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
This suggests that the leaders know that temps are going down. They don’t have to do anything, but can claim victory.
“It represents a “decoupling” of CO2 and climate. It is, in effect, a “heat up or shut up” aimed directly at the greens.”
Woof. I think we have a winner!
AnonyMoose,
As long as CO2 continues its rise, the alarmist contingent will have a hard time claiming victory. The internet never forgets. And neither will I.
Yes, the underlying assumption is that CO2 is responsible for global temperature increase. But by edging away from a commitment to cutting worldwide CO2 by a fixed percentage, these ‘leaders’ have left themselves open to fudging, without giving up the idea of strangling our economies in ridiculous schemes of ‘carbon trading’ and ‘abatement’.
The world is not going to be safe from these fools until we can find some real leaders, who are willing to stand up and say, “We were wrong. CO2 is not a problem, so we can stop worrying about it. In fact, it’s really good for us!”
/Mr Lynn
This makes it so much easier!! Without having to worry about CO2, we can just fire up some giant air conditioners to keep the temperature down! AND use coal fired power plants to do so!!
Piece of cake!
Well it would certainly be entertaining to see how the world leaders would react if the earth refused to obey their command. But a more likely senario is that the earth won’t warm up 2 degrees C regardless of what they do so they can still claim victory.
Out of all the things listed in that article, the two I think are most important are: nuclear non-proliferation (nuclear war is scary stuff, talk about climate change…) and development of Africa. Africans are destitute and I think they could use a hand getting up of the ground.
The part about world leaders agreeing to keep temps from rising 2C strikes me as patently absurd. If they believe that CO2 is doing it, they should have insisted on its inclusion, but leaving it out just makes them sound ridiculously naive.
I laughed heartily at this good news–blogging in my less than SFW fashion–especially as it accompanied news of the Euros slapping a tariff on U.S. biodiesel. Bwuhahahahaha.
2°C? Or not 2°C? That is the question!
Well. What are all the modelers going to do now that they have the answer?
ohioholic (20:56:40) :
The part about world leaders agreeing to keep temps from rising 2C strikes me as patently absurd. If they believe that CO2 is doing it, they should have insisted on its inclusion, but leaving it out just makes them sound ridiculously naive.
I don’t think that those leaders think that CO2 is the cause of it (a good politician looks a both sides and keeps his options open), but it is yet to early to admit this in public for several reasons.
By dropping the CO2 emission norm like a hot potato and only talking a maximum temperature rise (average of course, wich makes even easier to achieve if you people of types like Hansen and Mann on your side, just give the order) you are setting yourself some easy target since it is very unlikely that averages temperatures will rise another full degree within 41 years time.
I would not be surprised to temperature records being adjusted again, more warming in the past and less in recent times. All this so politicians can thumb their chest while saying “You see, carbon-taxes, cap and trade, it worked”.
A good politician keeps his options open, yes CO2 is not the culprit but to keep your options (a new resource of public money to spend) open it is yet to early to admit, its even better keep your mouth shut about it.
Typical of the lapdog “press” they are studiously avoiding this defeat for alarmists. CNN literally carries nothing about the flip flop. Their spin is “get the rich.”
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/07/07/carbon.emissions.allocation/index.html
The credibility of the “press” has sunk so far and they have alienated so many readers, viewers, listeners… You could say that AGW accomplished one thing – the replacement of a free press with windup toadies and sycophants.
But we still have the internet!
I was just wondering, are these cuts that are proposed real cuts or cuts like Federal and State spending ‘cuts?’ I.e. is it actually cuts below current CO2 levels or cuts below what they think it would be without any action.
Perhaps our “leaders” finally realized that rolling back CO2 to pre-industrial levels would mean that our standard of living would also have to be rolled back to pre-industrial levels, and 95% of people would not stand for that.
Reality anyone??
Maybe it’s an old hat for everyone else, but this is the first time I have ever seen someone compare CO2 regs to prohibition. Great analogy with dozens of relevant parallels. Can’t wait to poke the bee’s nest with that one. You don’t even have to get into the science. “vote the straight democratic ticket” hahah!
The theater of the absurd.
Now it’s about 2°C; Copenhagen will continue the silliness with an agreement that’ll never get past the Senate, while politicians of all parties continue to posture. They’ll keep using the issue to try to garner revenue, as they do with all so-called environmental legislation. Let’s see just how looney these folks can get before they get laughed out of office.
