Guest essay by Craig Rucker, CFACT.org
The UN is celebrating at COP 21, but what did they really achieve?
President Obama called the Paris climate agreement the best chance we’ve had to “save” the planet.
Not even close, Mr. President. We’ll put that bit of hyperbole right up there with your election being “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”
The good news is that the final agreement is substantially weaker than the drafts that led up to it. French Soclialist Laurent Fabius, who presided over COP 21, must have spent all of Friday night yanking the teeth out of it to come up with a document everyone would sign.
China and India will be pleased that this agreement permits them to go on burning coal and expanding their economies all they want. The President will be pleased that the agreement is weak enough that he can attempt to bypass Senate ratification.
You can read the whole thing at CFACT.org.
Marc Morano asked, “Does this mean we never have to hear about ‘solving’ global warming again!?” Marc’s full commentary was posted to the top of the Drudge Report.
CFACT senior policy advisor Paul Driessen warns that although he believes the final agreement is no more than “mush,” attempting to voluntarily abide by it will cause terrible economic harm and human suffering. You can read his full analysis at CFACT.org.
This agreement will not meaningfully alter the temperature of the Earth, even under the UN’s own computer models.
The bad news is that it plants the seeds of a new UN climate regime that left unchecked will swell into a bureaucratic behemoth.
The good news is that the agreement’s soft commitments, lack of penalties for noncompliance, and long dates buy time for more scientific data to come in.
The more scientific evidence we examine, the weaker the case for economy-wrecking global warming policies becomes.
Science may provide the way out.
If we can keep the data honest.
Thank you for that summary, I have been confused by the hype but not interested enough to spend energy reading the draft in any detail. Your summary tells me everything I needed to know
Careful Julian. Remember the emphasis now per both the UN entities and the OECD is global/local. Nothing to ratify is not helpful when it is state legislative bodies or mayors like Bloomberg’s What Works Cities or Clinton’s C40 that are the point of implementation.
In particular the UN last month had a meeting in Mexico City to push what are called Learning Cities. http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/harnessing-the-willingness-of-the-populace-to-fill-its-role-in-these-plans-via-deceit-at-all-levels/ Places that are simultaneously implementing the UN’s education, climate change, Equity for All by 2030 social and economic vision, and other elements of what the Brookings Institute, with Rockefeller Foundation support, calls the Metropolitanism agenda.
We always know when something is the true point of implementation when the advocates get to use the Bellagio retreat in Italy’s lovely lake region for planning purposes. That would be the case for all these aspects being pushed locally and largely out of sight.
I do not disagree. These things take years to fizzle out, but there was a rotten stink in the air and I sense that a lot more people are smelling it. In the end this is all politics, and politics never stays still; it goes forwards or it goes backwards. The forward momentum is losing its power
I’m with Robin. I’m more concerned about what was agreed to that sets up long term beaurocracies at the UN….not unlike the IPCC was innocently and quietly set up 25-30 years ago. And look how much power the IPCC now has to have led us to this point in Paris, how much damage the IPCC has done with its politics over science approach.
These were leaders in Paris, typcically long term thinkers, perfectly comfortable with a big baby step toward bigger objectives. To many of us who recongnize that this is not about climate change, but something bigger, headlines that there is nothing binding on climate change miss the point, are a ruse. Its the fine print that will matter here on their bigger objectives that I worry about.
Bingo, we have a winner
bureaucracies
Yore vowels is jumbled.
Mush.
An excellent description. When I looked over the document, that is what I felt about it; but I didn’t sum it into a single word that described the whole morass so well.
Unfortunately, it is one of those agreements that is so loose, it may never go away.
What really irritates me is that there are zero metrics for success.
There is all the hoorah mush about emission reductions, but nothing about how the climate and climate component contributions are measured and verified.
End result; cash transfers are the only success metric that can be accurately measured. But cash received is not tracked as to the purpose it is put forward. Some little island potentates are going home dreaming of riches to come.
Professional bureaucrats and rent-seekers creating nebulous bafflegab word salad and whose only purpose is to keep themselves employed because they are incompetent at anything truly productive.
ATheosK
‘Some little island potentates are going home dreaming of riches to come.’
And riches can come from many sources.
‘President Anote Tong for the Nobel Peace Prize’
This Nobel Candidate nomination is being organised thru the Australian Edmund Rice Foundation. A Catholic Social Justice Concern that bangs on about Refugees, Climate and The Usual Suspects.
‘President Tong was first elected to office in 2003, and is now in his 3rd and final term. Whilst in office he has sought every possible opportunity within the global debate on climate change action, to – alongside the leaders of other impacted nations – articulate the concerns, the perspectives and the need for urgency experienced by ‘small island developing states’.
Note that President Tong can be a tad two faced on this subject as outlined in BBC Online report which Eric Worrall posted at WUWT on Nov 15 2015.
‘ And you thought the Kiribati Climate Refugee Story was Over’
Mr Teitiota claimed New Zealand citizenship due to the Climate Refugee notion but it was rejected as Court deemed the danger not imminent based on scientific data. .
AS BBC ONLINE NOTES.
‘…But there hasn’t been a dramatic exodus just yet. The New Zealand immigration department sets aside 75 places a year in a lottery for migrants from Kiribati, and at the moment it can’t fill them.
President Anote Tong suggests that is because things aren’t desperate enough yet.”
Eric was actually reasonably kind to President Tong in his post but the BBC journal less so.
…President Anote Tong suggests that is because things aren’t desperate enough yet.
“It’s not a critical issue yet. I think if there are people who migrate now, I hope they would do it out of choice. But as to the question, is it so critical that people would be regarded as refugees? My answer would be no, not at this point in time.”
And yet, the annihilation of his country is something he discusses more than any other head of government.’
BBC The man who would be the first climate change refugee 5 Nov. 2015
Come Nobel time I wonder which ‘narrative’ will be peddled and should ‘Tong Get The Gong’ I can only imagine the rapture that shall emanate from the MSM Regarding the Victory.
How devalued can this Peace Prize become and, as ATheosK has posted, watch the financial bonanza that will flow.
They couldn’t find a way to tax the air we breath in, so they decided to try and tax the air we breathe out . It’s called ” Cap and Trade ” or ” Carbon Tax ” !! ….Don’t be fooled again !
A watered down suicide pact is still a suicide pact…..
