The weather isn’t so hot, either.
Editorial from: The Washington Times, 29 November 2010
Today, U.N. negotiators will begin two weeks of meetings in Cancun, Mexico, looking for a way to move the climate action agenda forward, impose global carbon emissions caps and compel countries to pay a series of new international taxes to underwrite environmental programs. Maybe they’ll get what they want when hell freezes over.
The mood of climate alarmists going into Cancun is decidedly downbeat. The sense of impending doom they had cultivated over the last decade or so has largely evaporated. The Climategate scandal took a severe toll on the credibility of some of the climate theology’s leading high priests, and subsequent investigations into some of the more outlandish claims on which their doomsaying was based found them to be either exaggerated or fabricated. The November demise of the Chicago Climate Exchange – which sought to transfer billions of dollars to political insiders trading in government-rigged carbon markets – signaled that there was no money in the game anymore. Last week, even Al Gore admitted his fallibility when he retracted his earlier support for ethanol fuels. The god bleeds.
Last year’s Copenhagen confab was intended to seal a comprehensive global climate deal but turned into an exercise in humiliation. The imagined 2009 treaty – originally billed as “the single most important piece of paper in the world today” – would have instituted global governance of carbon emissions enforced by an international body with the power to levy taxes to force countries to impose its will. But the final, hastily written three-page agreement contained none of those controversial proposals and was simply a nonbinding statement regarding voluntary emissions caps. The most significant event at last year’s summit was when the leaders of China, India, Brazil and South Africa unceremoniously snubbed President Obama, who was reduced to barging his way into their meeting uninvited. It was a low moment for the president personally, and a poor showing for what is under most circumstances the strongest country in the world.
The principal goal of this year’s meeting seems to be to hang on to the meager gains made in 2009 and to discuss what to do about the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which is set to expire at the end of 2012. The green utopians are up against more immediate problems than their imagined impending climate catastrophe. The debt crisis in Europe will blunt the enthusiasm of countries in the Eurozone to underwrite expensive new international initiatives. China, India, Braziland South Africa, among others, will be even less willing to agree to cut back growth than they were when they scuttled the Copenhagen deal. The United States delegation will have to accept the fact that whatever schemes they would like to agree to, any treaty language would have to meet the approval of the incoming more conservative Senate, a highly unlikely proposition. Cancun will be dead on arrival.
One benefit of meeting in Mexico is that the conference will avoid the embarrassment last year when the Copenhagen meeting ended in an unexpected blizzard. It’s harder to sell global warming to world leaders who have to flee the city before their flights are grounded by an ice storm. The worst the Cancun conferees will have to deal with is the threat of being kidnapped by heavily armed gangs of drug dealers.
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Climate change is a real threat to people in many western countries but the greatest danger is from people wanting to use dictatorial powers to combat it.
In today’s Daily Telegraph there is an article about a demand by “climate change experts” for the introduction of Second World War-style rationing in rich countries to bring down carbon emissions.
Cancun climate change summit: scientists call for rationing in developed world
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/8165769/Cancun-climate-change-summit-scientists-call-for-rationing-in-developed-world.html
To those people in Britain old enough to remember the hardships and lack of freedom associated with rationing the proposal to reintroduce it will seem absolutely incredible. Those of you who are not old enough to remember it or who live in countries that did not have rationing should browse through the Wikipedia article on it to understand why the idea is so outrageous.
Rationing in the United Kingdom
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationing_in_the_United_Kingdom
It took a World War to make the British people accept rationing. It is difficult to believe that it could be introduced in rich countries in peace time without getting rid of democracy first.
Julia Gillard needs those ETS tax dollars to recoup the handouts that former PM Kevin Rudd unnecessarily dished out. Not to mention funding for those newly created “Department of Climate Control” jobs. Other countries are in a similar position. This is why the Met Office and GISS cannot show a decline in global temperatures.
Cancun was dead after the last US elections.
It’s hard to sell global warming in Britain at the moment. What delicious irony. We can only hope and pray that the Earth enters a strong and long cooling period to finally hit the last nail in the coffin of Catastropic Anthropogenic Global Warming movement.
Make that 2 weeks before, Hell has already frozen over.
Anthony –
While I agree with the sentiments here, very few people take the Washington Times seriously as a news organization. (And that low status isn’t easy to achieve; look at the NYT and WaPo, for example, not to mention even Reuters today.)
