We met to talk about CO2, and got a forest agreement –
Eric Worrall writes:
Now that its all over, the climate spinners are already hard at work, desperately trying to reframe the New York climate shambles as a win for the environment.
According to “The Australian”, a major Aussie daily newspaper;
“Yet this year’s summit seemed different. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon brought together heads of state, NGOs and business leaders from major global companies such as Unilever, Coca-Cola and Asia Pulp & Paper to sign a declaration to safeguard the world’s forests. … The declaration is a commitment to act, not just to speak. Action on this scale will, though, require collaboration on an unprecedented level. A crucial phrase in the New York Declaration is: “We commit to doing our part to achieve the following outcomes in partnership.”
However, a declaration to save forests is truly an empty, painless piece of spin. Forests are already recovering worldwide, thanks to globalisation, cheap energy and economic development. In a mirror of our own economic history, large scale urbanisation of countries such as Brazil and Panama, driven by the creation of new jobs in the cities, is luring the younger generation to abandon subsistence farms hacked out of the jungle.
The abandoned farms, contrary to green propaganda, very quickly revert back to a state almost indistinguishable from the original virgin forest.
In fact, the only places where forests are not recovering, are places where perverse incentives are encouraging an increase in agriculture.
One of the biggest of these perverse incentives is biofuel subsidies, which are motivating global corporations to clear fell large plots of tropical forest, to make way for palm oil plantations.
http://www.worldwildlife.org/stories/illegal-palm-oil-plantations-threaten-protected-forests
Stepping back from the forest non issue, there is another aspect of the NY climate conference spin which I find disturbing – the continuous emphasis on the need for “widespread collaboration” and “unprecedented cooperation”. Every time I see a reference to how everyone has to allegedly strive to sacrifice their own interests, and work together for a common eco-goal, to save the world, I remember something the famous author Terry Pratchett once said;
“Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny. Free men pull in all kinds of directions.”
Thankfully, for now at least, people appear to be following Pratchett’s sage advice.
This highlights one positive that the warmists never seem to understand: the forests are doing quite well. Why? Some of it is improved protection of wilderness areas, some stems from improved logging practices, and some is the increased CO2 content in our air. In a way, by encouraging plant growth, it offsets some of the additional CO2, a fact that is oft overlooked.
Planting more trees and preserving their existance seems like a win-win-win: more renewable resources for building, a larger and highly effective carbon sink, and who doesn’t like trees? Whether they’re for hugging (barf) or for hanging out underneath and BBQing (oh yeah!), everyone wins!
I understand this is a very pedestrian viewpoint, but it feels as though it’s one thing everyone can agree on and, what more, it works.
Except for those forests that are being felled, transported by trucks to Chesapeake Bay, converted to pellets, and shipped to England where they now burn 70,000 tons of wood pellets every day in the newly reconfigured DRAX power station to produce “green” electricity for the north of England. Makes you want to cry.
Yerrs. Except than in an unprecedented volte-face, the UK government decided that after all, they were not going to subsidise this as much as they said they would, leaving Drax holding a very expensive baby indeed.
The moral: never trust a government on anything.
Recovery of tropical forests is aided by higher levels of CO2.
CSIRO reports that Austtralia has greened by about 20% or so which considering the increased CO2 levels and the fact that the continent is about 20% wetter over the past century makes sense. Gee those feedbacks will get yer every time.
and have you noticed the salinity screams have shut up?
seems they got it wrong:-)
and are keeping quiet nowdays.
So, a demographic that HATES “big business” is glad there is “big business” for them to manipulate and get to commit to things.
Again – doesn’t require logic or internal consistency to be a climate addict.
Actually it is largely big business that funds the greens with substantial grants. However to maintain the fiction that big business is the enemy and so keep the individual greenies putting in their cash, the propaganda line shouted at max volume is that “deniers” (all of them – me included) are the shills in the pay of bigoil and bigcoal. How long would the execs at Greenpeace or WWF be able to keep their cushy jobs if their close association with big energy was made clear to their individual contributors, who unfortunately can’t be bothered to find out the facts for themselves?
Big Business loves this stuff. It raises the cost of entry into the market too high for startups to challenge their gravy train.
Big Oil certainly benefits by Obama’s war on Coal via the EPA. Without coal the only alternative is to burn oil and gas. Instead of competing with coal, big oil gets a monopoly. Natural gas prices are low today. Once everyone switches from coal to natural gas, does anyone in their right mind think the low prices will continue?