Not likely if your weapon of choice is a wet noodle.
Have you ever been whipped by a wet noodle? Well, have you? Have you? Never underestimate a wet noodle. Whew, can they be vicious.
That’s boogey-noodles. They disintegrate at first contact. Fear not.
The sort of suicide pact where you make sure the other person goes first.
China and India have invited us to go first.
But we don’t have to accept.
Unfortunately, in the UK we have Cameron as our illustrious leader.
And he suffered from being over-promoted when he became an MP.
In other words, a youicide pact!
‘Science may provide the way out.’ – Reality will provide the answer.
“Reality will provide the answer.”
How well will this work out when so many “reject your reality and substitute their own” (which is apparently easy to do if you have a complicit media to continue and uphold the broken narrative)?
Reality must make its way into the media before the average citizenry will become aware of the underlying agenda all giftwrapped as ‘science settled by consensus’. That will depend largely upon who is in control of the media’s PC policy in each country as time passes.
In 1928, Edward Bernays, “The Father of Public Relations”, published his book, PROPAGANDA. His opening sentence reads: “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”
Thirty-seven years later, Jacques Ellul authored PROPAGANDA: THE FORMATION OF MEN’S ATTITUDES, concluding fewer than 10% of us can resist propaganda’s powerful influence.
Thomas Jefferson warned: a poorly educated society will not remain free. We have been heading that direction for more than a century.
Lee Welter: Yes, and we’ve had the Perfect Propaganda Machine (the internet) in place worldwide for what, a decade now? Since computers makes smart people smarter, and stupid people much, much stupider, we’re in real trouble.
I hope for the same sort of things to happen, as ended Lysenko’s foray into bad science setting government policy. The difference is that this is global and that fact introduces the need for multiple leaders to play the part of Khrushchev, along with a revolt from within the ranks of the science elite to reverse this detour into climate phobia pseudoscience.
Can’t imagine what might have transpired if Lysenkoism had been global…
CO2 Reduction: Potential Economic Disaster?
Introduction
The IPCC has warned we must reduce the consumption of fossil fuels in order to save the planet from the consequences of global warming. Although most of what the UN has said or written about global warming is “factually challenged’, our world leaders are making a politically expedient pretense of reducing CO2 emissions. This, of course, translates into burning less coal, oil and natural gas. But are these pledges realistic?
Absolutely not.
from my blog.
US got non-binding, India got differentiation (meaning they don’t have to play along), China got lack of transparency (via Preamble para 27), Tuvalu and gang did not get $100 billion/year, Kiribati and gang did not get to sue for loss and damage (preamble para 52), and France got to celebrate presiding over a largely meaningless agreement supporting the EU’s apparent fervently green desire to commit voluntary economic suicide. A pithier summary.
As for the US INDC, two points. The EPA Clean Power Plan is almost certainly unconstitutional; no less than Larry Tribe has contributed a brief providing three independent grounds.But that does not matter. The average US coal generating station is 40 years old. The average retirement age for the past two decades is 48. One third of US coal capacity will be retired anyway in the INDC time frame (I actually did the inventory analysis). They will be replaced with lower capital cost, faster to build, more thermally efficient, 65% less CO2 per MwH, lower LCOE CCGT. The lower bound of the US INDC is satisfied by this economic transition to better natural gas generation. This will happen anyway without Obama or COP21. Neat US trick, thanks to abundent inexpensive shale gas.
What does Russia get out of the deal?
It can keep exporting vast amounts of oil and natural gas without any penalties.
Russia gets to laugh at the spectacle of the west making fools of themselves and wasting more hundreds of billions of dollars. Again.
Piper Paul and Chris F:
I was actually asking a serious question. In order to claim with any credibility that this agreement was significant, the major industrialized countries together with China and India had to be on board. With a combined population of 2.7 billion people, China and India are not going to be swayed from their interests by the lamentations of Tuvalu, Kiribati and other members of the Carbon Chorus. The “non-binding” part was essential for the US because anything binding would be a treaty requiring Senate ratification, which was not going to happen.
Russia likewise had to get something in order to show up and pretend to go along. I’m interested to know what it was.
Alan Watt, (CD7),
Russia got the West to commit to not developing new coal fields. That means Western Europe has to buy their gas.
Shale gas may disrupt the market but that was always the case
Imagine if Hansen got his CO2 tax. Russia would have had yet another drain on their economy. Russia’s other win was that the treaty is pointless.
Mcourtney:
It will be interesting to see who’s going to supply the coal for the roughly 1,200 new coal-fired power plants China and India have planned between them. If the West develops no new mines, eventually the price of coal for India and China has to rise. Are they going to come back and demand the West subsidize their coal as part of “climate reparations”?
They might have a go.
But they will develop their own coal.
The fact it’s abundant is one of the reasons why coal is cheap.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_mining_in_India
GK
Whenever someone tells me that we just can’t count on innovation, I give them Michael Crichton’s fine piece on Manhattan horse manure and a link to Mike Mills’ excellent work:
“The invention by American entrepreneurs of a new way to literally manufacture oil from rocks, and at volumes and prices that move global markets, has been the biggest disruption on the energy landscape in 30 years. If the U.S shale industry were a country, it would rank as the world’s fifth largest hydrocarbon producer”.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/markpmills/2015/04/22/earth-day-2015-celebrate-cheap-abundant-oil-unleashed-from-the-earth-by-american-innovators/
(of course, this imagines that someone is willing to read)
check out abiotic oil——–proven..Death to FOSSIL fuel!
Read it. It has a number of egregiously erroneous ‘facts’. IMO typical of Forbes and most MSM.
‘Cheap’ The fracked shale wells cost 6-7 times as much as conventional onshore wells, yet the output is lower at the start with typical decline curves to only 15% of initial production after 36 months. Conventional wells have a decline curve close to zero for decades, and then 5-7% per anum decline to,stripper status.
‘Abundent’ The shale TRR ranges from 1.5 to 3% of OIP. The present TRR for ‘good’ (i.e large) conventional fields is 35% of OIP, and for all fields 26%. Estimated TRR for all US shale oil (not gas) is 12-15Bbbl after correcting the Monterey goof. The estimated remaining TRR for all US conventional oil is ~245 Bbbl (onshore and offshore, excluding fracked shale TRR). All TRR numbers are EIA 2015.
