From Politico:
Negotiators from about 190 countries reached a modest set of agreements early Saturday in Cancun on how to tackle global warming but punted some of the most controversial questions for a later date.
A year after U.N.-led talks all but collapsed in Copenhagen, delegates from countries large and small signed off on a package of low-hanging fruit that includes establishing a program to keep tropical rainforests standing, sharing low-carbon energy technologies and preparing a $100 billion fund to help the world’s most vulnerable cope with a changing climate.
“What we have now is a text that, while not perfect, is certainly a good basis for moving forward,” Todd Stern, the top U.S. climate official, said during the all-night bargaining session that culminated in approval of what’s known as the Cancun Agreement.Stern’s reluctant endorsement was echoed over and over into the early morning hours as diplomats scarred by the chaos in Copenhagen accepted a deal that fails to ratchet down greenhouse gas emissions anywhere close to scientific recommendations.
It also fails to establish a firm date for negotiators to reach a conclusion on a new climate treaty.
Diplomats struggled over the last two weeks at the Mexican resort town on some of those key questions and had essentially reached a standoff, forcing them to pick around the edges at ideas like technology, trees and adaptation, all of which could garner sufficient consensus.
The Cancun Agreement, for example, puts off until next year’s meeting in Durban, South Africa, or 2012, the debate over whether to extend the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. Russia, Canada and Japan insisted throughout the Cancun negotiations that they wouldn’t agree to a new set of commitments under Kyoto until the world’s three biggest polluters – China, India and the United States – accepted a role in the mandatory system too.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1210/46269.html#ixzz17psQflAU
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Jeff says:
December 11, 2010 at 1:18 pm
Hmm, that kid may be my daughter’s classmate! She’s having final exams this week, what’s he doing in Cancun? (Besides putting his head in the sand.)
The “postcard” version of the Heads in Sand is at
http://sierraclub.typepad.com/ssc/2010/12/humor-is-kind-if-not-a-bit-twisted.html
in particular
http://sierraclub.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451b96069e20147e061708a970b-800wi
Hug a polar bear TV. These people are so gullible they would voluntarily hug a wild meat eater, alright thats good, can we film it and profit from their idiocy?Shades of the Grizzly Man who got et with his girlfriend a few years ago, except he forgot to point the camera in the right direction. If human population is the real concern behind these UN farces then they could act upon their beliefs and remove themselves, thus solving their problems, we would consider their fine example and act accordingly.
Do I sense a drift back to environmental issues and away from climate ones going on? Which would be a good thing. I’d happily pay to have a cleaner more ecologically friendly world. I just don’t want to spend billions on carbon crapology.
Terry says:
December 11, 2010 at 2:50 pm
“They should have left their heads in there.”
They probably have, they were there all the time.
@Ric Werme says:
December 11, 2010 at 2:59 pm
“Hmm, that kid may be my daughter’s classmate! She’s having final exams this week, what’s he doing in Cancun? (Besides putting his head in the sand.)”
—————————————-
Ric,
I actually think you should thank (the Mayan?) gods that your daughter is safely some distance away…but since your daughter obviously has a dad like the one my daughters have – you probably needn’t worry. My 19 yr old in university and my 17 year old in high school brook no fools when it comes to boyfriends or teachers and AGW – am immensely proud of that (if not a little worried sometimes about the effect on their marks)
Is it likely that the USA will pay its share of the 100 billion? Can the president decide this matter on his own? Does Congress have to approve the expenditure? Would someone please explain?
Re the SC video…not much knowledge of politics (or perhaps geography) on the part of the Sierra Clubs boy wunderkind….
@7:15:
“…In the United States, we are the only western industrialized nation whose right wing party does not adhere to climate science…”
We, the lovers of the Great White North (and the White Sands of Cancun) doth protest!
