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.
Wayne Richards (02:37:51) “It’s time to think hard and deep, and if possible present our own people with a strong plan.”
Agree. Come big or stay home.
” P Gosselin (01:33:02) :
Consider it dead and buried.”
No, consider it like the fairground game… as the head of one clown is bashed down another will pop up somewhere else.
So the end result is that some Swiss bank accounts get a boost!
Comment from BBC News24 this morning, regarding the freezing cold weather:
“Global warming may mean much colder winters”.
?!
Anyway here is the Copenhagen Accord for those interested in perusing the contents http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2009/cop15/eng/l07.pdf
It is not entirely clear what sort of Accord it is. Apparently it was not accepted by all 193 or so UN countries but “hammered through” by the UN Secretary General and countries can now decide if they want to sign or not as the case may be. I guess that if it is that “iffy” if it actually is a valid UN document it could generate court cases if big money is thrown towards the developing world without a proper legal basis. Time will show.
The BBC is claiming a succesful solution.
” Paul Vaughan (02:55:48) :
“… the windmill lobby for the large scale industrial development of the few protected wild areas we have left in the name of conservation.
“This makes me irate. Do you have any related links?”
… Try this one
“Winners to be revealed in £100bn bid battle to build UK windparks”
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/utilities/article6962260.ece
Here’s what the BBC’s Roger Black has to say:
“The concept that global environmental issues can and should be tackled on a co-operative international basis has taken a massive, massive blow.
The UN climate convention is the flagship agreement, and its outcomes are supposed to be negotiated. This deal was presented to the greater body of countries on a take-it-or-leave-it basis by small group of powerful players.
It is now debatable whether the UN climate convention has a meaningful future, or whether powerful countries will just decide by themselves, or in a small group, by how much they are prepared to cut emissions. ”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8422186.stm
Well, at least he seems to have got something right, at last.
Now, remember that Barack Obama was going to be the President who restored the world’s faith in America by talking nicely to everybody instead of telling them all what to do. As someone seasonal would say: Ho, Ho, Ho.
Some more information about the CRU’s connection with the whole sorry affair:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100020304/climategate-peak-oil-the-cru-and-the-oman-connection/
Patrick Davis (02:02:59) :
Largest recorded under-sea volcanic erruption…Add to this the volcano named “Beautiful” in the Phillipines about to blow it’s top…
I wonder how our “leaders” will off-set these emissions and prevent climate change. With more international love-ins, group-think sessions, taxes and documents?
Nope. They’ll all go trooping to Putney to search for sacrificial virgins…
View from a slightly liberal skeptic. President Obama played a blinder.
1.The “deal” is among the big emitters, and will stop any “race to the bottom” in emissions pledges. The EU was excluded as the Whitehouse recognises that they are infected by the Greens. ( There will follow a period of backbiting within the EU, expect the Danes to cop a load of Flak).
2. China takes the blame, – something they can live with. I suggest that for all their wailing we won’t see too many Greenpeace activists protesting in Tianamein Square!
3. The UN process has been shafted, the POTUS reconised that the whole UN/IPCC farago is damaged goods and wants to distance the US from it. The UEA e-mails may have had more of an effect here than anywhere else. I also cannot imagine that there will be a huge rush to offer to host any proposed follow up confence, ( see above re the Danes).
4. The 2deg C commitment could easily be achieved by “re-adjustment” of the figures over time, UK governments (including the administration of which the noble Lord Mockton was a member) do this all the time with the unemployment figures.
5. The 100bn is peanuts on a world scale (google TARP, NAMA or RBS to you see real money!) and a small price to shut up the trouble makers. In any case most of the money will never show up.
In other words President Obama has came up with exactly what President George W Bush would have aimed for, its just that he is a better showman( but probably less principled).
Finally, to quote a certain British Prime minster dealing with rather more serious matter: “Now this is not the end, nor is it even the beginning of the end, but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning”.
So…. As the Champagne-again conference winds down, and tired delegates lever their lardy arses into their limos for the ride to their awaiting jets, what have we learned about the U.N’s ability to organise a piss-up in a brewery town?
And these people want us to pay a tax on every financial transaction so they can build an unelected world government???
The simple way to thwart their plans is to stop using money systems which give them the opportunity to take a slice off your leg.
Cash is king.
It’s all in a day’s blizzard. He got there in one and returned in a bigger one.
Yes, it is climate change.
Ice Cold Climate Change.
More than 2,000 people have been evacuated from four Eurostar trains that were trapped in the Channel tunnel after breaking down due to the cold weather.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/dec/19/four-eurostar-trains-break-down
I know, I know, weather isn’t climate, as I always tell people.
But these guys seem to have no problem screaming dangerous climate change at the first sign of a mild heat wave in summer time. So, as I get ready to face blizzards on the East Coast of the U.S. today, I say “what global warming?”
