By Tom Harris and Madhav Khandekar
Originally published in The Washington Times Tuesday, December 3, 2013
Bad science puts rich nations on the hook for trillions in climate liabilities
Delegates at the recent U.N. climate conference in Warsaw decided that $1 billion a day, the amount currently being spent across the world on “climate finance”, is not enough. Far greater funding is needed to save the world from what U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon calls the “greatest threat facing humanity.” That climate science is highly immature and global warming actually stopped 17 years ago was never mentioned.
Here’s what our representatives just agreed to:
Starting in 2014, the U.N.’s Green Climate Fund, a plan to divert an additional $100 billion per year from the treasuries of developed countries to those of developing nations to help them “take action on climate change,” will commence operation. The heads of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are scheduled to take part in a launch ceremony for the GCF headquarters in South Korea on Wednesday.
A timetable was accepted to pave the way toward the establishment of a new international treaty in 2015 that will force developed countries to spend untold billions more to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions. The fine print in the negotiating text includes an escape clause for developing nations, indicating that carbon-dioxide emission targets their governments agree to will not be enforced. Developed nations do not have this escape clause.
The rules governing how developing countries will be financially rewarded, at our cost, for reducing deforestation were also established.
However, this is only the tip of the financial iceberg we will soon face. Last-minute concessions by our representatives have set us up for a potential liability of trillions of dollars. They agreed to the establishment of a new U.N. legal framework: the “Warsaw international mechanism for loss and damage associated with climate change impacts.”
In so doing, the door has been opened to requiring that we compensate developing countries for the impact of extreme weather events that are supposedly our fault. No one knows to what extent the charges against us will be retroactive, but for the first time ever, the costs of extreme weather events all over the world are about to be added to our bill.
This happened because developed countries did not challenge the scientifically flawed notion that anthropogenic climate change is thought to be responsible for extreme weather events. Consequently, Mr. Ban faced no opposition from delegates when he unjustifiably blamed the recent typhoon in the Philippines on man-made global warming.
Rather than accepting such mistakes, here are the sorts of things our representatives to U.N. climate conferences must bring up.
Extreme weather has always been an integral part of the Earth’s climate system. It is not within human control, and there has been no worldwide increase in such phenomena.
The U.N.’s own science body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), stated in their March 28, 2012 Special Report on Extremes: “There is medium evidence and high agreement that long-term trends in normalized losses have not been attributed to natural or anthropogenic climate change.” In their September 2013 assessment report, the IPCC had only “low confidence” that damaging increases will occur in tropical cyclones (typhoons and hurricanes) owing to global warming.
The Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change agreed, asserting in its September report: “In no case has a convincing relationship been established between warming over the past 100 years and increases in any of these extreme events.”
U.N. delegates also must ask critical questions of their leaders. For instance, extreme weather events occurred with about the same frequency during the 1945 to 1977 global-cooling period as they do today, yet no climate scientist pointed to human activity as being responsible in the earlier period. What is different now?
Why has the secretary-general not answered the 134 skeptical climate experts who told him in their Nov. 24, 2012, open letter: “Current scientific knowledge does not substantiate your assertions . Global warming that has not occurred cannot have caused the extreme weather of the past few years.”
To maintain political pressure for the new climate accord, there will be additional U.N. negotiations this coming spring, summer and autumn, the latter hosted by the secretary-general himself. Our negotiators must introduce the findings of real science at these meetings. Otherwise, we will soon be responsible for trillions of dollars in compensation for natural phenomena that impact rich and poor nations alike.
The right response is to help vulnerable people adapt to extreme weather events, to the degree we can afford. The idea that we cause them and can prevent them from occurring is science fiction.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Tom Harris is executive director of the International Climate Science Coalition. Madhav Khandekar, a former research scientist with Environment Canada, was an expert reviewer for the U.N.’s IPCC 2007 climate-change documents and contributed to the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change.
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“So, todays watermelons emanate from the UN, not the other way around. The Green movement was designed from the start as an enabler for the NWO.
