Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I haven’t yet found a copy of whatever agreement they signed at Durban. But thanks to Kumi Naidoo, the radical head of Greenpeace International, I know that there’s nothing to worry about. He’s done the analysis for me.
Figure 1. Kumi Naidoo, Greenpeace International Executive Director PHOTO SOURCE NYT
DURBAN, South-Africa, December 11, 2011/African Press Organization (APO)/ [emphasis mine] — On the closing of the latest round of UN climate talks in Durban Greenpeace today declared that it was clear that our Governments this past two weeks listened to the carbon-intensive polluting corporations instead of listening to the people who want an end to our dependence on fossil fuels and real and immediate action on climate change.
“The grim news is that the blockers lead by the US have succeeded in inserting a vital get-out clause that could easily prevent the next big climate deal being legally binding. If that loophole is exploited it could be a disaster. And the deal is due to be implemented ‘from 2020′ leaving almost no room for increasing the depth of carbon cuts in this decade when scientists say we need emissions to peak,”
said Kumi Naidoo, Greenpeace International Executive Director.
“Right now the global climate regime amounts to nothing more than a voluntary deal that’s put off for a decade. This could take us over the two degree threshold where we pass from danger to potential catastrophe.”
A “voluntary deal that’s put off for a decade” that contains a “vital get-out clause”… as a compromise that works for me. The real threat now is the “Green Carbon Fund”.
I am curious, though, about the location and nature of the “vital get-out clause”, I want to know how that part works for when we need it … reader’s contributions invited. Anyone have a copy of the actual agreement? I heard it was 100 pages long at one point …
Overcast morning here … what a crazy world. It’s Sunday, I’m gonna watch football and hope the sun comes out.
w.
UPDATE: What I think is the final copy of the document is available here.
UPDATE II: How foolish of me not to realize that in the UN system, something only 55 pages long can only be a draft agreement. The actual agreement is 138 pages long, and is here (h/t Fred Berple). It requires developed countries to
Reduce global greenhouse gas emissions more than 100 per cent by 2040,
Truly, you couldn’t make up useful idiots like the Durban delegates if you tried. Me, I’m shooting for a 137% reduction in global innumeracy …
UPDATE III: Once again, fooled by the UN. That was not the final, final, really final document. What I find for the really final one is here. They’ve removed the requirement to reduce emissions by more than 100%.
I throw this in as an entirely humerous input !
http://www.grumpyoldsod.com/global%20warming%20bollox%2013.asp
I would have posted on the BBC , but just for a change , comments are closed.
The next ten years will likely be critical to the AGW movement. If they can force large cuts in carbon dioxide emissions and the World does not warm, they will be in a position to say: see we saved you.
If, however, they get no significant carbon cuts and the World does not warm, then their credibility will be shot.
Of course, if the World does warm significantly in the next ten years, with or without emissions cuts, then …
“The Durban Platform for Enhanced Action” is being mentioned.
Looks like maybe one group has a budget for a year to play with ideas.
http://unfccc.int/files/meetings/durban_nov_2011/decisions/application/pdf/cop17_durbanplatform.pdf
i heard a neologism come out of durban – ‘expectation gap’
(if not a neologism, for sure it’s a euphemism for fail)
A Canadian Perspective.
Why sign a deal if there is no up side for the signer? I don’t know yet what was in the “deal” (a deal presumes a give and take) and I don’t know if Canada’s envoy actually signed anything. I don’t know if an agreement was tabled and a simple majority at the UN ratified it. I just don’t know.
What I do know so far is that Kyoto is dead and there are no obligations extending it from the chatter at Durban. Yes, yes,the AGW alarmists say there was a deal but I don’t see anything that represents a deal to me. You must understand that the UN HAD to have something to say after no agreement was made… even if it was an agreement to talk, which is more or less what happened at Durban from what I can gather.
So… a big fat yawn.
What is mistaken as life in the corpse of the AGW advocates is actually the maggots and vermin animating the putrefaction so as to simulate a kind of life.
Here is a video of UN delegates feasting on the whats left of the global warming scam.:
At 3:30, you can see the animated carcass moving, just like the UN moved at Durban.
“I’m still real real curious, though … where is this stinkin’ agreement to be found? What did they agree to?”
Why should they show it to you. You’d only try to find something wrong with it.
Hugh Pepper says:
December 11, 2011 at 12:03 pm
Thanks, Hugh. It depends on the deal, not on either Orwell or logic. A bad deal with a get-out clause is a good deal.
Because it’s a bad deal.
The US, the poor of the world, right-thinking people everywhere, and even you. Everyone benefits except those making money off the carbon scam … which includes far too many of the Durban delegates and attendees.
I have considered the risks quite deeply. Suppose we get 2°C of temperature rise over the next 100 years. The latest “BEST” temperature figures (if you believe them) say we’ve seen that same rise, 2°C, over the last 200 years.
Until you can show me the “enormous risk” in the 2°C rise in the last 200 years, I fear you can’t convince me of the “enormous risk” of your claim that it will rise another 2°C in the future.
