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
The way the BBC is reporting this right now – 7:25am London is that the G8 have AGREED to the limit of 2C AND to reduce emissions by up to 80% by 2050. It’s a done deal!
However, the weasel words are emerging and the Indian prime minister has said that “climate change cannot be addressed by making India poorer.”
Also one of our w*nk (English technical term) tax payer funded carbon lobby groups has published “research” that shows that home based wind turbines don’t work for 95%+ of the country. Strangely, Evan Davis did not think to join this up with the billions we are wasting on wind farms.
Cheers
Paul
I heard the BBC too – they are definitely spinning this as a hard CO2 reduction agreement like you say. But it’s ok – day by day I am reducing my exposure to the BBC propoganda machine.
I like the Chinese line on this which translates as ” yeh, sure, CO2 whatever, you pay us, no problem”
Update: the leaders finally agreed on the 50% reduction… From CNN
“The leaders said they would “join a global response to achieve a 50 percent reduction in global emissions by 2050, and to a goal of an aggregate 80 percent or more reduction by developed countries by that date.”
That would be 80% for the US, then. Good luck!
I’m totally shocked that the G8 seems to think they can control the temperature. This is just moronic in the extreme and clearly show none of them have an iota of common sense about the forces of nature.
I wrote my Senators to vote against Cap and Trade. One letter by itself seems like a small thing but I have set a goal for myself to write to more legislators more often.
I’ve got an idea – how much CO2 would we Brits save by switching off our televisions and radios and not listening to the BBC’s spin?
2°C over pre-industrial times?
This is really quite clever. The new target now is to cap the temperature and not CO2.
Well right now we’re probably at about +0.5°C and many scientists are projecting cooling ahead. So this is a target the G8 will meet.
Holt,
Better yet – call them.
Tell them you’re going to get active in the area and get the message out. This scares them because they view it as the start of a troublesome grass roots movement.
They are dead afraid of budding grass roots movements. It’s a sure signal the tide is turning.
It’s one thing when people fire off an e-mail here and there, but quite another when people start calling and announcing they’re getting active in the community.
OT
Anthony, I really like the expanding climate indicators (arctic sea ice, DMI chart, sun image) you have on the right, which I check daily.
Perhaps you’ll consider adding the following Antarctic sea ice chart:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.south.jpg
and current SST temp anomalies:
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.html
Thanks!
I’m interested in the climate debate. Can someone please put in laymen terms an answer to my probably stupid 2°C question please.
At any one typical day throughout a year the temperatures at two points on the earth can be so vastly different. Say one is -50°C in Antarctica and the other is say 40°c in Africa.
What impact would a fluctuation of 2°C have globally?
(if by my understanding there are already extremes of temp across the globe on any typical day.)
Many thanks
In the mean time a US Congressman has come up with a clear plan.
Cut the UN budget because the IPCC only delivers “Junk Science”.
Some politicians are getting the message.
It’s a pity he did not made this row before Congress voting in favor of the Climate Bill.
In politics, timing is everything.
http://luetkemeyer.house.gov/?sectionid=26&itemid=272
If we humans were capable of letting go of our materialistic lifestyle, we’d have done it already. There has been no shortage of groups and teachers advocating ascetic paths, all throughout history, and yet only a small number of people have ever really followed them religiously. Politicians have their faults, they get asked to do impossible things, but they understand something about success, and they play freely in the material world.
And whilst we’ve all been “selfishly” pursuing materialistic stuff, our societies and ethics have become more developed and more refined. This is what extreme environmentalists miss, that going back to pre-industrial means going back to slavery, serfdom, oppression, racism, rape—-the world was just more violent, life was harder, and culture was more primitive.
The greens want to saw off the branch on which we are sitting. Of course, if they got what they wanted, they’d put up with it for all of ten minutes then scream to have their flushing toilets back. Oh, you mean you don’t want to spend two hours a day walking to fetch water and carry it on your back?
You only need to look at places in Africa to be brought back to reality. I think a lot of these greenies should go live there. Not visit on a safari, but live there for ten years. After ten years, they can ask themselves what they now want in life… perhaps electricity would be nice?
Simply, we cannot stop Chinese and Indian coal fired power delivery etc., so the only remaining “choice” is terraforming.