The UN was conceived by the CFR, one of the round-table groups created by Milner to create the “secret society” desired by Cecil Rhodes in his 7th will (which is online and searchable).
It’s a multi-staged power structure about 120 years old that follows its plan in a gradualist way. CO2AGW is just one tool in the box.”
Do you really believe that? Do you find it strange that some may link “skeptical” thought on climate change with conspiratorial thinking?
Conspiratorial thinking from this thread (admitted that some fit better than others):
“Is it western egalitarianism and third world dictators banding together at the UN? ”
“It’s seems to me like a massive sustainable global pyramid scheme, with compulsory participatory contributions by the tax payers of the world…”
“The UN, led by Mr Ban, quite clearly has an agenda over and above the need to be accurate on climate matters. ”
“It’s not about redistribution or the poor or anything else, it’s about socialist world government. The watermelons having failed to get power democratically have captured the UN and are trying to impose rule undemocratically. The UN like the league of nations, should be disbanded and reformed differently.”
“It is about redistribution of wealth, the Socialists mantra! It is indeed about Global Guvment, Agenda 21, & the systematic dismantling & destruction of the United States of America. As I have said several times before, the poor people in rich countries will be taxed to oblivion,” (etc.)
“Our tormentors have an agenda and it’s called UN Agenda 21.
They don’t want the developing world to industrialize and they want the West rigged, poor and retarded.”
“CAGW is the excuse for what Kenneth Boulding described in his 1962 book as The Great Transition and that’s what the OECD says it is pursuing now. The idea is to simultaneously close the gap between the haves and have-nots within the developed countries by making subjective well-being the responsibility of governments. Both Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen have created the capability as a human right to update this 19th century political theory to a 21st century mandate without having to mention Uncle Karl at all.”
“Arne Naess graphically details why ecology was such a good fit for Marxists looking for a different narrative to get the same desired outcomes.”
“The aim of the UN is to erase sovereignty of all nations effectively making national borders district boundaries-for governing purposes. The end result is worldwide socialism–take from the rich and give to the poor. Climate change and all the perceived ramifications are simply a means to an end.”
“The main problem is that the MSM is intentionally not letting the average citizen know what is going on behind our backs. ”
“We may not have a choice whether the “global socialist experiment” will be implemented.”
“The Green Climate Fund is the treasury dept. to fund the U.N bureaucrat’s attempt at world government ( oops, I think we’re supposed to say “governance” now, since government may give the impression of elections or something silly).”
“Zeke, Greg and others, clearly the UN and its backers are only interested in increasing their power over everyone until such point humanity is enslaved, “allowed” to live, eat, stay warm, travel and prosper only at the whims and dictates of selfish narrow-minded narcisstic deceivers.”
“Without this as the pre-eminent focus, we are doomed to the eco-socialist nightmare that is the UN, the liberal progressive valueless utopia where an elite engage in their redistributive orchestration at a terrible price, pretending that it is for the greater good.”
Sisi is so confused. She thinks that everyone else is out of step in the parade.
Earth to Sisi: 100% of the ‘consensus’ says that you are wrong.
Deal with it.
Sisi says: “Do you really believe that? Do you find it strange that some may link “skeptical” thought on climate change with conspiratorial thinking?”
A little history: The Climategate emails which were leaked in 2009 were met with almost complete silence by the mainstream medja. After a couple of months, when the story became impossible to ignore, the first question out of their mouths were, “So do you think this is all a big conspiracy?!”
I think the possibility that the worldwide abuse of science, along with the simultaneous intent to collect trillions of dollars for climate debt (aka “climate justice”), is what some would classify as a “conspiracy,” although the actual players and history might be a matter of some debate. And many of us do not think of it as a “conspiracy” so much as a form of criminal injustice on a very very grand scale.
Now regarding the $100 bn which the UN requires annually for its Green Fund – what term can we use for charging developed nations $100 bn/year for extreme weather events? Adults who have a real sense of the value of a dollar might have various words for that. Make your best suggestion, because lecturing people about “conspiracies” is coming of as a bit insubstantial of a point. How about “fraud”?
