Guest essay by Larry Hamlin
The world’s developing nations are defying the Paris climate agreement with continued and growing use of cost effective and reliable fossil fuels including coal, natural gas and oil while making little progress in use of high cost unreliable renewables as demonstrated by the graph from a recent Wall Street Journal article.
The data demonstrates the emissions of both the U.S. and EU are and have been declining over the past 10 years but the levels of emissions of these developed nations are insignificant relative to the huge growth of emissions for the rest of the world’s developing nations. The politically contrived Paris Climate Agreement has no provisions that have any impact on controlling developing nation emissions increases.
Furthermore this data shows that even if the U.S. and EU had zero emissions at some future point this outcome has little impact on global emissions that are clearly controlled by the world’s developing nations.
The Journal article further notes that:
“As negotiators at United Nations climate talks in Poland this week hammer out a rulebook to curb greenhouse-gas emissions, some of the biggest boosters of the 2015 Paris accord are undermining efforts back home to curb global warming.
China is ramping up coal-fired electricity generation despite pledges to cut emissions, according to clean-energy advocates. Canadian provinces are challenging federal carbon-price rules and adopting local policies that go against national emissions goals. And the European Union is bickering over how much carbon dioxide cars should be allowed to emit and subsidies to coal-fired power plants that threaten its climate targets.”
“EU governments and the European Parliament on Monday failed for a fourth time to compromise on regulation to reduce car CO2 emissions. Negotiations have foundered over opposition from German auto makers, divisions among the bloc’s 28 members and a parliament push to more strenuously curb polluting vehicles.”
“EU members heavily reliant on coal-powered energy also oppose European Parliament efforts to end subsidies to the most polluting plants by 2025, seeking delay of one decade.
In a sign of how incendiary the issue has become, nationwide riots in France began as a protest against a carbon tax on fuel.”
Political chaos reigned at the U.N. COP24 Conference on Poland as climate alarmist conference attendees struggled unsuccessfully to achieve commitments for increased emissions reductions as described in a GWPF article.
“China, Canada and the EU showed support for the Paris accord by unveiling ambitious agendas ahead of the U.N. talks in Katowice, in the heart of Polish coal country. China launched the world’s biggest carbon market last year and is working to expand it. Canada last week signaled more ambitious emissions-reduction targets. New EU regulations are lifting the bloc’s target for renewable-energy generation.
Yet all three economies face corporate lobbying, local economic concerns and political blowback eroding climate ambition.”
The huge scope of these issues was further expanded upon in the article as follows:
“China’s coal consumption declined from 2014 through 2016 as its economic growth slowed and shifted to services, and due to environmental and health concerns. Last year the trend reversed amid state-backed loans to juice the economy and a surge in provincial permits. China is now on track to add coal- fired power equal to almost the total U.S. capacity, according to Coalswarm, an advocacy group for clean-energy that tracks plants world-wide. That would push coal-fired production in China up to and over Beijing’s existing cap of 1,100 gigawatts. Its current production is already equivalent to half of the world’s total coal-fired generation and nearly quadruple that of the U.S.
China’s CO2 emissions resumed their rise in 2015 after leveling off in 2013-2014, according to research by Climate Action Tracker, a website that follows efforts to curb global warming. Last year China accounted for one-quarter of global CO2 production.
Coal’s relatively low cost and difficulties transitioning to clean-energy sources have frustrated Beijing’s efforts, said Li Shou, Greenpeace’s senior global policy adviser in East Asia.
“The continued building up of coal-powered plants in the country is definitely not in line with China’s climate targets and ambitions,” he said.”
Europe is facing significant political upheaval and climate and energy policy turmoil which is resulting in back tracking in efforts by the EU to implement actions for more aggressive climate action political steps as addressed in the article below.
The article further noted the frustration with the lack of leadership by the EU to support the Paris agreement emissions reductions noting:
“The Dutch lawmaker said Cañete’s insisting on the rulebook, which is indeed important to establish the technical rules of the Paris Agreement was “a cheap trick”.
“With focusing on ‘ambition’ for the rule book, the EU Commissioner tries to avert attention from the total lack of ambition when it comes to the most important part of this COP: concrete commitment to stricter climate targets to fulfill the Paris Agreement and limit the global warming to well below 1.5 degrees,” he said.”