HR, abiotic oil has been thoroughly debunked. The Swedish trace was drilling mid contamination. The supposed Russian find in eastern Ukraine was seriously wrong geology involving an overthrust.
Abiotic natural gas is real. The ‘largest’ deposits are in the form of methane clathrates at the bottom of the Framm Strait, owing unusual plate techtonics at that location. Still rounding error compared to biogenic methane, biogenic clathrate and thermogenic conventional and shale.
That is why out of all the major western economies, the US even though it did not sign up to Kyoto, has achieved the greatest reduction in CO2 emissions.
It is not Kyoto, but shale that has driven the US reduction in CO2 emissions.
A similar result could be achieved in much of Europe (since it appears that there are extensive shale reserves), but the EU is too beholden to the greens who oppose fracking and the shale revolution. The green blob do not want to allow something that would actually result in worthwhile reductions in CO2 emissions,. they just wish to oppose economic development full stop.
You can see their motive with respect to their opposition to nuclear, and now to shale. If they truly believed that CO2 was the problem they yell about, they would be in favour of either nuclear or shale.
It has always been about degrowth and populace control. anything which does not create negative human impacts wont stop growth and human development. A populace that does not require government to survive can not be allowed to continue. This is why they hate the US and our own politicians have bought the socialism big government lie hook line and sinker.
I think greens’ main motive is playing holier-than-thou, or one-upsmanship, and secondarily to indulge in wishful tantrums for a green utopia.
But when finally even the shale gas revolution begins to falter, and LFTR nuke plants are still on the design table, the coal in the ground will still be there.. ready to dig up. The oil sands will still be there… ready to be dug up processed and burned for energy.
Hallelujah.
Obama didn’t need “binding”. He wedged a generic “All enviromental agreements” enforcement clause into the TPP. As soon as TPP is ratified, that commission can enforce the Paris agreement.
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2015/12/13/paris-cop21-obama-declares-victory-the-tpp-likely-gives-it-to-him/
Rearranging the deck chairs as the band plays on. When the USS Obama hits the iceberg, our ever increasing debt load will sink us into an abyss so deep Bob Ballard will never find us.
Until the next one.
There two big juicy positions to be created (see paragraph 122) to be called high level champions to facilitate the high level engagement in the period 2016 to 2020. Most likely one of the champions will be from the east and the other from the west. Al Gore? Pachauri ? Obama? Ban ? From the descriptionis somebody who could muscle out the countries.
Tony Blair (re IRA):
Barack Obama:
Therein lies the lack of a classical education: the un-knowing of the word: Hubris.
C’mon Harry, doncha want to be on the Right Side of History and remain unharrassed like all the other Kool Klimate Kidz?
When folks get that high up in the world, they can’t see arrogance or hubris in themselves anymore because the power veils their self-image.
Harry Passfield:
Are you sure you had adequate “classical education”?
Classically, Nemesis followed Hubris.
Blair and Obama each seem to have done well. Perhaps they were not guilty of hubris.
Richard
I believe drowning in mush is still FATAL. GK
Not just fatal, but icky.
Does this mean carbon taxes are on the way?
Possibly for some countries, but that will just rally the opposition troops to get elected and do away with them, just like Australia did.
The science and data are already in; the Warmist conjecture has failed. All we need now is the political will and fortitude to defeat what remains of the Climatist Industrial Complex.
If anyone here thinks any of the Arabic Gulf states, Russia, Venezuela and so on are going to refrain from pumping every barrel of oil they possibly can and someone on the other end will NOT be buying every barrel are nuts. The only nations that will curtail their oil/gas production are the US and Canada. Yeah – we’re the only ones who will get hurt in this insanity.
@Albertalad—I think that the only reason US and Canadian production has slowed so much is the <40.00/barrel price these days. Makes fracking and tarsand production a loosing proposition. When the price goes up again so will production. The industry heavy weights have way to much power and political clout for anything other wise.
JVC
JVC – You are flat wrong. It is the Saudi war on fracking and others that is currently determining oil prices these days. Case in point – many Canadians oil/gas companies have moved operations south to Mexico and other points south where governments are far more oil/gas friendly then in Canada and the US. Now – lets deal with the so called green economy. Take the idea that the vast infrastructure of green energy sources, is somehow going to appear as if by magic is insanity. Wind turbines require steel mills, carbon fibre, rubber made from oil, copper cable from mining, solar PV requires glass factories, electrical aluminium smelting, and more mines, etc. etc. People need to wise up, and stop dreaming. The biggest fantasy is that politicians can now control the temperature of the planet 50 to 100 years from now. Or that oil/gas will not be used world wide.
The ultimate goal in Canada is to end all fossil fuel production and use renewable energy.
@Albertalad–not sure what I am dead wrong about–the saudi war on fracking is what has brought the price/barrel down to the point where fracking and tar sand production are cost prohibitive. Don’t think you can say that the US is “unfriendly” to oil production-Obama recently opened up parts of the Arctic that were previously verboten. Thinking that Shell was ready to take advantage of it-rig all set to go, but decided to wait for better times (price).
Good friend has been working deepwater rigs for just about forever–most recently off the Yucatan. The company he works for owns 12 platforms–10 are mothballed right now. Seems that the most recent OPEC decision will insure a global glut for a while into the future–don’t believe anyone can say just how long.
as for the rest of your comment on the “green” economy, I agree.–it is obviously just a bunch of pie in the sky hype right now intended to enrich some at the expense of the rest of us. I live where wind farms spring up virtually over night. Without government subsidies, they wouldn’t be marching across the landscape, like so many martian war machines. and so many days, those blades are standing still. Even if the Texas grid has 10%/15% of it’s potential energy output in wind, it still needs fossil fuel plants to pick up the slack. Maybe some day renewables (solar/wind) will reach a point of practicality, but being I’m an old man, I doubt it will be in my life time. Once the storage problem is taken care of, and some of the newer solar concepts are brought on line (thinking the solar elastomere paints in particular) I can envision every new structure built being energy neutral—that is if the big energy producers let that happen, and government would just get the h*ll out of the way But until then–It’s fossil fuel or nuclear, and the latter doesn’t have much going for it right now in the public’s mind.
JVC
jvcstone – December 13, 2015 at 4:24 pm
HA, ….. the Saudi’s war is simply one of “price fixing” …. and they “fixed” the price of their oil exports to insure it was cost prohibitive for tar sand production.
