From the BBC, apparently Copenhagen is falling apart:
Environment correspondent, BBC News website, Copenhagen
Excerpts:
The African delegation is unhappy over moves by the Danish government
Negotiations at the UN climate summit have been suspended after developing countries withdrew their co-operation.
Delegations were angry at what they saw as moves by the Danish host government to sideline talks on more emission cuts under the Kyoto Protocol.
As news spread around the conference centre, activists chanted “We stand with Africa – Kyoto targets now”.
Informal talks continue, and the UN climate convention head said the formal agenda should resume in the afternoon.
Blocs representing poor countries vulnerable to climate change have been adamant that rich nations must commit to emission cuts beyond 2012 under the Kyoto Protocol.
But the EU and the developed world in general has promoted the idea of an entirely new agreement, replacing the protocol.
…
Last week, the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu forced a suspension after insisting that proposals to amend the UN climate convention and Kyoto Protocol be debated in full.
“The point is being made very loudly that African countries and the wider G77 bloc will not accept non-action on the Kyoto Protocol, and they’re really afraid that a deal has been stitched up behind their backs,” he told BBC News.
=========
Hmmm. Ya think?
This story earlier on WUWT certainly suggests something was indeed “stitched up”:
More Leaks – Copenhagen in disarray
The poor countries are a good scapegoat here. Western leaders who have bought in to the AGW hypothesis don’t have to publicly change their minds and invalidate their previous positions. They can blame Bush and then all go home.
Green Turtle (06:51:25) :
What a bang up way to end this year!
—————————–
Yes, Merry Christmas to us!
I think the sudden elevation of the debate over sunspots, cosmic rays and clouds to the front pages of the MSM shows just how worried they are at the moment. There are several issues here:
1) The first is this is a huge red herring and attempt to switch the debate. The debate isn’t about solar activity, cosmic rays and climate change. The debate is about modern warming, the MWP and attribution.
2) The second point that none of these reports cite any evidence, show any data, or even discuss any reasons why the Svensmark and Christensen studies are in error. We have some of the usual suspects making allegations without supporting these. Laut, Rahmstorf, Crutzen and Berger saying they have seen the arguments but not prepared to elucidate on them.
As for asking for papers to be retracted they want to think very carefully before going down this road. MBH98 and 99 spring to mind as starters.
O/T I’m afraid, but I can’t resist.
I am casting figures from Climategate as characters out of Tolkien. I call this epic __Lord of the Tree-rings__.
Ont the side of Light, Steve McIntyre is obviously Gandalf. Anthony is Aragorn. Lucia is the Lady Galadriel.
The trees of the Yamal peninsula are the Ents.
I can’t figure out who plays Frodo, which is certainly a major lacuna.
On the side of Darkness, Phil Jones is Saruman and Hansen is Sauron. Al Gore is the Balrog. Barbara Boxer is Shelob.
“One tree-ring to rule them all!’
Of course it’s about the money, as far as the ‘developing nations’, or whatever the current politically correct euphemism for them is, are concerned.
Just as it is all about the politics as far as the eco-fascists and their useful idiots are concerned.
UK Telegraph (Scottish edition; I can’t answer for the rest of the UK) today. Salmond (Scotland’s First Minister, for the benefit of anyone outside the UK who might not know the ins and outs) lambasted for his stance on nuclear power. Told that Scotland’s carbon emissions have gone up by some figure I can’t remember because I wasn’t that interested because the nuclear stations are winding down and the coal-fired ones are having to take up the slack. And his favourite green technologies don’t work.
In a typical “mine’s bigger than yours” stance he’s aiming to have Scotland’s emissions cut by some impossible figure that will have us back in the 18th century (or earlier).
Somebody at the weekend noticed that the current crop of protesters look very similar to all the other Rentamob recruits of the last 30 years.
You don’t say!
It’s hardly surprising that no-one wants to hear about the science. They know it is almost certain to give the “wrong” answer.
I wonder what Newton or Faraday or Einstein would think of the idea that there is a “wrong” answer. I think their synapses would fuse!
If all these African countries abolished Soscialism and started up Capitalism, they would be able to create their own infrastructure, jobs and economic future.
I wonder how many generations will have to suffer before they themselves, Merckel, Brown and Obama will realize this?
Carl Bussjaeger (05:57:42) :
Meanwhile at GoogleGate, Google search results for “climategate” (I’m tracking just this one spelling for consistency’s sake) are now down to 21.2 million (from 30 million), while Altavista has continued to climb to 76.3 million.
Gore must be making it worth someone’s while.
