A summary of opinion related to the UN conference on climate in NYC
Collated by Benny Peiser.
Copenhagen was essentially sidelined yesterday at another event, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon’s Climate Change Summit in New York. There, along with Chinese leader Hu Jintao, U.S. President Barack Obama more or less shuffled climate control policy off into the great dreamscape of unattainable plans and long range objectives. Like equality for all and peace in our time, the world will have to wait for sweeping and binding climate policy.
–Terence Corcoran, Financial Post, 22 September 2009
The UN Climate Change Summit in New York managed to produce a concrete result. It has nothing to do with CO2 reduction targets, however, but with a simple political insight: Forget Copenhagen! The chances that the Copenhagen summit will deliver more than just a non-binding framework agreement decreased further on Tuesday. They now tend towards zero. Therefore, it would be best to postpone the climate conference until the United States is ready to agree to clear progress in negotiations. Otherwise, there is a real danger that a compromise formula in Copenhagen would make any progress impossible for years to come because the big climate sinners could hide behind the agreement.
–Editorial, Financial Times Deutschland, 22 September 2009
Initially, many climate activists had hoped this year would yield a pact in which nations would agree to cut their greenhouse gas emissions under the auspices of a legal international treaty. But recent announcements by China, Japan and other nations point to a different outcome of U.N. climate talks that will be held in December in Copenhagen: a political deal that would establish global federalism on climate policy, with each nation pledging to take steps domestically.
–Juliet Eilperin and Colum Lynch, The Washington Post, 23 September 2009
The significance of the Chinese proposal is that it indicates that China is willing to join Europe, the United States and others in a fantasyland of climate policy detached from policy reality. It is hard to believe how that outcome leads some to greater optimism on climate policy.
—Roger Pielke Jr, 31 August 2009
None of the alarmists and their supercomputer climate models ever predicted even a 30-year respite in their apocalyptic scenarios. Neither did they predict the sun, that thermonuclear furnace in the sky that has more influence on earth’s climate than any number of Ford Explorers, would suddenly go quiet for an indefinite period. Latif and others conclude that, at the very least, we have time to think about it and analyze and learn. We don’t have to fight global warming by inflicting global poverty. More things on Earth affect climate than are dreamed up in computer models.
—Investor’s Business Daily, 22 September 2009
If you want to know what I think is going on inside Prime Ministers’offices around the world, it’s ‘Let’s kick this into the long grass.’ Because that is what it will take to approach the problem. The short-termism is gone.
–Benny Peiser, LTT, 14 November 2008
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According to the WSJ, Copenhagen will be merely political pronouncements.
Just postpone these wild dreams as long as possible, and reality inevitably prevails. Then look how they will twist, scream and eventually look for another mounting man-made catastrophe. After decades of pressing the “scientific consensus” down our throats and finally the whole affair being proved wrong, public will be much more reserved to the next hype (well I hope at least).
Time is working for us.
Reposted from tips section:
Hi Anthony, I love your site.
I heard an interesting interview today on AM640 in Toronto. Here is the link:
http://www.640toronto.com/HostsandShows/Podcasts.aspx
Do you know what study Richard Zurawski is referring to, this University of Chicago meta study that found a 97% support of AGW theory? I suspect an astroturf operation here, but don’t know enough about the players involved.
Perhaps a story on your site is warranted…the tape is rather interesting….you should give it a listen.
Cheers!
CO2 is a greenhouse gas, it makes all plants grow, and without it all life on earth would cease to exist. That’s what we are, carbon lifeforms, one and all.
Sucks to have bet on this hoax actually working.
I am relieved that the UN will not save me.
I suppose James Hansen is home preparing a rocket ship for the infant Kal-El to be sent to a cooler planet. Perhaps the crystals will contain all past content of realclimate.org and the director’s cut of An Inconvenient Truth…
The best take on this is that the leadership is looking for a gentle way out of the AGW madness.
George Tobin,
Great image. I am still smiling.
Probably impolite to suggest that voters should kick world leaders into the grass.
God save us from those who promise to save us.
