingerprint, which means no serious global warming due to human greenhouse gas emissions. QED.
Moreover, satellites also have been measuring the energy entering the earth's atmosphere from the sun, and the energy escaping back out to space. If the theory of man caused global warming is correct, then the energy escaping back out should be less than the energy entering, as the greenhouse gases capture some of the energy in the atmosphere. But the satellite data show negligible difference. (Geologists know that if the Earth did not release heat out through the atmosphere equal to that which is added to the Earth by the Sun, the Earth would have burned up long, long ago. To think otherwise reveals a gross ignorance of Earth History. I wonder if these modern "climate scientists" even took Geology 101 in college. Certainly Al Gore didn't, and Obama? Nobody is even sure if, when, or where he went to college. He's not saying. Peter)
The real cutting edge in climate science was publicly exposed recently in a book by one of the long time leaders of the German environmental movement, Fritz Vahrenholt, in his new book, The Cold Sun. The book expresses the growing concern among more careful real climate scientists, rather than political scientists, that trends in solar activity portend a return to the cold, limited agricultural output, and widespread disease of the Little Ice Age, or even a more full blown, overdue by historical standards, real ice age.
The consolation is that those threatening developments are still centuries away. In an interview with Spiegel magazine, titled "I Feel Duped on Climate Change," Vahrenholt tells readers that the UN's forecasts on the severity of climate change are exaggerated and supported by weak science. The American version would be Al Gore producing a movie with the title, "The Most Inconvenient Truth: I Was Wrong."
(I wish I could take everyone on a field trip and show them the effects of the last Ice Age, which ended less than 20,000 years ago. I wish they could comprehend how the great ice sheets covering about half of the Northern Hemisphere carved out the Great Lakes, and valleys like Yosemite, with ice two miles thick in places. And then all this ice melted and retreated back up into the Arctic regions, all long before man was burning fossil fuels and emitting all that "pollution" as the alarmists....and the EPA, by the way, now call carbon dioxide, CO2. Our public education is so pathetically inadequate and incompetent that people actually fall for the most obvious lies about global warming and climate change. Why isn't anyone worried about our education system? Are our schools just brainwashing our children based on some socialist political agenda? It sure smells that way. Peter)
The root of the global warming confusion is that the UN is not a disinterested party that can be trusted to compile and interpret the climate science on which the world's policymakers can rely. The UN sees the theory of man caused catastrophic global warming as a tremendous opportunity for gaining the regulatory and taxation powers of a world government. (Bingo! The guy writing this article figured this out. However, people in power, and those pushing "cap and trade", carbon taxes, etc. will never admit to this. And the people who are being duped into believing this global warming nonsense? Well human nature and hubris make it very difficult for people to admit they are wrong. Peter)
It is at least as self-interested on the subject as oil and gas companies. It has used its role as grand overseer of climate science to advance its own agenda. The result has been a great disservice to the scientific community and to policymakers. It fueled a global panic and mass delusion that has cost hundreds of billions or even trillions of dollars, and is likely to cost trillions more before it finally runs its course. (Are you a little bit unhappy about this deception and all the lies coming from people you ought to be able to trust? You ought to be. Imagine if a medical doctor lied to you about your own body in the same way these climate "doctors" have lied to us about our dear Mother Earth! Peter)
That is why Gleick's Fakegate memo is actually a perfect metaphor for the entire fabrication of global warming. It and the entire Fakegate scandal provide a window, much like Climategate did, into the global warming movement, and what we see is ugly indeed. Peter Gleick's misconduct is repeated a hundred times every day, in the same dishonest, cynical, and corrosive way, by global warming advocates around the world. (This entire fiasco is a viral stain on all of science, tarnishing all honest scientists. Scientists must be honest; they must tirelessly seek the truth and settle for nothing less. Our civilization depends on it. These corrupt climate scientists have betrayed us all. Peter)
Fakegate is another reason why the U.S. should withdraw all funding and participation in the UN's IPCC, and establish its own panel of scientists representing the full spectrum of views to study whether there is any real potential threat from man caused global warming. I nominate as the Chairman for that panelRichard Lindzen, (I agree, and if anyone who deserves a Nobel Peace Prize, it is Dr. Lindzen, Peter) the retiring Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at MIT.
Peter Ferrara
Peter Ferrara is Director of Entitlement and Budget Policy for the Institute for Policy Innovation and General Counesl for the American Civil Rights Union.