And what will happen to all the coal that cannot be sold in the US? It will be exported of course and burned for energy, and all the CO2 will still be produced. And it will return to the US, carried for free by the wind. Can’t say the same about the jobs however.
@ferdberple
The War on Coal is totally unnecessary. There is no good reason to shut down perfectly good coal plants. Whether new baseload plants should be built for coal, natural gas, or even an adjustable mix of both is a decision worth analyzing and debating.
That said, if there is a choice between exporting LNG or coal, export of coal is probably a winner in terms of safety, cost, flexibility, and local environmental emissions.
@ fredberple – A recent study on the availability of natural gas with new drilling techniques and the volume of gas found suggests that the switch over from coal to natural gas fired plants will not increase the price by more than a few cents a kilojoule because there is a lot of locked in gas at the moment and a lot of gas can be made available profitably near current prices – the additional cost may be for pipelines. Coal will still be there when we need it, and coal can be used for a lot of things including “Renewable” energy plants where powdered coal is fed in to assist in the combustion (but don’t tell the greenies who think they are burning only wood pellets or wood waste 😉 )
fredburple
And what will happen to all the coal that cannot be sold in the US? It will be exported of course and burned for energy, and all the CO2 will still be produced. And it will return to the US, carried for free by the wind.
And it will likely be burned much less efficiently, adding more net pollutants to the atmosphere.
“And what will happen to all the coal that cannot be sold in the US?”
The primary US coal reserves are a long,long way from a shipping port and the coal needs to go over the Rockies and Cascades to get to a coal export terminal.
By the time shipping costs are figured in, coal imported from the US isn’t very competitive in the long term with alternatives live nuclear.
Of course Europe is hell bent on being anti-nuclear so they’ll take the excess. China will only take the excess until they get their nuclear fleet build. I
“Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny. Free men pull in all kinds of directions.”
I would love to live in a world where we cooperate more and use war less. However, my analysis shows that a centrally planned system invariably leads to tyranny. The key to reducing green house gas emissions is the development of economically efficient alternatives India and China can deploy in a massive fashion.
I´m definitely supporting research to find these alternatives because we are about to start paying much higher prices for fossil fuels (unfortunately by the middle of the century the world will surely see lower oil production even at higher prices). It seems prudent to start getting ready for it.
I reckon you will be as wrong “by the middle of the century” as you are now.
Why do you want to reduce CO2? It is good for all living things.
We already have “economically efficient alternatives” called nuclear.
Seems that when I was younger the enviro-mental movement published a manifesto that in part advocated for a world population of five hundred million people. Five hundred million of the right people I’m sure. One sure fire way to limit planetary population is to restrict the production of electrical power. What that translates into is that there we’ll never be an enviro-mentally approved method of producing power. More power at lower costs means more people.
@Claudius 2:23 am
One sure fire way to limit planetary population is to restrict the production of electrical power. ….. More power at lower costs means more people.
I am not sure whether a) you meant that statement as fact, b) meant it sarcastically, or c) as gospel in the enviro-mental manifesto.
I believe the sure-fire way to limit and reduce the population is with MORE and CHEAPER power. As a hobby, I do family tree research with Ancestry.com. What is inescapable is the size of families are much bigger before electrification than after. China and India did not get to a billion people each because they had widespread electricity. Why this is so is likely a complex socio-economic interaction — but it might be as simple as when you have light at night, there are other things to do than make children.
Hello Stephen, you’re probably right and the reasons are probably deep and very complex. I will says though that the formula for expanding population growth, for one is water, clean, drinkable and under pressure. The recipe for clean drinking water under pressure is a reverse osmosis filtration system and electricity. Case in point, California has all of the Pacific Ocean to draw usable water from. Whenever a filtration plant is proposed the usual actors show up and oppose the project using every trick in the book. On the other hand, in China if someone is fool enough to get in the way of the states attempt to implement a water purification project if you’re lucky you’ll end up in a re-education camp. If you’re not so lucky they’ll just shoot you. I can’t answer for India. Producing all of the material resource to support human populations all require the production of power. The west is the only society on earth that deliberately restricts itself on the production of power.
@Claudius 9:40 am
You are absolutely right about the need and benefits of clean water.
The recipe for clean drinking water under pressure is a reverse osmosis filtration system and electricity. Case in point, California has all of the Pacific Ocean to draw usable water from. Whenever a filtration plant is proposed the usual actors show up and oppose the project using every trick in the book.
