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
give thanx nothing happened at Cancun.
ceasley7 asked “Got Georgia Guidestones?”
Never heard of them. Now I have. It nicely complements the etched in stone theory of catastrophic CO2 warming.
richard verney said “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.”
You are thinking of the principle of statistically significant trends that the catastrophists insist on but violate themselves whenever it is convenient to do so. The answer to that it fairly simple, we need to frame and win the political battle. Ask the next ordinary people you meet if they think money should be sent to third world thugs to pretend to plant trees? Or ask them if they think that gas prices should double to theoretically save a polar bear in reality saving nothing. This is not rocket science or any other kind of science.
10 days to establish a wish list.
I am contemplating setting up a new organization which I trust the UN and all the left wing eco nuts in the world will contribute at least 10 percent of their annual gross income to help me get it off the ground.. The organization is the People for the Ethical Treatment of Plants. The proposals put forward at Cancun, if adopted and implemented, are going to result in a catastophic shortage of CO2 for the plants of this world. Just because these plants can’t speak and represent themselves does not mean that they don’t have rights. These rights should be respected and if this war against Co2 continues and massive carbon sequestration occurs, this is going tor result in plant genocide and human starvation of epic proportions. All those perpetrators of programs to restrict Co2 should be immediately brought before a war crime commission. We need to have the UN immediately organize a world conference to save Co2 for the sake of the plants. Those countries who are not contributing their fair share of Co2 to the atmosphere should contribute moneys to those countries who have the capability of producing more Co2. In the event a country which has a Co2 deficit fails to pay for their Co2 deficit, those countries who do produce Co2 can set that amount off against the UN’s proposed carbon tax. My quick calculations show that this would result in a net transfer of $0.00 dollars from any single country to any other country. I was hoping that fluffy the teleprompter guy would lead the charge to transform People for the Ethical Treatment of Plants into a world wide organization. But when I see that he has to call in Daddy Clinton to help him with his press conferences I’m not so sure anymore.
Cancun was never about climate change so no surprise. If you had tried to persuade Lenin that communism might not be a good idea, he might say that you are missing the point – communism isn’t about communism. Climate isn’t about climate.
Jeff said (December 11, 2010 at 1:18 pm)
Something the kid from Pennsylvania said struck me: “The young people in schools have caught it from the teachers.” The leftist propaganda in the schools has taken hold.
Jeff, did you notice, that one of the Cancun proclamations called for creating citizens more aware of climate through appropriate education? Apparently it already functions this way…
BBC take on Cancun, is this the turning point.
http://s446.photobucket.com/albums/qq187/bobclive/?action=view¤t=cancumbbc2.mp4
The global warming party line mantra continues unchanged and is picked up across the country and published by newspapers, and news websites…this corespondent has apparently not gotten the Climategate memo yet.
http://www.waff.com/Global/story.asp?S=13656706
Analysis: On climate, the elephant that’s ignored
Posted: Dec 11, 2010 11:25 AM Updated: Dec 12, 2010 6:05 AM
By CHARLES J. HANLEY
AP Special Correspondent
CANCUN, Mexico (AP) – “The latest international deal on climate, reached early Saturday after hard days of bargaining, was described by exhausted delegates as a ‘step forward’ in grappling with global warming.”
If they step too far, however, they’re going to bump into an elephant in the room.
That would be the U.S. Republican Party.
richard verney, the money wouldn’t be available any more to give it back to you and me. It has been spent. And who would forge a fallback system? Those politicans who knowingly introduce the nonsense laws to make it possible they can be made accountable? Dream on.
CO2 is not a pollutant. When we clear the air of CO2, we will have a planet devoid of carbon lifeforms. like those with their heads in the sand in the icy beach.
Stalin had his ‘useful idiots’ and the people interviewed in the video are the environmentalist equivalent.
Their repetition of the same slogans and the obvious fact that none of them were in any way qualified is disturbing.
This drama is not about climate. like the girl said, it is about social justice. Her brain doesn’t know we have had famines and floods before we had tv news.
There is no way 10 trillion dollars in taxes could change the climate.
“Cancun will be a very low-key affair. The attendees going there expect to achieve exactly nothing. I’ll repeat that; exactly nothing. ”
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2010/12/03/cancun-and-the-chinese-perspective-on-it/
Apart from a vague end of conference fig leaf, nothing.
Pointman
That’s not a $100 billion dollar fund, it’s a $100 billion dollar per year fund.
The UN had caimed that we could provide education, food and clean drinking water to every person on earth for less than this price.
I’m sure all those who watch their children die of diesease and hunger will be consoled that we chose instead to reduce Carbon Dioxide.