Finally, what action are you proposing to “alleviate the risks”? Nothing that anyone has proposed to date will have the slightest effect on the risks. Kyoto has proven that quite clearly.
So yes, in answer to your question, it is always wise to stall futile, meaningless, expensive actions which can do nothing alleviate the risks, even if those risks were real.
The idea that an energy tax, a hugely regressive tax which hits the poor the hardest, should be imposed in order to line the pockets of wealthy third world despots and scam artists is so bizarre that one wonders about the sanity of the folks espousing it …
w.
Those poor buggers have to organize themselves another junket. I’m sure glad it’s them and not me, must be tough.
Kumi Naidoo was once a communist activist for the ANC in South Africa. He is a watermelon.
The paint is peeling on my old Honda…
and I’m sure it’s caused from global warming climate changing acid rain.!!
“Damn the Western World !!” ,
“They surely owe me a new paint job.!!”
Am I covered under the new Durban Agreement ?
Look, I am just about fed up with this sort of talk because it is absolutely untrue. It would not in any way, shape, or form be a “catastrophe”. This guy has no understanding of the CO2 scrubbing capacity of the atmosphere. He probably has never heard of the Azolla event where Earth’s atmosphere went from ~3500ppm to ~650ppm in about 600k years and it was all apparently by the action of a single plant.
The absolute root of all of this is the nonsensical belief that climate is naturally stable. It is not, has never been, and over the past few million years has been the most unstable it has ever been in the history of the planet that we know of so far. Pleistocene was a period of the most unstable climate in the planet’s history with absolutely wild changes in climate over very short periods of time.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/65_Myr_Climate_Change.png
There will be no “climate catastrophe”. The Earth can very easily tolerate a doubling of CO2 from today’s levels due to the current configuration of the continents and ocean circulation patterns. There were three things that prevented the Earth from cooling much until rather recently in geological history:
1. Drakes Passage being closed preventing a circular current in the Southern Ocean.
2. No deep connection between the Arctic Sea and either Atlantic or Pacific.
3. No isthmus of Panama blocking an equatorial exchange of water from Atlantic and Pacific.
Through most of its history, Earth has been much warmer than it is now. During the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) we saw an absolute skyrocketing of atmospheric carbon and an immediate spike up in temperatures. During this period, mammals exploded and began to spread across the continents and primates begin to thrive. Within about 120K years, atmospheric carbon (and temperatures) were back to their pre-event levels. Earth responds very well to increases in carbon in the atmosphere and scrubs it out pretty quickly. That is because it is a NUTRIENT and not a poison.
This “movement” is based on several fallacies:
1. Climate is naturally stable. It is not. It varies dramatically on very short timescales.
2. Humans are having a large impact on the global climate system. We are not. We ARE changing the local climate in many locations due to deforestation, agriculture, damming of rivers, irrigation, etc. but there is to date no idea that people are making any overall change to the global climate system. Any such change would be reflected in ocean temperature changes in the abyssal deep as that is our long-term average thermometer. And we can’t start measuring today and get any idea of where we are relative to the past, either, because we would have no recent high-resolution context in which to place those measurements.
I see absolutely no evidence that we are having any accelerating increase in temperatures. Temperatures have been rising at about the same rate for the past 150 years as we have recovered from the Little Ice Age which was the coldest period in the Holocene since the Younger Dryas. Anyone wanting to claim climate stability should explain that to the farmers who lost everything in Greenland during the LIA.
They claim rising temperatures will cause drought and desert expansion when we know that is not true. When the temperature of the Earth increases, the Intertropical Convergence Zone migrates Northward in response. This brings rains to places like the Sahara and the Levant and increases the duration of the monsoon in places like India. Temperatures started cooling about 5000 years ago and the ITCZ moved South. In response, places like Jordon became desert. The level of the Dead Sea dropped nearly 50 meters.
This issue is about money and about how smaller third-world despots can charge larger countries rent for the atmosphere.
This is about instilling fear of climate change in people and using that as justification to extract billions of dollar for paying themselves and engaging in their world socialist “redistribution of wealth”.
At first it was “global warming” then it was “climate change” then it was “climate disruption” but now it is “climate justice”. It is as if they believe that if they just shovel money to poor countries and inhibit economic activity in rich ones,
The test of this would be to see if they would adopt the following:
Rich countries will send some cash to poor countries.
Rich countries must reduce their CO2 emission rate.
Poor countries must maintain their CO2 emission rate at current levels with no increase.
They will never accept that third provision. They will say that it is impossible to grow their economy without increasing CO2 emissions because it takes some unit increase in energy consumption to raise economic output. By the same token, when you enforce a CO2 reduction on the “rich” countries, you are enforcing economic downturn.
This is a total and complete farce. It is theft. It is a sham. It is a lie.
How much would WWF make if they didn’t have this issue? Would Tyndall Centre at UEA exist without this issue? Would the IPCC and the UNFCCC exist without this issue? This issue lines the pockets of thousands of people through careers built on “fighting” an issue that is created out of thin air.
