When the Guardian, that champion of everything “green” says it, you know it was a failure.
Excerpt:
The UN climate summit reached a weak outline of a global agreement last night in Copenhagen, falling far short of what Britain and many poor countries were seeking and leaving months of tough negotiations to come.
After eight draft texts and all-day talks between 115 world leaders, it was left to Barack Obama and Wen Jiabao, the Chinese premier, to broker a political agreement. The so-called Copenhagen accord “recognises” the scientific case for keeping temperature rises to no more than 2C but did not contain commitments to emissions reductions to achieve that goal.
American officials spun the deal as a “meaningful agreement”, but even Obama said: “This progress is not enough.”
“We have come a long way, but we have much further to go,” he added.
The deal was brokered between China, South Africa, India, Brazil and the US, but late last night it was still unclear whether it would be adopted by all 192 countries in the full plenary session.
The agreement aims to provide $30bn in funding for poor countries to adapt to climate change from next year to 2012, and $100bn a year after 2020.
But it disappointed African and other vulnerable countries who had been holding out for far deeper emission cuts to hold the global temperature rise to 1.5C this century. As widely expected, all references to 1.5C in previous drafts were removed at the last minute, but more surprisingly, the earlier 2050 goal of reducing global CO2 emissions by 80% was also dropped.
The agreement also set up a forestry deal which is hoped would significantly reduce deforestation in return for cash. It lacked the kind of independent verification of emission reductions by developing countries that the US and others demanded.
Obama hinted that China was to blame for the lack of a substantial deal. In a press conference he condemned the insistence of some countries to look backwards to previous environmental agreements. He said developing countries should be “getting out of that mindset, and moving towards the position where everybody recognises that we all need to move together”.
Read entire story at the Guardian here
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Now compare what the Guardian has written, to what Obama says:
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My summary of the Copenhagen Climate Conference is just a bit less wordy.
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It’s official, soon to be in the lexicon and dictionary:
Obaminable
Adj. description of an abominable mistake, dishonest, disagreeable or unpleasantry increasingly common from B.H. Obama.
ex: Copenhagen’s Obaminable Failure
tags: obama, abominable, disagreeable, dishonest, unpleasant
FAILURE? NOT REALLY! IT’S ALL ABOUT THE MONEY AFTER ALL
“Richard North has two articles in the newspapers today, both on the extraordinary financial conflicts of interest in the IPCC process.
In the Telegraph, he and Christopher Booker look at how IPCC boss Rajendra Pachauri has reaped vast sums of money from his involvement in the trade in carbon credits:
What has also almost entirely escaped attention, however, is how Dr Pachauri has established an astonishing worldwide portfolio of business interests with bodies which have been investing billions of dollars in organisations dependent on the IPCC’s policy recommendations.
These outfits include banks, oil and energy companies and investment funds heavily involved in ‘carbon trading’ and ‘sustainable technologies’, which together make up the fastest-growing commodity market in the world, estimated soon to be worth trillions of dollars a year.
Forget ‘Big Oil’ – this is ‘Big Carbon’ making the most of a ‘business opportunity’ that was created by the first climate treaty at Kyoto in 1997.
The frenzied negotiations we have just seen were never about ‘saving the planet’. They were always about money. At stake was this new ‘climate change industry’ which last year ripped off £129billion from the global economy and is heading for that trillion-pound bonanza by 2020 – but only if the key parts of the Kyoto treaty could be renewed.
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/
S.1733 Cap-and-Tax Energy Inflation bill text: http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-s1733/text
articles, blog, and can comment on the text of the bill line by line.
Why won’t Copenhagen just lay down and DIE?
Gordon Brown embarrasses himself again, and drags Milliamp down with him.
From the London Standard
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23786545-miliband-china-hijacked-summit-and-prevented-climate-deal.do
Gordon Brown today tried to regain the initiative on climate change by calling for a change in the way UN negotiations are conducted. In a Downing Street podcast, the Prime Minister accused a small number of countries of holding the Copenhagen talks to ransom.
He did not name the culprits, but Sudan, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Cuba tried to resist a deal being signed, said government sources.