“And the political signals coming from Europe are currently negative, he said. Indeed, key EU member states such as France, Germany and the UK are currently grappling with domestic issues, which hinders the political momentum required to raise the EU’s ambition at the talks.”
These outcomes clearly reflect that the political realities of using lower cost and reliable fossil fuel energy resources are simply too powerful to be abandoned by the world’s developing nations based on politically contrived, speculative computer model driven and scientifically questionable UN climate alarmism schemes.
As has been said many times, if the goal of CO2 reduction was really to prevent global warming, nobody should tolerate the CO2 emissions of the third world.
No. The only sensible route is to cap CO2 emissions at the same level per capita. Which would allow developing nations a route to increase their emissions and their wealth while still curbing total emissions. It goes against any principle of justice or equity to require developing nations to curb their emissions while they are still poor and lacking resources needed to grow.
So you’re saying that countries need fossil fuels & hence CO2 emissions to grow their economies? Wow, that’s quite an admission!
“It goes against any principle of justice or equity to require developing nations to curb their emissions”
Who cares? We are Saving The World! Sacrificing the poor people of the world is perfectly fine because it is all for the Greater Good. Obviously, anybody who disagrees is RAYSIS!
{Shut Up, he explained.}
Green morality exists in a universe all its’ own.
No, The only sensible route is to forget about CO2 emissions.
Which is not “carbon”.
Cap of any kind, no damn way!
And why, pray tell, should we cap ANY CO2 emissions in ANY country?
Percy your thought processes are part of the problem, not the solution.
“Lacking resources”?
LOL
They have immense “resources” and have been given trillions of dollars by ‘the west’ to boot. It’s on them and no one else.
Enough is enough.
Anybody that thinks that China is interested in capping CO2 emissions at any level is a fool. From now on in France it will be impossible to further cap CO2 emissions. The Brazilian government has seen through this scam and will roll back climate change nonsense. Poland will never give up coal. You will never get any agreement from India either to cut back on emissions. Indian scientists are some of the smartest scientists in the world and some now are fighting back against this scam. In any case India is leading the way with the highest increases in CO2 per year( in 2018 it is coming in at 6.4% increase). Japanese have seen through the scam as well. Top Japanese scientists go on national TV and admit that the global warming scare was manufactured with no science behind it. In Australia the One Nation party ‘s platform is that global warming is a hoax. Sky News TV in Melbourne,Australia one of the most watched programs on Aussie TV is Andrew Bolt’s BOLT REPORT where almost every day he rails against this scam.
Slowly the world is waking up to the biggest scientific fraud in human history.
Percy,
Carbon, energy production, per-capita wealth, lofe expectancy and standard of living are inextricably and intractably correlated in the high ninety percentiles.
If you are living in the developed world, I presume you are quite happy to live with an 80+% cut in your standard of living and a couple of decades off your life expectancy in order for you to be averaged out with the rest of the world.
But these facts seldom trouble idealists who don’t live in the real world.
Ken, the UK by 2017 cut its CO2 by 43% on 1990 levels (and still dropping). My standard of living is not at all affected.
Tell that to the 9000 dead people who couldn’t afford to heat their homes.
Griff, I can believe that YOUR standard of living has not been affected by the huge rise in energy prices in Britain caused by “renewable” energy policies. However, many people in Britain live on extremely limited budgets and THEIR standard of living has been severely affected.
That Griff is called anecdotal evidence as stated there will be many who have a vastly different experience which is why France had the yellow coats come out. For most democracies this will be decided at the ballot not by Griff anecdotal evidence.
What griff totally ignores is that the UK did not cut it’s CO2 by 43%, it “exported it” to China, India and other developing countries with a massive loss of jobs.
It has taken years to build back those jobs, but they are not the same because most are low paid zero hours contracts.
griff’s job wasn’t lost, therefor the job losses don’t matter.
I was just looking up the home town newspaper of my family home in Enfield, North London. One of the headlines refers to 360 winter deaths due to “heat poverty” just in Enfield, and it’s only mid-December and the place doesn’t even get very cold! i live in Western Canada, where -30C is not unusual. I’m glad to hear you’re ok, Griff. Merry Christmas!
