Legislating temperature limits to 2°C will surely be more effective than legislating alcohol. Right?
Developing Nations Rebuff G-8 on Curbing Pollutants
L’AQUILA, Italy — The world’s major industrial nations and newly emerging powers failed to agree Wednesday on specific cuts in heat-trapping gases by 2050, undercutting an effort to build a global consensus to fight climate change, according to people following the talks.
As President Obama arrived for three days of meetings, negotiators for the world’s 17 leading polluters dropped a proposal to cut global greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by mid-century, and emissions from the most advanced economies by 80 percent. But both the G-8 and the developing countries agreed to set a goal of stopping world temperatures from rising by more than 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels.
The discussion of climate change was among the top priorities of world leaders as they gathered here for the annual summit meeting of the Group of 8 powers. Mr. Obama invited counterparts from China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Mexico and others to join the G-8 here on Thursday for a parallel “Major Economies Forum” representing the producers of 80 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases. But since President Hu Jintao of China abruptly left Italy to deal with unrest at home, the chances of making further progress seemed to evaporate.
The G-8 leaders were also grappling with the sagging global economy, development in Africa, turmoil in Iran, nuclear nonproliferation and other challenging issues. On Friday, Mr. Obama planned to unveil a $15 billion food security initiative by the G-8 to provide emergency and development aid to poor nations.
The failure to establish specific targets on climate change underscored the difficulty in bridging longstanding divisions between the most developed countries like the United States and developing nations like China and India. In the end, people close to the talks said, the emerging powers refused to agree to the specific emissions limits because they wanted industrial countries to commit to midterm goals in 2020, and to follow through on promises of financial and technological help.
“They’re saying, ‘We just don’t trust you guys,’ ” said Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group based in the United States. “It’s the same gridlock we had last year when Bush was president.”
Read the entire article at the New York Times here
Can anyone explain the government-speak, “But both the G-8 and the developing countries agreed to set a goal of stopping world temperatures from rising by more than 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels.”
With the omission of CO2 in the statement, it seems to me that China (and others) have no intentions of cutting CO2 because A) they can’t maintain growth while cutting CO2 emissions, or B) they think CO2 is a non issue in any warming scenario.
Personally, I’d love to see China and India come out with their own conclusions that CO2 is not the primary driver of climate change.
Just my thoughts.
Jesse
“Legislating temperature limits to 2°C will surely be more effective than legislating alcohol. Right?”
I wish they’d legislate a cap of 2 hurricanes/typhoons a year too. And while they’re at it, maybe they should legislate an end to earthquakes.
The AGW hoax died in the driveway snows of winter which just wouldn’t stop coming.
A good question is if CO2 drives temperature isn’t it proper we control CO2? Termperature is just a follower — And how much reduction in CO2 do we get for each trillion in new taxes. Don’t we have a right to know the answers before paying the trillions?
From my understanding of this, it is essentially nothing more than political cover. It contains no enforcement provisions, nor were any proposed that I’m aware of, and therefore is merely words.
An article I read earlier said that the Russian leader has declined to commit to emissions cuts if it impacted their industrial base.
Bill
But what a tongue and oh! what brains were in that parrots head
It took two men to understand one half the words he said.
Quite so.
As I understand it our political masters at the G8 are agreed they will not let global temperatures rise by more than two degrees Celsius.
Well simple enough I suppose.
It just needs an Act of Parliament, Bill in Congress, EU directive and such like, all to be agreed by international conferences, redefining the terms global, temperature, 2, degrees and Celsius.
There you are, all done and dusted.
Kindest Regards
Since when did the G8 turn into the Messiah? The next you know, the G8 leaders are going to announce they can walk on water and when they tell a tornado and thunderstorm to shut up, it will stop. I love how delusional these guys are to actually think they can just control the temperature at will.
It’s a short list of the ‘most developed countries’.
Developing Countries is a misnomer in my opinion. The only reason China is “developing” is because of western money. Hu knows darn well that’s the reality. Their economy (even with reduced restrictions allowing some capitalism) wouldn’t survive without people in the west who can actually afford to eat.