U.S. Department of Energy Undersecretary of Science Steve Koonin had some interesting things to say about all this yesterday also. The one statement that disturbs me was “Given coal is 1/2 the power generation in the country, Koonin said the price of carbon must be made “evident to the consumer. “If we want to reduce carbon emissions, we need to set a price on carbon emissions.” , but even that has a bolt hole – “if we want to……”
From:
http://www.dtnprogressivefarmer.com/dtnag/common/link.do?symbolicName=/ag/blogs/template1&blogHandle=policy&blogEntryId=8a82c0bc239b24620123e169665c036b&showCommentsOverride=false
It won’t stop all those eco-warriors clocking up their airmiles and drinking lots of wine, will it?
It might give them enough air miles for a nice trip to Goa, mightn’t it?
I wonder what their carbon footprints will be??
ding, dong, the witch is dead, wicked witch, bad old witch,
Ding, Dong, the Witch of Copenhagen is dead!!!
and since you mentioned Kal-El, it’s a perfect time for a reprise of this news flash:
(the picture alone is worth the look!)
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/al_gore_places_infant_son_in
But wait.. Warming oceans melt glaciers
http://www.physorg.com/news172917431.html
Don’t ken how to make it clickable.
Hey policy makers,
You want a sustainable ecology? Do you want balance? The money for destroying the environment comes from the government backed banking cartels. The purchasing power for that money, OTOH, is looted from all money holders for the sake of banks and borrowers.
Who could ever guess that government backed, systematic,violation of the 8th Commandment would cause problems?
This planet is almost too stupid to live on. Beam me up, Lord!
If Copenhagen goes ahead, the real reason for the Global Warming Hoax will become apparent: A bureaucratic World Govwernment, a la European Union.
You colonialists should jolly well think yourselves lucky. We have a Marxist Socialist government (Noo Labour is Old Labour (flat-cap & hob-nail boots & a mighty chip on the shoulder) with a high-street suit, filofax & a mobile phone) that wants to control every aspect of our lives, because they know what’s best for us all more than we do. Everything we do, eat, drink, say & think, health & safety, political correctness (e.g. we no longer have colleagues, but co-workers). Every day more & more lives are being intruded upon via function creep laws, i.e. a law brought in to combat a particular aspect of say, terrorism, only to be found being used far more by local town & district councils to attack behaviour of a more benign kind. All the anti-terror laws in the UK are being used in this way, yet we were told catagorically that they would only be use for anti-terrorism measures. As I may have boringly said before, in the 1950’s as a result of a ghastly world war, the UK had around 6 laws entitling the “State” to enter one’s home, by force if necessary. In the 1990’s it had risen an order of magnitude to 60, thanks to the likes of the IRA & Lybia. We now have some 266 such laws. Oh joy & bliss. I know you guys do things slightly differently to we Brits, but it would be interesting to see what gets passed in the next 4 years in the USA. We will fritter away what wealth we have left on loony schemes & policies, build loads of useless windmills at a rate of about 2/week my foot, – Milliband (a thousanth of a band?) reckons 40% of our energy supplies will come from renewables by 2020, the clueless prat! There is barely time to indulge in Richard Courtney’s geo-engineering rescue ladder as far as I can see. Last person leaving the UK don’t bother turning the lights off, there’s no power anyway.
wws (09:29:42) :
The Onion has it wrong. The baby in the picture is Senator John Edwards’ love child.
Reed Coray
Interesting to contemplate that the origins of the EU were in regulating the coal and steel markets in Europe.
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On prediction, if ten years of no-warming is consistent with ten year noise in climate model runs, but we only have less than ten years in which to act to avert tipping points, then what is the point of the models?
Yes we could wait and see what the climate is like in 50 years, but then it will be too late. Yes we could wait and see whether the models can be relied on because their predictions in 50 years can be checked, but by then it will be too late. So models are irrelevant to decision making. May as well state something simpler.
Have a big number guestimated by consensus expert opinion.
I’d say you deserve a cold one, Anthony. The Powers That Be have recognized that any serious attack upon carbon fuels will be politically, bureaucratically, and economically inviable. Now they’re just looking for nuanced ways to back off from the issue without enraging their radical kook base. Once these schemes die, the cannot again be resurrected. The immediate danger has passed. Now begins the long task of purging the literature and the institutions, and restoring credibility to science.
Don S 09:30:47
Thanks for the link to that article. There’s a wonderful line in it near the bottom: “..species…. such as polar bears and seals find their habitat is melting away. We’re heading off to a climate extreme and it’s just going to snowball.”