Your willful callousness to obvious, horrible truths is disgusting.
UK had 168,000 “excess winter deaths” over the last 5 years including 3,000 deaths per year due to people who can’t afford to heat their homes. We could poll them as to whether their standard of living has been affected by increasing UK energy costs but we can’t because, well, they’re dead.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/cold-weather-uk-winter-deaths-europe-polar-vortex-a8224276.html
@Percy Jackson
The only sensible route is to cap CO2 emissions at the same level per capita. Which would allow developing nations a route to increase their emissions and their wealth while still curbing total emissions.
This is importantly characteristic of the activist argument.
The attempt is to change the argument. We started out with the proposition that to continue to emit 37 billion tons a year of CO2 and rising would destroy civilization and wreak havoc on earth.
The natural and logical response, if one believes this, is to say that the tonnage must be reduced. Then we look at who is doing the emitting, and who is growing their emissions. It turns out to be China.
We then change the terms of the argument totally. It is now no longer about the urgent need to reduce emissions to avoid global warming. Its now about something nebulous called ‘fairness’. So we invoke per capita emissions, and claim that the reduction or equalization of per capita emissions is the goal we should be adopting.
However the problem with this is that Chinese per capita emissions are now at EU levels, and rising. And in addition, anything that allows all the other countries besides the US and EU to carry on growing their emissions will not actually deliver any global tonnage reductions, and therefore will not, according to the activists, avert climate disaster.
Inquiring minds therefore ask, why is it that the activists are so reluctant to demand that China reduce? Why are they so reluctant even to concede that this is the logical consequence of their theories?
Why do they advocate reductions by Europe and the US which will, in terms of the tonnage which they claim to believe is the climate driver, deliver no material changes to the supposedly disastrous global temperature rise which they forecast?
If the activists are right, the task is not to equalize per capita emissions nor is it anything to do with per capita emissions. Its to do with reducing raw tonnage of emissions from about 37 billion tons a year to something like 5 billion.
The question Percy has to answer is simple. How do you propose to get real tonnage down to what you claim to think is a safe level, when China alone is currently emitting about double what you think the world can emit, and rising?
Or are you arguing that the world can perfectly well carry on emitting something like 37 billion a year? Because that is what Paris would deliver.
My own answer to these puzzling questions is very simple. Its that people advocate these measures and give these nonsensical justifications because they cannot very well confess their real reasons for wanting to do them. The reason is what the measures would produce if implemented.
It would be the de-industrialization of the West coupled with the rapid industrialization of the East.
If this is what your desired policies would deliver, while having, in your view, no impact whatever on global warming, maybe this is what you are really trying to achieve, and all you are really trying to achieve. Maybe global warming is just a convenient excuse for justifying the actions and results you really want?
The day climate activists start demanding that China reduce its emissions below 2 billion, and that the world, globally, shuts down the auto industry totally, that’s when we should start taking them seriously. Then at least they will be advocating measures which follow logically from what they claim to believe. Right now they are advocating things that will have, in their own view, no effect, while refusing to advocate what, in their own view, is required.
I guess it comes down to, “What if that which is fair gets everybody killed.” In that case, you can’t afford fairness.
But what is the political reality? The argument to take action is weak enough that it doesn’t justify a decline in living standards by those living well. And the argument is certainly not strong enough to convince poor people they should stay mired in poverty!
Those in poverty are exempted, because the arguments don’t exist to convince them anyway.
Michel, I think you forgot that, at least in Canada, CO2 is responsible for gender inequality, homophobia, xenophobia, Islamophobia, racism, misogyny, child abuse, and too much and/or too little snow at Whistler. And you clearly don’t understand that Chinese CO2 molecules are different than European and North American CO2 molecules.
michel:
Exactly so and well put. Consensus IPCC science says that any molecule of CO2 emitted anywhere in the world will be both long-lived and quickly “well mixed”, which means it will have exactly the same climate changing effect as a molecule of CO2 emitted anywhere else. The inescapable consequence of this is the only strategy to avoid global climate disaster is to reduce total world-wide emissions, and the faster the better.
If this is true, considerations of fairness must give way to the realities of planetary survival. If China, India and other developing countries continue to increase emissions at their current rates it will dwarf even the most ambitious Paris Treaty reduction targets by developed countries.
