Presidential hopeful Nicolas Sarkozy reckons that climate change is not caused by man [alone] and that the world has far bigger problems on its hands than global warming.
Presidential hopeful Nicolas Sarkozy reckons that climate change is not caused by man and that the world has far bigger problems on its hands than global warming. Nicolas Sarkozy, who is fighting to regain the presidency that he lost to François Hollande in 2012, has finally come out of the closet as a climate skeptic. Speaking in front of business leaders Sarkozy, a candidate for Les Republicains party primary in November, told them that man alone was not to blame for climate change. “Climate has been changing for four billion years,” the former president said according to AFP. “Sahara has become a desert, it isn’t because of industry. You need to be as arrogant as men are to believe we changed the climate.” —The Local, 15 September 2016
Nicolas Sarkozy, the centre-right candidate for the Presidential elections in 2017, said that “humans were not the only ones responsible” for climate change. “Much is said about climate change; it is very interesting, but the climate has been changing for 4.5 billion years. Mankind is not solely responsible for this change” said the former French President according to comments reported by AFP’s Gerald Darmanin. “I’d rather we talk about a more important issues.” —Le Figaro, 14 September 2016
h/t to The GWPF
Tres bien.
And so it begins.
Pourquoi n’a t-il pas défendu cette position alors qu’il était président? Comme les autres dirigeants politiques, il a eu peur des lobbies écolos et des médias et a trouvé plus politiquement rentable de rentrer dans les rangs.
AGW is good. Catastrophism is the catastrophe.
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Common sense may prevail…….eventually.
Catastrophism uses fear and misplaced guilt. It is unlikely to stand.
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There are plenty of borderline criminally insane folks waiting in the wings to take over any mantle of stupidity the French want to relinquish.
Today’s Murky News tells of US Interior Secretary Sally Jewell’s final approval of POTUS Obama last gasp of scorched earth thinking.
So some 1250 square miles of pristine California southwest desert is to be sacrificed to doubling down on Ivanpah and similar lunatic projects.
The Desert Renewable Energy Conservation plan, (there’s an oxymoron for you), is a joint California, and federal government program for giant solar and wind “renewable ” energy plants.
Even the greenies are opposed to such nonsense.
So stupidity tends to be conserved on a worldwide basis.
What the French may shed, will be picked up by someone else, apparently this time in the USA.
G
George E. Smith’s Law of Conservation of Stupidity states:
“Stupidity cannot either be created or destroyed. You can’t change stupid. You can only move it somewhere else.”
CO2 is not
a problem
Sarkozy will say whatever he thinks they want to hear.
Like relocating the Jungle from Calais to Dover, when Sarkozy set up the border deal in the first place.
He has no credibility
That’s the principle trait of the species we have come to know as politician. But, not unlike a blind squirrel finding an acorn, a politician will occasionally stumble over the truth.
It is interesting that a skilled national (French) politician thinks people “want to hear” that AGW is not a dire threat, and is less important than other issues. Encouraging, right?
exactly….how the mighty have fallen
It wasn’t that long ago, a politician didn’t think they could win without a global warming platform ” this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal”
..now politicians think they can win on the opposite
Major shift
Believe me, AGW – even if it existed – is the least of the problems faced by France.
If that is “what he thinks they want to hear”, it is not less notable, it is more notable.
Rather mild statements quoted by Sarkozy on climate change, but promising.
Christine “Antoinette” Lagarde’s response:
Qu’ils mangent du gâteau.
If you don’t know the relevant french phrase, you’d do better to stick with the english version rather than try to translate it back again.
Hint: it’s brioche.
Qu’ils mangent de la brioche as Marie Antoinette didn’t say
We don’t care what any of them said or didn’t.
If I told you what it is in Maori, you wouldn’t be any the wiser.
G
Kia kai ratou keke?
Good for Sarkozy, Along with Britain’s Theresa May, the two of them leave Angela Merkel dangling all by herself on all the worries and misguided policies due to alleged antro-caused climate change. If you haven’t followed German climate policies — especially its aktionsprogramme for the year 2200 — you might find that program as ding-a-ling as possible, along with other less important EU members. Meanwhile, Germany — along with almost all the EU countries — are overwhelmed by economic problems that reflect, to one degree or another, their cockameme climate policies.
Wasn’t it Merkel that decided to push ahead with plentiful german coal powered generation, basically abandoning the CO2 targets ?
Merkel never has pushed any coal ahead: it’s falling since 1991 from over 65% down to less than 55, while nuke did since 2000 from 30% down to about 15.