(late addition: dedicated to Andrew Breitbart, a patriot and seeker of the truth.)
Is it rare? Yes, very. Is it endangered? Let's hope not. (As my usual style, my comments are in italics.)
I just discovered something (someone) very rare indeed, a sceptical (honest) climatologist, and her name is Dr. Judith A. Curry. Bear in mind Dr. Curry is no lightweight, from her blog:
Judith Curry is Professor and Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology and President (co-owner) of Climate Forecast Applications Network (CFAN). She received a Ph.D. in Geophysical Sciences from the University of Chicago in 1982. Prior to joining the faculty at Georgia Tech, she held faculty positions at the University of Colorado, Penn State University and Purdue University. She currently serves on the NASA Advisory Council Earth Science Subcommittee and has recently served on the National Academies Climate Research Committee and the Space Studies Board, and the NOAA Climate Working Group. Curry is a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Geophysical Union.
So where has Dr. Curry been hiding all these years? My guess is she has been lost in the vast primitive swamps of politically correct academia where it is career suicide to question the conventional wisdom regarding global warming/climate change. Why is she coming out now, after so many years in the climate closet? I don't know, maybe she grew tired of living a lie. Maybe "climategate" has made being a climate sceptic somewhat academically acceptable. Maybe she wants to disassociate herself from the scandals at Penn St. (Michael Mann - climate fraud, football and child sex predators). Maybe she finally feels secure in her career. I don't know and don't care. I just welcome her in from the cold and dark.
The enemy in this case is a website titled oilprice .com. Imagine the horror going through the ranks of Al Gore's global warming true-believers! They are probably on suicide watch. It gets better, and I couldn't be happier. I almost feel vindicated because I've stuck my timid little professional neck out on the line about what I've long called "the myth of man-caused global warming. This blog is testimony to that. Here is a thought along those lines:
“The acid test of intelligence is whether the things you believe in turn out to be true.” — James R. Cook
Here is the beginning of the interview with Dr. Curry.
The IPCC May Have Outlived its Usefulness - An Interview with Judith Curry
As the global warming debate increases in its intensity we find both sides deeply entrenched, hurling accusations and lies at one another in an attempt to gain the upper hand. This divide within the scientific community has left the public wondering who can be trusted to provide them with accurate information and answers.
The IPCC, the onetime unquestioned champion of climate change, has had its credibility questioned over the years, firstly with the climategate scandal, then with a number of high profile resignations, and now with the new “Gleickgate” scandal (1) (2) – One has to wonder where climate science goes from here?
We have just had the pleasure of interviewing the well known climatologist Judith A. Curry in order to get her thoughts on climate change, the IPCC, geo-engineering, and much more.
Judith is the current chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology and hosts sensible discussions on climate change at her popular blog Climate, etc.
Considered somewhat of a black sheep within the scientific community Judith was a one time supporter of the IPCC until she started to find herself disagreeing with certain policies and methods of the organization. She feared the combination of groupthink and political advocacy, combined with an ingrained "noble cause syndrome" stifled scientific debate, slowed down scientific progress, and corrupted the assessment process. (continued here.)
Now, let's here a few key comments. (My observations in italics.)
OP: What are your personal beliefs on climate change?JC:The climate is always changing. Climate is currently changing because of a combination of natural and human induced effects. The natural effects include variations of the sun, volcanic eruptions, and oscillations of the ocean. The human induced effects include the greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, pollution aerosols, and land use changes. The key scientific issue is determining how much of the climate change is associated with humans. This is not a simple thing to determine. (Nothing new here, just the admission that there are "natural" causes of climate change, as if humans are somehow not "natural", a radical departure from the mainstream liberal ideology. Peter)
JC: I absolutely think that more effort is needed in determining the effect of the sun on our climate. The sun is receiving increased attention (and funding), (Again, nothing new, just something obviously long overdue. Peter)
OP: You are well known in climate and energy circles for breaking from the ranks of the IPCC and questioning the current information out there. What do you see as the reasons for the increase in skepticism towards global warming over the last few years.
JC: Because of the IPCC and its consensus seeking process, the rewards for scientists have been mostly in embellishing the consensus, and this includes government funding. Because of recent criticisms of the IPCCIPCC, and I think this is a healthy thing for the science. (Again, this is something I and many others have been saying all along. Add to the blackmail and constant subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle threats climate skeptics have received. Peter)
OP. What are your views on the idea that CO2 may not be a significant contributor to climate change? How do you think such a revelation, if true, will affect the world economy, and possibly shatter public confidence in scientific institutions that have said we must reduce CO2 emissions in order to save the planet?