If you believe that an increase of 1.497853526°C over pre-industrial times will cause a worldwide planetary catastrophe, then you must go after the biggest and fastest-growing emitters first and most forcefully.
Otherwise, one might get the impression you don’t really believe the settled consensus science after all — you dirty denier!
and for course you going to be able able to judge how well these caps are working how ? and then when broken you going to do what ?
Dictatorships , one part states ,theocracies , and systematic corruption is a sadly relate of many of these developing countries. Good luck you get any caps imposed and then getting any action if they are broken, with these countries, and you are dam well going to need it .
But survival of life on earth is at stake!!! We’re in an emergency situation! You would rather destroy humanity to preserve your sense of justice?
A train is rolling down the tracks. You can direct it to hit the poor people, or you can direct it to hit everybody.
It doesn’t really matter. Emissions are not going to be reduced. The good news is, if there is a train you don’t actually have any control over it.
I love the Percy Jackson idea that the world is fair place … that is why there are armies. If you think nations are going to let go of country sovereignty and sit around singing kombya you are the typical delusional socialist. All the human rights junk was removed from agreement at COP24 as demanded by all the big boy nations including China.
If you think Human Rights is ever going to be part of an emission control agreement dream on.
Per capita energy use needs to continuously increase or the economy will collapse.
So someone in the North of Canada with fiercely cold winters would have the same CO2 allowance as someone in balmy Barbados?
Thank you for admitting that CO2 is not a concern.
Whose per capita do you suggest we follow? How about the rest of the world goes to the per capita CO2 emissions of say, the Masai hunters in Africa? That would curtail all electronics use and communication. That would be a great way to even all playing fields back to the stone age.
No. The only sensible route is to cap CO2 emissions at the same level per capita
Besides all the other flaws in your logic that others have pointed out, what then happens when the capita increases? (as world wide capita continues to do even though it is expected to level out in a few decades) well if you are at the same emissions per capita and you increase the amount of capita that mean your total emissions will increase. since the “problem” is supposed to be increasing amounts of CO2, your “solution” doesn’t solve the “problem” at all, it only lets the “problem” continue to get “worse”.
It goes against any principle of justice or equity to require developing nations to curb their emissions while they are still poor and lacking resources needed to grow.
it goes against any principle of justice or equity to require *ANY* nation to curb their emissions (and thus their access to cheap reliable energy necessarily for a prosperous civilized society) over a non-existent problem.
I will bet you a dollar to a donut that if Trump proposed to build a 50 mile high wall around China to prevent CO2 from coming to the US Congress would pass it 535 -0.
No, not every congressman believes in the scam
are fossil fuel emissions relevant in the study of atmospheric CO2?
https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/12/19/co2responsiveness/
chaamjamal I apologize on behalf of the rest of us skeptics for not recognizing that your studies are some of the best reports on here. They don’t get enough attention because I have noticed that few of us comment on your posts. I can assure you that I read them and I thank you for your hard work.
Alan, I too read everything Chaamjamal writes, and have written to both Heartland and GWPF to please take a look at his work. With utterly no result. He makes very powerful arguments, but unfortunately it requires a minimal level of statistical knowledge that is apparently lacking in most of the leaders of the skeptical (I was about to say “movement” but in fact there is no organized group–perhaps skeptics by nature are not joiners.) The best hope appears to be rioting in the streets, as France has shown us. But Canadians, Australians, even US citizens, appear to be too “nice”, or phlegmatic, to get results.
I think Chaamjamal is a she, not a he, based on the photo on her linked webpage.
And I too read her reports, whether I comment or not.
Out of curiosity, I looked at the “About” page. The first thing that is listed is:
No insult intended to the person in the photo, but she doesn’t look old enough to be retired. 🙂
I looked, I liked and will keep an eye out in future.
Great work Chaamjamal.
As an ex-lecturer I know how bad adult numeracy is – so I imagine it switches people off.
If I was ever faced with a stroppy bunch of students, I would write “let x =” on the blackboard and go from there – it never failed to bludgeon them into submissiveness.
chaamjamal – December 19, 2018 at 6:20 pm
Chaamjamal, …… the only reliable and fairly accurate record of measured atmospheric CO2 ppm quantities is the sixty (60) years old Mauna Loa Record, ….. (aka: the Keeling Curve Graph) ….. which does not, …… anywhere within said record, ……. infer, suggest, imply, define or portray a “human signature” than can be attributed, associated, correlated or insinuated as being the result of an anthropogenic source.
