By EDITH M. LEDERER (AP)
Excerpts below.
UNITED NATIONS — Just weeks before an international conference on climate change, the United Nations signaled it was scaling back expectations of reaching agreement on a new treaty to slow global warming.
Janos Pasztor, director of the secretary-general’s Climate Change Support Team, said Monday “it’s hard to say how far the conference will be able to go” because the U.S. Congress has not agreed on a climate bill, and industrialized nations have not agreed on targets to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions or funding to help developing countries limit their discharges.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has made a new climate treaty his top priority, hosting a Sept. 22 summit on climate change to spur political support and traveling extensively to build political momentum for a global agreement to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol which only requires 37 industrialized nations to cut emissions.
Pasztor told a news conference “there is tremendous activity by governments in capitals and internationally to shape the outcome” of the climate change conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, in early December, which “is a good development” because political leadership is essential to make a deal.
But he indicated that Copenhagen most likely won’t produce a treaty, but instead will push governments as far as they can go on the content of an agreement.
read the entire story here
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“20,000 delegates? In Denmark – not exactly the cheapest place in the world. Exactly what are they all going to be doing and why do they have to be there?”
Prudence would have urged avoiding meeting at a time and place where an embarrassing blizzard or freeze-up might occur. So why were they chosen?
Could it be that the election of a Democratic president was foreseen (an easy call) and the possibility of giving him/her a Nobel Prize to tempt him/her to the vicinity was considered a good enough bet to settle on that place and that time? The huge upside payoff would have been worth gambling on. Political schemers think this way (both left and right).
Now let’s hope a blizzard does occur.
wws (20:07:31) :
This is a good analysis of what might happen. But the alarmists have not finished with Copenhagen yet, and they’re determined to get something signed if only to save face. By the way, Kerry is in London getting on TV and in the papers spreading the alarmist message and trying to salvage some sort of deal, even though the only thing falling faster here than the temperature is the public’s interest in global warming.
I tend to think they are going to push ahead with it anyway but are simply playing coy about it all now that the truth is out about it.
Canadian minister has said they will still try for a political agreement to pave the way for the treaty later;
http://www.bcsea.org/learn/news/2009/10/22/ottawa-dashes-hope-for-climate-treaty-copenhagen
Monckton however is trying to get a agreement of repudiation so that signatory countries can pull out later. Was mentioned in an interview on our radio – link here;
http://www.2gb.com/index2.php?option=com_newsmanager&task=view&id=4998
Roger Knights (02:24:44) :
That certainly seems like a bit of a reach, but I’ll never qualify as a good conspiracy theorist. I could see simply that the Peace Prize committee was quite aware of the overlap of awards with Copenhagen and thought this would be a good way to force Obama to go. He was President before the deadline for nominations.
I was looking forward to the future steps in:
1) Obama goes to Copenhagen to pitch for Olympics in his home town.
2) The senate (and maybe house/senate committee) can’t agree on treaty terms that meet what Copenhagen so desperately desires.
3) Obama goes to pick up the Nobel Political Prize. (I’ve viewed that as completely separate from the science prizes, at least those go to people that have made significant accomplishments. I haven’t figured out the Literature Prize yet.)
4a) Obama, having no support for a climate treaty, doesn’t go back to Copenhagen and loses major “face” among the AGW community. Some of the press have a field day pointing out the “obvious” difference in priorities, i.e. Olympics vs the Deadly Tipping Point. Bloggers try to claim this is Obama’s Tipping Point.
4b) [Or] Obama, having no support for a climate treaty, goes to Copenhagen to assure the delegates that fighting AGW is one of his highest priorities and progress is being made. The global recession has bought some time and sets the stage for Great Advances in Clean Energy for the rest of the century. Some of the press have a field day wondering just how rosy his glasses are. Bloggers wonder how much CO2 he’s inhaling.
5) I look at my January heating bill and am thankful that natural gas prices are the lowest in several years.
One of the most shocking aspects of the Copenhagen saga for me has been the growing involvement of wildlife protection groups – such as WWF, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and a host of smaller organisations (for example, in the UK, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) who have appointed climate commisars and for which WWF acts as a spearhead.