You might have hit upon a most efficient and useful way to make use of intermittent wind and/or solar power. Forget pumped storage for generating electricity. Use turbines and solar, with its variable power output to directly pump water through reverse osmosis and store the valuable fresh water. Let the environmentalists oppose that installation!
I’m all for research into new forms of energy generation, such as next generation thorium reactors, what I object to is the government subsidised large scale implementation of broken systems which don’t work.
Personally I see no benefit to reducing ghg. Try as I have to find even one negative result of increasing CO2, I have failed.
Perhaps it is due to a father who owned two acres of greenhouse where I worked as a young man. One of my jobs was monitoring the CO2 levels and keeping them near 700 ppm’s…..didn’t seem to hurt me or the flowers we grew.
Actually we could be paying less if the politicians would just let us drill, baby drill, and build pipelines.
The problem is how do you force individuals who have different ideas of what is most important, to all cooperate?
As to war, unless you can find a way to improve humanity, there will always be those who want to use force to take what they want. The only thing that can stop them will be individuals who are willing to fight back.
The only reason why fossil fuel prices are rising is because govt is mandating that rise.
There’s enough oil left in the ground to supply our needs for several hundred years.
Well, if you believe in Global Warming, you’ll be glad to hear the Russians (in partnership with EXXON) have discovered an oil basin north of the Arctic Circle that is believed to be bigger than the total reserves of the United States. Not expected to be developed anytime soon, but it is there. EXXON is currently banned from participation due to the US embargo on Russia, but this will pass.
If you subtract the rent seekers, Hollywood luvvies and eejit politicians, what are you left with? A defenestrated supposition.
9/23 NYC 2014, the day that a supposition – that of, man made emissions causing warming – croaked and a long overdue death was acknowledged by the world’s media – in that, nobody noticed.
The article from The Australian pretty much sums up the sad state of the MSM on this topic in Australia. About as entertaining and informative as piped music in a supermarket.
The ABC is making cuts, I wish they would cut their alarmist Science contributors. No news would be better than their lack of perspective.
“The ABC is making cuts, I wish they would cut their alarmist Science contributors. No news would be better than their lack of perspective.”
But the ABC has had multiple internal inquiries, and always found that they presented a neutral, objective view of things.
It’s been said before – socialism and direct control dressed up as environmentalism. Foxy Locksy at his best
Dissolved CO2 in Coke – perfect transport mechanism for forest food! There you go fixed the headline!
The zombie apocalypse Shouting incoherent things and waving placards. I thought I heard ‘brains, brains, brains’ in one of the audio pickups.
Thankfully, for now at least, people appear to be following Pratchett’s sage advice.
We live in interesting times.
I read the IISD’s “Climate Summit Bulletin” aka “SUMMARY OF CLIMATE SUMMIT 2014” or, if you prefer, Volume 172 Number 18, which they produced on Friday, 26 September 2014 as a “final” summary of this gathering of the great and the good [See http://www.iisd.ca/climate/cs/2014/html/crsvol172num18e.html ] a few days ago.
Trust me, it was quite a challenge to keep my eyes open through all 19 pages of the .pdf version.
Probably the most useful/enlightening part of this document was the glossary at the bottom of p. 19: All the acronyms liberally sprinkled throughout in one handy-dandy place (including a few I’ve never even seen before, e.g. DRR disaster risk reduction, INDC intended nationally determined contribution & SLCP short-lived climate pollutants) Although any newcomers might be interested in the “Brief History” section.
Probably the best summary I’ve read was written by the U.K.’s Christopher Booker
[See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/11124976/Dreary-climate-summit-was-surely-their-saddest-fiasco-yet.html ]:
Word counts in this 19-pager were interesting, though. A few that jumped out at me:
carbon dioxide = 1
carbon (without dioxide) = 63
transform* = 6
target* = 20
disaster = 16
sustain* = 42
pledg* = 25
fund* = 21
financ* = 63
billion = 41
million = 28
climate = 270 (including 132 “climate change”)
global = 53 (including 1 “global warming”)
Amazing, eh?!
This list is all that is needed to understand the purpose for, and tactics of those behind this gathering. Thank you for eliminating my need to read this report.
china and india will be only too happy to sign up to any agreement whereby the US agrees to cut back, so long as china and india are not so constrained.
china and india have a long, long way to go before their per capita emissions are anywhere close to the US.
Suppose they sign without any intention of keeping any promises or pledges or meeting any goals. What then? From a purely Machiavellian point of view, China should engage in exactly this jujitsu. Encourage your competition hamstring themselves while you deceptively act blatantly in your self interest.
