This week, another COP meeting gets underway; COP23. For those of you new to the subject, COP stands for “Conference of Parties” and is a UN sponsored climate shindig for policy wonks, self described planet savers, and serial doomsters. Two of note were COP15 in Copenhagen in 2009, which became DOA thanks in part to “Climategate” and COP21 in Paris, which produced the toothless and pointless “Paris Accord” of which the USA is no longer a part of, thanks to president Donald Trump.
Every year, thousands of people come from all over the world to participate in trough feeding wealth redistribution climate reparations high level negotiations to figure out how the heavy hitters must compensate poorer countries for supposedly causing “climate change” through such things as generating electricity, driving cars, growing food, and yes, even going on travel/holiday.
Yet, these same people seem oblivious of their own carbon footprint related to travel. Here is a list of locations for all the COP conference so far:
1995: COP 1, Berlin, Germany
1996: COP 2, Geneva, Switzerland
1997: COP 3, The Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change
1998: COP 4, Buenos Aires, Argentina
1999: COP 5, Bonn, Germany
2000: COP 6, The Hague, Netherlands
2001: COP 6, Bonn, Germany
2001: COP 7, Marrakech, Morocco
2002: COP 8, New Delhi, India
2003: COP 9, Milan, Italy
2004: COP 10, Buenos Aires, Argentina
2005: COP 11/CMP 1, Montreal, Canada
2006: COP 12/CMP 2, Nairobi, Kenya
2007: COP 13/CMP 3, Bali, Indonesia
2008: COP 14/CMP 4, Poznań, Poland
2009: COP 15/CMP 5, Copenhagen, Denmark
2010: COP 16/CMP 6, Cancún, Mexico
2011: COP 17/CMP 7, Durban, South Africa
2012: COP 18/CMP 8, Doha, Qatar
2013: COP 19/CMP 9, Warsaw, Poland
2014: COP 20/CMP 10, Lima, Peru
2015: COP 21/CMP 11, Paris, France
2016: COP 22/CMP 12/CMA 1, Marrakech, Morocco
2017: COP 23/CMP 13/CMA 2, Bonn, Germany
For example, COP21 in Paris, had an estimated 50,000 people, including media and world leaders, flying in for that big save the planet shindig, including president Obama flying in his entourage on Air Force One. From an article in the New York Daily News:
Most of the people traveling to the meeting arrived by airplane, the world’s top transit offender when it comes to belching CO2 into the atmosphere.
The average attendee, and there are about 50,000, will travel around 9,000 miles. Traveling on a Boeing 747 like Air Force One – which guzzles around one gallon of jet fuel every 16.5 miles – means the summit will consume an estimated 27 million gallons of fuel.
Each gallon of burned jet fuel produces about 21 pounds of carbon dioxide, which is estimated to emit in the neighborhood of 575 million pounds or nearly 290,000 tons, according to calculations by Wired.
Yet despite that enormous footprint of all the COP meetings, full of sound and fury, signifying essentially nothing to the planet’s climate, we have our betters telling us that we shouldn’t travel to Australia, because we’ll damage the climate. Sounds to me like they are jonesing for a climate impact fee attached to airline tickets. Of course we all know that the only way to save the planet is with more taxes and fees, just ask anyone in Canberra.
Australian tourism policies fail to address climate change
Australia’s Federal and State governments are failing to produce effective long-term tourism policy to address climate change, according to the findings of new QUT-led research.
Australia’s Federal and State governments are failing to produce effective long-term tourism policy to address climate change, according to the findings of new QUT-led research.
- Tourism contributes to climate change
- Tourism policy on climate change in Australia is inconsistent and ineffective
- Federal and state governments are not collaborating on best practice approaches to tourism policy on climate change
- The tourism industry can contribute to the sustainable management of climate change
Dr Char-lee Moyle, from QUT’s Australian Centre for Entrepreneurship Research, and her co-authors from Griffith University and James Cook University analysed 477 relevant documents for their paper – Have Australia’s tourism strategies incorporated climate change?