Well that’s it – just switched my search engine out of disgust – to Yahoo, which is showing over 71 million hits for climate gate. Well done, Google!
Honestly, only India and China can truly stop this deal. What I do not understand is, if the deal goes through, how will it be enforced on the taxpayers as the world cools for decades?
I promise to cut my CO2 emissions by 50% by 2050.
And I will commit to cut my emissions by 100% by 2060 (since I should be fully sequestered by that time).
I cannot make a commitment for 2020 since my schedule is already fully booked for that year.
So much political brinkmanship. Do any of these parties pushing for cuts and regulation really want them? expect them? or even know what they will do if they get them?
Nomad-Brit (05:57:18)
I wouldn’t worry too much. the Independent is just a minor circulation paper that doesn’t live up to its name, and in any case, if a matter of debate is being sided with in the common media, it is in the nature of the averagely educated English mind to harbour even more doubts, under the pretext that if the press side with a general authority consesus, there must be something wrong with the consensus.
the Guardian is the newspaper of extremists and idealistic causes.
If memory serves, Kyoto wasn’t doing too well at the time until a certain vice-president saved the day with his carbon trading idea. Coupled with an appealing date against which to measure CO2 levels and the Kyoto Protocol was born.
Not that it’s had much success. And has no enforement behind it (good!).
So now, here we go again. It’s all political posturing. An agreement will be worked out, even if it’s to sign on to agree to meet in a year or two to sign a new Kyoto replacment agreement.
magicjava has it right.
Beware the red herring in premature press releases. This could all be a clever orchestration for Algore O’bama to ride in on a white horse at the last minute and save the day.
The U.N. cabal has worked too long and too hard to let this golden..and I emphasize GOLDen…opportunity to slip from their hands.
they are doing this so they won’t have to listen to Chavez. Brilliant move.
The fundamental irony of all this is that any realistic global energy policy meant to address AGW will not produce any discernable change in climate – even if you accept the IPCC’s conclusions at face value.
Knowing this, the CO2 conferences have morphed into an attempt at a global power grab and massive wealth redistribution by the UN. It doesn’t even appear to be primarily about CO2 anymore.
Agree with “ew-3” above, this is setting the stage for team Obama to come in and save the day. There will be divine inspiration when he arrives.
Countries with low per capita income went to Copenhagen to get money. They still are in denial. That “money” will be eaten by higher food and energy costs.
The money will be kept by the money handlers.
Suspended until the Livingston and Penn graph line crosses the X axis….interesting!
Arthur Glass
To pick up your Tolkeinian analogy, we would also need a ‘Wormtongue’. How about Gavin Schmit, or Tamino?
What about Gollum? He could be the MSM.
As noted in ClimateDepot’s current headline:
The world must take action on climate change at Copenhagen even if the science is not correct, Tony Blair, the former Prime Minister has suggested.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/6803921/Copenhagen-climate-summit-Tony-Blair-calls-on-world-leaders-to-get-moving.html
They’ve too much invested (politically) to walk away. An agreement will be hammered out and signed, even if at the last minute, and even if it’s nothing more than an agreement to put off to another day a more binding agreement. These buffoons aren’t even thinking of walking away.
Nomad-Brit (05:57:18) :
Has anyone else seen the disgraceful FRONT PAGE article in the Independent on Solar activity?
…Yes, I saw The Independent today, and just ignored it. The global warming people are so desperate that they will publish any old rubbish and expect the public to believe it. They’ve shot themselves in the foot this time because they’ve drawn attention to the fact that sunspot activity is one of the reasons the Earth is getting cooler. This cooling is happening to other planets in our solar system. A very good book to read about this effect is “The Chilling Stars”.
Let’s see, the African nations are not going to cooperate. And this means what? Are they going to refuse the money that is sent to them by the rest of the world?
Agree that caution is in order. The troublemakers are on somebody’s payroll, or will be. Those who don’t shout on cue, and cease shouting on cue, will be visiting the kennels run by the cops of Copenhagen.
That said, the politicians have to be looking for a happytalk outcome. None of the developed countries can afford the payoffs let alone the changes in economc output that emissions control will require. The politicians know this. They also know the voters are getting wise and are fed up and scared silly about the current tax-and-spend frenzy that has only weakened the global economy. So the “global leaders” have nowhere to go but home after –they hope– some great photo-ops and networking. Agreement to agree on an agreement to study and confer blah blah and very important implementation process blah blah next year hum hum hum.
The poor countries will be thanked for their passionate advocacy and really compelling personal testimony, given a good dinner and a bus ticket home with promises of lots more capacity-building studies.