To wit: http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=727&t=6
+ 1 ( and I wish it could be more!).
The new gov in Alberta, Canada is insanity. Thousands of lay-offs to promote “green” energy ? From what? Are they going to harness Chinooks? Solar for an area that for most of the year has little sun? ( They call it winter) And even if they could harness wind power or solar ? How effective is the equipment when it is -40 Celsius (common) with a wind chill factor that can go as low as -45-50 C ??
Basically I think congress should take President Obama and Mr Kerry to the woodshed for not pressing for a legally binding agreement.
If they truly believe AGW is such a vast threat PROVE it.
Trust, in the good judgement of the American people, Good Lord they elected him TWICE ! Let there be an open debate and all the facts, implications and warts aired. We all sides of the debate must ask;If not to get an agreement that was legally binding amongest all nations then why was he there?
If The President and the Secretary of State do not have enough confidence in their beliefs to put them before the Elected Representatives of the American people, then perhaps they should admit that the two of them should have never have gone to Paris and squandered the Peoples’ purse.
michael
If COP21 accomplishes absolutely nothing else it sure is good to know that at least it was such a grand and profound rebuke to terrorists.
(um, I guess I better put a sarc tag here)
No sarc required.
The fact that Paris could host a large conference shows that a few thugs with guns are like gnats to the West’s elephants.
It is embarrassing for the people who believe tomorrow belongs to them.
We are being bombarded by the media in the UK by propaganda saying that the weather is so extreme compared to what it used to be. However our energy bills are being pushed up to pay rich landowners to make money by putting up wind turbines. I noticed recently that the cost of buying a bicycle had shot up from about one hundred pound to three hundred pound and yes the governments are now giving firms subsidies to buy their employees bicycles.
Will need to put up in orbit truth telling satellites for true data.
Will have to independently check every weather data source for fudge.
Will have to have true data on the windmill lies, the solar lies, the coal kills all, nukes will never be safe lies.
At the base, lies kill, rob, and subvert the truth.
Only truth can save US and sanity.
Time is on our side, use each hour with sound judgement.
We already have the truth telling satellites, the propaganda arm of the left refuses to acknowledge their data.
Writes Mr. Rucker:
Why all this hatred focused on our Indonesian-in-Chief, “Bathhouse Barry” Soebarkah?
After all, as an “affirmative action” hire, isn’t he entitled to a “diminished capacity” defense as to his morality, intelligence, competence, integrity, and efficacy?
+10
Obama’s goal was to negotiate a “multilateral environmental agreement” that could be added by the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) Commission to TPP and then enforced against the U.S. by TPP’s tribunals which allow countries to sue each other for multi-billion dollar fines if a country violates the agreement.
He needed to thread a needle: A “declaration” would not be enforceable. A “treaty” would require Senate ratification. I think he succeeded, but I am not sure.
you are not alone in that thinking –
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/12/obama_will_use_tpp_to_enforce_his_climate_agreement.html
This is what Wikileaks was reporting a few months back.They hope Congress will pass TPP without knowing the full ramifications.I hope its not true.
” Howard Richman
December 13, 2015 at 9:34 am
Obama’s goal was to negotiate a “multilateral environmental agreement” that could be added by the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) Commission to TPP and then enforced against the U.S. by TPP’s tribunals”
I think this agreement is wonderful but we should go much, much further. This agreement must be extended in scope and should form the basis for mitigating all related man made client affecting emissions. In that spirit, I think it is logical we extend the process to money itself. It would not be hard – even self evident – that the proliferation of money can be convincingly demonstrated to be tied to climate change even more so than CO2 (I can visualize the IPCC graphs as I type). This, according to current climate science logic, must imply causation. So: I am going to propose to my bank that I will submit a strategy (or IPDC – Intended Personally Determined Contribution) to abrogate my money footprint starting with a voluntary plan to repay my mortgage and other debts. This will, of course, be non-binding and I may or may not make payments and/or submit status reports on my re-payment plans in the future. And these status reports, should I choose to provide them, will be generated by myself alone and not subject to any external scrutiny. The bank will have no legal recourse against me – since it is a developed financial entity and I only aspire to to try and stay ahead of my bills. This sort of arrangement will benefit all of humanity – what could possibly go wrong?? /sarc off
Just 13 more months and his gone…..
Be careful what you wish for.
Infiltrate the cult, recon inside, be where they do not think they will be checked on.
When it is best let them go on the record with the lies.
Next day put the infiltration data out that shines the light on the lie they just told.
Make it so no one believes one of the lies and in the end no one even listens any longer.
I Tried that but it didn’t work……I think my Mark Steyn T-shirt might have given’ me away ??
If temps go down they’ll claim victory. If temps go up they’ll claim we’re not doing enough.
If you think temps are going to drop because we reduce CO2 now, then you really have no understanding of the science. If AGW is real, it will be a very long time before anything we do now makes a difference. And there in lies the ultimate moral question. Do we act now to protect generations in the future?
that sustainability drivel needs to be dragged to an unmarked grave in the barren desert:
https://www.nas.org/articles/sustainabilitys_war_on_doubt
Bubba Cow
What has the rather one sided right wing article you quoted got to do with what I said?
“generations in the future”
you and the offended generation need to grow up
CO2 is plant food, future generations need to study science, not sociology
“If you think temps are going to drop because we reduce CO2 now, then you really have no understanding of the science.”
No, I don’t think that at all. I think human contribution to atmospheric CO2 has little if any effect on planetary temperature. There is not one iota of scientific evidence based on real world observation that proves otherwise. It doesn’t exist.
My original statement was in regard to those in power living in a fantasy world. They believe there’s a CO2 knob that controls the temperature of the planet and that we have the power to change it as we see fit. Current temperature fluctuations (both magnitude and timescale) are well within the known bounds of natural variability. They truly believe we’re responsible for the temperature fluctuation we’ve been seeing though, at least since 1950 (or whatever arbitrary date they’ve chosen). Ergo if temperatures decrease, regardless if it’s natural, they’ll claim victory, and if temperatures increase, regardless if it’s natural, they’ll claim we’re not doing enough.
I think it is you, Simon, who has no understanding of the real science.
deebodk
Wrong
Ending with such a resounding success, what can they possibly do for an encore??
After 20 curtain calls? God forbid.
This agreement merely puts the frog in the pot. Subsequent agreements (or amendments) will slowly turn up the heat. If you don’t recognize roles, we’re the frog.