At the same time, renewables moved from about 5% in 1991 (hydraulic) up to over 30% actually (wind, solar, biomass, hydraulic).
“cockameme”? If that was a deliberate blend of “cockamamie” + “meme”, I love it.
Spooner concurs.
Oh come on Michael. You can’t be falling for this drivel surely. When May was Home Secretary did we hear her views on “Climate Change” eh? Damn right we didn’t. If you keep silent then you condone it. She condones it. And so does Sarko. It’s just the same old. same old. They are doing this for one reason only – they are playing to the people and telling them what they want to hear. Whether they believe it not is irrelevant. All that matters is the end result – Power.
Zut alors!! Quelle grand fromage parles vraiment.
(Note: can’t be bothered to Google translate my schoolboy French).
I am verklempt, first Brexit, then Hill-o-beans meltdown, and now this. Could it be that the proverbial “commone sense gods” have hit some pols over the head with their giant bag of sugar?
acknowledgements to Proctor and Bergman…
Perhaps they’re Rudyard Kipling’s Gods of the Copybook Headings. They can hit people with a lot worse. See http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poems_copybook.htm
Sorry meant to add that my wife, (first language is French), said “close enough” and chuckled
“The big cheese”?
In English, it’s better translated as the Grand Poobah
Thanks Old Man, My French has never been good. It’s very “idiomatic” as those of us who can’t speak it would say…
Why even bother us with your schoolboy French.
The idea here is to communicate ideas. The Tower of Babel approach doesn’t help.
G
George, it was a whimsical response. It communicated the idea of whimsy. You have extended that theme. Merci, mon brave.
Harry Passfield says, “Zut alors!! Quelle grand fromage parles vraiment.”
Well I really laughed hard!
I guess people with 5 years of B’s in high school French have all the fun.
As BernardP notes, Sarkozy endorsed alarmism the first time ’round. It’s very gauling!
But, if he’s seen the light, at least his speech writers might just want to craft a short “transition sentence” to help explain the flip-flop. Something like:
“I was a boy then. And a boy’s will is the wind’s will… And the thoughts out of office are long, long thoughts.” Or
“In between doubling my own salary and the end of my first term in office, I began to reflect…” or
“I may be very short, but taking three wives has made me long on insights not granted to most men…” or even
“I have a new pair of elevator shoes, and they sound really cool on the carrera marble over at the palace…”
Whatever to take some votes away from the only alternative to the same old… Coming from the guy who brought the inane Nicolas Hulot to the forefront, this is pure electioneering.
No, Hulot was already prominent, that is why Sarko tried to latch on to him.
But does this signal a change in the body politic? First Brexit now another EU country where cagw is questioned. For Christians who believe the Bible is prophetic, the toe of Daniel 2 has been broken.
Like Maggie Thatcher a little bit late to the party but welcome to the real world Nicky boy.
What??? DENIER!!! APOSTASY!!! HERESY!!!! CRUCIFY HIM!!!!!11111ONE!!
And today we hear news that Theresa May has approved plans for Hinkley Point C nuclear power station.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/09/15/china-to-build-nuclear-reactor-in-essex-after-hinkley-deal-appro/
A financial disaster in the making, imho.
For the UK a white elephant, for EDF probably a death knell; for the chinese a nice way to buy some western tech with all those US dollars that they can’t get rid of quick enough.
See you in ten years to learn they need another ten years to finish Hinkley C and another £18bn due to unforeseen problems.
Still, why not let a hostile state participate in your energy infrastructure and communications technology, what could possibly go wrong?
One more step towards 3rd world status for the UK.
There are subtlties in the approval. May not be a done deal. Veto power on EDF ever disposing its stake. No cost overrun protection. That will set the concerned French unions back. No promise to China about its hoped for additional reactor. Looks like the ball was kicked back to EDF with a ‘are you sure?’ undertone.
Good point, ristvan. I wonder now whether May is trying to finesse the whole thing and get the French or the Chinese to back out. My feeling is this is not a good deal – at very many levels, not least at the level of technology and delivery.
It is unlikely to be completed.
A money pit in the making. I just wonder how much will be wasted before the plug is pulled.
Possibly. However it could be down to the French in the end. The UK used to be World leaders in nuclear technology, then Tony & Gordon sold it all to the Japanese for a pittance. Thanks to them & their cranky advisers we have lost the ability to go nuclear alone!
It takes some time to grow a pair back after EU disease.
But Paris will continue to host climate agreement conferences because it’s good for travel tax receipts.