Therefore, the answer to your above question is an emphatic ….. “NO, …… fossil fuel (anthropogenic) emissions ARE NOT relevant in the study of atmospheric CO2.”
Consequently, after the era of wealth destruction by politically correct energy starvation, all countries will claim the status of “developing”.
As all countries in fact are, ours included, except for one city:
Thanks for the intermission! A nice break.
Oklahoma!
Where the corn grows high as an elephants’ eye.
Yeeee-haw!
Here in Australia while the political parties still mouth the usual “Something must be done about Climate Change, we still export vast quantities of both coal and natural gas.
Perhaps the politicians of both major parties think that either the nations receiving this fossall fuel just leave it unburnt, or that as its North of the Equator then it will not affect us, so we can still carry on with our war against fossall l fuel.
Of course all politicians realise that if we were truly concerned about the rising CO2, then we not be exporting such fossell fuel, in fact we should do what the Greens keep on telling us, that is to “Leave it in the ground”.
But with a Federal election due very soon, no political party wants to bring on a recession. Such is modern politics.
MJE
Very true MJE. And it’s very easy for the greens to say leave it in the ground (or crazy shit like throw people in jail for using coal driven electricity) because they are and will remain a fringe party. There is nothing wrong with coal. It is quite simple to remove particulates as it burns and other than that minor problem we should absolutely continue to sell AND burn it until something better comes along. I would like to here ANY politician in power tell China or India to stop using it.
That should be ”hear” of course!
The total population of Australia is less than the state of Texas, or about equal to Southern California. Australia has fewer people than Shanghai metro, which is rapidly industrializing, and only about a quarter of SE China surrounding the Pearl Delta, the most industrialized part of China. If Darwin, Australia decided to revert to the Stone Age as some kind of object lesson, would the rest of Australia be impressed? Or just scratch their heads and wonder what’s got into them?
In short, nothing Australia does or doesn’t do is visible on a global pie chart. China could buy up all Australia’s energy and ore assets, and Australia’s fuel use wouldn’t show on a global pie chart. It doesn’t make a particle of sense for Australia to commit economic or political suicide to appease any of the non-binding energy treaties made over the last 30 years. It’s just virtue signaling, empty gestures no one in the world is willing or able to live up to.
“empty gestures no one in the world is willing or able to live up to.”
That sums it up right there.
It’s a good thing that CAGW appears to be a fiction because contrary to what the socialists think at the UN and elsewhere, the people of the world are not going to commit economic suicide over CO2, with the exception of a few areas with really dumb politicians like South Australia, California, Canada, and the EU. The rest of the world isn’t that stupid.
“If Darwin, Australia decided to revert to the Stone Age as some kind of object lesson, would the rest of Australia be impressed?”
No, but they would deserve the Darwin Award!
Pun intended, of course.
Both parties realize you are trying to get away with minimum spend to buy a few votes. Most likely all agreements will end in tears because each country will act in it’s own good as it represents it’s people. The whole human rights junk all got tossed out and each country is now in it for there own ends .. but we will always have paris.
LdB
“Most likely all agreements will end in tears because each country will act in it’s own good as it represents it’s people.”
If only the UK would act in the interests of its own people, rather than in the interest of Poisoner Putin.
The 2008 Climate Change Act might have been written by the Kremlin; it was probably written by ‘Useful Idiots’ in the UK, however.
And a point – London Gatwick Airport has been closed for over 24 hours, until at least tomorrow morning; some clown/emissary of Moscow (delete as appropriate) has been flying drones in the airport’s airspace [at considerable risk to the commercial planes there, I may add] – so nothing is going in or out.
And, at the same time, London Heathrow and London City have had some (unspecified) ‘software issue’ with checking in.
That issue certainly isn’t due to the Brilliant Bears – or whatever the Poisoner’s Moscow-based hacking team calls itself.
And we are cutting our own throats moving from coal power.
