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
Sean (17:54:42)
“So did these clowns just realize where the weather is really headed and get in front of the movement to claim leadership?”
Exactly ! But this would mean ignoring the models and looking at the real data. I don’t really care as long as they using and discussing real data, they can even take credit for reducing the temperature of the Earth as far as I am concerned as long as they follow what is actually happening.
This may be a political realization of the disconnect between CO2/Temp that we have been waiting for.
This just in – The Obama Administration will in all due haste because this crisis cannot wait! distribute One Trillion Dollars to people around the world. They have been instructed to take one in each hand and fan like crazy!! There are backups if one breaks.
It’s obvious really. Install air-conditioning units everywhere to keep the temperature at the required level.
It works for Las Vegas.
Wasn’t there a king in Greek mythology who ordered the tides to stop? Or something like that?
So, they dug up Canute and dosed them all with his cloned stem cells.
Makes perfect sense now.
Wonderful what we can do nowadays…
The really simple way to keep the temperature from rising more than 2C is to appoint the right kind of anti-Hansens to keep tack of temperature. “Live by sword, die by the sword”.
Good job !
… and to achieve the 2° goal, just do nothing. That will most likely do the trick.
The really sad part of the coverage this nonsense is receiving is that the complete insanity of the underlying premise, that governmental action cannot only actually affect the flow of global temperature, but control it to a precise degree, is never seriously challenged. The various mumbling obfuscations are regurgitated, but no one thinks to ask the obvious question, which is; Are you people all totally nuts? It’s as if the wise little boy in “The Emperor’s New Clothes” could not bring himself to shout “hey, that guy is naked” but settled instead for suggesting that maybe his pants needed to be let out a bit.
At least this is a goal that they will obtain, although it will not be from any imposed restrictions, but from the natural cooling that is already occurring. I can already here them celebrating their victory.
Canute Lives!
I am Canute. I will force back the tides.
Dang, Trevor, you beat me to it!
This is hilarious. Just checked CNN’s coverage on this and not one word about the temperature thing, even tho the white house confirmed it. ROFLMAO. The spin machine must be about to burn it’s bearings out.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/07/08/g8.summit/index.html .
The “optimists” are right, here.
This gives the G8 a complete excuse to dodge CO2 caps as the temperature cools. It represents a “decoupling” of CO2 and climate. It is, in effect, a “heat up or shut up” aimed directly at the greens. Read between the lines. Look at the bottom line.
I agree with Keith Minto above, A literal “paradigm shift” has just occurred with this announcement. We need to know now, what objective sources will be trusted to monitor this. It looks too, that they are setting a target that appreciates a general cooling trend…
Fat Bigot is on the money too, switch on the A/C’s world wide…every mud hut should have one…
Maybe we should send them ours. I live in New York City, and I have not used my AC less during the summer for decades. Ever since I have owned an AC, for that matter.
Next G8 agenda. Ban extreme hot and cold days during summer and winter.
These measures will ensure that power overload due to not requiring air con and heating will be avoided.
However now governments can look at evidence that CO2 levels have risen and temps have flattened and decide to tax something else.
I am having trouble figuring out if we now have an idiocracy or a kleptocracy … or both.
I agree with Francois. This forces the AGWers to actually prove that CO2 reduction will, in fact, prevent 2 deg. of warming. An impossible task, since it can’t prevent what CO2 doesn’t cause.
If this cut in emissions goes ahead, I bet the temps don’t go up 2C, the sea levels will drop and CO2 levels will go down. Just ask Jim, Ralph and the boys – they’ll make sure.
Ammunition for Skeptics
Handbook for skeptics.
You can’t improve the economy and try to shove cap and tax down our throat. Even the thought of it is affecting our economy adversely. My dad was going to buy a fixer up house, but upon hearing of the sneaky green police that Waxman slipped into his bill, he figured he didn’t need the risk of more enviro costs and promptly stuck his money in bonds. Multiply that by tens of thousands and you have a real mess.
2°C, that much? WOW!
Thank GOODNESS, now we don’t need to do anything about CO2. I was really worried about Cap & Trade, but I guess I was getting all worked up over nothing. Seems like every recent paper I’ve read puts climate sensitivity at between 0.4°C and 0.6°C now that the majority of water vapor feedback has been shown to be absent, and now that we have reasonably good measures of negative feedbacks from clouds. So we should be able to double CO2 4 times. What a relief. I’m not looking forward to using a machete to get to my SUV every morning though, but I think I can hack it.
Now can we get them to set the lower limit to -2°C? This would be most helpful as it’s July and I still haven’t put my long johns away. I’m sure ±2°C is most acceptable to all of us voters out here, so let’s just do that OK? I didn’t realize it was all going to be this easy! THANKS!
+2C- 2C (created or saved) =0C…..Simple!
This seems the ultimate conceit of world government, that they think they can legislate a world temperature.