When has better scientific data made a difference with these clowns?
Joshes 7 days of HOPES AND FEARS rings true then. See you at COP 22..23…24…25…26…27.. Wait it’s suddenly getting very cold!
It is an international climate treaty signed by all, gold dust to alarmists and those with agendas, way better than the 97% thing trotted out by politicians, this IS very dangerous, regardless of the lack of teeth.
Everyone got almost exactly what they wanted from this deal.
For all those sarcastically criticizing this deal as a sham that will accomplish nothing. you are wrong. It will accomplish exactly what it set out to do.
1. Establish in the public consciousness that CAGW is real, and the governments of the world are coming together to do something about it. Any discussion of the science itself has been swept aside and no longer matters.
2. Provide cover for the political elites of the free world to enact programs ranging from subsidies to crony capitalist green technology companies, to grants to to crony socialist lobbyists and researchers reinforcing the message. Not to mention a big tax hike or two…or five… on everything from gasoline to electricity. You can hear the sanctimonious response to anyone who objects already. “We had to, we signed an an agreement to save the world”.
3. For the crony capitalists and crony socialists, it provides more than sufficient cover for them to lobby heavily for their agendas which include a healthy dollop of putting your money in their pockets.
4. For the developing world, they get to do what they were going to do anyway, with the slim but real prospect that they’ll get some money from the free world to do it.
5. The oil producing nations of the 2nd and 3rd world will pump oil like mad without any repercussions. Only wealthy 1st world countries like US and Canada will be stupid enough to curtail their own production.
6. The rest of the world, made up mostly of dictatorships ranging in style from military to theocracy will be able to go home and pacify their populations by blaming all their problems on climate change caused by others. They will promise relief tat the 1sr world will probably never send, and which will be skimmed off by corruption if it is.
The only loser in all this is the common man, 99.9% of the population who had no effective representation at the meeting in the first place.
DH, tend to disagree although I understand your perspective. Kyoto accomplished the political goal of legitimizing CAGW, not Paris. This won’t end until the IPCC is forced by Ma Nature to recognize they and their models and their anthropogenic attribution were wrong. Then it might become possible to defund the huge bureaucacies that are accreting to UNFCCC. Also by then, a lot of the most vested ‘climate scientists’ will have retired or died. It is said that a subtle scientific paradigm shift proceeds one death at a time.
Also by then, a lot of the most vested ‘climate scientists’ will have retired or died. It is said that a subtle scientific paradigm shift proceeds one death at a time.
In this case the inverse is true. For every scientist guilty of selfish corruption of the science for their own personal aggrandizement and wealth, there will no be 10 to replace them who grew up with the CAGW meme as a fact since childhood and will pursue the same agenda with the blindness of youthful idealogues.
As for Kyoto, it was a far away thing that most people didn’t hear much about, regarding science about which they new little. Now we have the internet, and social media and instant MSM from anywhere and everywhere about anything and everything (except dreary science with all its facts and formulas and minutia that the MSM consumer has no interest in) and most people have heard about it, and despite their near instant access to information on the web, perhaps I should say disinformation since it seems to be prevailing, it regards science about which they no little.
Ristvan does Lomborg’s estimate of 0.05 C change by 2100 still hold after this nonsense? And could this best outcome be measured anyway? BTW what will the likely co2 emissions be by 2040 if every country follows this to the letter? EIA estimates that OECD countries emissions will nearly flat line ( about 13 GTs to 14 GTs ) while non OECD ( China, India etc ) will soar from about 19.5 GTs to 31 GTs. Any change?
DH – think you are probably right about the psychological effects. Actual discomfort to be inflicted on the population of any country will be entirely voluntary, however, although there are plenty of governments around with sado-masochistic tendencies.
What will it mean for each country? USD100bn per annum could be deemed to have been found rather painlessly if you try hard enough. Here in UK our Govt. has a foreign aid budget of around GBP12bn(USD18bn), some of which is already renewables-related. Mr Cameron has proven adept at announcing various extra ‘helps’ which it turns out in the end come from that aid budget, so that ‘finding’ say USD5bn-6bn, which on a pro rata GDP basis should be the UK’s share of the developed world’s penance, need not mean much change except a little re-labelling, which they are already good at.
The good thing seems to be the lack of urgency, giving time for the proper debate to continue, and for nature to give its verdict.
Mr Cameron has proven adept at announcing various extra ‘helps’ which it turns out in the end come from that aid budget, so that ‘finding’ say USD5bn-6bn
The $100 bn is a pittance in global economic parlance, but a pretty substantial pay off for a UN agency which will skim off a healthy chunk for “operational expenses” and the rest will be skimmed off by corrupt third world governments. But it is a pittance. The big numbers come from the academics lined up at the public trough to “study” climate science, which is in turn a pittance compared to the crony capitalists who will fill their pockets with subsidies raked from the common tax payer. How much has Britain spent on subsidies for wind farms in the last 10 years? Here in Canada an auditor’s report puts the number in a single province, Ontario, at 37 Billion. Just one province of one country!
The spending this will enable far exceeds the 100 Bn. The beneficiaries are easy to identify. The world’s poor, who they are supposed to be protecting will be hurt the worst by it.
“They will promise relief [that] the [first] world will probably never send…”
Thus justifying further anger and outrage towards the “first world” and the encouragement of committing acts of mindless violence by the mentally deranged/easily-fooled against those in the west. Perhaps.
I fear you are right David.
It is just another milestone down – or tombstone on – the Enlightenment that briefly captured mens’ minds and raised them above mere prejudice towards an understanding of what was real.
Now we see that ignorance prejudice and faith are as usual ruling the roost, and worst of all, its not even faith in some deity, but in a crazed concoction of social ‘seance’
Climate change is a sideshow: the real game is the complete destruction of independent inquiry into the state of the Universe, to be replaced by sponsored inquiry into the universe of the State.
Terri,
I note on the CFCT document linked to, there is a stern injunction – Recycle this.
Seems fair to me . . . .
As a first skim, it is really a non-binding kvetch.
Now, yes, there are bits that zealous (= deluded) politicos could use to cripple their own countries’ economies.
Most of them in fairness, probably don’t really want to do that.
Are there exceptions? – well, I have suspicions – certainly about souls who will not be in office for COP 22 in 2020, which, doubtless, will be in some agreeable location.
