From the GWPF:
G7 Leaders Shift Decarbonisation Goal To End Of Century
Calls by the Group of Seven (G7) Monday to slash world carbon emissions did little to boost UN climate talks in Bonn, where frustration mounted over the snail-like progress. Due to end on Friday, the 11day Bonn talks are tasked with shaping a draft text for the November 30 December 11 UN conference in Paris, which must yield a global agreement. But after a week of wrangling, just about five percent had been shaved off a sprawling near 90 page draft, mostly by removing glaring duplications, said delegates. —Agence France-Press, 9 June 2015
In a joint declaration from the G7 summit, leaders of the world’s richest countries called for a global phase-out of fossil fuels for the first time on Monday. That sounds great, but unfortunately, they’re talking about a lax timescale — “over the course of this century.” The leaders also committed to “doing our part to achieve a low-carbon global economy in the long-term,” though they didn’t announce any increased ambitions in cutting carbon in their own economies. –Eric Holthaus, Slate, 8 June 2015
Already in 2009 (L’Aquila summit), G8 made a similar announcement. How did it influence the Copenhagen climate summit? To sum up: G7 repeating UNFCCC + IPCC language and promising to go carbon neutral by 2099. —Oliver Geden, 8 June 2015
Trade union GMB has signed a landmark agreement with the fracking industry in a bid to accelerate the exploitation of shale gas and oil resources in the UK and boost local supply chains as the sector develops. In a move that is likely to anger environmental groups, GMB signed a joint charter with UK Oil and Gas (UKOOG) which argues that gas is “essential” to British industry and households and will continue to play a key role in the UK’s future energy mix. Gary Smith, GMB national secretary, said gas was a matter of national security. “Our homes and large parts of British industry need gas; any suggestion to the contrary is just not real world,” he said in a statement. —Jessica Shankleman, BusinessGreen, 9 June 2015
The lunatics have escaped their asylum and have taken over the entirety of this lovely and beauteous continent. They’re imposing import tariffs on cheap Chinese solar cells. This at the same time as vast swathes of public policy are devoted to the idea that we’ve got to have cheap renewable power in order to save our entire species from boiling itself. We’re also spending hundreds of billions to make such cheap renewables a reality. So, when someone comes knocking at the door asking if we’d like to purchase some cheap our answer is to try and tax them for their temerity? Seriously people, how did we end up with an entire continent, the cradle of modern civilisation, adopting such an insane public policy? –Tim Worstall, Forbes, 7 June 2015
Reality Check: UN Climate Talks Stall Despite G7 Posturing
Agence France-Press, 9 June 2015
Calls by the Group of Seven (G7) Monday to slash world carbon emissions did little to boost UN climate talks in Bonn, where frustration mounted over the snail-like progress.
Delegates during the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Bonn, Germany, June 2015 (AP Photo/Martin Meissner)
Groups of countries pleaded for greater efforts to streamline a draft text for a climate pact due to be adopted at a conference in Paris in just over six months.
“We are very concerned about the pace of negotiations,” said Amjad Abdulla of the Maldives, speaking for the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) which are deeply exposed to climate change.
“We have not made the big jump forward that we need,” he told a stocktaking session. “There is clearly an urgent need to make more substantive progress and to proceed at a faster pace than we did last week,” said South Africa’s Nozipho Mxakatoc Diseko on behalf of the so called G77 and China group of developing nations.
Due to end on Friday, the 11day Bonn talks are tasked with shaping a draft text for the November 30 December 11 UN conference in Paris, which must yield a global agreement.
The final document is supposed to enshrine the will of 195 countries to roll back climate change, spell out commitments to tackle greenhouse gases and provide aid to vulnerable economies from 2020.
But after a week of wrangling, just about five percent had been shaved off a sprawling near 90 page draft, mostly by removing glaring duplications, said delegates. And there has been little serious talk about some of the many thorny issues that remain.
Delayed Until Further Notice: G7 Leaders Shift Decarbonisation Goal To End Of Century
Eric Holthaus
In a joint declaration from the G7 summit, leaders of the world’s richest countries called for a global phase-out of fossil fuels for the first time on Monday. That sounds great, but unfortunately, they’re talking about a lax timescale—“over the course of this century.”