Mr Brown may push ahead next year with a “Plan B” to rescue the deal, with radical plans to get the EU to show a lead by increasing its own emissions cuts from 20 per cent to 30 per cent.
Energy Secretary Ed Miliband today described the summit as a “chaotic process dogged by procedural games” and singled out China as having vetoed agreements on emissions. But Mr Brown and Mr Miliband believe that a diluted deal was better than nothing at all.
Paul Vaughan (11:31:43) :
Re: Kate (03:34:28)
Can you (or anyone else) provide link(s) to articles about nature preserves / parks being destroyed to make way for windmills &/or solar panels? (This is the kind of thing that sets me off like nothing else.)
…There is a great deal of information about this, so it helps to be as specific as possible when searching for it. For example a search for “wind farms” will provide links which will have you reading for months, but “wind farms + Cumbria” will be more focused on what you may want.
Anyway, this is an overview of the situation as I see it at present.
Why the so-called “Green Economy” is destroying large parts of the Earth
The state we are in.
1.) We have witnessed a fantastic evolution of the internal combustion engine to a level where it’s entirely clean and no threat to the environment.
2.) We will have new technologies in the future, but only if they are better and more economical compared to the technology they replace, not by Government dictate.
3.) The so called “Green Economy” is a Ponzi scheme because:
1. The necessity for the introduction of the “Green conomy” is based on the carbon dioxide = global warming lie.
2. The so-called “Green Solutions” are a hoax and a waste of money because they don’t deliver the power we need and they operate at very high costs. These costs are so high that a Green Economy can’t exist. It is a scheme directed at the continuation of a fossil fuel economy which will be at much higher prices, only serving the fat cats that have a stake in Carbon Trading.
3. The so-called “Green Economy” is a front for the installation of a World Government gaining control over our resources, our financial Institutions, our markets and our lives; Green = acceptable version of communism.
Flaws in the “Green” Economy
Wind Energy
Needs a conventional power generating back up, increasing your electricity bill by 500%
Besides that, windmills kill birds and bats and they despoil the countryside.
Solar
Amortization takes longer than the economic life cycle, how economical is that?
Besides that, solar needs a back-up system for night time.
CO2 sequestration in coal plants
Doubles the amount of coal per Kw energy delivered.
Triples the price of electricity and doubles the speed of consuming our resources which is a bad idea with an ice age around the corner.
Bio fuels
Currently, the biggest people-killer.
Ethanol: Competes with the food industry causing irresponsible price hikes.
Before the financial crises 350 million people were living from 1,700 calories per day, now it’s 1.3 billion.
Huge amounts of water are needed.
The latest technology of ethanol production is based on the use of wood as a resource, which will result in deforestation.
Diesel
Jatropha Palm Oil, currently the biggest engine behind deforestation of tropical forests world wide.
There is only a single green fuel that could work and that is bio fuel from algae. All others do more harm than good.
Read Agenda 21 of the United Nations and http://green-agenda.com for more detailed information.
Paul Vaughan (11:31:43) :
Re: Kate (03:34:28)
Can you (or anyone else) provide link(s) to articles about nature preserves / parks being destroyed to make way for windmills &/or solar panels? (This is the kind of thing that sets me off like nothing else.)
…This is about the great “wind farms delusion”, held by our leaders.
Wind farms will be a monument to an age when our leaders collectively went off their heads
Let us be clear: Britain is facing an unprecedented crisis. Before long, we will lose 40% of our generating capacity. And unless we come up quickly with an alternative, the lights WILL go out. Not before time, the Confederation of British Industry later waded in, warning the Government it must abandon its crazy fixation with wind turbines as a way of plugging this forthcoming shortfall and instead urgently focus on far more efficient ways to meet the threat of a permanent, nationwide black-out.
There are a few contenders for the title of the maddest thing that has happened in our lifetime. But a front-runner must be the way in which politicians of all parties have been seduced by the La-La Land promises of the wind power lobby.