The misnomer leads to people thinking, well they’re just behind and are catching up. — This is a big pile of bull IMO and I won’t use the term – developing countries. These countries will only catch up if we debilitate ourselves with similar idiotic policies…… oh
….um
.. wait
yeah well.
“… the developing countries agreed to set a goal of stopping world temperatures from rising by more than 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels.”
Although “stopping temps from rising” is ridiculous, this is a major first step towards victory. It represents a paradigm shift by setting an objective which can be measured rather than simply reducing emissions for the sake of reducing emissions. In a way, it moves the issue away from ideology towards pragmatism.
And what happens when it shows it won’t get 2 degrees C warmer, you just keep pumping up the CO2 for the good of the plants?
Also speaking of temperatures, Unisys seems to show a weak El Nino in place and some of the warmer areas vanished over the past days, also does anyone know what happened to Earl Happ and his ENSO predictions, has his predictions regarding a weak El Nino or return to La Nina changed at all?
One of the questions our scientific betters have never answered is what is the optimum temperature? For that matter, what is the optimum level of CO2. If you bother to read some of the farming community blogs, they are ecstatic about the increase in CO2 as that allows them to avoid the expense of artificially building up the CO2 exposure to their crops, as this trace element has enhanced their per acre production.
As I have stated before, this is utter madness.
Why not legislate volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, sea currents or the spinning speed of the earth.
You know what, now we are at it, let’s also reschedule the when and where the sun goes up.
These morons belong in a closed institution.
Oh dear, have I made a mistake!
They are not talking about the real world, they are talking about the virtual world.
That’s easy to do because you can work with those wonderful models.
Raising or lowering the temps can be performed by a push on a button.
Minimum investment, maximum profit.
Hopefully they also take virtual money.
Like crowing to make the sun rise.
“Let’s try X to stop the temperature rise. It will only cost 3 gazillion. And think of the children!” (Not the children’s taxes, of course.)
Fifty years later, the temperature is up by 0.3 C.
“Yay! It worked! Let’s keep doing it!”
2C is code for CO2 below 450 ppm.
Sound innocuous – just keep temps below 2.0C – but that really means keeping CO2 levels below 450 ppm.
With the current growth rates for CO2, we will reach 450 ppm by about 2030 so there is a large emission reduction trendline insinuated in the motherhood statement of “keep temperatures below +2.0C” – at least a 50% reduction in emissions within 21 years.
The irony I see in just what happened is that the thing they might actually MIGHT be able to control, carbon emmisions through crippling taxes and beaurocratic schemes, they have given up on. However they agreed to the restriction to a 2C temperature rise, which they have absolutely no control over. Yet they will likely succeed in their new objective because all the projected the warming is a figment of poor climate modeling and the sun seems intent on keeping things cool. So did these clowns just realize where the weather is really headed and get in front of the movement to claim leadership?
“They’re saying, ‘We just don’t trust you guys,’ ” said Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group based in the United States. “It’s the same gridlock we had last year when Bush was president.”
So Global Warming isn’t Bush’s fault?
Actually, I think the 2 degree approach is a very good development. It means that there is room to adjust if trends indicate that CO2 is less of a contributer to AGW than is presently modeled.
Since temps are trending downwards anyways, this is a win/win for them. Walk away and declare victory. Cue the parades.
Close but not quite. Better comparison is to Kellogg-Briand, outlawing war.
Let me peer into my crystal ball. Ah, yes I see it now. It’s the entire world laughing at these clowns. The late night comedy types ( Letterman, etc. ) could have a great time with this if they have the cojones.
So what pre-industrial era is to be the base line? The Medieval Warming Period or the little ice age? Let me guess.
I have forgotten to thank the journalist who wrote the article.
Great job Peter Baker, you have made an ass of the entire G8 political establishment including President Obama.
This is the winning sentence:
“But both the G-8 and the developing countries agreed to set a goal of stopping world temperatures from rising by more than 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels”.
We now have the written proof that our politicians are mad beyond belief and ready to be send out of office.
Never expected to experience such a bummer in my life time.
pi = 3
(All the rest is an error bar.)
NEWS FLASH!!
This just in:
Members of the G-8 voted unanimously to stop the expansion of the Universe and return all matter to their pre-industrial positions (in a relativistic sense, of course).