Just published in the international Journal of Sustainable Tourism, it reveals only 21% of Australia’s tourism strategies mention climate change, with most simply acknowledging it as an issue.
“Despite the fact tourism is worth billions of dollars to our economy and has been found by scientists to accelerate climate change, only five Australian tourism strategies analysed by us (one per cent of the entire sample) even recognised the sector’s impact,” Dr Moyle said.
“Looking at policy documents from 2000-2014, we have seen Australia’s tourism strategies increasingly focus on adaptation strategies, with mitigation appearing to have fallen off the policy agenda in recent years.
“Even certification and accreditation schemes are essentially viewed by industry as adaptation measures and a way to reduce climate change induced costs such as rising electricity bills.”
Dr Moyle emphasised the link between tourism climate change rhetoric and federal government election cycles.
“We found significantly more tourism climate change strategies were produced during the years the Australian Labor Party was in power at the federal level, with a peak in 2007,” she said.
“State Governments appear to be far less proactive in considering climate change in relation to tourism and, conspicuously, New South Wales did not even mention climate change in any state-level tourism strategies.”
Dr Moyle said there was significant room for the tourism sector to improve and step up action, particularly in developing tangible adaptation and mitigation policies.
“There are opportunities for the tourism industry to contribute to the sustainable management of climate change, including through the development of more ‘green’ products and implementing more environmentally-friendly practices,” Dr Moyle said.
She added that many initiatives proposed and subsequently implemented no longer exist, indicating an extremely dynamic climate change policy environment, as well as a lack of long-term consistent support and planning for tourism climate change response.
“On a positive note, there has been an increased focus on identifying opportunities, strategic needs, barriers, challenges and potential actions in relation to climate change since 2008,” Dr Moyle said.
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Some climate piggies are more equal than others.
“the toothless and pointless “Paris Accord” of which the USA is no longer a part of, thanks to president Donald Trump.”
Incorrect. Under the Paris agreement which Trump WH says it will follow on the withdrawal protocol, the US will not effectively pull-out until November 4, 2020.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/07/climate/trump-paris-climate-timeline.html
And the USA election is the following day. If it hasn’t cooled off a few degrees by then making all this seem redundant, then the next election could be partially about what the next President would do to either stay in Paris, or if Trump wins a second term, exit on Nov 5th. By Nov 2020, this climate madness is going to reach new heights if the Alarmists get their way, so expect a big plank of the 2020 election campaign to be over CAGW and carbon tax/redistribution of wealth from rich countries to poor. I predict it will be between AL Gore vs. DJ Trump. And Trump will win again, because most people, some secretively, despise this whole notion of CO2 having much to do with any warming.
What is humorous about that is having a party still bound by an agreement they make no effort to honour and no intention of meeting any obligations financial or otherwise.
Sometimes having a piece of paper with something written on it is actually worthless 🙂
Show me the (actual) payments associated with staying in for that time period.
The US government has a full seat at the table for the COPs until then and sending scientists to prepare for IPCC AR6.
Not saying I like it. But US is still a full party to Paris until November 2020.
What I would hope Trump would do is pull out of the entire UNFCCC charade. That only has a 1 year withdrawal period.
And that would be much harder for a Democrat President to undo without Senate Ratification of some new US obligation to the UNFCCC climate hustle.
It’s a yin yang thing. Planet-killing tourism is somewhat offset by virtuous climate conference travel. I could calculate at what point virtuous travel would balance travel of the planet-killing kind, but for that I would need a yuuge grant.
You don’t understand, it’s hoi polloi who are supposed to give up everything to save the planet.
Our leaders are much too important to worry about cutting back their lifestyles.
Its very simple. Make those who are mouthing about CO2 being a problem, pay a large “levy”, to compensate the environment.
Oh wait.. they tried that, and VERY FEW PEOPLE ticked the box, even for small extra “Green” cost.
Traveling on a Boeing 747 like Air Force One – which guzzles around one gallon of jet fuel every 16.5 miles!
Good Lord. Are they trying to say you have to fleece the tourists more but left it in s tangle of govmentese with a hopeful expression on their faces.