“It sets irresponsible targets, doesn’t lay out any measure of achieving them other than … by shutting down sections of the Canadian economy and throwing hundreds of thousands and possibly millions of people out of worPk,” Harper said. “Of course, we will never support such legislation.” Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada and leader of the Conservative (ie right wing – at least by most definitions) supporting Canadian Conservative Senators that voted down Bill C311 on November 16, which was set to hamstring the entire Canadian economy based on so-called climate science.
http://www.cbc.ca/politics/story/2010/11/17/senate-climate-bill.html
Perhaps this brainiac might have asked why there was a Canadian flag on one of his fellow ostriches?
Why can’t the stupid simpletons speak without saying “you know”?
What is it that I know?
If I already know, why are you telling me?
Theo Goodwin says:
December 11, 2010 at 4:03 pm
“Is it likely that the USA will pay its share of the 100 billion? Can the president decide this matter on his own? ”
The State Department had a ‘discretionary’ budget of $48 billion in 2009. Congress decides how big the ‘discretionary’ budget should be and they’ve already written to Mrs Clinton(Head of the State Department) and informed her if she wanted to have any budget at all next year she should avoid writing checks to the UN for climate change.
The “Green Fund” establishes more than a consensual UN right or power of taxation upon western democracies, it also creates an “Express Lane” to the world’s first unemployment benefits scheme, which, may or may not include a few African dictators and their administrations. Topping up their Swiss bank accounts never became so easy.
You have gotta love this type of ‘Collective’ approach for the collection and distribution of other peoples money regardless of beneficiary regime status and governance.
Global Warming morphed to Climate Change and has now been reduced to its bare roots of reparational theology as espoused by the brainwahed ramblings of young trust funders who serve as useful idiots for leftist professors trying to prove that they now know how to make socialism work where all others have failed.
Cancun seems to have cornered the market on the irrational and uninfomed.
All reports focus on the adamant statements by Japan, Russia and Canada that they will not accept any extension to Kyoto obligations imposed on Annex 1 countries. Under the radar, Australia’s Climate Minister Combet is saying exactly the same – no second commitment unless USA China and India are similarly bound.
The countries with existing Emission Trading Schemes – Europe and New Zealand – are being rather more equivocal. Europe has nothing to lose because it is still sitting on many ‘hot air’ credits from the soviet bloc industrial collapses of 1990-2.
Pity they didn’t complete the scene by filling in the sand around their heads. I guess they believe in the cause,.. but not THAT much.
This is from a wikileak cable guys, dated 02-17-10 USG embassy Paris
(C) Borloo(French) argued(to the Americans) that the key to implementing the “equilibrium”
revealed at Copenhagen was an arrangement that would be voluntary but
also automatic in implementation and would include tradable emissions
quotas (with linked carbon markets), a forestry mechanism (REDD
Plus), and financing, including innovative financing and a fast start
mechanism. He commented that China would agree to such a system as
far preferable to a U.S. and EU carbon border tax or tariff
arrangement.
I wouldn’t underestimate these one world Luciferians if I were you. They are going to try to use this Copenhagen Accord to backdoor World Government and their abominable carbon trading scheme. The Wall Street banks have to much invested in this and that is where the true power lies. They don’t care about the science, they never have, it’s all about power, money, and domination. Got Georgia Guidestones?
Give the 3rd world energy and wealth, then they won’t have to live in flood plains and breed so much! The reason they populate so much, is because in the past natural disasters used to kill them all the time, since most of the 3rd world lives in volatile areas of the planet or near volcanoes, but these are also the most productive areas of the world.
Well it’s being reported in Australia as a complete success, and “Kyoto” has been retained. We’ll see what cooling the next year brings.
It is quite moving the sheer naiveté of those youngsters, growing a beard to look like grown up “real” scientists (Gavin, Mann?), and reciting the Old Green Litany. But the older f*r*ts, especially the guy from the Sierra Club, well… it is a disgrace. Worried about an imaginary risk and completely ignoring real dangers and problems as the advance of narco countries and the increase in drug addiction in all countries in the world. Not to mention people starving to death, diarrhea, malaria, tuberculosis, all kind of parasitosis, thirsty children without hope of any amelioration in their life conditions.
These people should spend the next 30 years in a reeducation gulag.