First time I’ve been back to ‘realclimate’ for two or three weeks.Yes a big change but those they are claiming have ‘no connection’ with ‘realclimate’ are still in the cabal of 42 who authored together and then peer reviewed their own work. These crooks aren’t giving up the ghost without a fight.
The good thing that may have come out of this (apart from the fact that there is no agreement) is that the money for poor countries (which I hope does NOT include Zimbabwe) is to help them adapt to climate change which is, to my mind, the right approach.
If only we had seen what was coming sooner and shot down the fatuous pseudo-science of the eco-fascists — there was another one on the BBC ‘Any Questions’ programme last night telling us again that climate change is absolutely the worst thing that mankind has had to face – ever! Black Death, anybody? WW1? — we could have had a sensible debate about what (if anything) needed to be done to adapt, which is what human beings have always done and it looks from where I’m sitting we have done pretty well.
I think perhaps we have a window of opportunity here so can we all raise our voices in support of sane science and demand that these dollars do not go to the Maldives or Tuvalu where sea-levels are not threatening to engulf the islands or to countries where it will not be used for anything other than to inflate further the Swiss bank accounts of the corrupt politicians.
And can we also insist in every medium we can get our hands on that the the antics of the eco-fascists at Copenhagen demonstrate more than anything else that they are not interested in science; they do not understand science; that for them “climate change” is just another excuse to take to the streets for a confrontation with western civilisation and that the fake science surrounding CO2 is a manufactured excuse for them to further their agenda of destroying that very same civilisation.
And will somebody who understands the science better than I do, please explain in words of one syllable to the general public and to the politicians (who don’t understand it, either — and why should they?) precisely what will be the effects on our quality of life — transport, energy, health, etc. — of a 50% reduction in emissions of CO2?
LUMUMBA STANISLAUS DI-APING, HEAD OF G-77 GROUP
[The draft text] asks Africa to sign a suicide pact, an incineration pact in order to maintain the economic dominance of a few countries. It is a solution based on values, the very same values in our opinion that funnelled six million people in Europe into furnaces.
So, the holocaust meme comes back to bite the warmists in chief on the backside.
“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.”
It said on the news this morning that they had agreed to limit the rise to within 2C of pre-industrial levels. Do we know how they define pre-industrial temperature?
Did president Obama have any problems with the weather on his way back to the US? Just interested? In the British media the winter weather in the rest of the Northern Hemisphere is know where to be seen.
Now that we are going to limit global warming to 2 degrees C (I wonder if that applies to global cooling as well), next year let’s limit tides to 2m and the year after hurricanes should be restricted to 2 a year and the year after that ……
Why is it that North American television commentators pronounce East Anglia as if it were East Angola? (It’s pronounced ann-glee-ah.)
Failure?
To make the delegates feel better, Mrs. Bill Clinton promised them $100,000,000,000 to divide up into their Swiss bank accounts.
Too bad these United States are bankrupt. President Obama will have to borrow it from the Communist Chinese before he can give it away. Then the despots will be his “very best friend”.
Got children? Pity them!
Regards,
Steamboat Jack
The Club of Rome’s (members: Al Gore, Kofi Annan, Tony Blair, Javier Solano, Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter et al) plan for global dictatorship has been derailed, for the moment.
Climategate inquiries in Britan and America will hopefully expose the Club of Rome’s evil plan for what it is. If not, we’re going to have to get physical.
China has smashed the AGW scam and try as the Euroweenie’s might, it will never succeed.
As everyone should have realised before Copenhagen, China is not going to imperil its economic development for anyone. In the last few centuries, China has been bullied and trashed by Japan and Europe. Now it wealthy and militarily strong, it refuses to be pushed around.
Nor is China interested in the one world government lark. They’ll be keeping their sovereignty thanks very much, not passing it over to a bunch of Europeans, Africans and less developed Asian countries who are supposed to pay tribute to the middle kingdom. Nor does the Chinese government need AGW as a tax excuse. All those rationales that may be persuasive to EU governments are of no interest to them.
If China doesn’t restrict emissions, no way will the US do so. It simply will not get through Congress. And forget about any cooperation from the rest of BRIC. So there’s 2/3 or so of world emissions off the table.
The Europeans and the green NGOs and the UN and the bludging third world dictators and the warmist scientific frauds can all pout, throw tantrums, hold their breath till they’re blue in the face but it will make no difference. China will not budge, and so there will be no global agreement of any consequence on this matter, ever.
Aswered my own question.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/us/20storm.html
Airfirce One in the snow
“FWIW: I just read that, back in the day, East Anglia was the headquarters of the Pilgrim / Puritan movement.”
And today is mostly known for – how shall we put it delicately – a long tradition of “close families”.