The leaders of the world’s richest countries wave goodbye to any urgent or binding climate targets on June 7, 2015 at Schloss Elmau near Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany.
The leaders also committed to “doing our part to achieve a low-carbon global economy in the long-term,” though they didn’t announce any increased ambitions in cutting carbon in their own economies. Reports from the two-day meeting in Germany indicated that bolder statements were considered, including a call to decarbonize the G7 economies by 2050, but they were ultimately dropped, likely under pressure from Canada and Japan.
Though today’s statement is bold, the focus on the very long-term is disappointing. The G7 meeting was billed as a showcase for Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, to assert leadership on climate change in advance of key negotiations in December, when world leaders will gather in Paris and are expected to sign the first-ever global agreement on climate change. Expectations for an ambitious outcome in Paris have been waning in recent months, and today’s G7 statement doesn’t help things much.
G7 Business As Usual: Plus Ça Change, plus C’est La même Chose
German policy wonk Oliver Geden sums up the lame G7 climate statement in two tweets.
Already in 2009 (L’Aquila summit), #G8 made similar announcement. How did it influence Copenhagen #climate summit?
to sum up: #G7 repeating #UNFCCC + #IPCC language and promising to go carbon neutral by 2099
In the last year I have tried to explain to those who are purportedly renewable subsidy friendly and EU friendly, that the EU is quite specifically working to impede the natural price-location mechanism in the solar panel market, by imposing vast taxes/tariffs/fines on importers of competitively priced panels.
When you explain this, the recipients of the information seem either to not believe you, or to imagine that their must be some higher purpose.
I suspect that both they and their beloved EU masters have no real interest in the roll-out of renewable energy at all.
They are really only in love with state control, and state hand-outs.
In this instance hand-outs to relatively wealthy solar array owners are preferred over allowing market forces to push down the price of solar PV for everyone.
Here in the UK, many solar farm owners are currently being paid about 10 times the wholesale market rate for the electricity that they deliver to the grid.
The whole thing seems to have turned into a massive price-fixing scam.
It seems strange that so many people have become convinced that the roll-out of renewable capacity is aided by forcing the costs upwards.
I remember a time when, if you wanted lots of units of something, and were constrained by a finite budget, then you attempted to ensure that each unit was purchased as cheaply as possible.
All that changed, obviously. At least it did in the new world of gullible idiots pleading for more state micro-management.
If Governments truly believed that CO2 was the devil it is claimed to be, they would not impose import tarriffs on cheap solar panels.
In Spain, they are reeling back all the subsidies because of abuse such that now if one goes off grid, the government even charges the lost VAT which the government would have got had the occupier been on grid and bought electricity from the few energy suppliers and paid VAT on that supply.
It is madness and a scam.
indefatigablefrog
You say
No. You have misunderstood. Nothing has “turned into a massive price-fixing scam”.
The UK renewables programme was deliberately established to be – and continues to be deliberately run as – a massive price-fixing scam.
Richard
The climate talks are this: a bunch of representatives handing knives around and explaining how other countries other than their own should go about cutting their own throats.
Thanks, Anthony.
The UN has been trying to become an unelected world government since its beginning.
I hope the USA doesn’t abandon its Constitution to embrace the UN Charter.
They know the central theory of catastrophic AGW is utter balderdash. They also know that however much they’d like to switch to ‘renewables’ it simply isn’t going to happen within the limitations of current technology, hence the ‘no fossil fuels by 2100’ line is simply part of their self-protecting rowback.
There won’t be a binding Paris deal because the whole climate change bandwagon is going nowhere, fast.
But why would any one wish to switch to renewables unless there was no other option.
Given that there is enough coal for many hundreds of years of energy production, it is inconceivable that man, well before the time coal runs out, will not have come up with a cheap and efficient alternative form of energy production.
There is no point in employing wind or solar (in high Northern Latitude countries) as a stop gap/filler. They don’t work, they do not reduce CO2, and only increase costs all round.
Am I the only who sees the concept of “decarbonizing the economies” as being absolutely absurd? Not to mention impossible. Or senseless. Or against the interests of humankind? How can anyone advocate such a concept and maintain a straight face. I can see that nonsense coming from minority fringe eco-nutbar elements, but the idea of heads of govt seriously considering this idea and actually agreeing to such an ridiculous idea is mind blowing to me.