Auto
Flight Level – don’t worry, give us ‘developed nations’ a few more years of this CAGW / Paris nonsense and our standard of living will have deteriorated far enough that we should qualify as ‘developing nations’. then we can spew out as much CO2 as we like again! Unless of course the new ‘developed nations’ like China and India decide to change the rules on us…and then we are totally screwed.
“The data demonstrates the emissions of both the U.S. and EU are and have been declining over the past 10 years”
Yeah, but only because consumption based accounting isn’t used. Where are huge amounts of goods bought in the EU and the US made (and some services also)? The developing nations. So to divorce large parts of your economy from emissions accounting is, at best, misleading and, at worst, dishonest.
Mike
Hmmm…not sure I’m buying that fancy “consumption accounting”. You better have evidence to support that claim.
According to the EPA 2010 Global & 2016 US total greenhouse gas emissions are heavily weighted to non-industrial electricity, transportation and agriculture (65% US & 63% global). Global & US industrial greenhouse gas is about equal at 22%.
Your proposed accounting fiddle would undoubtedly change the US “absolute” numbers, but it’s uncertain how it impacts the slope of the curve.
For China, exports are 19% of GDP, but imports are 9.8% of GDP. I believe you may be too heavily discounting the impact of people in developing countries now using more energy to live significantly better lives.
EPA 2010 global greenhouse gas: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data
EPA 2016 USA greenhouse gas: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions
Simple, ban imports. Or they could ban manufacture for export.
Oh wait, that will cause unemployment and be socially most unjust….
Anyone believing that CO2 reduction is about temperature is naive. This is where the whole scam will fail. They (as in the UN and accomplices) are finding out that even with total control of the media and propaganda the people aren’t swayed. When it gets right down to the wire no country will knowingly commit economic and living standard suicide. The governments know they would be quickly replaced if they tried. Macron is the sacrificial lamb for the Progressives…… watch what happens.
“When it gets right down to the wire no country will knowingly commit economic and living standard suicide.”
See Venezuela.
Chavez destroyed the independence of the press, then the legislature, and finally the courts. With nobody left to stop him, he destroyed the economy.
The take-away message here is that Chavez had the overwhelming support of the people every step of the way, until it was too late. All it took was a decade of Chavisimo to turn the most prosperous country in South America into a failed state.
By the time Maduro took over, the die was cast. The private sector economy had largely been expropriated and the rest was in shambles. The only thing keeping the government afloat was the oil sector. Bleeding that Golden Goose white combined with another round of expropriations would collapse the oil industry, and the rest is history.
And still, Maduro enjoys at least some support from people who still believe this mix of populism and socialism is a good thing.
Australia:
One can only follow the events in Australia with horror. Will they really destroy that nations entire industrial base in pursuit of the dream of “Clean, Green Power”?
Electricity prices have already soared, with more on the way.
Shortages and grid instability with consequent blackouts are already the reality, again with more on the way.
All political parties seem to be “all-in” with the green agenda, leaving the voters no choice.
Unfortunately, yes, it seems perfectly good countries can and will commit suicide.
“Unfortunately, yes, it seems perfectly good countries can and will commit suicide.”
Yes, all it would take for that to happen in the United States is for another socialist like Barack Obama to be elected. He was well on his way to undermining the U.S. form of governent when Trump got elected and derailed his plan. Hillary would have continued the Left’s undermining of all the levers of power in the government by corrupting the process for politcal gain and power.
Obama and Hillary corrupted the Justice Department, the FBI and all the intelligence agencies by putting corrupt, partisan people in positions of power within those agencies, and used them to try to overturn a presidential election.
And if they are not punished for this sedition, then guess what they are going to do the next time they get presidential power.
Trump needs to take drastic action on many fronts. He needs to fight for the border wall and more than anything else, he needs to expose the corruption, crminality, and sedition of the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton by declassifying ALL pertinent records that Congress has requested of the Obama administration over the years, along with all the records pertaining the the current witch hunt going on by Mueller.
Shine the light of truth on these underminers of freedom, President Trump. That’s the only way to prevent these quests for ultimate power in the future.
And President Trump, you are going to hurt yourself badly with your base if you show any sign of backing off on building the southern border wall. Your supporters will stick with you through anything including a partial government shutdown or any other issue that shows you standing up to the Democrats obstructionism. You will lose your supporters if you do like just about every other Republican has done which is to cave to the Democrats at the first sign of pressure (which usuallly means criricism from the Leftwing news media).