@dbstealey
Meh… My last comment is awaiting moderation. Is there a rule that says you should not use too many quotes in one comment?
Oh! By the way, which parts of my comments before the one being moderated do you object to? Or did you just feel the need to say something but weren’t able to formulate anything more than some vague conjectures?
Sisi says:
December 4, 2013 at 4:57 pm [ … ]
“Conspiratorial thinking” is Sisi’s label for those quotes.
Sisi, pick out any of those quotes you believe are wrong, and defend your position. Because the quotes seem pretty accurate to me.
The completely opaque UN bureaucrats are interested in money and power, not in helping the world’s poor. They are conniving theftocrats who will do anything to advance their anti-U.S. agenda. They hate America — while always putting out their greedy hands for more, more, more.
And 90% of the money never gets to the poor that they purport to represent. Despite hundreds of $Billions funneled into the UN every year, there are still billions of poor people. So obviously, the UN wants it that way.
Construct an early hypothesis for us – what would it ‘affect’? The transport of warm moist air? The upper air movements of flows, including jet stream? The movement of polar fronts to southern latitudes? The rapidity of the formation of a convective thunderstorm? Enhanced ice or snow or rain falls?
And via what ‘linkages’, via what ‘forces’ or electric field influence? Surely you have some back-of-the-envelope numbers and or calcs that prod these thoughts …
.
@_Jim, If I did, it would be a lot better than, “Warmth hides in the oceans, now you owe me $100 bn.”
How come my electrometer (‘field mill’ style) reads ZERO facing into the sky of a clear day? Where’s the ‘electricity’ flowing from space? /rhetorical
(Anybody do basic MEASUREMENTS anymore? OR do we just accept quackery from the start?)
.
So I guess those third worlders completely deforesting their nations like Haiti and the North Africans are the good guys.
Right.
re: Sisi says December 4, 2013 at 4:57 pm
Can you explain why the simple ‘linking’ of observed actions inferring certain motives jumps the gap into con-spiracy theory?
Is naivety also one of your hallmarks when it comes to understanding people (or organized groups of people, like NGOs and other rent-seekers) and underlying possible (and probable) motivations (for their observed actions)?
Ever heard the term “Follow the money” or Cui bono” (Latin for “to whose benefit”)?
Do you know what those terms mean, or imply, or no?
.
Continued failures to show ANY applicability to actual, testable hypothesis on how fronts, both warm and cold, would be affected, or how those air masses achieve their characteristics (PART of study in meteo courses), how precipitation forms etc. etc. etc.
Do you (EU) ppl ever pick up a basic textbook on meteorology? At least become familiar with the basics and propose something observable in the real world …
.
Well, this was lived up to : “The most transparent administration ever”
Oh, wait … maybe coming true on the ‘back swing’ though?
What exactly is the status of the “agreement(s)” reached at this event? A treaty would have to be approved by a ⅔ vote of the United States Senate. Of course, the Puppet President and his handlers in the White House are not generally bothered by formalities like the US Constitution, but even in the absence of Senatorial advice and consent, the House is not likely to advance additional billions to hand over to third-world satrapies and potentates under the guise of reparations for “extreme weather events.” I think we have to rely on the Congress to defend us against these world-governance conspiracies. And if that doesn’t tell you how to vote next November, I don’t know what will.
/Mr Lynn
The billions to be transferred to poor countries (coming from middle-class taxpayers in developed countries) will inevitably wind up in the pockets of a handful of socialist kleptocrats. But then, all wealth redistribution schemes actually work in the opposite way to how they are advertised: from poorer to richer. And since socialism outlaws the middle class (as the bourgeois class enemy), it always has the most skewed distribution of income and wealth of any political and economic system. In Soviet Russia, 9,000 nomenklatura effectively owned 99 percent of the economy of 300 million people.