JC:Personally, I think we put the CO2 stabilization policy ‘cart’ way before the scientific horse. The UN treaty on dangerous climate change in 1992 was formulated and signed before we even had ‘discernible’ evidence of warming induced by CO2, as reported in 1995 by the IPCC second assessment report. (Demonizing CO2 was a tactic, clever, but ridiculous from the beginning. A way of baffling the public with scientific jargon (Bull$hit), collecting taxes, selling carbon credits and enriching Al Gore. Peter)
OP. You have been noted to criticize the IPCC quite openly in the past on several topics. Even going so far as to say: “It is my sad conclusion that opening your mind on this subject (climate change controversy) sends you down the slippery slope of challenging many aspects of the IPCC consensus.”
Do you believe that the organization as a whole needs to be assessed in order to better serve progress on climate change? What suggestions do you have on how the organization should function?
JC:The IPCC might have outlived its usefulness. (Send the entire United Nations packing. All they do is waste taxpayer's money and spread their one-world-government ideology and socialism. And send Hillary and her lust for gun control with them. Peter)
OP. Would renewable energy technologies have received the massive amounts of funding we have seen over the last few years without global warming concerns?
JC: I think there are other issues that are driving the interest and funding in renewables, including clean air and energy security issues and economics, but I agree that global warming concerns have probably provided a big boost. (To say the least! There are many reasons to promote the myth of man-caused global warming....try corruption....Solyndra? Political contributions from liberal environmental groups, a desire to control the energy industries of the world, a desire to rule the world, destroy America........there are many reasons to frighten people about global warming/climate change. Peter)
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace
alarmed–and hence clamorous to be led to safety–by menacing
it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them
imaginary.” — H. L. Mencken
OP. What do you believe are the best solutions to overcoming/reversing climate change; is a common consensus needed in order to effectively combat climate change?
JC: The UN approach of seeking a global consensus on the science to support an international treaty on CO2 stabilization simply hasn’t worked, for a variety of reasons.(Science does not operate by consensus. Science must seek the truth and must be apolitical, non-partisan. Peter)
OP. I saw an interesting comment on another site regarding climate science that i thought i’d get your opinion on as it raises some very interesting arguments:
"Climate science has claimed for 30 years that it affects the safety of hundreds of millions of people, or perhaps the whole planet. If it gets it wrong, equally, millions may suffer from high energy costs, hunger due to biofuels, and lost opportunity from misdirected funds, notwithstanding the projected benefits from as yet impractical renewable energy.
Yet, we have allowed it to dictate global policy and form a trillion dollar green industrial complex - all without applying a single quality system, without a single performance standard for climate models, without a single test laboratory result and without a single national independent auditor or regulator. It all lives only in the well known inbred, fad-driven world of peer review."
JC:I agree that there is lack of accountability in the whole climate enterprise, and it does not meet the standards that you would find in engineering or regulatory science. I have argued that this needs to change, by implementing data quality and model verification and validation standards. (Bingo, right on the money, Trillions of dollars, millions of people suffer and die on the altar of global warming fear. Peter)
OP: Do you believe that the language used in papers and at conferences is a problem? The public just wants straight answers to questions: Is the climate warming, By how much, and what will the effects be? Scientists need to step out from behind the curtain and engage the public with straight answers and in their own words. Is this achievable, or is climate science too complex to be explained in laymen’s terms? Or is it because even climate scientists can’t agree on the exact answers?
JC: I think the biggest failure in communicating climate science to the public has been the reliance on argument from consensus. We haven’t done a good job of explaining all this, particularly in the context of the scientific disagreement. (We have conditioned our people to behave like sheep and follow the herd (consensus). Of course that is what those who seek to rule us, the liberals, socialists, progressives, Democrats, want....power and control. Peter)
Maybe it is taking economic disaster, massive unemployment, bottomless governmental debt, despair, hopelessness, bitter partisan politics, and rioting in the streets, (to name a few of the symptoms of the illnesses afflicting the world) to wake us up to the fact that modern "environmentalism" may actually be the PROCESS by which this illness spreads. The illness is a deadly CANCER on society. This deadly cancer is the idea of ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT. The idea that ONE group of men (people), an "elite" group for sure, can and SHOULD control ALL others. Call it socialism, welfare state, nanny state, communism, or fascism......it is EVIL and has caused more deaths and suffering than any movement in human history.