Judge them by their acts, and perhaps their speech – not by which gongs they get given [or claim to get, in a few cases!].
Auto
“This agreement will not meaningfully alter the temperature of the Earth, even under the UN’s own computer models.”
That’s because there is no global temperature!!! Stop speaking nonsense!!!
<If temps go down they’ll claim victory.
Yes, but that doesn't count if the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere would still be increasing. In that case, how could they tell that the decrease of the temperature is due to their action?
These people will never give up. They will strive to move forward with their agenda 1 salami slice at a time. And party on our dime while they do it. Win-Win for them. Lose or Lose more for the rest of us.
Eradication of bureaucracies is our only hope. It is them or us.
We Don’t Need Them…pg
Well at least at the present time there is still cheap energy available. I wonder how long this will last:
http://www.bloomberg.com/energy
Seems to me that the “agreement” which has been reached is a change of tack. The aim now, is to keep temperature rise to below 2 degrees by the end of the century. Like someone just found a control knob! It may be, if the planet continues to behave as it has in the past twenty years, that this “aim” will be achieved. So then it hasn’t been a scam. We were never lied to. The whole sorry bandwagon rolls on and no-one ever gets blamed or castigated. Mission accomplished!
In an abstract way, skeptics of the science won the day as these demagogues used their outside voices in public, but their inside voices to forge a document that gave them a ‘get out of jail’ card. Critically though, the science has taken a back seat to politics and power and money in these latter years. The entire notion of ‘climate change’ is less and less about global warming and sciencey concerns over emissions. It is more and more about Maurice Strong’s Agenda 21 initiatives. How long before our elected leadership agree to (essentially) lease our sovereign lands from a U.N. bureaucracy, as that bureaucracy determines how we will use our land and energy. Crazy thought? Maybe…
GWPF sums it up well:
“*) We would like to apologise to editors and correspondents as this is exactly the same statement we issued a year ago, with the sole change of Paris for Lima; but since there has been no substantive change in the COP21 deal there is no change in our assessment.”
http://us4.campaign-archive2.com/?u=c920274f2a364603849bbb505&id=95e8d96b05&e=fdc2942f24
Look, it’s working already!
Current Arctic sea ice extent:
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/icecover/icecover_current.png
This graph is bogus, I referred to it in another post. Where are people getting this graph from? The right one is at
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/icecover/icecover_current_new.png
There are a few details at http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
If you had read your own link, you would have seen exactly where the first graph comes from. For your convenience, please allow me to quote the relevant portion: The plot above replaces an earlier sea ice extent plot, that was based on data with the coastal zones masked out. This coastal mask implied that the previous sea ice extent estimates were underestimated. The new plot displays absolute sea ice extent estimates. The old plot can still be viewed here for a while.
The earlier graph is the one I have bookmarked. Perhaps the new methodology is more accurate. I don’t know.
There was no indication in your image post that you had read the link I posted saying the old plot has problems.
Please check http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/sea-ice-page/ (from the Nav bar at the top of the page), it has other plots and pointers to plots that are close to the DMI new (and fixed) plot.
Thanks, Craig Rucker, CFACT.
This looks like a repreive.
It appears like we carbon-based creatures will live to see another day.
Shouldn’t Josh’s last “projection” of them trudging out through the snow to their CO2 producers been the title picture? 😎
China and India will be pleased that this agreement permits them to go on burning coal and expanding their economies all they want.
1935 Anglo-German Naval Agreement, anyone?
Piper Paul and others: I agree.
The COP21 has already accomplished its primary mission: perpetuate the Bully Travel Club. Those who have worked with UN/State Dept activities (e.g. being the “representative” of some agency involved) are quite familiar with this. The UN/State group never saw a meeting they didn’t like, especially in some desirable vacation spot.
How much did this cost the normal, taxpaying public of the world? Apparently 38,000 people registered for entry. Chalk up about $2,000 for a plane ticket, perhaps $300/day ($4,200 for two weeks) for lodging and food, then about $7,000 for two weeks loaded salary for “working” there. That works out to over $600 Million for the lot. That’s if the attendees paid more or less government rates and didn’t get too many waivers because, well, they were “saving the planet.”
Add that the agreement isn’t binding, the progress reporting is voluntary, and there is no way to tell if whatever it did is working or not, there is no way to tell if anyone who attended actually contributed anything, AND that there are guaranteed to be more meetings until forever. (Who wouldn’t want a job like that – unless of course one takes pride in actual achievement.)
A really Bully Travel Club. Largely for politically favored and their friends.
First 15 comments are all spot on. Well observed and dissected. The evidence it is nearly useless save as a way to bleat on for five more years is the cagey way the BBC is shameless over-selling it while avoiding the content. The usual shills are on the soap box with florid prose signifying, well, not much. Calving glaciers abound, as if they are supposed to stop and grow forever. I am amazed how effectively the major countries (by population and economy) eviscerated the Carbon Dream with ifs, buts and outs.
What I take away from COP21 is that the last happy generation of mankind is currently alive. What is to come will be born into a world of calculated misery.
I submitted the following to the Climate Science Blog of the Geological Society’s “Connected Community.” We’ll see if they post it. A shorter version appeared on my Facebook page:
The Paris COP-21 meeting on climate change has published its 31-page “Agreement” which can be read here:
http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2015/cop21/eng/l09.pdf
I’ve read the agreement and got the impression, perhaps mistaken, that it is an advocacy document with feel-good intentions lacking rigor and enforcement mechanisms. Key provisions are voluntary with no oversight. In other words, each country is left to decide what it wants to do simply because no agreement was possible without such a provision rendering it meaningless.
The winners were the Indians and the Chinese who are increasing coal production. The Chinese also are selling coal-fired power plants to other countries! Even US Secretary of State Kerry admitted that any agreed mitigation the US might do won’t ameliorate Anthropogenic global warming significantly.
The Agreement also has an opt-out provision after three years from signing the agreement with a one-year waiting period after giving notice. However, failure of 55 countries to ratify the agreement by April, 2016, also is an opt-out mechanism that is four months away. The most critical part of the agreement appears in the “Annex” starting on p.19.
