Why Copenhagen Will Achieve Nothing

6 11 2009

Guest post by Willis Eschenbach

The upcoming Copenhagen climate summit, officially and ponderously named “COP15 United Nations Climate Change Conference Copenhagen 2009″, is aimed at reducing the emissions of the developed world. The main players, of course, are the US and Western Europe. There is a widespread perception that if the US and Western Europe could only get our CO2 emissions under control, the problem would be solved. Nothing could be further from the truth.

To see the gaping hole in this idea, it is only necessary to look at the historical record of carbon emissions. Here is that graph:

Carbon_emissions_trends

Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 153 Comments »

Categories : Carbon dioxide

Boxer-Kerry: “climate” bill or green jobs program?

6 11 2009

It seems difficult to figure out just what the Boxer-Kerry bill is these days. If nothing else, its a sloppy rush job, beyond that, is it climate, or something else? How much will it cost? Only the shadow knows.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3017/2549087853_62635f6261.jpg

Photo by Chris Kleponis. NWF

From Wall Street Journal Blogs Environmental Capital:

By Keith Johnson

Okay, so Sen. Barbara Boxer has moved the energy and climate bill out of the Environment and Public Works Committee and onto the Senate floor. That doesn’t get the bill any closer to garnering 60 votes, but as Sen. Boxer said, it can’t get 60 votes while stuck in committee, either.

The chairwoman of the environment committee defended her decision to pass the bill despite a Republican boycott; usually, Senate panels require at least a token presence of the minority party. Rules do allow for a simple majority vote, rules that “are there to be used when the Majority feels it is in the best interest of their states and of the nation to act,” Sen. Boxer said. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 32 Comments »

Categories : politics

More “unprecedented” warming in the Antarctic

6 11 2009

Via a Euerekalert press release

Past climate of the northern Antarctic Peninsular informs global warming debate

IMAGE: The American icebreaker RV/IB Nathanial B. Palmer is shown off the South Shetland Islands. The drilling rig is clearly seen on the rear deck.Click here for more information.

The seriousness of current global warming is underlined by a reconstruction of climate at Maxwell Bay in the South Shetland Islands of the Antarctic Peninsula over approximately the last 14,000 years, which appears to show that the current warming and widespread loss of glacial ice are unprecedented.

“At no time during the last 14 thousand years was there a period of climate warming and loss of ice as large and regionally synchronous as that we are now witnessing in the Antarctic Peninsula,” says team member Dr Steve Bohaty of the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (NOCS), home of the University of Southampton’s School of Ocean and Earth Science (SOES).”

The findings are based on a detailed analysis of the thickest Holocene sediment core yet drilled in the Antarctic Peninsula. “By studying the climate history of the past and identifying causes of these changes, we are better placed to evaluate current climate change and its impacts in the Antarctic,” says Dr Bohaty. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 67 Comments »

Categories : Antarctic, paleoclimatology

Copenhagen – not happening

6 11 2009
Little mermaid - Copenhagen - 08/07 by julienpons.

A summary from Dr. Benny Peiser’s daily newsletter:

Delay is preferable to error.

–Thomas Jefferson

A world treaty on climate change will be delayed by up to a year and is likely to be watered down because countries with the highest greenhouse gas emissions are refusing to commit to legally binding reductions. The admission that no treaty will be signed at Copenhagen marks the failure of the process agreed at a UN meeting in Bali in December 2007, when industrialised countries agreed to deliver a binding climate-change agreement within two years.

–Ben Webster, The Times, 6 November 2009

Nitin Desai, a member of Manmohan Singh’s council on climate change and a former top UN official, said a hard-nosed concession-based negotiation to reach a global consensus on how to combat global warming would likely founder.

–James Lamont, Financial Times, 6 November 2009 Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 72 Comments »

Categories : Climate News

2009 Weblog awards – nominations open

6 11 2009

Well, it is that time of year again. Blog awards. Time to honor your favorites in many categories.

2009_weblog_awards

The way it works is that we start with nominations. The blogs that get the most nominations wins a spot in the voting contest. From then on it’s a horse race to see how many blog readers can vote once each day to determine the winner.

Last year, WUWT won “Best Science Blog”. I certainly didn’t expect it. Neither did many others. It made a few people angry. It was funny to watch.

This year, I’m feeling that Steve McIntyre’s Climate Audit is more deserving of that award than WUWT for two reasons. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 77 Comments »

Categories : Announcements

UAH Global Temperature for October, down significantly

6 11 2009

October 2009 UAH Global Temperature Update +0.28 deg. C

by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.

YR MON GLOBE NH SH TROPICS
2009 1 +0.304 +0.443 +0.165 -0.036
2009 2 +0.347 +0.678 +0.016 +0.051
2009 3 +0.206 +0.310 +0.103 -0.149
2009 4 +0.090 +0.124 +0.056 -0.014
2009 5 +0.045 +0.046 +0.044 -0.166
2009 6 +0.003 +0.031 -0.025 -0.003
2009 7 +0.411 +0.212 +0.610 +0.427
2009 8 +0.229 +0.282 +0.177 +0.456
2009 9 +0.422 +0.549 +0.294 +0.511
2009 10 +0.284 +0.271 +0.298 +0.328

UAH_LT_1979_thru_Oct_09 Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 51 Comments »

Categories : climate data