They have all uncritically accepted the UN authority and the alarmist rhetoric (especially about ‘tipping points’ and are completely immune to rational discourse. What are they campaigning for? Two things – a forest treaty to protect virgin tracts of rainforest and taiga, and renewable energy developments. The former is entirely understandable, but the latter relates to the dogma that global warming will damage habitat and endanger wildlife.
Even if we accept the latter – which I do not, the spectacle of these groups engaging with the worlds diplomats, scientists and deal-makers is deeply distressing. They are simply played by cynical and corrupt interest groups who have far more experience than they can muster. Having added their weight to the global warming chorus and the need for ‘targets’ (with no analysis of when those targets would actually make a difference to the real climate), they have helped unleash immensely powerful forces from industrial and financial interests that feed off subsidy and stealth tax – and which have no regard to biodiversity, indigenous peoples and rural communities. In the name of carbon accounting, turbines, barrages, hydro and biofuel schemes invade wild places, destroy both landscape beauty, indigenous community and biodiversity. On the forest protection – a potential for Copenhagen to offer carbon credit for standing virgin forest and thus a payment system to keep it standing in places like Borneo, the Amazon and the Congo, they are about to be out-foxed by the biofuel lobby that wants plantation forestry to count acre-for-acre for the same credit. This will then actually help pay for the destruction of biodiverse rainforest – as if the current incentive from renewable targets was not enough.
Britain is set to build several very large biomass/woodchip power stations. They will then import 20 million tonnes of woodchip from overseas (Latvia, Brazil, Africa?) in huge container ships. It will cost the UK taxpayer because biomass burning is 3-5 times more expensive than fossil fuels. That money will go to big companies that will destroy rural subsistence communities and tribespeople as pressure is put on forest resources. The ‘safeguards’ are not in place – and the biofuel industry in corrupt regimes in South America, Africa and Indonesia where illegal logging and land-take are widespread, will do everything it can to circumvent legislation.
Back home, these very same groups are fighting against the very monster they unleashed – against turbines in the beautiful wilderness of the Hebrides and Scottish Highlands, central Wales and the wild marshes of eastern England; against barrages on the Severn, and arguing against new nuclear stations that would have been unthinkable without the climate story because of the irresolvable problem of waste and devestating consequences of a major accident.
My only conclusion – and I discuss it in my book ‘Chill’, is that these organisations have been subject to ‘corporate creep’ – where their boards of directors have been drawn more and more from managerial and professional sources that have little real feeling for what they are there to protect, they fall for ‘target’ driven goals that bear no relation to reality, and always defer to higher authority. They are also naive and easily outmanouevred when they switch leagues to the global level.
tokyoboy,
I have not checked whethr this is an influence but one thing that tends to crop up with daily plots of ice when the changes can be quite dramatic day by day (steep lines) is a ‘number of days’ issue rather than a date. Just remembering that 2008 was leap year for example.
That said the resolution on the graph is such that trying to make anything of it for small variations is unlikely to be decisive.
There are some odd things happening though. North America is cold, here in the UK is quite mild still and today the sun is out in force which makes a nice bright change.
——
More generally in relation to other comments there are some seriously fractured concepts around in world government thinking – or so it seems to me.
I have no particualr problem about attempting to improve the lot of the poorer peoples of the world and agree that the best chance would seem to be economic development – industrialisation if you will. Oddly that seems to be against the philosphies of the green concept of energy reduction. At least it is until such time as strong industrialisation provides the wherewithal to find ways of doing more with less energy, assuming that it can.
The greatest puzzle is that nobody seems to have commented much on the dissater that is, for example, Sudan. One example of many I would guess.
The Noth Eastern part of Africa suffered severe drought and famine several times in the last 3 decades and the world attempted to help out. The result seems to have been successful in that the population of the area has doubled – leading to more famine, more fighting and more political corruption than previously. None of that seems to be the sort of result that will ‘save the planet’ and the climate there is still pretty brittle.
So what exactly are we intended to make of that result and is it about tme that someone had the courage to take a different approach?
Here’s the problem; if you can quickly and greatly extend the survival rates in a desparately poor area you have doubled a very small ‘carbon footprint’ per person and the difference will be no big deal. It helps make the numbers for those living in poverty look greater of course, but I would be the last person to suggest that any of the NGOs see something useful in that.