The Global Warming Policy Foundation in the UK has described the COP-21 Agreement as “non-binding and toothless” which pretty-well sums it up. Similarly, GSA’s distinguished invited speaker at the 2015 Baltimore annual meeting, Dr. James Hansen, has stated that the COP-21 meeting in Paris is a ”fraud.” (http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/12/james-hansen-climate-change-paris-talks-fraud). Given his credentials and GSA’s high regard for his expertise, Dr. Hansen’s assessment should be taken seriously even if his language could be viewed by some as strong.
The 12 day venue appears to have been very costly. I estimated it cost over $1 Billion to arrange the Paris meeting. Using the US State Department per diem rate for Paris of $480/day, just this item for 40,000 delegates comes to $211,200,000. Travel costs, averaging $5,000 per delegate (probably a low figure because most travelled first class) would add $200 million. Add rental of the venue, security, special limousines, flying the US President’s security designed SUV, security detail and 500 person entourage, and the costs keep climbing. Add delegates’ salaries as an additional cost.
Did the world get its money’s worth? In the Southern USA, they say “time will tell.” In my view, the venue money could have been better spent helping the world’s poor improve their economic well-being and given them a chance for upward mobility. That’s a global goal worth striving for.
Writes George Devries Klein, PhD, PG, FGSA:
In yet more words, the politicians in each First-World government are left to decide precisely which economy-killing measures to inflict upon the productive sector of their respective societies as their “campaign contributors,” graft-payers, and other rentiers have commanded.
Twenty years later, it appears that it’s time to implement the ballistic solution. Pour encourager les autres if not to utterly eradicate the vermin.
Craig Rucker:
You write
Yes! That was inevitable and I warned of it five years ago. I then said what we needed to do and now still need to do.
Immediately after the IPCC Copenhagen CoP in December 2000 I wrote the following on WUWT and elsewhere.
The AGW-scare was killed at the failed 2009 IPCC Conference in Copenhagen. I said then that the scare would continue to move as though alive in similar manner to a beheaded chicken running around a farmyard. It continues to provide the movements of life but it is already dead. And its deathly movements provide an especial problem.
Nobody will declare the AGW-scare dead: it will slowly fade away. This is similar to the ‘acid rain’ scare of the 1980s. Few remember that scare unless reminded of it but its effects still have effects; e.g. the Large Combustion Plant Directive (LCPD) exists. Importantly, the bureaucracy which the EU established to operate the LCPD still exists. And those bureaucrats justify their jobs by imposing ever more stringent, always more pointless, and extremely expensive emission limits which are causing enforced closure of UK power stations.
Bureaucracies are difficult to eradicate and impossible to nullify.
As the AGW-scare fades away those in ‘prime positions’ will attempt to establish rules and bureaucracies to impose those rules which provide immortality to their objectives. Guarding against those attempts now needs to be a serious activity.
Richard
I remember that, and it is very true.
The problem, of course, is how to kill the beats, given the MSM has swallowed it hook line and sinker.
Where are the troops, how are they rallied and how can they achieve their objective? Whilst what you said was prophetic, it is in practice very difficult for the ordinary citizen (who is not a rabble raiser) to do much about it.
I have long said (going back before Copenhagen) that this will only die a death when energy prices become so expensive that hit hits the consumer hard, and if that coupled with a severe winter leads to high numbers of premature deaths, the story might be picked up by MSM and run with.
It is the loss of jobs in the energy intensive industries (eg., steel and aluminium etc) and high consumer price of energy which will eventually mobilise enough people to shout loud enough that the politicians must take notice if they are to remain in office and/or be returned at the next election.
I very much welcomed Milliband’s intervention on capping energy costs since I thought that that would lead to a sensible and open debate on why energy is so expensive. Unfortunately, this never happened. The average electricity user does not realise that they are paying more than twice as much for electricity because of the push to renewables. The average gas user does not know how cheap gas is in the US, and how cheap it could be in the UK if shale fracking were to go ahead. The economics is never explained.
I think that we have a long way to go. Whilst I do not want to see a cooling globe, it would obviously help the cause (not The Cause as referred to in the Climategate emails) if the globe was to cool over the next decade.
In fact, if there is no long lasting step change in temperature coincident with the current 2015/16 strong El Nino, as there was a long lasting step change in temperature coincident with the Super El Nino of 1997/98, it will make AR6 very difficult to write since without such a step change in temperature, the ‘pause’ will be over 21 years in duration during which time nearly 40% of manmade emissions will have taken place. This will mean that Climate Sensitivity must be lower than suggested in AR5, and the discrepancy between model projections, which is already embarrassing, will be even more stark and even more difficult to explain.
I really think that we need to see a cooler globe, with increasing Arctic ice, to drive the point home, namely that Climate Change is natural in origin, and that man has little or no impact (other than on micro regional level such as urbanisation, damming, deforestation, farming and irrigation etc). .
richard verney:
Thankyou for your thoughtful response to my comment.
Firstly, and for clarity, my comment was certainly not intended to say “I told you so”: I am fully aware that one is often forgiven for being wrong and rarely forgiven for being fright.
I wrote to say it has been clear for a long time that there was a need to avoid what has happened in Paris. And contrary to many comments here, the Paris agreement provides a serious long-term problem that is difficult to overcome.
As you say, it is very difficult to overcome the problem of a policy to establish rules and bureaucracies intended to provide immortality to the objectives of AGW promoters.
The job losses in energy intensive industries and the high fuel costs have not overcome it. In fact, when the UK fuel escalator became intolerably high it was adjusted to be just below the level at which it induced civil disorder.
Also, cold as well as heat is (illogically) asserted to be a result of ‘climate change’ from GHG emissions. So, I doubt that global cooling will overcome the problem especially when ‘global temperature’ data can be adjusted to be anything desired.
And prior to AR6 there four more years to establish the rules and bureaucracies intended to provide immortality to the objectives of AGW promoters and now agreed in Paris. Therefore, whatever AR6 says may be irrelevant because – as I keep saying – bureaucracies are difficult to eradicate and impossible to nullify.
I write in hope of inciting suggestions on how to solve the problem because I have none.
Richard
‘Science may provide the way out’. There’s plenty of science showing that AGW is all bull, and so far nobody has paid any attention to that. What makes anyone think that a load of fresh data will make any difference? Whatever hidden agenda going on behind the scences, their minds are made up and that’s that.
You have to love Article 28:
“Article 28
1. At any time after three years from the date on which this Agreement has entered into force for a Party, that Party may withdraw from this Agreement by giving written notification to the Depositary.