Brad et al;
About those “poor countries”, here’s a dramatic 4-min. illustration of what the last 200 yrs have done to them, and what the Greenies want to reverse:
Note, however, his leftist “aid” and “green technology” plugs, notwithstanding that they have demonstrably had nothing to do with the improvements. The actual lesson is: maximize exploitation of carbon resources, and you will get wealthy and healthy.
“Russia, Canada and Japan insisted throughout the Cancun negotiations that they wouldn’t agree to a new set of commitments under Kyoto until the world’s three biggest polluters – China, India and the United States – accepted a role in the mandatory system too.”
=============================
Russia??? Russia????? Hahahahaha.
Calling the United States one of the “world’s three biggest polluters”….WTF?
The most polluted sites on the planet are in China, India, and Russia…..not in the USA.
Oh….I see….they are talking about CO2 as a “pollutant.”
Idiots! But hey, our own idiotic EPA has led the charge on that one.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
The trouble is that we will need many many years of stable or cooling temperatures before there will be mainstream acceptance that the AGW theory is wrong. By the time the results are in, much money will have been wasted and heaven knows what stupid political treaties will have been forged. It is all very depressing.
There should be some system in place which, when the AGW scam is finally proved to be false, would entitle ordinanry people to recoup green taxes and other subsidies which they have been forced to pay from all those engaged in pursuing the AGW agenda (activists, politicians, media groups, sponsors etc).
Fortunately, we are, at least at this blog, I would judge to be at least in the three digit I.Q. category. Furthermore, the crowd observing their lovely gathering was impressively void.
How about the green speaking on green. Old enough to be vocally inept.
Blind and thoughtless are these sheep. So remarkably sad it defies the reason of a clear mind.
God help them recover from such youthful vigorous ignorance.
The folks would be well served to check out this site, might save them some heartache and some sand mites.
Dear Harrywr2
Per your December 11, 2010 at 12:40 pm comment. Where you say:
“Steam Coal on Global markets is now at the $120/tonne range which yields a fuel cost of $50-$60/MW for coal. Coal is no longer cost competitive with Nuclear or Hydro.” ”
Regards your view that coal is not economically competitive with nuclear or hydro. Meeting electrical power demand is bit more complex than simply building the lowest cost power source. Had you said that nuclear and hydro units will generally dispatch ahead of coal units, you would have be correct. Unfortunately, U.S. Nuclear plants are not designed to operate with varied load (i.e. their power output is fixed). Hence, nuclear plants are strictly “base load” units. In sharp contrast to nuclear plants, coal units can vary electrical production with load. Because utility loads vary considerably throughout the day; having a mix of coal, gas, and nuclear units is essential to ensuring the delivery of reliable and cost competitive power.
Regards, hydro versus coal. Usable hydro resources are quite limited in terms of available capacity. Even in regions with abundant hydro capacity, intermediate and base load coals or gas units are constructed to “back up” hydro units — particularly in regions prone to occasional drought.
Regard your quoted “$120/tonne” coal price, I strongly suspect you’re looking at price quotes for very high quality steel/coke grade coal. Power plants burn much lower grade/cost coals. For example, in the south-eastern United States, medium grade (11,800 Btu/lb) Illinois Basin (ILB) coal can be obtained for a delivered price of about $45-$48/short ton (U.S. dollars). Lower grade (8,800 Btu/lb) Powder River Basin can be obtained for $13-15/short ton. Even high quality (12,500 Btu/lb) Central Appalachian (CAP) coal sells for roughly $71-75/short ton. For an accurate current prices of U.S. coal see: http://www.eia.gov/cneaf/coal/page/uscoal.pdf
(Note: for our non-U.S. readers 1 metric ton = 1.10231 short tons — so you may need to increase the prices above by 10%)
Perhaps, you are looking at the delivered export price of high grade coals used in steel production?
Kindest Regards, Kforestcat.
P.S. Contrary to common belief very little “mountain top” CAP coals is burned to produce electrical power. This high grade CAP coal is generally too costly to burn in U.S. plants power plants. Most CAP coal is used for steel production and a good deal is exported for that purpose.