You need to deliver some ultimatums to the Democrats and to the spineless Republicans. “You” are the president, not them. It is your responsiblity to defend the border. Do your job. If you get pushback, so be it, but you continue pushing, too.
And quit listening to Rand Paul and Laura Ingraham when it comes to Middle East policy. Don’t do something that will cause the situation to deteriorate in Syria and Iraq. A premature pullout means we go back in and do it all over again at a later date at greater cost in lives and treasure. Leave a vacuum and it is filled by bad guys. Desert your friends and its harder to get friends for future endeavors.
“When it gets right down to the wire no country will knowingly commit economic and living standard suicide.”
…
Unfortunately, yes, it seems perfectly good countries can and will commit suicide.
Indeed, it is possible for perfectly good countries to be hoodwinked into committing economic and living standard suicide by hucksters and charlatans. Which is why eternal vigilance is needed now more than ever.
Sorry, the UN has made it quite clear on a number of occassions that it is all about Wealth Distribution and closing down Capitalism.
They have numerous Agenda laying it all out.
“…These outcomes clearly reflect that the political realities of using lower cost and reliable fossil fuel energy resources are simply too powerful to be abandoned by the world’s developing nations…”.
….and the developed nations to some degree.
The major malfunction of the anti-fossil fuels movement is how poorly thought out the means to their ends are. Trying to disappear fossil fuels in the absence of commercially viable technological alternatives in sufficient quantities to replace them is doing things backwards. All the efforts in the world aren’t going to change that. Pushing nonviable solar and wind energy (without understanding why they are currently nonviable) in this effort only adds to their problems.
If in fact the climate alarmist narrative was just dreamed up as a means to this end (Maurice Strong, where are you?), it would behoove somebody in a powerful position in the world to muster the intestinal fortitude to step forward and challenge the scientific credibility of the narrative. This would most certainly add to the frustrations of the anti-fossil-fuel people and send them into fits. So far, no takers.
Knowledge is power as they say, but being convinced of your own righteousness won’t necessarily do you any good if you lack the knowledge to understand what it is that you’re doing wrong. Bill McKibben, of course, immediately comes to mind.
The govts of the world appear to be a considerable distance from realizing any of this, at least as far as I can see. If and when the ever will remains to be seen.
“…These outcomes clearly reflect that the political realities of using lower cost and reliable fossil fuel energy resources are simply too powerful to be abandoned by the world’s developing nations…”.
….and the developed nations to some degree.
Indeed. And whats more you can’t limit the genie to it’s bottle. If reliable fossil fuel energy resources are going to be used, everyone who can is going to use them, not just those nations that you might wish to limit it to. Particularly as it’s the developed nations that have the technology and resources in the first place.
EU, U.S. CO2 reductions completely overwhelmed by world’s developing nations fossil fuel driven emission increases
That was exactly what was agreed by President Obama and President Xi Jinping as per the us-china-joint-presidential-statement-climate-change on 25th September 2014, See here
The relevant para(s) are reproduced here under:
8. The two sides reaffirm that, in the context of meaningful mitigation actions and transparency on implementation, developed countries committed to a goal of mobilizing jointly USD 100 billion a year by 2020 to address the needs of developing countries and that this funding would come from a wide variety of sources, public and private, bilateral and multilateral, including alternative sources of finance. They underscore the importance of continued, robust financial support beyond 2020 to help developing countries build low-carbon and climate-resilient societies. They urge continued support by developed countries to developing countries and encourage such support by other countries willing to do so.
11. Since last November’s Joint Announcement, the United States has taken major steps to reduce its emissions, and it is announcing important additional implementation plans today. In August 2015, the United States finalized the Clean Power Plan, which will reduce CO2 emissions from the power sector to 32% below 2005 levels by 2030. In 2016, the United States will finalize a federal plan to implement carbon emission standards for power plants in states that do not choose to design their own implementation plans under the Clean Power Plan. The United States commits to finalize its next-stage, world-class fuel efficiency standards for heavy-duty vehicles in 2016 and implement them in 2019. In August 2015, the United States proposed separate standards for methane emissions from landfills and the oil and gas sector, and commits to finalize both standards in 2016. In July 2015, the United States finalized significant new measures to reduce use and emissions of HFCs through the Significant New Alternatives Policy (SNAP) program, and commits today to continue to pursue new actions in 2016 to reduce HFC use and emissions. Finally, in the buildings sector, the United States commits to finalize over 20 efficiency standards for appliances and equipment by the end of 2016.