Excuse me Jim, allow me to help you understand some things. First of all, the Electric Universe Hypothesis explains far more than you seem to realize. Perhaps you’ve never actually went over to their site and watched their video explaining how Wal Thornhill’s predictions on comets came to pass. I’ll forgive anyone for not being up on all subject matters… but what you can you do when you lead a horse to water and it won’t take a drink?
Perhaps you’ve not aware of all the successful 30 day long-range weather forecasts produced by Piers Corbyn from WeatherAction.com, based on his outstanding skill and ability to know how solar activity will develop during the month and how those solar energetic particles which constitute the electric space weather I discussed (charged particles accelerated away from the sun – the solar wind) will interact with the Earth’s weather systems. He is an astrophysicist – a scientist – and the things he says are echoed by many other scientists around the world from different disciplines.
And perhaps you haven’t watched when solar activity occurs that then affects the Earth’s weather. I’m going to try and help you with that. It’s going to take a week or so, as I’m in the middle of making something to help illustrate what I think the cause and effect relationships are, and after that, the floor will be open to all my fellow skeptics to tear it apart like we do everything, right?
Well this time, after a long six years of reading supportive papers discussed in WUWT, Tallbloke’s Talkshop, Hockey Schick, Climate Realists, Climate Depot, and many others, of living in and watching the weather and space weather very closely along with Piers’ forecasts, where so many times he predicted sudden stratospheric warming at the north pole causing that cold artic air to move southward, where he predicted so many other extreme weather events that were subsequently blamed on “climate change” when they actually happened, when people’s lives could be better protected with that knowledge, I am going to definitely stand firm on this because I’ve seen it over and over again, and nothing you’ve said has convinced me otherwise.
Further, there is so much evidence that you don’t have to be an electrical engineer like me to be convinced. Just think about this, how is it possible that Piers Corbyn, in his November USA forecast, said there would be tornadoes here on Nov 17-19, and then it happened on Nov 17!? Was he lucky? Was he lucky when he also said in his Nov earthquake watch that there would be a high risk, in his rating system, the highest, “QV5”, for Nov-17-19, and then, 7 volcanoes erupted on Nov 17!? Was he lucky when he forecasted for Nov 17-19 the highest “R5” solar activity day, and it happened? Did he not know what he was talking about when he related these events? What about all the other times he’s been right and useful?
We skeptics will prevail when we have a completely rational explanation for where the real power comes from that causes extreme weather events and “climate change”, an explanation that must have predictive skill. What I’m saying is that we don’t have to wait for that – it’s already here.
@ur momisugly George Lawson asks in response to-“The most recent data indicate that in 2010, 223 000 deaths from lung cancer worldwide resulted from air pollution. 2″
How in God’s name, can any research arrive at this conclusion?
That’s too easy George. The same way Big Climate can tell which part of global warming is anthropogenic and which part aint. It comes from a very authoritative source and ipso facto, clearly that settles it. Do keep up mate 😉
Like me George you have to constantly be on your guard against ‘impure thoughts’ like- I wonder what the big picture lung cancer numbers in the other neat boxes for smoking and passive smoking look like?- lest you wander into the deep dark realm of the Holocaust denier from which there is no redemption.
Mind you if Big Tobacco came sniffing around asking for a hard look at the numbers in those various definitive and authoritative boxes I have a hunch there’d be a lot more impure thoughts flying around and the boxes would get mighty fuzzy all of a sudden. In post-normal science you do need to constantly contextualise your standard deviations and confidence levels, but more importantly capture the commanding heights so that you can always fall back on the appeal to authority when you’re in trouble with such trifling matters.
@Zeke
“I think the possibility that the worldwide abuse of science, along with the simultaneous intent to collect trillions of dollars for climate debt (aka “climate justice”), is what some would classify as a “conspiracy,” although the actual players and history might be a matter of some debate. And many of us do not think of it as a “conspiracy” so much as a form of criminal injustice on a very very grand scale.”