Yes, he wants to hold agreement conferences in Paris. As many as possible.
But according to Le Figaro, 14 September quoted above, the conferences will be on a different subject than climate changes.
Here is the Figaro print site and the translation what he said about the topic he want to have conferences about:
http://www.lefigaro.fr/flash-actu/2016/09/14/97001-20160914FILWWW00251-l-homme-n-est-pas-le-seul-responsable-du-changement-climatique-sarkozy.php
” I’d rather we would be talking about a more important topic: the demographic shock. France must hold a conference on demography. Never the Earth has experienced a demographic shock as she will know it, since we will be 11 billion in a few years. There, the man is directly responsible. And no one is talking, “ he lamented.
yes, like whether women should be allowed to wear ugly, one-piece swimming suits in public. Liberté , égalité , fraternité , etc. Everyone has the right to wear exactly the same beach wear … or else.
If the terrorists make us abandon the values of our society they are winning. Sarko 0 – ISIL 1
Sure to entrench the left-right division on the climate issue, but good that some major character is saying it.
Sacre’ Bleu!!!
The French first realized their mass Muslim refugee invasion was an absolute disaster, now they’re contemplating leaving the EU, and today, Sarkozy announces he’s become a CAGW skeptic…
All these sudden random acts of intelligence are indeed a welcome surprise.
The scientific mystics are losing ground. Maybe.
Sarkozy is a man of science. Welcome.
Vive La France!
Vive Sarkozy!
We are near the low, not the high, end of the historically safe range of CO2 atmospheric concentrations:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_RXGJAF_XL5V0Y0eU1ya3E2UTA/view
(which, just in case it matters, are entirely unrelated to temperature, except possibly near biosphere extinction levels of CO2 starvation.)
Was it this warm or warmer in the Medieval Warm Period, 1,000 years ago?
Was that warmth global?
The overwhelming science says yes.
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/qualitative.php
Not according to this chart, which is spreading like wildfire across the internet.
http://xkcd.com/1732/
Marcott and Shakun. But, heh, the cartoonist slips up and talks about the MWP and the LIA. If he only knew.
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What it shows is that all the mportant advances have come when the climate was warm.
Warm is good, cold is bad.
The Holocene temperature record is perhaps one if the most important climate questions. Isotope records, ice core and others, paint a very different picture of Holocene optimum temperature several degrees higher than today, with several previous high temperature excursions also higher than today e.g. Minoan, Roman and Medieval warm periods. Shakun and Markott ironed the temperature record flat by mixing in dozens of unreliable and mutually contradictory midge and pollen “palaeo” records. I would argue for rejecting pollen and midges and focusing on isotope records only. At least they agree with eachother.
Ooo, a ‘hockeystick’ on steroids, Mark Steyn’s apt description of Mann’s work as “cartoon climatology” taken literally.
I saw that Steve,
Sort of hard to know which one to believe. A source that consists of compiled data from over 100 scientific studies for a particular time frame(Medieval Warm Period) or……………a creative piece of art that shows something different.
Yes, I saw that cartoon chart a few days ago.
Looked at it for few seconds…another hockey stick, where the instrumental record is attached at the end of the proxy reconstructions. Problem is the mush of proxy data does not have the decadal resolution required for a valid comparison with the instrumental record. In this case the instrumental record is a “cherry pick”
Hey, did’ja u see, between 6500 BC and 6000BC, a BREXIT Event,
Britain cut off from Europe by rising seas…
http://xkcd.com/1732/
It deserves to be a cartoon, same as the “science”.
Mike Maguire on September 15, 2016 at 11:13 am
The overwhelming science says yes.
Oh yes! A site financed by the Idso family, all having best connections to Peabody and Heartland…
Mike Maguire on September 15, 2016 at 11:13 am
Was it this warm or warmer in the Medieval Warm Period, 1,000 years ago?
Science independent of any coal mining corporation influence says rather no:
http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/11/e1500806.full
I guess they grew ice wine in scotland then?
Excellent, scrap Hinkley point and let’s get fracking.
Could dobut other generations in the future will need it!
Oh boy, he’s stepped in it now.
Next stop is Germany after Merkal falls.
Angie Merkel is more flexible and powerful as you think. She even skipped our
Chancellor Kohl.
He is just following the polls-
“UN poll of World Citizens Rank Climate Change Dead Last As Concern – 16th out of 16”
http://notrickszone.com/2016/09/15/alarmism-not-working-world-citizens-rank-climate-change-dead-last-as-concern/#sthash.bIktYOtG.dpbs
Reblogged this on Climatism and commented:
When politicians, scientists leave the clutches of the bureaucratic bosom and the public purse, they speak out for what they know to be true, reasoned and rational.