Foretelling the future from the entrails of a computer we know that we’ll reduce the year’s temperature increase from 0.012 degrees Centigrade to 0.01128 degree Centigrade. But I still find it hard to comprehend that there’s anyone who prioritises that change above saving millions of children from agonising early death, and i cannot agree with them.
The UK parliament passed a Climate Change Act a couple of years ago. Parliament was almost unanimous with ony 2 or 3 MPs dissenting. This Act commits the government to reducing carbon emissions by 34% by 2020. £18 billion per year is being spent to achieve this. In order to achieve this we have decimated our defence capability (including building an aircraft carrier which will sold off on completion because we cannot afford the aircraft). Savage cuts are to be made across the board.
So beware of complacency you other countries – yes it appears that some governments are indeed prepared to ruin their country in the name of the carbon godess if the UK is anything to go by. Still the prime minister is happy to trumpet that this is one area where Britain leads the world! It certainly did last week, the coldest on record and our wind energy output got to 0.2% of demand.
harrywr2 says:
December 11, 2010 at 12:40 pm
“Steam Coal on Global markets is now at the $120/tonne range which yields a fuel cost of $50-$60/MW for coal.”
Not only are you exaggerating the price paid by electricity producers for coal, $120/tonne would anyway only equate to $20-$30/MWhe.
Next stop GUYANA and drink the beverage of oblivion…
Oh! The naïveté!
They commit 100 billion dollars that we don’t have for a crisis that does not exist.
That sounds like a crime.
The “commitment” of $100 billion is a joke. A treaty containing it would never, ever pass the U.S. Senate, and funding for the U.S. portion won’t either (and definitely won’t pass the U.S. House from next year). The fact is we are just about broke and simply don’t have this money to give to other countries even if it were a good idea, which it’s not since 90% of it would be lost to corruption and graft. This part of the “agreement” will never happen.
The excellent Maggie’s Farm links to several WUWT articles.
Gentlemen
Regards my December 11, 2010 at 8:26 pm post. I accidently provided the wrong post to current U.S. coal prices the correct site is:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/coal/page/coalnews/coalmar.html
I do apologize.
Regards, Kforestcat.
Kforestcat says:
December 11, 2010 at 8:26 pm
“Perhaps, you are looking at the delivered export price of high grade coals used in steel production?”
No, I am looking at 5500kcal steam coal. Coking coal(used to make steel) is well over $200/tonne on global markets.
Global markets and US markets are completely different.
Coal is expensive to transport you might want to look at the delivered price of coal by state to get a feel for how expensive coal is to transport.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/coal/page/acr/table34.html
What’s economic to do in the US is completely different then what is economic to do in the rest of the world.
I.E. The Saudi’s burn oil to generate electricity. If we look at Saudi extraction costs oil is cost competitive with coal and natural gas as a way to generate electricity. Unfortunately, the rest of the world pays significantly more then ‘Saudi extraction cost’ price.
The same goes for coal, the US is the Saudi Arabia of coal. By the time you put $15/ton powder river basin coal on a train for 1,000 miles to the nearest boat then float it half way around the world the price is nowhere near $15/ton.
South Africa is one of the world leading steam coal exporters. Their current energy plan for the next 15 years is to add 10GW of coal and 10GW of nuclear. Presumably the nuclear will be baseload and the coal will be ‘peaker’ units.
China’s got $500 billion in it’s nuclear build budget. It’s going to take them 20 years to spend it simply based on how long it’ll take to ‘ramp up’ the necessary industrial infrastructure.
Japan is bumping it’s nuclear capacity to 40% of total by 2020 and South Korea is bumping it’s nuclear capacity to 48% of it’s total by 2024. Fossil fuels will be relegated to ‘peak load’.
5500kcal steam coal was $27/tonne ‘on the boat’ in the Chinese port of Qinhuangdao in 2002. It bumped up past $120/tonne on November 28th,2010.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-11-28/china-s-coal-prices-rise-to-two-year-high-on-winter.html
No one expects the price of steam coal to drop because India, the worlds 4th largest coal producer is expected to have a domestic shortfall of 200 Million Tonnes by 2015.
In ‘coking coal’ news Taiwan just agreed a $225/tonne contract price, FOB Australia. http://www.platts.com/RSSFeedDetailedNews/RSSFeed/Metals/8272690
The good folks with banks in Switzerland will be happy with this result
Funds pumped into the Third World have a depressing habit of turning up in numbered accounts in Zurich and Geneva. If anyone tries to stop the process, they are branded as racists, colonialists, capitalist pigs or enemies of the environment.