I think some warmists would be happy if China made an insincere commitment, as that would give them the go-ahead to further cripple the West. They may even be maneuvering China deliberately in that direction. China has stated that come 2030 or 2040 it will Do Something.
New York was a complete failure. They achieved precisely nothing of substance and the evidence for that claim is ‘not’ there for all to see.
Today the BBC are leading their environment section with a story about landing a robot on a comet, followed by an update of flight MH370.
The ultra-green Guardian (which like the BBC spent a month pushing ‘crucial’ and ‘definitive’ New York’ talks before the event) is now leading with a banal story on fracking. It does have a small lament at India’s
‘hypocritical’ position regarding their emissions v what they said in New York, but alas, that is all.
So neither of these fanatical climate alarmists are touching the New York outcome with a bargepole because
there’s literally nothing of worth to say.
They failed, again.
PS. Strange formatting on the actual post, there. I took care to arrange the sentences correctly. Mods…?
It still is costing insane amounts of our (my!) money to get nowhere with this non-problem.
This is the goal (a not-too-funny joke I heard on the radio last night):
“Did you hear about the new simplified tax form? Only two lines!”
“Really? Wow”
“Yup, Line 1: What is your income for the past year?
Line 2: Please remit the amount on Line 1.”
It has been said that even if your government taxes you at 100%, they would still run out of money. Having worked for some government departments, I have to agree.
There has always been and will always be tax revenue shortages. inefficiency pays when you’re a government. When they want to raise taxes, they don’t speak of fiduciary responsibility, no. They tell you about starving babies and lack of health care. “Won’t someone please think of the children.” Taxes could triple and that plea would not change.
There are no ”virgin” rainforest in Amazonia.The indiginous native population had a slash and burn policy used over thousands of years. Their plots were abandonned every few months to maintain new fertile soil availability. This plus wildfires ensures that rainforest, or all forest is renewed every few years.
The Amazon was not forested during the last ice age but was mostly grassland.
Its pretty difficult to find a forest which has never been touched by humans – I use “virgin forest” in the sense of nobody can remember when the trees weren’t there 🙂
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/07/08/would_it_be_bad_if_the_amazon_rainforest_was_all_farms_well_it_was_once/
Errr…and 400 year old trees survived by…..?
Is Coca Cola made from wood? Is Coca Cola using wood from (tropical) forests in any or for the production of any of their products? All I know is that they are major players in sequestering CO2 in cans.
This is apparently the best they can muster for the Paris 2015 coming together. As Richard Lindzen (MIT) already pinpointed eloquently: Speech of Di caprio at the UN: ” Let’s stop research; start acting”. Lovely.
The only outcome to date of climate conferences: Tax payer funded failure at expensive locations.
Just like the most common outcome of predictions by the climate obsessed: Failure.
But in reality we should start pointing out that these events are victories not only for the skeptics but for the people: If the climate kooks and climate hypesters ever do succeed in ramming through what they claim to want, not only will science and reason be damaged even further. People worldwide will suffer even more if the misanthropic vision of the climate obsessed becomes a reality.
We should focus on the victories skeptics are ringing up:
Pointing out the problems with the climatocracy predictions, laws, treaties, and science that assure the failure of their movements. how a tiny group of disorganized unfunded people are held responsible for the defeat of the worst combination of science and public policy since eugenics.
Hoooray! Now what do I see here?
Green on the outside, red on the inside. Many came to the march in cars. Just take the coach or train I say.
After discussing this stuff around the wild Internet for the last few years, I’m convinced that the word “hypocrite” has changed its meaning. Currently it means “right wing”, or “climate skeptic”. There’s no other actual usage among the younger age groups. I think they are genuinely unable to comprehend how they are hypocritical.
Hypocrisy runs deep in the climate movement. Leonardo DiCaprio, the new UN “peace” ambassador, flys more air miles in a year than I will ever fly in my life. http://www.torontosun.com/2014/09/27/why-leonardo-dicaprio-is-a-poor-role-model-for-saving-the-planet
“The abandoned farms, contrary to green propaganda, very quickly revert back to a state almost indistinguishable from the original virgin forest.”
Reminds me of a 1970s environmentalist expedition to catalogue the long term devastation of the local environment caused by the Anyox copper smelter in northern British Columbia that had caused widespread kill back of the forests until a fire in the 1920s burnt it down. When they got to the general area they walked around in the forest for a couple of days unable to find the smelter itself. Finally, they went into town and found someone to guide them to the site. When they got there, in the daytime darkness of the lush growth they found pieces of iron and old concrete. As I recall, no report on the case history was forthcoming from this publicized expedition.