If you still haven’t made your mind up about wind power, just consider some of the inescapable facts – facts which the Government and the wind industry do their best to hide from us all. So far we have spent billions of pounds on building just over 2,000 wind turbines – and yet they contribute barely 1% of all the electricity that we need. The combined output of all those 2,000 turbines put together, averaging 700 megawatts, is less than that of a single, medium-sized conventional power station.
What’s more, far from being ‘free’, this pitiful dribble of electricity is twice as expensive as the power we get from the nuclear, gas or coal-fired power stations which currently supply well over 90% of our needs – and we all pay the difference, without knowing it, through our electricity bills.
But despite its best efforts to conceal the fact that wind turbines expensively and unreliably generate only a derisory amount of electricity, the Government keeps on telling us of its megalomaniac plans to build thousands more of them – at a cost of up to £100billion. The prime reason for this is that we are legally obliged by the European Union to generate 32% of our electricity from ‘renewable’ sources by 2020. And with just 11 years to go until that deadline, we hope to meet the target by building highly-subsidised wind turbines.
But this is a farce. In fact, as the Government is privately well aware, there is not the faintest hope that we can do anything of the kind – even if we wanted to.
Gordon Brown talks airily of building 4,000 offshore turbines by our target date – plus another 3,000 onshore. But this would mean sticking two of these 2,000-ton monsters, each the height of Blackpool Tower, into the seabed every day for the next 11 years. Nowhere in the world has it proved possible to install more than one of them a week. The infrastructure simply isn’t there to build more than a fraction of that figure. Furthermore, such are the weather conditions around Britain’s coasts that it is only possible to work on these projects for a few months every summer.
Then there are the 3,000 promised onshore turbines – many of which are to be erected in the most beautiful stretches of Britain’s countryside. These are meeting with so much local hostility that the Government has continually had to bend the planning rules in order to force them through over the wishes of local communities and the democratic opposition of local councils.
————————-
Obama talks about creating “five million green jobs” in the US. Meanwhile, as Mr Obama’s Nobel Prize-winning Energy Secretary, Stephen Chu, babbles on the BBC’s “Today” program about how the world’s energy needs can be met by wind and solar power, for which, he assured us, we would need to cover only 5% of the planet’s deserts with solar panels, a study shows that for every job created in Spain’s “alternative energy industry” since 2000, 2.2 others have been lost.
In May 2009, the BBC and various newspapers excitably greeted the opening by Alex Salmond of Whitelee, “Europe’s largest onshore wind farm”, 140 giant 2.3 megawatt turbines covering 30 square miles of moorland south-east of Glasgow. It was happily reported that these would “generate” 322MW of electricity, “enough to power every home in Glasgow”. They won’t, of course, do anything of the kind. Due to the vagaries of the wind, this colossal enterprise will produce only 80MW on average, a quarter of its capacity and barely enough to keep half Glasgow’s lights on.
It really is time people stopped recycling the thoroughly bogus propaganda claims of the wind industry in this way. Any journalist who still falls for these lies by confusing turbines’ “capacity” with their actual output is either thoroughly stupid or dishonest. The truth is that the 80MW average output of “Europe’s largest wind farm” is only a fraction of that of any conventional power station, at twice the cost. For this derisory amount of power, the hidden subsidy to Whitelee over its 25-year life will, on current figures, be £1 billion, paid by all of us through our electricity bills.
Truly, our world has gone off its head, and no one seems to notice – not least those wretched MPs who allow all this to happen without having the faintest idea of what is really going on.
Fake science is settled on lies, real science on laboratory succesful tests.
Many of the institutions involved in the Climate Gate scandal have settled science in other areas, as in solar science where not a single theory has ever produced a succesful forecast. That is not science but Vodoo science. Unrepeatable phenomena are unsuccesful withcraft.
“Unprecedented” is undoubtedly correct. Never before have so many done so much, for so long, and achieved so little.
I am amused and shocked, shocked I tell you, to see little South Africa jumping hoops with the big boys.
Then again, the big brain in the ZA delegation is Ms Joanne Yawitch, replete with MA in sustainable something, autographed copies of Steven Covey’s DIY books, and a diploma in kool aid from the WWF itself.