Quite mad. Mostly delusional. Ultimately insane.
Keep the temperature rise to below 2 C.
No problem for the Data Correction Unit of the Global Institute for Statistical Sophistry (GISS)!
Jesse: “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.”
If they do, we may stop our self-destruction in the West, so I think they will keep double standard and never admit/mention that they don’t believe this.
It’s just insane and surrealistic that the West politicians believe in the story about man controlling the climate. It’s a successful modern myth which is dangerous and already seems to prohibit free speech etc.
–
Isn’t the Danish fairy tale “The Emperor’s New Clothes” (Hans Christian Andersen), with a lie in the center, a good comparison? (Wikipedia says the story occured in a TV serie, “Alftales”; Al-tales maybe?) I hope this takes an end without too much stupidity. Media should understand its responsibility!
An even better story I think this half a century old Donald Duck episode is:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_9F0mSQ77gM8/SlVaj9BWvRI/AAAAAAAAA7Y/075A9RUgVDU/s1600-h/Donald_duck_carbon_dioxide.jpg
HT: http://klimatbluffen.blogspot.com/2009/07/storbritannien-lanserar-grona-poliser.html
Compare the Donald Duck srip with the new British police state:
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/public_sector/article6639289.ece
Translation of the Swedish Donald Duck strip I linked above:
The mistake being made by most of us is to think that politicians are misguided but ultimately honest. We think that they will alter course once the junk ACC ‘science’ has been fully discredited. Because I cannot believe that our leaders are almost universally stupid, I suggest that most of them already know that ACC is the bastard son of political and economical science and that the natural sciences had no part in its conception. The truth will not emerge because they and their ilk are constantly reinventing ‘the truth’ aided and abetted by a compliant media.
The one hope for those of us who despair the future of science is that once cap and trade, emissions trading and all the other vacuous tax-raising measures in the western world begin to bite, the minimal industry that survives will relocate. The real message from G8 is not that politicians are abandoning their commitment to carbon taxes et al, but their understanding that in order to perpetuate the scam, the whole world has to commit.
“Africans are destitute and I think they could use a hand getting up of the ground. ”
oh really?
Need I explain how aid destroys the economies into which it is poured?
Need I explain that the answer to poverty is free trade and capitalism? which is an outcome of good government..
It would take more space than I have here, but the evidence of what effect that massive aid and socialist governments have is fairly clear just by observing the current state of sub-saharan Africa.
“Stefan (02:21:48) :
You only need to look at places in Africa to be brought back to reality. I think a lot of these greenies should go live there. Not visit on a safari, but live there for ten years. After ten years, they can ask themselves what they now want in life… perhaps electricity would be nice?”
Well said!!!!!!
Now that they have decided what the future global temperature will be, then there is no need to worry about the arctic ice anymore.
Btw., why didn’t they just decide the future thickness if the arctic ice sheet?
Sorry, replace I with o
“Btw., why didn’t they just decide the future thickness of the arctic ice sheet?”
EM Smith is absolutely dead on right.
The Chinese, Indians, Brazialians et al are not stupid.
The Europeans are and the American political class are just opportunists seeing an opportunity to tax the populace to fund their power maintenance activities.
They are all thieves.
What is Obama going to do, wave his arms like Moses and stop the temp for rising? These people have losts their minds.
I was amazed when I heard this. It’s actually brilliant. To my ear, it sure sounds like they’re backing off CO2 because they know that there’s no real warming going on now as such, and that what little there was/is is only tangental to CO2.
They can now pretend to do something and when temperatures fail to rise 2′, then they can crow about how successful they were. It’s brilliant.
You’re dead wrong, so with the stroke of a pen you redefine the issue so that what is going to happen anyway will make you look good.
Not only that, but if things don’t appear to be working out, you just send Hansen out to doctor the numbers again (i.e. change ’em back).
Bravo! to Congressman Luetkemeyer!
I attempted to send a “Bravo!” to him via the Contact form on his website, but it rejected my Zip Code because it wasn’t in his district.
I’d like to see a lot of Congressmen and Senators signing on to this bill. Contact yours (I’m in Ed Malarky’s district in the Peoples’ Republic of Taxachusetts, so there’s no point here).
/Mr Lynn