If they can't do it through climate control, they will do it through health control, or water control, or through the creation of massive debt and perpetually higher taxation (slavery). Who are "they"? We know the names well by now, Clinton, Gore, Kerry, Pelosi, etc. and now the principal flag-carrier, Obama. We must fight this trend with everything we can. Destroying the myth of man-caused global warming/climate change is a good beginning. The following article summarizes some of the issues well. Peter
Peter Gleick obtained documents falsely from the Heartland Institute (HI) and used them to vilify that organization. HI was a major target for promoters of human caused climate change because they dared to hold international conferences presenting the other side of the climate debate. This was actively surpressed by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Climatic Research Unit (CRU) members, as leaked emails showed. (Disclosure; I was privileged to be a keynote speaker at the first conference in New York and commented in my opening remarks, I’ve waited thirty years for this day.)
Gleick’s activities apparently manifest a groupthink mentality of several faculty at Stanford University. The late faculty member and grandfather of IPCC, Stephen Schneider, delineated it in Discover magazine in 1989.
“On the one hand we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but, which means that we must include all the doubts, caveats, ifs and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists, but human beings as well. And like most people, wed like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climate change. To do that we have to get some broad-based support, to capture the publics imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have.(Precisely the problem,; this is not science, but politics and it is NOT good. Peter) This double ethical bind which we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.”
The penultimate sentence is wrong frightening and not justified by the last sentence as Schneider apparently thought. Scientific ethicist Gleick agreed with Schneider as he wrote, “He taught me and many others he mentored to understand and honor the science, but he also taught us the importance of speaking up in defense of the integrity of science and the public interest. “
Gleick is fully compromised, but will likely continue because of his claims about water. It’s the environmental vehicle replacing climate for achieving government control, nationally and internationally.
Stanford University was the academic centre for issues that framed the Club of Rome (COR). Pivotal publications included Paul Ehrlich’s book The Population Bomb, but predictions were set out primarily in Limits to Growth using simplistic computer models. Theyextended the Malthusian idea that population would outgrow food supply and applied it to all resources with amplification by capitalism and fossil fuel driven economies. Almost all the predictions were disastrously wrong.
Others involved were PhD Stanford graduate John Holdren, co-author with Ehrlich, and now Obama’s Science Czar. Gleick’s water research is referenced throughout their works.
Water was central to the COR concerns, probably with Gleick’s influence. Their agenda was incorporated into United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) specifically as Agenda 21. At the 1977 United Nations ‘Water Conference’ they set up the International Drinking Water Decade as 1981 – 1990. People involved with this project were associated with the COR and the plans for One World government. Central was socialist Barbara Ward, former Cabinet Minister in the UK government. In an article titled “Only One World: An Awakening” Stephen Berry quotes Ms. Ward, “We may be on the way to a new moral reality.” This view pervades all the policies emanating from the UN, the COR and the environmental movement of the last 40 years.
The objective is one world government with almost total control.
Environment became a vehicle for social control of individual countries and suppression of capitalism and technology. Strong used the UNEP with the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) to create the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Neil Hrab wrote: “What’s truly alarming about Maurice Strong is his actual record. Strong’s persistent calls for an international mobilization to combat environmental calamities, even when they are exaggerated (population growth) or scientifically unproven (global warming), have set the world’s environmental agenda.” Now that warming has failed as the political vehicle water is rapidly advancing as a replacement.
Mark Dubrulle: 40-year member of the COR was asked in 2008, “Is water an issue within this consultation process and the general program of the Club of Rome?” He replied, “Resources include water by definition. We have within the Club very distinguished members who already years ago draw our attention on the problem of water. We intend to play an active role in the debate on water resources, water supply and water consumption, with a very critical attitude towards the current policies. Ian Johnson, the new Secretary General of the international Club of Rome, clearly stated that water is one of the big challenges, perhaps even more important than oil.”
The 74 Club book explains they believe “democracy has failed and new forms of governance are required”. They determined that “a common enemy must be found, one either real or invented, to unite humanity." They explain, “in searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill.”
