Doha Conference: United States Must Pay for Climate Change “Loss and Damage”

Guest post by Steve Goreham

Originally published in The Washington Times

The United States must pay for its evil carbon-emitting ways. According to the United Nations Doha Climate Conference that ended on December 8, developing nations should be compensated for “associated loss and damage” from climate change by the wealthy nations. Developing nations will now pursue industrialized nations for compensation from sea level rise, extreme weather, and other events allegedly caused by past emissions of greenhouse gases. Since the US was the world’s leading emitter of greenhouse gases until 2007 when China assumed the lead, the US is the primary target of this conclusion.

At the 2010 Cancun Conference, delegates acknowledged that industrialized nations were responsible for global warming, stating “…the largest share of historical global emissions of greenhouse gases originated in developed countries…” The just concluded Doha Conference called for establishment of “institutional arrangements, such as an international mechanism” to “address loss and damage associated with the impacts of climate change in developing countries.” In other words, let’s form an international body to pursue money from nations responsible for historical global emissions of greenhouse gases, namely the US and other industrialized nations. Compensation could amount to hundreds of billions of dollars per year.

Why would US delegates agree to such a position? Unfortunately, our current administration accepts the doctrine of Climatism, the belief that man-made greenhouse gases are destroying Earth’s climate. As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in 2009, “We acknowledge—now with President Obama—that we have made mistakes in the United States, and we along with other developed countries have contributed most significantly to the problem we face with climate change.”

A major voice at the conference in favor of associated loss and damage was the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS). AOSIS consists of 43 members, including the Bahamas, Cuba, Fiji, Maldives, Mauritius, and the Seychelles. These countries are rightly concerned about the threat that rising sea levels pose to their homelands. AOSIS members seek to sue in the International Court of Justice for damages from US-made climate change.

But is the rise of the oceans man-made or natural? Geological data shows that sea levels have risen about 390 feet as Earth has warmed from the last ice age 20,000 years ago. No one can tell how much, if any, of the 7‒8 inch rise over the last hundred years is man-made. Nor is there any empirical evidence that sea level change will accelerate to 20 feet per century as predicted by some climate doomsayers.

Those concerned about the climate also claim that weather events such as Hurricane Sandy and Typhoon Bopha, that hit the Philippines last week, were strengthened by man-made warming. But empirical evidence shows that, on a global basis, neither the strength nor the frequency of hurricanes and tropical storms has increased over the last 35 years.

The theory of man-made global warming is increasingly suspect. The 1990 First Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted a rise in global surface temperatures of 0.3^oC per decade. The report provided a “high estimate,” a “best estimate,” and a “low estimate” for global temperature rise. But 22 years later, global temperatures sit far below the IPCC’s 1990 low estimate. Recent data from the University of East Anglia do not show statistically significant warming in global surface temperatures for the last sixteen years.

Nevertheless, with the full support of the US government, your tax dollars are now in play to compensate developing nations for sea level rise, typhoon damage, droughts and floods. It’s all part of this mad, mad, mad world.

Steve Goreham is Executive Director of the Climate Science Coalition of America and author of the new book The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism: Mankind and Climate Change Mania.