Re Anyox: This is what they were looking for:
http://www.gent-family.com/BC/Anyox.Blast.Furnacies.jpg
This is what they found:
http://www.explorenorth.com/bc/anyox.html
Not virgin forest, but not a complete desert waistland either.
Forests recovering..? Pah..! Just wait till Drax power station (built on a coalfield) in the UK starts burning wood chips in earnest (carbon neutral, don’t y’know) – produced by trashing the forests of North Carolina, and then shipping the stuff across the North Atlantic
We’ll show you how to ruin forests AND increase CO2 all in one go…
Meanwhile, they still burn wood pellets from the USA in the UK. How ironic!
“In fact, the only places where forests are not recovering, are places where perverse incentives are encouraging an increase in agriculture” — AND, where they are clear-cutting for the pads and access roads to install the sprawling footprints of industrial wind factories, causing massive Habitat Fragmentation in previously untouched areas – right here within the United States (ie: 308 industrial wind turbines strewn throughout five entire towns in Wyoming County of western New York State. Between increased clear-cutting to grow more corn and build USELESS industrial wind factories, there are no big woods left here.)
In the past 8 months I’ve visited areas in the NH from the equator to the Arctic circle, and I think speed of forest recovery is relative to latitude and altitude. Forests recover rapidly near the equator, but somewhat more slowly just below the arctic circle due to slower growth rates. Of course you also have to take into account differences in species of trees and the way they are adapted to different climates. However in the middle latitudes a forest will fully recover within a hundred years. Modern, heavily forested New England, where there was once widespread clear cutting and farming is a good example of what can happen in the middle latitudes.
“widespread collaboration” and “unprecedented cooperation”. – anytime I hear those phrases I just substitute “Blahbitty Blahbitty BS” into the sentence, in their place, and it makes much more sense.
As in: “Action on this scale will, though, require Blahbitty Blahbitty BS on an unprecedented level.”
See? I fixed it.
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2014/09/29/what-was-actually-agreed-at-the-ny-climate-conference-of-2014/
Pointman
In other words, it was another bang the drum event where the weirdos are carefully kept out of the brave march photos and summary. We now return you to your daily PR spin.
On the subject of the hypocrisy of some of the Climate marchers….
The Northwest Passage 2014 blog has this post yesterday:
Build a new $500K yacht then motorsail 8,000 miles in 4 months to the Arctic – CAUGHT MARCHING FOR CLEAN ENERGY – PRICELESS DOUBLE SPEAK BS
Londoners (Jimmy Cornell) Turn Out In Force For the Climate [London March]
It looks like a deal is not necessary at the Paris conference afterall. Could it be that they know there will be no binding deal?
John Kerry will do anything to sign something. It is to be his legacy.
It will be shadows and charades. But it will be something he can sign, throw over the wall to EPA and then resign for it won’t have a prayer in Congress.
I can site a case here in Oz where vegetation regrowth was cleared under a major transmission line to prevent the likelihood of bushfires caused by regrowth trees coming in to contact with 330kV overhead lines. The opposition with the help of the Greens turned this into an absolute bun fight and a tragic waste of tax payers money in laying down straw compost and planting non local tree species for several kilometers. Experience has always shown that mother nature is very good at restoring vegetation very quickly to it’s former state.
“New York climate shambles ” . . . Ya gotta love it. (You know, New York, that climate capitol of the world, as everybody knows…)
Next headline:
More non-perfect weather blamed on CO2!” Read all about it!
Collaboration and cooperation don’t concern me nearly as much as their new narrative. We have a film from 10 10 that shows climate skeptics and children being blown up for expressing doubts, a play in Australia which advocates the killing of deniers, a cartoon in the New York Times showing how to use an icicle to kill a denier without leaving evidence behind and a well known politician calling for “rational thinkers” to imprison deniers with “the other war criminals!” Don’t forget the two professors at SJSU who were shown preparing to burn climate books.
These people have serious psychological issues. There’s nothing amusing about showing children being blown up for refusing to conform. The very idea of burning books should appall any “rational thinker”
Zealots are notorious for doing extreme things when their core beliefs are challenged. The more desperate their situation becomes, the greater the threat to their beliefs, the more likely they are to lash out.
My boundless gratitude to all the contributors on this most admirable site. Could I encourage you to post on the Guardian site now and again. I post as Antagonista on the Australian version and much amusement is to had poking fun at imbeciles. Come on now, let’s have some fun with this before it fizzles out.