Schneider’s dilemma is non-existent; the truth is the only option. Gleick’s unethical actions indicate he believes it’s an option and the end justifies the means. We are on notice, so diligence about all water resources claims is required.
Regarding truth and science you might also like to look here:
The ClimateGate leaking of Emails and computer climate programs revealing the corruption, deceit and lies by "climate scientists"promoting the myth of man-caused global warming is just the tip of the iceberg where the "environmental movement" is concerned. This disease costs everyone dearly and will take a long, long time to cure. Maybe ClimateGate will be a beginning of much needed change into how science is conducted and viewed by the public. Thank goodness for the internet! Peter
The waste of BILLIONS of taxpayer dollars on the global warming scam is an atrocity. Consider this in light of the current economic recession we are enduring. Consider jobs lost, massive and increasing government debt, and a loss of trust in science and the integrity of "scientists". We don't really expect politicians like Al Gore and people running the United Nations to feel any shame, but what about so-called scientists like Michael Mann of Penn State or James Hansen of NASA? Scientists, like Doctors, especially those being supported by tax dollars, are supposed to operate under the strictest measures of honesty. There can be no manipulation of data, no politicking, no lying; but that is not what has been happening since the beginning of the push to "stop global warming".
A scientist who lies about his data is no scientist. They're bought and paid for and can be equated with those who practice what some call "the world's oldest profession". In other words, they are whores. All of the honest scientists in the world, myself included, should be outraged by the actions of the immoral few. All of the non-scientists should be embarrassed and alarmed that they have been so easily misled by the prophets of global warming and environmental catastrophe.
Read the following article and weep. Peter
U.S. Funds Nearly 50% -- $31 Million -- of U.N.’s Global Warming Panel
(CNSNews.com) – A study by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) determined that the United States funded the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations’ authority on alleged man-made global warming, with $31.1 million since 2001, nearly half of the panel’s annual budget.
The GAO also found that this funding information “was not available in budget documents or on the websites of the relevant federal agencies, and the agencies are generally not required to report this information to Congress.”
In a Nov. 17, 2011 report, “International Climate Change Assessments: Federal Agencies Should Improve Reporting and Oversight of U.S. Funding,” the GAO found that the State Department provided $19 million for administrative and other expenses, while the United States Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) provided $12.1 million in technical support through the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), averaging an annual $3.1 million to the IPCC over 10 years -- $31.1 million so far.
The IPCC runs an annual budget of $7 million, according to the Wall Street Journal, making the United States a major benefactor for its global warming agenda.
IPCC Chairman Hairma Rajendra-Pa. (AP Photo)
An international body, the IPCC was created in 1988. Though thousands of scientists contribute to the panel, only 11 working members support the organization. Set up by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the IPCC is an “effort by the United Nations to provide the governments of the world with a clear scientific view of what is happening to the world’s climate,” according to its Web site.
The organization has been the subject of controversy in the last several years when thousands of e-mails from the University of East Anglia's (UEA) Climatic Research Unit (CRU) were stolen and released in 2009, and again in November 2011, on the eve of climate talks in Durban, South Africa.
The e-mails included those between Michael Mann, the director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University and author of the infamous “hockey stick” graph that apparently showed global temperatures reaching “unprecedented” levels, and Phil Jones, director at CRU, which brought into question the validity of the IPCC’s work, with the reported statements “hide the decline,” and “Mike’s Nature Trick.”
In explaining its reason for auditing U.S. funding of the IPCC, the GAO said, “Interest in IPCC’s activities increased after the theft of e-mails among IPCC scientists was made public, and with the discovery of several errors in its 2007 set of reports.”
The IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), released in 2007, included several errors, including claims that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by the year 2035, which the IPCC, in a statement, later admitted was based on inconclusive data.
After facing “key challenges” in determining the amount of funding to the IPCC, the GAO now recommends that U.S. funding be reported annually to Congress with “accurate and consistent information.”
The report said documents on U.S. financing for the IPCC were “not available in budget documents or on the websites of the relevant federal agencies, and the agencies are generally not required to report this information to Congress.”
Conflicting State Department numbers also made it more difficult for the GAO to assemble the data. The GAO “reviewed documents and interviewed officials from federal agencies and IPCC” to reach its findings.
A 2005 GAO report entitled “Federal Reports on Climate Change Funding Should Be Clearer and More Complete” found that federal funding for climate change was not adequately accountable. “Congress and the public cannot consistently track federal climate change funding or spending over time,” the report concluded.