See http://www.deat.gov.za/AboutUs/Department/joanne_bio.htm
So, with no deal in sight, no takers to bankroll ZA’s energy spend, our fearless leaders opt for ubuntu: Shaft the other Africans (they won’t complain in public) cozy up to Barry & Wen and hope like hell they drop us some crumbs.
It’s Officially a Word – Obaminable http://obaminable.urbanup.com/4449215
Adj. description of an abominable mistake, dishonest, disagreeable or unpleasantry increasingly common from B.H. Obama.
ex: Copenhagen’s Obaminable Failure
Kate (02:45:56) “[…] Then there are the 3,000 promised onshore turbines – many of which are to be erected in the most beautiful stretches of Britain’s countryside. These are meeting with so much local hostility that the Government has continually had to bend the planning rules in order to force them through over the wishes of local communities and the democratic opposition of local councils. […] covering 30 square miles of moorland south-east of Glasgow […]”
I appreciate the notes. It seems your government’s messaging is aimed at conveying certainty to markets & investors. If UK “environmentalists” are onboard with these schemes, they certainly appear corrupt (or severely naive).
My overall impression is that Europe is paranoid that its energy supply-lines from outside the region will be cut off at some point in time in the future …or at least that its officials see profit in having the public believe this.
It is very unfortunate that the enviro movement appears involved (i.e. complicit). As an ecologist, I see no environmental benefits stemming from the measures you describe. On the contrary, I see instability, controversy, & chaos being generated, which loosens our grip on nature preserves etc. Nature will survive natural [&/or anthropogenic] climate change given a network of places to do so. (I researched in this area extensively in the 90s.) Climate is not an environmental issue, but land use is.
Re: Kate (02:45:56)
Paul Vaughan (13:28:13) “It seems your government’s messaging is aimed at conveying certainty to markets & investors.”
Added clarification: …i.e. they appear to be blowing bubbles (economic ones).
Paul Vaughan (13:39:31) :
…Thank you for your insights, which tally exactly with my own.
The main driver for all the Government lying propaganda about global warming is the total hash the Labour Government has made of our future energy requirement. The government has a minister of “Energy and Climate Change”. Goal: To shut down electricity production. Much power generation has used natural gas from under the North Sea, but this is now running out. They can’t go back to coal because of EU pollution directives, and they have reversed their anti-nuclear position too late to fill the gap. All they are left with is sourcing natural gas from unreliable overseas sources like Russia, covering half the country in wind turbines – and desperately trying to do everything they can to get consumers to reduce demand – hence (at least in part) the convenient “fig leaf” of carbon dioxide reduction.
On a positive note, they have made such a mess of the economy that power consumption has been reduced anyway.
The UK ruling elite have gone insane. Really. The government, incredibly unpopular and desperately broke, is trying to “lead the world” in dragging the country down to King Canute levels of energy use. Even the Conservative Leader of the Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, David Cameron, has a windmill on his house.
They’re all demented over there, in Government; their policy on global warming has been handed over to a committee for climate change, run by profiteers. It’s not in the control of Parliament.
The scammers have taken over while the deluded in Parliament are bamboozled by the criminally insane.
EUreferendum.com is a good web site to follow some of this, as well as climateresistance.com. Both explore the politics of it all.
Kate (12:22:13) “The UK ruling elite have gone insane. Really.”
If it’s any comfort, mainstream Canadian media has conveyed similar commentary (on the state of politics in the UK). I hope sensible minds find a peaceful & harmonious way (without further chaos) to prevail. I acknowledge the magnitude of the challenge.
Paul Martin (04:26:05) :
Why is it that North American television commentators pronounce East Anglia as if it were East Angola? (It’s pronounced ann-glee-ah.)
Same reason they….oh forget it.
The affectation which really gets me for some reason is when they and others pronounce “forward” as “fo-ward”, or “Florida” as “Flo-i-da”. One local broadcaster right from the midst of Idaho’s agricultural heartland decided to pronounce “Aggies” as “Augies” – a team’s nickname. I try not to watch much.