Now the next stage to improve the lot of those people is to start to industialise – which will alsmost certainly lead to higher ‘consumption’ and, in the medium to long term, a larger population. This exacerbates both the local self sufficiency problem and the alleged global energy consumption problem. Politically, from a ‘western’ state and religious position, it also could be seen as feeding the threat against one’s security. Why would anyone choose do that without some really good guarantees that the action would be beneficial to all?
On the one hand one might argue that global government would likely address such issues. I suspect there is little enough evidence to support such a claim. People are naturally tribal not all embracing. To make any global governance work such individuality would have to be re-directed. And that seems to be against the interests of ‘diversity’ that people use as a reason for de-industrialising to a greater or lesser extent.
Perhaps the reason we see a growing scepticism in the undustrialised world (I doubt the rest of the world knows or cares other than those at the top of the pyramid with money making aspirations) is the messages just don’t fit together in any way that makes sense to people, whether they understand ‘the science’ or not.
The more politically inclined readers may be interested in what the UN Secretary General has been up to lately.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/thebusinessofgiving/2010141457_on_saturday_they_tried_somethi.html
My most favorite quote was this one, “A great Seattle philosopher once said knowledge speaks but wisdom listens,” Ban said, quoting Jimi Hendrix.
Just thought this summed everything up! Is it true?
A VERY GOOD EXAMPLE OF THE KIND OF REPRESENTATION WE HAVE IN CONGRESS, TRUE STORY:
A noted psychiatrist was a guest speaker at an academic function where Nancy Pelosi happened to appear. Ms Pelosi took the opportunity to schmooze the good doctor a bit and asked him a question with which he was most at ease.
‘Would you mind telling me, Doctor,’ she asked, ‘how you detect a mental deficiency in somebody who appears completely normal?’
‘Nothing is easier,’ he replied. ‘You ask a simple question which anyone should answer with no trouble. If the person hesitates, that puts you on the track.’
‘What sort of question?’ asked Pelosi.
Well, you might ask, ‘Captain Cook made three trips around the world and died during one of them. Which one?”
Pelosi thought a moment, and then said with a nervous laugh, ‘You wouldn’t happen to have another example would you? I must confess I don’t know much about history.’
We can only hope it still goes over the cliff, into the dustbin of history.
So, despite the “apologist tour” the world settles comfortably back into “blame the U.S. mode.” Some times it’s better to be right than popular.
Don S. (21:07:55) :
In the US live literally millions who are currently under oath or in the past have sworn an oath of office which includes the line “I will support and defend the constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic”. This oath is taken by every member of the military, members of the state and federal legislatures, law enforcement officers, judges, and the President. Do not underestimate the intent of most of these people to fulfill that oath.
Don-Thank you for this post. It is somewhat OT, but the oath that Americans take is almost unique…few countries, now or in history, have had anything similar…and few, outside the US, are aware of this aspect of the US culture…it makes an enormous difference in our national caracter…and may well become very relevant in the near future….
cdl
I know ‘Blue Dogs’ are House members; I was speaking of their equally-uncomfortable colleagues in the Senate, from (as you say) energy-producing or otherwise conservative states. I don’t know how many might be up for re-election in 2010, but a vote for Crap and Tax might make them vulnerable.
With any luck you’ll be right, but there’re only a couple of months left in this year. I don’t think we can rest easy until at least the new Congress in 2011, assuming that Republicans regain some of the ground they lost in ’08, and assuming more Republicans don’t follow the tomfoolery of Lindsay Graham.
/Mr Lynn
Alan the Brit (05:43:35) :
Just thought this summed everything up! Is it true?
A VERY GOOD EXAMPLE OF THE KIND OF REPRESENTATION WE HAVE IN CONGRESS, TRUE STORY:
She is pretty ditzy, but unfortunately, no.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/pelosi/captaincook.asp
I thought Arnold and Maria were really green.
Nice SUV.
http://www.foxnews.com/video2/video08.html?maven_referralObject=11051414&maven_referralPlaylistId=&sRevUrl=http://www.foxnews.com/
The New World Order has a plan to implement a global border-less government. A global border-less government requires funding with a global border-less taxation system. Tax laws will need to change. This could pose insurmountable problems because national and international tax laws are already highly complex and would surely become even more so with the imposition of a global border-less form of government.