I seriously think we need to shut down the United Nations and all these off shoots like the IMF and IPCC and UNFCCC, etc etc.
No Terrence, you’re not.
Seriously people, how did we end up with an entire continent, the cradle of modern civilisation, adopting such an insane public policy? –Tim Worstall, Forbes, 7 June 2015
Something will have to give. The UK has commited itself, by law, to reducing CO2 output by 80% over the next 35 years. What most people haven’t realised yet is that this is all sources of CO2. Industrial, domestic heating, transport… All of it will have to be powered by electricity.
At this very moment Wind is providing us with 5% of current demand, not the kind of demands placed on a future grid once all the other sources of demand have been added in.
I see only two options. The program will be dumped once the electorate realise its full implications and no politician would be electable while defending it or we find a new source of energy eg Fusion.
Yet when you hear a politican on TV they frequently state that wind is already providing us with more than 25% of our electricity. I think that is because they confuse nameplate capacity with real world average output which is coming in at about 22% of nameplate capacity.
So [your] 5% contribution is about the typical contribution that wind makes.
However, the problem is that wind does not reduce CO2 emissions because of the need for backup by conventionally powered fossil fuel generation.. Whilst wind produces on average about 22% of its nameplate capacity such that one might at first sight expect that that results in a reduction of about 22% CO2 emissions, that is not the case.
Although conventionally powered generators may be running for only about 78% of the time they produce about 95% of the CO2 that they would produce had they been running 100% of the time. This is because they have to be [operated] in ramp up/ramp down mode and this is very fuel inefficient. It is akin to driving a car in urban conditions compared to the fuel consumption achieved if driving at a steady 60mph on a motorway. Urban fuel consumption (because of the start/stop nature) uses about 25% to 30% more fuel compared with motorway/freeway fuel consumption. The same is so with power generators.
So the madness of all this is not simply are we creating an unreliable energy network which produces electricity at a very high cost (on shore wind is about 3 times the cost of coal) it does not reduce CO2 emissions to any significant extent, especially when one takes into account the amount of CO2 that is emitted in erecting the windfarm and coupling it to the existing grid.
The politicians will be in for a shock when they find out that renewables such as wind and solar do not reduce CO2 emissions to any significant extent and therefore will not help them attain the 2050 goal.
Presently, there are only 2 ways to reduce CO2 emissions, either go nuclear, or cut energy usage. It is as stark as that.
The incredible arrogance of the G7 Clique is flabbergasting.
The reality is that they are pushing for another bank bail out by pushing for a Global Carbon Tax.
The fact is these morons are destroying our entire social and economic structures.
They fail as serious and responsible politicians just by the politics they make.
Time for a fresh wind and the restoration of empirical evidence in science instead of consensus based corruption.
The most important obstacle to a binding greenhouse gas emission reduction agreement in the past has been the inability of the parties to resolve the demands of the developing countries that the OECD pay for the measures they were asked to take to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This can be viewed as one of the largest shakedowns in history, involving the transfer of hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars from the industrialized countries to the rest. Alternatively, it can be viewed as only logical that the less developed countries not impair their economic development prospects, and their chances to raise billions of people out of energy poverty, to address an alleged climate problem the effects of which will only be felt a century hence. Regardless of how one describes the disagreement, it is central. So far, there have been no reports in the media as to what progress, if any, has been made in resolving this issue. Meanwhile, in the developed countries, the willingness of leaders to commit notionally to 70% reductions in emissions from 2010 levels by 2050 should be taken as remarkable. If one calculates what that target would mean in terms of actual emission reductions, and then examines the changes in consumption and lifestyles that would be needed to achieve it, it quickly would become clear that the target is unachievable in economic, technical and political terms. It would require either returning to a pastoral lifestyle typical of the mid-19th century or complete electrification of the economy along with construction of hundreds of nuclear power plants – all within 35 years! Of course, there exists a possibility that governments will take the cynical course and commit to targets and financial transfers that everyone knows cannot be implemented, based on the now well-established principle that there is no political downside to promising to reduce emissions, only in actually doing so.