So, I am trying to rephrase what you said, you think that there is a worldwide abuse of science, with the goal of collecting your money, but this is not a conspiracy, instead it is some worldwide criminal organisation? Is it that what you are trying to say?
“Now regarding the $100 bn which the UN requires annually for its Green Fund – what term can we use for charging developed nations $100 bn/year for extreme weather events? Adults who have a real sense of the value of a dollar might have various words for that. Make your best suggestion, because lecturing people about “conspiracies” is coming of as a bit insubstantial of a point. How about “fraud”?
Whatever you may think about UN funds, if the UN decides to build funds it is because its member states agree on building the funds. How is that “fraud”? Countries negotiate, they agree about stuff within UN frameworks. See the piece above the line. “Last-minute concessions by our representatives…” and “They agreed to the establishment of a new U.N. legal framework”. It’s what happens in negotiations. If you think the UN is set up to be a criminal organisation by being fraudulent, you must ask yourself why elected governments agree to UN treaties.
@dbstealey
“The completely opaque UN bureaucrats are interested in money and power, not in helping the world’s poor. They are conniving theftocrats who will do anything to advance their anti-U.S. agenda. They hate America — while always putting out their greedy hands for more, more, more.”
So why is the the US in the UN if that is the case? Why is the US working with other countries in the UN framework (what is opaque about it?). Have you ever heard of countries opting out of UN treaties? Have you ever heard about countries going to war without the consent of the UN security counsel? What is it with this UN (and apparently now also its bureaucrats) that many of the quotes I used seem to blame for some of the ills (or the soon to be enacted ills) in the world?
Sisi asks:
“So why is the the US in the UN if that is the case?”
Damn good question. Let’s put it to a straight up vote of U.S. citizens.
I think they would vote overwhelmingly to keep the $Billions in our own coffers, since most of that money ends up in the pockets of the UN 1%ers.
To hell with the UN. They are self-serving America haters. We do NOT need them. At all.
@_Jim
“Can you explain why the simple ‘linking’ of observed actions inferring certain motives jumps the gap into con-spiracy theory?”
No I can’t because it doesn’t, except when it is implied (or explicitly said) that there is some organisation behind it which controls the proceedings because “they” have some agenda, while at the same time zero evidence is provided about this being the case (it is only asserted).
@dbstealey
“To hell with the UN. They are self-serving America haters. We do NOT need them. At all.”
The US is part of the UN, they are even in the security counsel. What does that make of the US? Are the US self-serving America haters?
Sisi says, ” If you think the UN is set up to be a criminal organisation by being fraudulent, you must ask yourself why elected governments agree to UN treaties.”
They do it because under the supremacy clause a treaty trumps state and local laws, and expands federal powers. This is a way of agreeing with an international body to override domestic law which was decided by voters. Several examples are the Law of the Sea Treaty, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the Small Arms Treaty. The treaties with the UN are the current fashion World Empire (UN) activists use to do an end run around self-government.
@Zeke
“They do it because under the supremacy clause a treaty trumps state and local laws, and expands federal powers. This is a way of agreeing with an international body to override domestic law which was decided by voters.”
I am not sure what you mean, which supremacy clause of what document??? Governments negotiate with other governments and agree on a treaty (or not, or let others do the treaty but opt out themselves). When a government agrees on a treaty (if the government is from a democratic state; there are many non-democracies in the UN), then the executive needs to ask the legislative if it agrees with the treaty. Those that ‘override domestic law which was decided by voters’ are those that have been voted in by the same voters!
Once ratified in the democratic process, it still does not mean that ‘a treaty trumps state and local laws, and expands federal powers’. For example, provisions in the treaty may be against provisions in the constitution. People may and have complained against treaties as against constitutional law to the highest court available in a state and have at times won.
Oh well, this all seems off topic by now. You are the one talking about ‘worldwide abuse of science, along with the simultaneous intent to collect trillions of dollars for climate debt’ and ‘regarding the $100 bn which the UN requires annually for its Green Fund – what term can we use for charging developed nations $100 bn/year for extreme weather events?’
Have a nice weekend!