Having been owned by the wacko Reverend Sun Myung Moon of Moonies and brainwashing fame, the Washington Times is somewhere between The Onion and Saturday Night Live as for as news goes.
Referencing the Washington Times doesn’t do the standing of the blog here a lot of good. It doesn’t come up nearly to your usual standards, even if its VP agrees with your own. It is a bit like the warmists quoting the IPCC…LOL
Every week we hear about another nation, another state, another province, another city or town having severe financial problems and being near financial collapse. Yet these global warming alarmists seem to be incapable of understanding or feeling the financial pain that exist already in our communities. They seem to be falsely panicking nations, provinces, states and cities into immense and often unnecessary green projects just to cut greenhouse gases. These projects may very well collapse even the strongest of economic regions. They can only be paid for by yet further borrowed money, carbon taxes, cap and trade indirect taxes, eco fees, green fees, 100 % plus increase in base energy rates etc. Free money seems to be thrown at the green alternate energies that are not viable for large city states and large loads[ some are 15 times more expensive than fossil fuel rates] Here is one example of blind pursuit of greenhouse emissions reductions that could bankrupt this community and put the tax payers under even more financial strain. Yet more of this questionable science and unnecessary projects are probably being committed to in Cancun for the entire globe.
http://www.thespec.com/opinion/editorial/article/279801–power-politics
GBees says:
Ahhh! Socialism. Isn’t it wonderful?
It’ll never work because it’s opposite to the way people want to live. Yet the little utopian, greeny sheeples continue to insist that we all cede to their every whim. @ur momisugly@$#%#}}~!!!!!
Gareth Says:
Isn’t it interesting that far right politicos continue to try and highjack our site and give ammunition to those who believe skeptics are a bunch of right wing loonies. We are a non political bunch, our skepticism has roots in our science, not in our in political beliefs. We skeptics are a broad political church, lets make sure those with an axe to grind from the left or right do not try and use our struggles for their own narrow political ends.
Rising greenhouse gas emissions this decade meant the 2 degree goal was “extremely difficult, arguably impossible, raising the likelihood of global temperature rises of 3 or 4 degrees C within this century,” an international team wrote.
The studies, published to coincide with annual U.N. climate talks in Mexico starting on Monday, said few researchers had examined in detail the possible impact of a 4 degrees C rise above pre-industrial levels.
Perhaps because few find it plausible. Notice Reuters doesn’t think we need to know the identity of the ‘international team’ or the details of their publication. Notice also that publishing ‘to coincide with Cancun’ doesn’t give anyone else the chance to appraise the contents and alert policy makers to inaccuracies, exaggerations, bias and uncertainty.
Aha, Roy has linked some details:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/8165769/Cancun-climate-change-summit-scientists-call-for-rationing-in-developed-world.html
Worth a post in itself I’d say.
The organizers of the UN climate conference should be happy that they didn’t start it today in Copenhagen. Haveing it in Cancun this time.
The Copenhagen airport hasn’t had similar bad condition for over 22 years.
Blizzard in Denmark
You seriously cannot be saying the Liberals will be better?
Have you not yet realised that it doesn’t matter?
Left Wing.. or Right Wing.. its the SAME BIRD
You are falling for the Hegalian Dialectic.
eg.
The Liberals create the the Water Act 2006.
Labour uses the Water Act to create the Basin Plan.
No-one seems to notice that BOTH are totally un-constitutional.
Not to mention the fact that voting along PARTY lines is already totally un-constitutional when the REPRESENTATIVES are supposed to merely re-present the views of their electorate.
We should have whip-around to see if we can raise enuf money to buy big AL a ticket to Cancun so that it will snow.
I have no trouble believing that those who would impose international taxes in the name of “saving the planet” are actually those who would rather serve as holders of those funds. Who knows whether those funds would actually be used to “equalize” the economies of all countries? I’m guessing they would not be. Does anyone really know where the UN’s money goes nowadays?
A week or two ago, our educational TV station aired “Ninotchka”, the 1939 movie starring Greta Garbo. One relatively minor exchange stuck in my mind. When Ninotchka’s suitor offered her a drink, she said she wasn’t thirsty. When he offered her a meal, she said she had had sufficient calories for the day.
If I didn’t know better, I would have guessed that Ninotchka had been indoctrinated by having lived under Obamacare *and* the draconian conservation measures advocated by those who believe in AGW – but, no! She was a card-carrying Communist! You don’t suppose they could be one and the same, do you?