At least, I hope so. The alternative is they bring home impossible obligations and the taxpayers throw them out.
Hey….that works too.
JB Williamson
Nice up-to-date catch. From the article:
“But they agreed to continue negotiations after securing guarantees that the talks would focus more on the future of the treaty, European and African delegates said.”
What the heck does that mean? Did the developed world just call the developing world’s bluff and the developing world has now scrambled back to the negotiating table to save some portion of a redistributionist deal? Are all participants saying there won’t be a deal now but there would be some general discussion on the treaty’s “future”?
Kind of weird.
This article was sent out under the Raymond James header, but one cannot verify the accuracy based soly on this header. But the article is intriguing.
Energy December 7, 2009
Industry Brief
J. Marshall Adkins, RJ&A, (713) 789-3551, Marshall.Adkins@RaymondJames.com
Pavel Molchanov, RJ&A, (713) 278-5270, Pavel.Molchanov@RaymondJames.com
Energy: Stat of the Week_______________________________________________________________________________________
Global Leaders Plead with China to Save the Planet by INCREASING CO2 Emissions
In a shocking turn of events, it is now expected that the attendees to the United Nation’s Copenhagen climate change conference starting today
will reach out to developing nations to actually increase their output of CO2. According to inside sources, global leaders are now concerned about
overwhelming, indisputable scientific evidence that the world is in the early stages of another ice age. In an effort to save the planet (and their
political futures), politicians have done an “about face” and declared CO2 now politically correct (http://co2isgreen.org/). While it may take a few
more days to re-program the entire global warming crowd, this change in public sentiment has clearly begun to take hold over the past few weeks.
The following key events triggered this complete re-assessment of previously un-debatable facts: (1) recently discovered “Climategate” files
revealed a whole new set of global temperature data that suggested the world has, in fact, been cooling rapidly over the past decade; (2) Oprah’s
sudden and unexpected retirement announcement raised immediate concerns about substantially less hot air available to warm the planet; (3) the
earliest recorded snowfall in Houston has now corroborated and confirmed the new “Climategate” data; (4) discovery of some ancient third-grade
textbooks that revealed increased levels of CO2 were actually good for plants and could help offset food production losses from glaciers invading
Iowa; and (5) fears that indeed hell would freeze over if TCU, Boise State, and Cincinnati all made it to BCS bowls have thrown the nation into a
tizzy.
1. This incredible shift in global opinion began only weeks ago
as TMZ revealed a startling and very unexpected discovery.
According to paparazzi reports, several rock and roll hall of fame
researchers were searching the vaults of an obscure British University
(University of East Anglia) for the “lost Beatles songs” when they
stumbled upon a collection of long lost climate data. Apparently, the
files were hidden under a few scientist mattresses and mixed in with
some ragged 1970’s Playboy magazines. The startling thing about this
data was not just the fact that it appeared to be deliberately hidden
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEiLgbBGKVk) but that the
“new” data actually showed that the planet has been cooling rather
than warming. As seen on the right, the United Nations
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) temperature
projections (in red, orange, and brown) compared to actual global
temperature surface (green) and satellite (blue) measurements have
moved in completely opposite directions over the past several years.
Also, note the yellow line representing the UN’s projection of future
temperatures if there were no further human-caused CO2 emissions.
IPCC Predicted Temp
U.N.’s projection if no human
caused CO2 emissions
Actual Temp
Predicted Temp Change vs Actual
Temperature (Celcius)
Source: John R. Christy
With the cat out of the bag, government leaders had to react quickly. Fortunately, President Obama’s daughter Sasha was studying advanced third
grade science in her upscale, very expensive, politically correct private school. Over a piece of breakfast fruitcake, Sasha suggested to her father
that an easy solution to the imminent ice age driven global food shortages would be to actually increase the level of CO2 in the atmosphere. As all
third graders know, plants consume the CO2 that humans exhale. More importantly, scientists have long known that increasing the amount of CO2
in the atmosphere increases the growth rate of plants (http://www.plantsneedco2.org/). In fact, she taught her father that a doubling of CO2
concentrations is estimated to improve plant yields by 20% to 50% with less water. Solution found.
Based upon insider leaks ahead of the Copenhagen summit, it appears the world’s leaders will now be attacking this global cooling crisis with a new
sense of urgency. Flying leaders individually in private jets from all over the world to meet in one of the northernmost parts of the civilized world in
the middle of winter should not only generate a lot of fossil fuel related CO2 but also release a lot of otherwise useless hot air when the
negotiations begin. Now, let’s just hope that China and India do their part to increase CO2 emissions and save the planet over the coming years.