The report also found federal funding for global warming had increased by 116 percent between 1993 and 2004, to $5.1 billion.
The $3.1 million annual U.S. funding goes towards the IPCC’s “core activities”: meetings of the governing bodies, co-ordination meetings, support for the developing country co-chairs, the IPCC Web site and Secretariat. The IPCC assesses scientific information, but does not conduct any research of its own.
According to the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, the United States “has made the world’s largest scientific investment in the areas of climate change and global change research” with a total of nearly $20 billion over the past 13 years.
Those who knowingly promoted the myth of man-caused global warming have been exposed as frauds, cheats, and liars. They make the humiliation of Tiger Woods pale in comparison. Peter
Yvo de Boer, climate chief of the United Nations for four years, unexpectedly announced his resignation today. Although he officially won’t leave his post until July 1st, it marks another turn for the worse for those hoping to see action on climate policy. De Boer, who led the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali (2007) and more recently in Copenhagen (2009) said, “Copenhagen did not provide us with a clear agreement in legal terms, but the political commitment and sense of direction toward a low-emissions world are overwhelming. This calls for new partnerships with the business sector and I now have the chance to help make this happen.”
Heritage Senior Policy Analyst Ben Lieberman explains just how epic of a failure the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference really was: “To fully appreciate what a step backwards the final Copenhagen accord is, one has to recall the buildup to it. For the last two years, global warming activists and UN officials had circled December 2009 on their calendars as the watershed moment for creating a new carbon-constrained global economy for decades to come. And in the nick of time, they would argue, as the existing targets in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol are scheduled to expire in 2012. Furthermore, with the Bush administration gone in 2009, many in the international community felt that the path was clear for the Obama administration to finally include America in binding, verifiable, and enforceable restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions.”
It also goes to show just how ill-suited the United Nations is at handling a climate treaty. The vastly competing interests of UN member states make it extremely difficult to reach an agreement. For instance, the Copenhagen conference sought to get developed countries to accept massive economic costs to meet carbon dioxide cuts and provide billions of dollars in wealth transfers to help nations cope with the projected consequences of a changing climate, while simultaneously exempting developing countries (even the large developing country emitters like India and China).. The kicker is that this deal – as bad as it would be for developed countries like the U.S. – would not significantly arrest greenhouse gas emissions. More egregiously, the U.N. itself had become too invested in the agreement. As noted by Heritage fellow and UN expert Brett Schaefer:
“The U.N. is supposed to be a neutral facilitator, not a decision-making body. The decisions over what commitments nations make should be left to their respective governments — they have to justify them to the citizens who will be affected. In this debate, the U.N. has moved inappropriately beyond serving as bureaucratic “butlers of the process” to full-blown advocates pushing for ever more stringent commitments in the face of countervailing evidence and lack of political support for its suggested actions.”
With UN Secretary-General Ban-Ki Moon selecting the de Boer’s successor, it’s unlikely we’ll see an effort to minimize the U.N.’s role in negotiating climate change treaties. But reversing that trend was unlikely anyway. The best option is to sideline the UN and shift negotiations on efforts to address climate change to a more effective forum of those states that would be expected to shoulder the burden of any proposed efforts and, therefore, would be sure to view those proposals in a proper cost-benefit framework.
As for de Boer, working with businesses may be easier said than done. BP, ConocoPhillips and Caterpillar recently left the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (US CAP), a coalition of business and environmentalists that support legislation to reduce greenhouse gases such as cap and trade. With trillions of dollars on the table and up for grabs, corporations worked hard for a seat at that table in search of corporate welfare at the expense of the consumer. But the recent revelations of flaws in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report as well as the ostensible data corruption and manipulation exposed by leaked emails and documents from East Anglia University’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) have companies jumping off the global warming bandwagon. It’s certainly not going be a cakewalk convincing them to jump back on and willingly cut emissions given the economic cost and faulty science.
Some say de Boer’s resignation will add to the trouble. Agus Purnomo, Indonesia’s special presidential assistant on climate change admitted the resignation “comes at the worst time in the climate change negotiations. His decision will ultimately add to the difficulties we already have in reaching a successful outcome in Mexico.” Hopefully, participating governments take this opportunity to reassess the entire fiasco of UN led negotiations like Copenhagen.
By | Associated Press – 12 hours agoView Photo
