Surprise, Surprise: China Rejects Emissions Pledge Review

Green Blob’s Annual Ritual Hits Rift Over Pledges, Climate $Trillions

China has rejected the scrutiny of efforts to limit carbon emissions, a key tool that the US says is necessary as more than 190 countries work to come up with a new deal to fight climate change. Chinese negotiators sought to delete provisions in a draft text that would have paved the way for other countries and non-governmental organisations to submit questions about its carbon-reduction plans, according to environmental groups that are official observers to the talks. —South China Morning Post, 8 December 2014

India on Friday refused to take a deadline for capping its emissions unlike China, saying the ongoing climate meet in Lima was not to discuss peaking year and hoped the world would reach a deal to cut down carbon emissions. The main issues which are dividing countries are centred on the excessive focus on mitigation which is opposed by the developing countries. Most developing countries were favouring a review process to assess contributions, though India remains totally opposed to such a process. —Press Trust of India, 7 December 2014

Benny Peiser, of the climate-sceptic Global Warming Policy Foundation described the summit as the “green blob’s annual ritual” and “an expensive form of mass tourism, never mind the carbon footprint. More importantly, the ritual gathering isn’t going to overcome the underlying deadlock,” he said. “The developing world will ask for a high price which will sink the deal in the US.” He said he believed any deal would not be legally-binding and that this would lead the EU to renege on its own carbon-cutting pledges. “In short, the deal that is now in the making won’t slow CO2 emissions and won’t bind any nation. But it will be sold as a breakthrough – as all agreements have been sold in the past,” he said. –Emily Gosden, The Sunday Telegraph, 7 December 2014

As somebody who has championed science all his career, carrying a lot of water for the profession against its critics on many issues, I am losing faith. Recent examples of bias and corruption in science are bad enough. What’s worse is the reluctance of scientific leaders to criticise the bad apples. Science as a philosophy is in good health; science as an institution increasingly stinks. –Matt Ridley, The Times, 8 December 2014

Negotiators at the UN climate talks in Lima have encountered yet another stumbling block with nations divided over including finance and adaptation commitments in national action plans. The European Union and Japan want national offers to be focused only on mitigation actions to reduce planet-warming emissions. Brazil, on the other hand, wants countries to be able to put adaptation and finance in their national contributions. Countries like Nicaragua have warned that a Paris deal could fail unless adaptation is included in the draft text expected to come out of the Lima talks. —International Business Times, 8 December 2014

So carried away are the warmists by their quasi-religious belief system that, when it was again proposed in Lima that richer nations should pay poor countries $100 billion a year to protect them from runaway global warming, the UN’s chief spokesman, Christiana Figueres, dismissed this as “a very, very small sum”. What is needed to decarbonise the global economy, she said, is “$90 trillion over the next 15 years”. It makes the £1.3 trillion we Brits are committed by the Climate Change Act to pay to halt global warming within 36 years look like chicken feed. –Christopher Booker, The Sunday Telegraph, 7 December 2014

Thanks to Dr. Benny Peiser of the GWPF for this compilation