Wow! Lookout, the melting ice is snowballing!!
Shall we take it as good news that the Won is hitting warmening hard now that we’ve(mostly) moved on?
Tin ear? Glad he can’t/won’t learn from Slick.
kim, you are wrong, and you are committing a similar error to the alarmist one in getting politics involved in a scientific question. The EC did start up with a free trade area in coal and steel. But the reason was not to regulate the coal and steel markets. The aim of the founders (read up on Monnet) was to eliminate the increasingly destructive European civil wars. They had been sparked by Franco German rivalry, and they had taken place with increasing destructiveness and loss of life ever since around 1640.
The founders looked at this history, at the millions of deaths and total devastation wreaked by these wars. Tour Belgium today, and you can see from the cemeteries some of what they led to. They resolved that it was essential to abridge the sovereignty of the European nations to prevent this ever happening again, as the next time might lead to total destruction. They were probably right in view of history. They chose coal and steel to start with, and moved on. They succeeded, because the truth of the proposition was evident to everyone who had lived through WWII in Europe. Never again.
None of which has anything to do with the simple scientific question: is it plausible that increased man made CO2 will lead to disastrous global warming?
We can accept or reject that, without regard to what we think about nation states and supranational organizations, and should we have as our aim getting at the truth on either question, we should keep them separate. They have nothing whatever to do with each other, and a devotion to the sovereignty of the nation state has no bearing on what one thinks of the hypothesis of global warming, or the other way around either.
This political stuff is in the same category as the alarmist hysteria over the Heartland institute, Exxon, tobacco, evolution, Dick Cheney, neo-cons, you name it. Its just hysteria, and stupid with it. On both sides.
I fear this flurry of articles is meaningless. The appearance of China’s hand in carbon cap legislation is ominous. They can advance world socialism simply by agreeing to controls (which they have little or no intent of imposing on themselves), in order to finesse the US et al into locking themselves into an odious agreement. If Obama has sold out, Copenhagen will be a slam dunk for the watermelons.
I give kudos to my political opponents when they are due.
Kudos to President Obama for adopting a more measured and practical approach to the much debated matter of reputed AGW.
In this, he is actually thus far proving superior to his predecessor, who, in spite of party affiliation and claims by Leftist moonbats to be “a shill of industry” actually proved to be, sadly, somewhat of a believer in Gaia worship.
We will rue the day we got distracted with all this nonsense and I pray we’ll right the ship in my lifetime.
Michel,
I disagree with you analysis of the EC being to do with eliminating war. NATO was set up with that aim – a military force united under one command structure, and insured by the nuclear threat MAD. The EC was originally the European Economic Community, and it’s primary purpose was to gain a trading advantage with respect to the rest of the world. It was originally supported by the Conservatives while Labour remained skeptical, even hostile. It was only when it became apparant that the ECC would embody a socialist agenda that it became acceptable to the left, and for the same reason, less palatable to the Thatcherites.
I will again note that a weird climate-politics power-play is emerging in Canada. It appears there are Bay St. (financial) people getting onboard with fear-mongering that, as a trading nation, Canada will get stuck behind low-carbon trade-walls. They found some American commentator to come on-the-air and say USA will sink into another Great Depression (with Canada being dragged along) if a low-carbon trade-barrier war breaks out. More media doom-&-gloom spin. What is weird to me is that the news agency carrying this spin has been woven into the fabric of the right-wing movement in Canada for the past 3.5 or more years. We’re now hearing the importance of “India & China” (with big warm smiles) every 5 minutes, whereas for the past few years those have been dirty words uttered with spit. It is weird to watch the about-face with the spin. I’m not really sure what is up because it is completely inconsistent with the (non-alarmist mainstream-Canadian) messaging of recent years; however, I suspect someone is plotting to prosper financially &/or politically. It could be interesting to see how this poker-hand unfolds. One guy has 4 aces, but his opponent thinks he has nothing. Maybe the other guy thinks he has 4 aces. Sometimes there’s actually a buck to be made by bluffing (even for those who are so deluded they don’t even know they’re bluffing). Does the truth factor into any of this? It’s clearly not relevant for these players, but that won’t change my interest in natural climate factors. Finally, whichever player wins the hand, I don’t see any benefit in the pot for the environment — it’s just a choice between poisons.