AMSU-A Ch 04 shows 28 November as being 0.41F cooler than same date last year or 0.23C cooler. So near surface temperatures are coming down. Maybe Dr Roy Spencer will have the November global anomaly out for the Cancun party of 15,000 participants to ponder. I suspect further cooling is in the pipeline. The fact that global temperatures have not gone up since late nineties, sea levels are falling and combined sea ice is steady with no warming of the oceans will not make any difference to these people.
I couldn’t disagree more with the statement, “The worst the Cancun conferees will have to deal with is the threat of being kidnapped by heavily armed gangs of drug dealers”. That’ll never happen. The worst the conferees will actually have to deal with is accidentally getting stung by a jellyfish or stepping on a sea urchin while snorkelling off of Cancun’s white sand beaches after one too many taxpayer financed Margaritas.
Jimbo says:
November 29, 2010 at 12:42 pm
“We can only hope and pray that the Earth enters a strong and long cooling period”
Awwww…C’mon Jimbo! We don’t need that kinda talk. Why can’t we ust drive the nail home AND have continued warming? The cold sucks, kills more people, for lots of reasons, and just isn’t much fun all the way around (except for skiiers, snowboarders, etc – keep it in the mountains!).
As for Carsten Arnholm’s comment that Hell has already frozen over I can corroborate that: my wife’s dad is from there and he was rather upset about the whole affair…his name would be Satan (He’s currently in Cancun under an alias). 🙂
Royal soc papers on 4C by 2060 warming downloadable here until tuesday evening:
http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/369/1934.toc
tallbloke says:
November 29, 2010 at 2:37 pm
“Royal soc papers on 4C by 2060 warming downloadable here until tuesday evening:”
Page 8, using a 2-3 Teraton cumulative emission scenario….blah…blah..
I.E. If we triple the emissions scenarios, I.E China’s recent trend continues..we are all going to burn. Most coal analyst’s expect Chinese coal consumption to peak NLT 2014.
Saladin says:
November 29, 2010 at 9:20 am
Funny how they refuse to talk about this:
The Environmental Impact Of War
—————————————————————–
Sal, warfare has immediate impacts upon the public’s health (i.e. getting blown up), which tend to necessarilly push the long term “environmental impacts” to a lesser tier of concern. Since there is already a laundry list of reasons to if possible avoid war one need not delve into the “environmental impacts”. Have you met someone that has suggested that war doesn’t cause pollution?
Please take a look at the insufferable prat that the UK has sent to Cancun:
This idiot, Chris Huhne, is our Government Minister in charge of Energy and Climate Change.
What hope do we have? Our Government can’t even keep up with the change in nomenclature.
Carsten Arnholm, Norway says:
November 29, 2010 at 12:43 pm
‘Make that 2 weeks before, Hell has already frozen over.’
Wonderful! LMAO.
The worst the Cancun conferees will have to deal with is the threat of being kidnapped by heavily armed gangs of drug dealers.
How much ransom could they get for Al Gore?
Well, he is good for laughs. I’d be willing to toss in 20 tons of CCX carbon offsets, provided those gathering the “bailout fund” will cover the transaction fees, of course.
Does Cancun have a coroner? They need one for the autopsy on the recently expired agenda, as I doubt it can be resuscitated.
That goes double for Gore’s Carbon Market cornering dreams. The financial crisis made sure there ain’t enough dough to bake a loaf of green bread.
Climate Craziness cools at Cancun!
Not according to this article:
Cancun Climate change Scientists call for rationing in developed world.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/8165769/Cancun-climate-change-summit-scientists-call-for-rationing-in-developed-world.html
Climate alarmism died during 2010 – killed off by cold brutal facts.
BUT
Here in Australia it goes on, triumphant-
-PM Gillard WILL have a carbon price in 2011 (she says)
-The new national education rules will include lessons on carbon in at least three different subjects and each will be show (wait for it) – Algorians inconvenient whatists.
– companies are being pressed to put voting on comanies carbon footprints to the vote
– an appeal has been made to the authorities to force reluctant boards of directors to put the above resolution to shareholders meetings
– and yet there is more and more and more.
While sceptics congratulate each other that AGW is dieing,
Adminstrators are quitely putting its restrictions into place.
It is time for action, not self congratualtion, else victory of “truth will out” will be snatched from the jaws of defeat.