Two years after Paris, the UN enviro-crats continue their charade.
By Oren Cass
Good news is hard to find at this year’s United Nations climate conference in Bonn, Germany. Diplomats from nearly 200 countries have gathered to review progress made on the “historic” Paris climate accords, signed two years ago. But as the champagne-fueled self-congratulation of Paris recedes into memory, the agreement’s underlying fraud is becoming obvious.
…
Operating in this framework, countries have pledged very little.
…
None of this should be surprising, given what the Paris agreement actually contains, as opposed to how it was advertised. “This agreement is ambitious, with every nation setting and committing to their own specific targets,” President Obama said in 2015. That was then. Now, the New York Times explains, “many of the Paris pledges remain fairly opaque, and most nations have been vague on what specific policies they will take to meet them. There is no official mechanism for quantifying progress.”
In 2015, leaders signing the agreement felt confident that the momentum and good feeling of Paris would surmount the gaps between rhetoric and reality. The agreement, Obama said, “sends a powerful signal that the world is firmly committed to a low-carbon future,” which would help “unleash investment and innovation in clean energy at a scale we have never seen before.” But investors could read the agreement, too. Global clean-energy investment fell by 18 percent in 2016, the worst performance on record; in developing countries, the decline was 27 percent. And First World investment in Third World countries, considered critical to global progress, fell 26 percent.
Apparently, the plan is to continue with the aimless plodding. One goal for Bonn is to finalize the “rulebook” under which countries voluntarily comply (or not) with their voluntary pledges. Another is to “tee up a ‘facilitative dialogue’ scheduled to take place in 2018,” reports the Washington Post. “The facilitative dialogue will be a preliminary assessment . . . So, expect the Bonn negotiations to produce a consensus on the structure of this first critical step.” Should next year’s facilitative dialogue fail to achieve its goals—whatever those are—a “global stocktake” is already calendared for 2020.
But all is not lost: Syria is finally on board. The war-torn failed state, the only nation yet to sign the Paris agreement, announced this week that it would do so. “With Syria’s decision, the relentless commitment of the global community to deliver on Paris is more evident than ever,” crowed the World Resources Institute’s Paula Caballero. “The U.S.’s stark isolation should give Trump reason to reconsider.” ThinkProgress, a website affiliated with the Center for American Progress, declared that “a country in the midst of civil war is doing better on climate change than the United States.”
Syria made no pledge, but pledges don’t matter anyway. Bashar al-Assad obviously has no interest in tackling climate change or reducing Syria’s carbon footprint—unless cutting his citizens’ energy supply or decimating the population counts for credit. But he signed; he’s playing the game. And he provided an opportunity to criticize Donald Trump. Isn’t that, after all, what action on climate change is all about?
Full post here
Oren Cass is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
The world waited for the announcement… It’s official!! Good news, Syria Is IN!!!
With the human disaster going on in Syria, these hypocrites can pretend that them joining the Paris Agreement ( to do nothing ) is actually relevant? Sick, really sick.
Priceless bureaucratic babble. Talk lots , say nothing.
“A country in the midst of civil war is doing better than the United States on climate change”. Maybe they should focus their attention on regime change. That’s what is really needed.
How much CO2 does an exploding ammunition generate?
“How much CO2 does an exploding ammunition generate?”
That is a very good question. Most munitions have explosives or propellants that are based on Nitrogen compounds as they are stable and work well. I would think that it is the secondary fires caused by the munitions that would give off the most CO2.
RDX has 3 Carbon atoms in each molecule.
Adam,
And six oxygen.
Complete combustion of RDX (C3H6N6O6) produces three molecules of carbon monoxide, three of water and three nitrogen gas molecules.
Trebula
Are you talking about the USA, you have just had a regime change.
Actually, the US is ruled by an entrenched progressive bureaucracy. Like kudzu and other obnoxious weeds, it is difficult to eradicate. As long as it exists, representative government is a fiction.
Reminds me of lemmings…
Actually it is long-standing misconception that lemmings commit “mass suicide” but yes the behaviour is consistent with misconception 🙂
50,000 lemmings can’t be wrong!
But one Disney movie can promote a myth that would have killed 500,000,000 lemmings.
If only Disney had followed their usual formula and killed off the parents in the first five minutes then there wouldn’t have been 50,000,000 lemmings.
Syria needs rebuilding, so of course they’re going to apply for free money.
And where does it think that money is going to come from ? Oh Dear, what a pity. !
It’s going to come from the U.S. … oh … wait …
And that right there is the REAL source of the depression in Bonn.
What the USA should do, is say.. “Yes , we will help you re-build…
….. once you WITHDRAW from the Paris Agenda.”
They will have to rebuild with mud because UNFCCCP will never authorise the use of “carbon” producing cement.
Back to the good old days of camel dung and straw.
And yet, when the sham is over it will be declared a “great success, despite some setbacks”, and that “although great progress was made, much more work needs to be done”. Can’t have the Faithful becoming discouraged.
From the graphs I’ve seen, the U.S. hs reduced carbon emissions far more than other countries, but then, what’s that got to do with all this?
Should lightning strike and these buffoons eliminate all manner of combustables, what is Plan B when the CO2 levels dip below levels required to maintain the planet’s inhabitants? Everyone start barbequing their meals using charcoal?
Of course the Paris Agreement has little to do with reducing CO2 emissions and a whole lot about redistributing wealth, the USA taxpayer’s wealth.