I’ve always thought of making a trip to Australia having met a large number of fun down to earth Ozzies, very well adjusted characters. What ever happened to these folks in two generations? Even Europeans have started to question the même and Oz seems impervious to evidence that the major part of tge whole thing was a natural cycle.
We’re they bamboozled by the spin on climategate? We’re they really okay with the Karlization of temperatures to try to end the embarrassing ‘Pause’, which seems to be reasserting itself? Do they know about the Ship of Fools incident where Tierney got stuck into Antarctic ice on a junket to observe the onslaught of global warming and in the process needed rescuing by a Chinese icebreaker and Antarctic researchers who lost a whole season’s work and sued the expedition for 3million? Do Ozzies know Turner received an award for this? Do they know the last known work of this fellow was to discover thousands of frozen Adelie penguins, blaming it on global warming and then being informed they had died over hundreds of years of natural causes and the lack of predators/carrion-eaters left them to accumulate?
There is a hardy, small thankless clutch of skeptics working daily on their behalf. Are Ozzies impervious to the egregious goings on unearthed? Someone has to go in and save this once proud individualist nation – its more desparate than the situation of East Timor of a few decades ago.
I wonder what Richard Branson would say about all this air travel.
Write to Richard demanding the closure of all businesses that produce CO2 from lighting, heating and burning of fossil fuel.
They want us to see them like Mother Theresa’s:
https://www.thoughtco.com/mother-teresa-1779852
Even though they behave more like this fellow:
http://www.climatedepot.com/2017/08/02/report-al-gores-home-energy-use-surges-up-to-34-times-the-national-average/
NEWS FLASH
Dr Moyle and her co-authors at Griffith University and James Cook University are closing their departments (returning all funding) as they’ve just realised their departments are producing enormous amounts of CO2 due to heating, lighting, air travel, car travel and human activity.
FURTHERMORE
Dr Moyle and her co-authors have pledged to:
Never again use carbon spewing air travel for holidays or conferences.
Never again use a carbon spewing automobile including electric vehicles (that primarily use carbon spewing coal generated electricity).
Never again use plastics or occupy any building made of concrete.
That’s all self-admiration of the ruling political class. This has nothing to do with climate.
COP23 is work, not “tourism.”
& vital to addressing the climate emergency
we find ourselves in.
crackers345 I’ve read a few of your posts.
Why do left-leaning types believe AGW is a “climate emergency”?
Is there anything else occurring that concerns you more?
crackers345 is correct, it is a “climate emergency”
we are several degrees colder than the roman period & sadly it looks like it’s going to get a lot cooler over the next 30yrs.
I will probably become a climate refugee & move south.
So we need a war to wipe out a large amount of poor people in warm climates, so we rich people can walk/fly in & take over the best bits…just like we’ve done many times before in history.
If you want to know the future….read history.
no evidence at all the any “roman period”
was global, let alone globally warmer
than today.
i’m sure you don’t have such evidence, so
don’t bother pretending
PLENTY of evidence that MWP and RWP and Holocene Optimum were GLOBAL and significantly warmer than now.
Your ignorance precedes you, as always.
Heck there was even a period name the “Neoglaciation” as the world cooled down from about 3000 years ago to the LIA.
Current temperatures are, fortunately, slightly warmer than those of the LIA, but still have to climb further to reach the temperatures of the MWP and RWP
We are fortunate to live in what can only be described as..
“The Modern Slightly Warm Period”
ROFLMAO,
There is NO CLIMATE EMERGENCY.. it is a manufactured figment of the globalist agenda.
Global temperature is still only a tiny, but HIGHLY beneficial amount out of the COLDEST period in 10,000 yeras.
If CO2 did actually cause this slight warming, we should be HIGHLY GRATEFUL for being saved from even further LIA eras.
Move to Siberia, if you want it COLD. ! Don’t stay in your fossil fuel heated and cooled inner city ghetto.