What is required is a totally new form of taxation. One which is not concerned with issues such as whether the taxpayer is domicile or non-domicle or whether they are migrant workers moving from one place to another and thus hard to track and even harder to tax.
What is needed in a globalized world such as the one the New World Order of the Rothschild/Rockerfella clans have planned, is a one size fits all kind of taxation system. A border-less tax which is in essence a tax on life itself. Enter the CARBON TAX.
This form of tax is a centuries old wet dream of the ruling elite and they are just moments away from realising such a dream. The Climate Change summit at Copenhagen this coming December is set to be the platform from which this tax on life will be imposed.
The pseudo environmentalists will be cheering loudly, suffering under the illusion that a carbon tax will protect the environment from that nasty CO2 pollution that we are pumping into the atmosphere year in year out. Totally oblivious to the real implications of a border-less taxation system.
Global government is a direct threat to National sovereignty which in turn is derived from individual sovereignty. Individual sovereignty simply means individual freedom, or human rights. Global government and global taxation is a direct threat to the freedom of all the peoples of the world.
The only way to beat the New World Order is to deny them their funding. If these Nazi fools have to dig into their own pockets to fund their plans for world government, it will be far less likely to succeed. This can only be achieved by exposing the “Man Made Global Warming scam”.
If you would like to know more about the AGW fraud and carbon tax, you can download this free .pdf book
[snip – self promotion ]
What China says or infers it will do is worlds apart from what China is actually doing, and what China is planning on doing.
China is opening a new coal fired power plant at the rate of 1 every 10 days, and will do so many times in their planned future.
China is busy buying all of the coal resources it can buy.
China is consulting with western petroleum engineers to develop technology to extract oil from “unconvential” petroleum deposits . . . such as oil in shale, which China has huge amounts of.
China has cornered the market on rare earth metals. China now owns or controls 95% of rare earth metal production.
The reason that the traditional Chinese costume has sleeves with really large diameter cuffs is so that really loud laughs can be contained when they are laughing up their sleeves at the incredible stupidity and gullability of western culture countries.
“”” Frederick Michael (20:37:08) :
tokyoboy (20:10:10) :
The Arctic sea ice can’t make up its mind how to go ahead?
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
There’s something funny about that plot. If you download the data, you can directly compare the numbers for 10/27/2007, 10/27/2008 & 10/27/2009 which are, respectively:
7,271,719
8,436,094 and
7,736,563
2009 is closer to 2007 than to 2008 but not by a lot. But the plot makes it look like 2009 is almost tied with 2007 and nowhere near 2008.
WUWT? “””
Well if you look at the DMI polar region temperature plot, you can see a lot of temperature delaying retraces, that have caused a time delay in reaching the usual polar temperatures for this time of the year. And if you compare those dleays, with the JAXA ice curve, you will see that each of those delays, has caused a delay in the ice area growth, so the 2007 regrowth curve is slowly catching up to the 2009 curve.
That’s an interesting phenomenon; but if you look
at where the ice now is, you can see there is a wide range over the years in this time region; so both 2007 and 2009 are pretty much back in the normal range. If more of these temperature drop delays occur; and another one seems to be happening right now; it is possible that 2009 will eventually fall below 2007.
What really matters is what the summer low was, and in that case 2009 was considerably better than both 2007 and 2008.
I am intrigued by those stops and starts in the polar temperature drop; both as to what causes them, and how they link to the ice regrowth; but I guess we will know more when we finally get into January and February.
Peter Taylor (05:20:33) :
I share your concern. I was horrified to see two charities, Oxfam and Action Aid, campaigning against Climate Change in the run up to Copenhagen. I have long supported both charities with regular donations. My money was given for charitable purposes, not to be spent tilting at windmills.
I therefore withdrew my support and have transferred my regular giving to other charities which spend their funds properly. I also wrote to Oxfam and Action Aid to explain my actions.
Kind regards – and I enjoyed Chill.
S
Sounds a lot like some movies I saw when I was but a lad . . . the bad guy would produce a handgun and say, “Stick ’em up.” Now using the club of mythical AGW instead of a gun, but it is still armed robbery.
“An idea I can get behind – regulate methane first”
Typo? Change “can get” to “got from my?”