Cop-out23 is run by cultural marxists, and their trademark is always gloom, despair & agony:
Gloom, despair, and agony on me
Deep, dark depression, excessive misery
If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all
Gloom, despair, and agony on me
We figured she was rich, loaded to the hilt
And we figured she had class like the Vanderbilts
‘Cause we had heard for years how she was so well reared
How was we to know they meant the way she was built
Gloom, despair, and agony on me
Deep, dark depression, excessive misery
If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all
Gloom, despair, and agony on me
If the UK climate change act does what it says, the UK will be back where China was in the 1950s and China and India will be where we are now. CO2 emissions up to a new level and minimal effects on global temperature, whatever they then say it is.
Good news is hard to find at this year’s United Nations climate conference in Bonn, Germany. Good news is hard to find at this year’s United Nations climate conference in Bonn, Germany.
I think there is good news, the sugar daddy that usually pays most of the bills is busy doing real business elsewere. The 20 000 + hand wringing rent seekers are doing a lot of talking but very few are coming up with the promised money!
Thank you Mr Trump you are a climate hero!
One can only hope the ‘support’ from despots and tyrants is a sign the AGW Industry is in real trouble.
The Syrians now support the Paris Climate Agreement…. while brutally killing their own citizens with releases of Sarin gas into the atmosphere. Will COP23 issue a consensus statement on atmospheric Sarin gas releases by their AGW allies? (………..crickets)
Why do the AGW Griffters gleefully applaud murdering despots as ‘participants’ in the AGW consensus farce? Because “The Ends Justify The Means!”
Indeed, Ted Kaczynski, Charles Manson, Fidel Castro, Osama bin Laden and James J. Lee all believed in “Global Warming”. With friends like these….
With friends like these…the world needs an enema
“while brutally killing their own citizens with releases of Sarin gas into the atmosphere. ”
What a load of crap. Anyone who has examined the evidence at all will know that the jihadists, who were in control of areas that had chemical weapons that the UN could not decommission, were responsible for those attacks.
https://twitter.com/tonyblunt12/status/928195465379753984
“What a load of crap. ”
Thanks, saved me the time.
For those not in the know, Al Nusra is the name for Al Qaeda in Syria. Al Qaeda? Where have I heard that name before?
Weren’t they run by Obama’s Ben Plottin
Call me cynical but I think all the other countries are waiting for “Made in the USA” funding, Syria included.
Well, now that CO2 has been dogmatized why can’t the ‘free’ magic money that the Federal Reserve periodically conjures out of their magic hole in the air be dogmatized just as well. Wait a minute…..! They did that already, didn’t they. It’s called Keynesian stimulus spending, isn’t it,
There is less good news in COP23 because there is more good news in the USA. One less Baby Huey at the dinner table trying to crowd out my family. If the remaining ones could be put on a diet, things would really start to look better.
Syria has it made, the carbon footprint goes well down if you kill millions, destroy all roads and airports, and force millions more to flee the country. I’m surprised that they don’t get an award from the “too many people cause climate change” side.
I believe they use carbon free nickel and green machine guns. Destruction of the infrastructure can be sold as leave it in the ground. They could not have grass roots organizations as the permadrought has dried them down. More money is needed to solve these Climate Change problems that were caused by the Koch brothers and Trump, conservatives and far-right.
It mostly looks like good news to me:
“Clean-energy” investment is down because people have realised it is not clean and does not provide much energy.
The eco-fascists are welcoming another mass murderer into their club demonstrating that their aim is mass murder.
Many countries are making use of the imprecision of the Paris agreement to not destroy their economy and so not murder their citizens.
It is not mentioned above but 30 signatories have not been stupid enough to ratify the Paris agreement.
“most nations have been vague on what specific policies they will take to meet them. There is no official mechanism for quantifying progress.” When it comes to seriousness of an agreement, this Paris Accord is a joke. Everyone knew they couldn’t get a solid commitment from most of the signers so they decided to go for feel good solutions hoping most people won’t know the difference.
The greater the number of meetings (parties),
and the larger the number of attendees,
and the nicer the digs :
“COP 23 – UN-Klimakonferenz 2017 in Bonn” . . .
. . . the less is accomplished.
Great News, all is not lost, Syria is supporting the Paris Accord! This war-torn, poverty-stricken, broken disfunctional State will really tip the scales. The statement that: “With Syria’s decision, the relentless commitment of the global community to deliver on Paris is more evident than ever,” is certainly tue….there is none. Syria’s main interest will now be to extract what money it can from the fetid pile of the EU and its cronies, before the Party ends and the for-sale signs go up in the CAGW bonfire. Bashar Assad has no interest in tackling “Climate Change” or reducing Syria’s “Carbon Footprint”, he just needs money to stay in power. He is playing their game, and helping the EU criticise Trump .
Trump should just pull the US completely out of the UNFCCC charade. One year timeline.
Then cut off all US government travel funding and research support to the AR6 working groups.
If the climate pseudoscientists at DOE, NASA/GISS, and NOAA want to go, they can take vacation time and get George Soros to pay the travel and expenses. Same for academic climatists with government grants, have NSF send them letters telling them they can’t use grant money to pay for IPCC working group attendance.
A decentralised global “initiative”, with no plan and no real idea what success looks like.
This is not unusual
Near me a small town (only about a 1000 people) has a widely discussed objective to be 100% renewable by 2022, only a bit over 4 years away. The came through my neighbouring town as part of a renewables roadshow. When I asked them what the planned steps were to achieve that goal, and if they were disconnecting from the existing grid in 2022, I was accused of being negative.
In South Australia , they kept deploying wind power and closing baseload till it blew up. Now they are spending half a billion dollars on patching up the system as an election closes in. Its clear they had no viable plan and just expected it to work somehow. The subsequent feeding frenzy of suppliers reminded me of one of those whale carcasses floating in the ocean while great whites rip chunks off it.