2. Any such withdrawal shall take effect upon expiry of one year from the date of receipt by the Depositary of the notification of withdrawal, or on such later date as may be specified in the notification of withdrawal.
3. Any Party that withdraws from the Convention shall be considered as also having withdrawn from this
Agreement”
I see lots of “recognise”, “urge”, “encourage” but no “commit”, “legally bind” or similar. Is this really just an agreement to “do your best”?
Great! The planet has now been officially saved by the alarmists. They can take all the credit they want. Can we now move on to more important issues?
Jbird:
The problem is not what alarmists have done or what credit they want to take.
The problem is that they have officially decided to establish rules and bureaucracies intended to provide immortality to the objectives of AGW promoters. Implementation of their decision needs to be opposed at each locality in each country.
Richard
” a new UN climate regime that left unchecked will swell into a bureaucratic behemoth.” Note well. And understand that, if checked, it will transform into something else environmental / of some global reach.
If we can keep the Data HONEST!
We can only hope!
Here is some “honest data” showing that arctic sea ice is declining faster than predicted. The time for dithering is over.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/files/2015/12/figure5.png
Luke,
You wrote: “Honest data”. heh, Luke, “data” isn’t [shown] in a [single] fabricated chart, invented so they can pretend to know the future to fool the dimwits here.
For folks who want to know REALITY, here is a real-time chart showing global ice cover:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
Notice something? There is nothing unusual or unprecedented happening.
The debate is over global warming. So why would you post a fake chart, showing only one hemisphere?
Answer: because fake charts are all you’ve got. The alarmist cult has been wrong in every scary prediction they ever made. Now the planet is proving them wrong about Arctic ice, so they invent fake charts to try and convince the credulous and naive that there’s a problem.
There isn’t a problem, so quit worrying.
“Now the planet is proving them wrong about Arctic ice, so they invent fake charts”. Please give me a source supporting your claim that the chart I provided is fake. The bottom line is that the minimum arctic ice extent has been declining for the last 50 years.
Luke
Well, that’s interesting … The first comparable measurements were from satellites that first measured Arctic and Antarctic sea in 1979. Not fifty years. Not yet 40 years actually. But that’s actually trivial.
Now, to the real issue though. What difference does a loss of Arctic sea ice make right now? Seven months of the year -including that dreaded two weeks of minimum Arctic sea ice extent in mid-September you like to cite as evidence of “global warming”, every square kilometer of “missing” arctic sea ice cools the planet.
5 months of the year, losing arctic sea ice warms the arctic ocean .. a little bit. So, should you not be worried about greater cooling in September?
11 months of the year, excess Antarctic sea ice cools the planet. A lot.
Luke,
Notice anything unusual about your chart?
Yep. It shows a drastic decline in Arctic ice — all the way out to year 2100!
How do they know?? Answer: They don’t know!
That chart is intended to scare the public. It’s a fake, pretending that they know what will happen over the next 85 years. As. If.
There isn’t any problem with “ice”, so quit worrying. Nothing unusual or unprecedented is happening.
Luke, can you explain what a sea ice model intercomparison actually is?
dbstealey states “It’s a fake, pretending that they know what will happen over the next 85 years.” I was focusing on what has happened over the past 50 years- that is empirical data, not projections. Aren’t you concerned about the 40% decline in ice extent over that period?
Luke says:
Aren’t you concerned about the 40% decline in ice extent over that period?
Not in the least. And I notice you omitted the word “Arctic”. Because global ice remains on its long term trend line. There’s no way to spin that, so the ‘40%’ scare is used. Did you really think you would get away with that here?
And your explanation for the 40% decline in arctic ice extent is?
Luke
What 40% decline?
Arctic sea ice has been only 5-7% below some assumed “daily average” part of the year, 10 to 15% below that assumed daily average part of the year, and 25% to 30% below that assumed daily average only in the few weeks of minimum extent. IF – big assumption there! – that assumed daily average is even correct over the long term.
YOUR claimed 40% decline is only based on less than one-half of one (theoretical) measured cycle: From a possible maximum point to a probable minimum poiint – extrapolated with a line.
Further, that published anomaly at sea ice minimum COOLS (not heats!) the exposed Arctic waters – thus, the Arctic sea ice extents appears to be self-regulating such that it is PERMANENTLY oscillating about NO AVERAGE sea ice extents at all, but about a continuously changing non-equilibrium state of “too hot, too much sea ice” and “too cold, too little sea ice” ….
“I” do not have an explanation for the cyclical behavior of Arctic and Antarctic sea ice, nor of the 1000 year long-term interglacial global average temperature changes, nor of the 66-year short term global average temperature cycles. We may determine that explanation in the future. “I” do not need to provide one now.
RACook states “YOUR claimed 40% decline is only based on less than one-half of one (theoretical) measured cycle: From a possible maximum point to a probable minimum poiint – extrapolated with a line.”
We are witnessing the greatest decline in arctic sea ice in 1450 years.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v479/n7374/full/nature10581.html
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v479/n7374/carousel/nature10581-f2.2.jpg
Luke,
Why are you cherry-picking only the Arctic? The debate has always been about global warming. And the Antarctic, which contains 10X the volume of ice that the Arctic has, is increasing in ice cover.
I’ll tell you why you cherry-pick only the Arctic: the alarmist crowd has been totally wrong about every scary prediction they’ve made. The natural dip in Arctic ice is the only thing they can find to support their belief that CO2 emissions cause global warming.
But if that was true, then the Antarctic would not be increasing its ice cover. It isn’t even remaining flat; the Antarctic is making up for the temporary, natural Arctic ice decline. It’s called the Polar See-Saw.
So let’s just discuss global ice area, volume, etc. No more cherry-picking only one limited region, just because you hope you can score some points.
The fact is that global warming stopped many years ago, and there’s no indication that it will resume. It may. Or not. Or it may stay in stasis for a long time. No one knows, especially not the climate alarmist crowd. Because they have been completely wrong up to now, and ther’s no reason why they should suddenly start being right.
dbstealey
You are right that the ice cover in the antarctic is increasing although the rate of increase has been much smaller than the rate of decline in the arctic. Overall the change in solar energy incident on sea ice has been greater in the Arctic than the Antarctic. It is clear that the increased absorption of solar energy in the north due to ice loss is greater than the decline in absorption in the south.