“Jesse (17:21:03) :
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”
I believe India “poo pooed” AGW, but I can’t find a reference (Pretty sure it was on this site too).
Isn’t 2 degrees the margin of error in thermometers?
Setting a goal of stopping world temperatures from rising by more than 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels will be a snatch as the planet is cooling and has been for the last decade. The cost of these conferences is alarming in itself. That the politicians will claim success for containment of “global warming” is breathtaking. The goal itself is blurry enough. What pre-industrial levels are we talking about? Temperatures have been up and down several times pre industry. To think that we elect these people to run our nations. What a joke!
China is not gong to do anything that does not help China. That means no reduction in their growth rate, and that means no reduction of their coal consumption. Period. Never listen to what China says, only watch what they do. What they are doing is building coal plants and iron smelters as fast as humanly possible…
India will be more polite about it, but only just. They will politely insist on a “pass” so as to catch up with the Imperial Colonizers that have exploited them…
Brazil is happy to ignore Europe and the U.S.A. and focus on China, India, the rest of South America, and their own growth. They are planning to “lift” a few billion bbls of oil that they have found off their coast (contracts are being let now…) and they plan to sell megatons of iron to China (all taking reduction with coke from coal). Want to send them a bucket of money to replant some farmed out slash and burn rain forest as CO2 sequestration? No Problem! Send down the cash… we all need to do our part!…
Russia has clue. Their scientists have figured out that AGW is bunk. They have a fairly large risk of being frozen to death, so they have a big incentive to get it right… They also depend on selling $Billions of oil, natural gas, and coal. They will not be shutting down their economy for our fantasy.
The list goes on…
The bottom line is that there is no way on this Earth that there will be any agreement to reduce global CO2 levels. None. There will be an agreement to watch US, and Europe, shut down our industries and send them money.
There will be happy talk and broad un-enforced and pointless “goals” and they will be happy to watch US shoot our toes and fingers off… but they will do nothing to reduce CO2. (And that’s a good thing! Some part of the global economy needs to stay intact… ) They will endorse any effort that raises money they get, and that’s about it. I’m sure they can be trusted to come up with a great many “CO2 Offset” programs to sell to the “west”…
So at the end of the G8 meetings there will be a nice group picture and some pretty (empty) words and everyone will fly home. And we will pay for it all…
Jesse (17:21:03) : 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.”
That is just classic “diplomatic compromise”. You can’t agree on something that matters, so you agree on something that either is of no consequence or is so far in the future that it will fall on some other regime to deal with it.
For the “law of the sea” treaty is was that resources were “The common heritage of all mankind” that the west could interpret as “we can go harvest whatever we want, it’s the commons” while the 3rd worlders could interpret as “we own it too … so you owe use something”. And nothing changes.
So they couldn’t agree on killing CO2, instead they settled on 2C at some ill defined future date (when, if ever, that is reached, then they can argue more about who’s fault and who ought to fix it, but that’s at least 30 years away, and they will be retired by then, so who cares…)
Oh, and it’s a “goal”. That is diplomatic lying, er, I mean “language” for “pretty words meaning nothing with no treaty, no enforcement, no penalties, and no action; but a nice press release.” We all agreed that we’d all like someone else to do something if they would like to… as a goal… for them… maybe.
“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”.
So….. are we talking pre-industrial China (mid to late 20th Century), or are we talking pre-industrial United States (late 19th), pre-industrial England (18th Century).
Leon Brozyna (22:12:36) : Let’s see just how looney these folks can get before they get laughed out of office.
Bad idea. They can get as loony as they want. Politics is a totally different animal than common sense. Why do you think Thomas Paine had to use it as a title?
Does this mean we have to cancel the transition from day to night on a global scale? Man, and I though reducing carbon emissions was going to be tough! 🙂
July 9th, 1030: At a summit of medieval nations convened by Canute, King of England and Denmark, at Southampton, England, negotiators agreed to set a target of stopping tides from rising zero fathoms above a base of last month. (Anglo Saxon Chronicle).
It’s a pity Canute didn’t promise to prevent global temperatures falling more than 2 degrees, benefiting as he did from the medieval warm period.
As i am reading this i am half listening to BBC world, the reporter used the words “control the climate”, what arrogant little creatures we are.
Please don’t make fun of king Canute. As I understand the legend, he did not intend to stop the tide. The point of the exercise was to show his courtiers that there are things not even a king can do. Since the G8 does not seem to be that clever, the analogy does not work.