Sarkozy the latest and not the last.
“Sahara has become a desert, it isn’t because of industry. You need to be as arrogant as men are to believe we changed the climate.” — Sarkozy, The Local, 15 September 2016
Quite.
When the climate wars are over ( and it is very close) will the AGW generals face the war crimes tribunals. How many have died as funds have been diverted from genuine worthwhile humanitarian programs?
If Sarkozy can squeeze votes out of a Climate Denial ticket, the rest will follow.
Interesting projection. If!
http://notrickszone.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/World-Unconcerned-About-AGW-highlight.jpg
Good point. It’s not a matter of whether Sarkozy is trustworthy or not, but that a major politician sees a path to the presidency in opposing climate alarmism. That’s an indicator of change in the public’s attitudes.
Bon les gars. Vue que ça cause français ce soir, je vais en profiter. Sarkozy a parlé à la télé ce soir. Il a même fait référence au petit âge glaciaire pour dire que l’homme n’était pas la seule cause du réchauffement climatique. Bon les journaux ne vont pas le louper demain !
From France 1- climate 0
Bon les gars. Vue que ça cause français ce soir, je vais en profiter. Sarkozy a parlé à la télé ce soir. Il a même fait référence au petit âge glaciaire pour dire que l’homme n’était pas la seule cause du réchauffement climatique. Bon les journaux ne vont pas le louper demain !
And for those of us that would like a google translate:
Okay guys . View it French because tonight I ‘m going to enjoy it. Sarkozy spoke on TV tonight. He even refers to the Little Ice Age to say that man was not the only cause of global warming. Good newspapers are not going to miss it tomorrow!
Finally the truth from a politician
Sarkozy says that demographic change is more serious than climate change. Up to a point he’s right, but not for the right reasons. The demographic change in Europe is downwards, with both an ageing population & because the French, the Germans & the Spanish birth rates are well below the replacement rate of 2.1. In Poland & other eastern Europe countries it’s even worse. Russia is in deep trouble as well.
Around 12% of the world’s people live in Europe, but if demographic trends keep their pace, its share may fall to around 7% in 2050. Germany requires 30 million immigrants by 3030, which is why Merkel put out the welcome mat for 1.1 million Syrians
Elsewhere, Turkey has an average total fertility rate of 2.18, or just at replacement, but it’s the ethnic Kurds who are making the running, not the ethnic Turks and that fact will make Turkey’s present geographic configuration untenable. See these articles from Asia Times.
http://atimes.com/2016/05/turkeys-demographic-winter-and-erdogans-duplicity/
http://atimes.com/2016/07/the-sick-man-of-europe-once-again/
In recent years, Iran’s birth rate has dropped significantly, from 7 children per female in 1979 to fewer than 1.8 in 2016. Iran has the fastest-ageing population of any country in the world. See “Why Civilizations Die (and Why Islam is Dying, Too”, by David P. Goldman.
The problem is, during the 70’s when everyone was concerned about population control, they believed it.
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/France-Sarkozy-climate-change-global-warming/2016/09/15/id/748561/
France’s Sarkozy Says Population Bigger Threat than Climate Change
“World population growth is a bigger problem than climate change, French presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy said on Thursday, pouring more fuel on a fire he ignited this week when he appeared to downplay man-made climate change.
Sarkozy, acknowledging on a late night TV talk show that climate change was “a very serious challenge” said that: “the real challenge is that of demographic change.”
‘Former French President and presidential candidate Sarkozy states his position as a climate skeptic’
I bet he’s not at all skeptical of climate . . just as no even halfway intelligent person would be . . and I denounce such a defamatory labeling of him, Anthony.
JohnKnight (and, btw, Anthony as well) should read Le Monde, a french newspaper which as opposed to Le Figaro did not forget Sarkozy’s heavy “pro renewable” attitude a he was a president:
http://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2016/09/15/les-volte-face-de-nicolas-sarkozy-sur-le-changement-climatique_4998385_4355770.html
This might help:
https://translate.google.com/
Frenchies love to say: « Dites-moi ce qu’ils veulent entendre, et je le leur dirai! »
I’m just bitching about the label . . which is nonsensical, and fails to convey what people like Anthony (or myself) are actually skeptical of, Bindidon.
Bravo, the French Lead and the US is headed in the wrong direction. Rarely in world history could America learn something from the French.