I believe I know why they want to wait until 2020 for Kyoto2. That is because by then it is likely that we will see even further divergence from and a complete discrediting of the IPCCs AR4, the GISS and CRU climate model projections, and the sea level rise scare. By 2020, I am fairly well certain, we will see such a wide divergence between the observations and those projections as to completely discredit them once and for all.
And Kumi KNOWS it! And this is why he is desperate to get agreements made now that can not be backed out of when the truth becomes obvious. 10 years from now this issue is going to be either a laughing stock or the largest international criminal tribunal in history to rival Nuremberg. The amount of money these people have stolen makes it the largest heist in the history of the world.
Curiousgeorge says:
December 11, 2011 at 12:10 pm
“Would you buy a used car from this man?”
No, I wouldn’t. I would, however, expect that he’d like for me to pay him for it, whether I bought it or not.
Willis, the disagreers agrred to extend their disagreement to 2015, during which time they hope to find solid ground upon which they wouldbe able to xtend their disagreement till 2020, by which time, all those government and UN climate-change delegates getting 6-figure salaries would reach their pensionable age and thus save their personal planet from change in climate-chane politics. And the devil takes the hindmost
Willis Eschenbach says:
December 11, 2011 at 1:09 pm
The idea that an energy tax, a hugely regressive tax which hits the poor the hardest, should be imposed in order to line the pockets of wealthy third world despots and scam artists is so bizarre that one wonders about the sanity of the folks espousing it …
=======================================================
amen…………..
It’s not all that unusual for Al Jazeera to have the most unbiased take on news nowadays. The official US line about AJ has always been false.
The Arab world has its own biases, but it’s generally free from our particular censorships and orthodoxies.
How is one supposed to find out whar deal was made when the BBC prints reactions only from:
* Christiana Figueres, UN Framework Convention on Climate Change executive secretary
* Connie Hedegaard, EU climate commissioner
* Chris Huhne, UK energy and climate secretary
* Tosi Mpanu-Mpanu, head of the Africa group
* US climate envoy Todd Stern
* Kumi Naidoo, Greenpeace International
* Celine Charveriat, Oxfam
* Mohamed Adow, Christian Aid
* Sarah-Jayne Clifton, Friends of the Earth International
* Alden Meyer, Union of Concerned Scientists
No bias there, then. Bah!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16129762
Not sure if this is off topic but….
In my vision of enforcing this new agreement, the saying “Hell freezes over” comes to mind…
Question….
Now when Hell freezes over…
Does that lower the sea level ?
Maybe Anthony should apply to the Gillard government in Australia for the latest job I saw in the paper on the weekend. Climate advisor, $90 to $120K + $25K expenses. The advise he could give would be worth all that and more.
Greenpeace and the other big green NGO’s are not friends to humanity or the environment. They are in it for themselves.
Kumi and pals will demonstrate this more clearly as their plans to exploit AGW continue to fail.
I added a link to the text above. It’s 55 pages. They’ve decided to have some workshops. Here’s how they put it:
Could someone please put these people out of their misery? What on earth are these fools agreeing to? No one knows, that statement is so vague as to be meaningless.
w.
I hear, yet again, the clarion call for a new world order: absolute authority in any sphere. History’s lessons notwithstanding, when one social paradigm is waning, when climate change goes the way of the Worker’s Party, another social imperative arises, similar in concept: increase the apparent size of democratic guilt, and, by the way, giving. And to what end? Change the leadership of The Elite; just replacing the head on the statue in the town park, with another. The social change device is always in evolution, the objective is the same. “We are marching on to Pretoria.”
An entirely premature analysis, Willis!
If Greenpeace, the WWF, the IPCC, the UN plus throw the CRU Team in there as well as a possibility, the “Final Draft Agreement” is still being drafted long after all the major participants have agreed to the “Final Draft” and gone home.
Like the IPCC Assessment Reports, the Durban Final Draft Agreement might come as a surprise to most participants who thought they had agreed to something a whole lot different.
This is Global Warming and Climate Change politics after all so the spin and smoke and mirrors and stench are all deeply ingrained!
I just checked the Eureka weather and it’s -38C in the “melting Arctic”. I hope the Durban agreement doesn’t cause it to cool further. Now I’m waiting for our Greenie Canadian Member of Parliament (accredited to Papua/New Guinea in an act of treason) to paddle her dugout canoe back to Canada from South Africa – I hope she doesn’t make it in time for the next election.
Willis Eschenbach says:
December 11, 2011 at 1:41 pm
The Conference of Parties …
I first read that as “The Conference of Pirates …”.
Same thing really.
Why is there no discussion from these “earth savers” just how we are supposed to end our “dependence on fossil fuels.”? Fossil fuels, not only are used for fuel, but as a base or key ingredient in untold thousands of products. Just about everything you touch has a fossil fuel connection and they are going to END all this??? It’s beyond insanity.