Come
Couldn’t agree more. +100²
The climate I’ve lived in since 2005, is perfect, bit cold for late spring Australia, but perfect. The climate I lived in in NZ since 1995, was perfect, colder than Aus, warmer than the UK, but perfect. The climate I lived in in the UK before that was perfect, colder than NZ, but perfect. And the climate in the UK until 1995 was perfect. I didn’t notice any disaster in that time.
So I have lived in three very different climate zones…during the period claimed to be a problem…and nothing, NOTHING to do with climate has in any way been a problem for the millions of people living in those zones.
Where is the problem?
Crackers
If there really was a climate emergency you lot would embrace Nuclear power because the world runs on energy .The trouble is you have morphed from the ban the bomb brigade and cannot bring yourselves to even understand that your stupid anti energy policies will harm all the poorer people of the world.
But, Crackers, it’s work that destroys Gaia…
COP23 is most assuredly NOT work. It produces nothing of any value, and in fact makes humanity worse off.
Stop all tourism immediately, including for COP23. Has that saved the planet?
No heating allowed in any building above 10 degrees C – just wear more layers of clothing. Planet saved yet?
Stop all energy-intensive manufacturing. What next?
“Each gallon of burned jet fuel produces about 21 pounds of carbon dioxide, ”
Hmm, is that right? Roughly 8 pounds of liquid burned creates at least 21 pounds of a gas? I have no idea, really, but it just doesn’t seem possible.
yes, that’s right, because the oxygen atoms that
make up
the co2 come from
the atmosphere, not the
fuel.
Yes it’s called OXIDATION. It’s how all the water on earth was created.
This type of questions where baffling consensus scientists of phlogiston era.
Let’s do the chemistry (simplified a bit to ignore hydrogen)
C (atomic weight 12) plus O2 (atomic weight 32) –> CO2 (atomic weight 44)
So ratio is 44/12. 8 pounds C –> 29 pounds CO2.
Yep…the sum is about right.
Australia does appear to be at the front of stupid these days.
Patrick MJD
Australia is in front but the intense rivalry that Australia has with New Zealand will cause a race to the bottom .New Zealand has changed its government and the greenbeans are part of it so just watch New Zealand forge ahead in the stupid stakes
Yeah NZ went the wrong direction.
They’ll right the ship soon enough. I have faith in people.
Dr Char-lee Moyle, from QUT’s Australian Centre for Entrepreneurship Research, and her co-authors from Griffith University and James Cook University can rest assured. There are plenty of other destinations – even for COP meetings.
It might well be an exceptionally schizoid conference this time around. Great pleasure will be had from saying nasty things, often about how Donald Trump ruined it all by so bigly disrespecting a great party, a party they didn’t want him at anyway.
My only wish, nay, prayer, is that they would all resign, en-masse, in protest. Then he could tell them via Twitter that they were already fired. Nothing ever actually has to be real or make sense in the world of global warming, but it could yet be entertaining.
An observation this week from Lord (Nigel) Lawson…chairman of GWPF and one-time UK Energy Minister
‘If cutting emissions made economic sense, people would be doing it anyway.
It is only the fact that it doesn’t that requires big international agreements’
Virtue signalling writ large.
Go to Australia by train, the most eco friendly way to travel.
I prefer going from Coober Pedy to Ayers Rock by ship.
If the global warming is as dire as those propoments say and let’s say those persons comprise 25% of the planet if they stopped making any emmissions at all or at least the very most minimal then in their eyes the problem would nearly be solved and surely the sceptics would see the results and follow suit. So please all Greens step forth and eliminate all of your “pollution” and emmissions forthwith.
It makes sense individuals expect to profit from the scheme of selling guilt and shame.
Another good article.
Lol I have nothing to add beyond that.
Does anyone know what all these thousands of delegates do all day at these conferences? Has anyone ever attended one? Who pays their expenses? What about the little countries – do they have massive delegations? Who pays for them?
No mention of carbon-offsets that are easy and cheap for purchase at all these COP conferences. Anthony Watts, are you intentionally misleading your flock? Why omit the obvious answer that is easily verifiable. Too busy?
“Too busy?”
Or because ‘carbon offsets’ are a load of bollox on a par with the old Roman Catholic church’s peddling of ‘Indulgences’?