12. China is making great efforts to advance ecological civilization and promote green, low-carbon, climate resilient and sustainable development through accelerating institutional innovation and enhancing policies and actions. China will lower carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP by 60% to 65% from the 2005 level by 2030 and increase the forest stock volume by around 4.5 billion cubic meters on the 2005 level by 2030. China will promote green power dispatch, giving priority, in distribution and dispatching, to renewable power generation and fossil fuel power generation of higher efficiency and lower emission levels. China also plans to start in 2017 its national emission trading system, covering key industry sectors such as iron and steel, power generation, chemicals, building materials, paper-making, and nonferrous metals. China commits to promote low-carbon buildings and transportation, with the share of green buildings reaching 50% in newly built buildings in cities and towns by 2020 and the share of public transport in motorized travel reaching 30% in big- and medium-sized cities by 2020. It will finalize next-stage fuel efficiency standards for heavy-duty vehicles in 2016 and implement them in 2019. Actions on HFCs continue to be supported and accelerated, including effectively controlling HFC-23 emissions by 2020.
The MSM had reported quite differently that
“The landmark agreement, jointly announced here by President Obama and President Xi Jinping, includes new targets for carbon emissions reductions by the United States and a first-ever commitment by China to stop its emissions from growing by 2030.”
See here from NYT
Oops.. the NYT link is here
As reported in 2014.
The Chinese will never curtail their emissions.
It’s a shell game for Western suckers.
It’s the new Chinese national sport . . . suck-in a Yank or two.
They swap stories, I’ve heard them on trade matters.
Yeah that is why you play them at there own game, tell lies and cheat wherever possible because there are no penalties you just get called a bad world citizen …. how sad.
The African delegates 9bar 1)missed the photo huddle.
They were all at the pub or in a knock shop.
Global Warming / Climate Change is on the verge of developing into the Battle of the Idiots in which all countries claim to be ‘developing’ and allowed to do just exactly what China is doing.
Delegates all think they’re amazing pioneers of a new World order.
Fact is they’re incompetent fools of the highest order.
Emissions increase unabated year-on-year and will continue to indefinitely.
Jail would be too good for each and every one at COP-24 if waste and fraud mattered.
Meanwhile hysterical and scientifically groundless fear-mongering continues under the prestigious patronage of the Nature journal. In this editorial “How I stave off despair as a climate scientist” a David Reay wails about looming catastrophe based solely on computer models. (It has to be, all real world data shows nothing but benefit of warming and CO2 increase.) It is opportunistic, dishonest, ill-informed activists like Reay who are the real vandals of our children’s future.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07765-4?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20181220&utm_source=nature_etoc&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20181220&sap-outbound-id=43B246636615E7D44F913F62D33ED5E253EF90A6
It does not seem to be sinking in.
The alarmist crowd claims we must do X to avoid Y. But there is no plan for how to do X. Nor is there a plan for how a plan could be developed. Doing X is not going to happen!
If not doing X means that we are headed for Y, then we may as well get ready for Y. Abandon X. Spending large sums of money on futile half-measures related to X is wasteful. Furthermore, it’s even dangerous since if we blow our wad on X, we will have less money to prepare for Y.
And don’t ask my country to sign an agreement that we’ll give you piles of money. IF AND WHEN we come to Y, there will be foreign aid. Until then, enjoy a Martini.
Oh what a tangled web of lies and deceit the haters of fossil fuels and more importantly the industrialized countries have woven. Even now that their intentions and lies have been laid bare, they continue to move forward, in robot fashion. Amazing, and sad. And to think they almost got away with their schemes.
The rise in emissions is linear. The change in concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is not.
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/gr.html
Im not sure everyone believes the “world is warming lets get rid of c02”. I think there are 3 types of warmists: 1. those that made up the scheme and believe it religiously. 2. those that like riding a popular wave, being in the club, they need to be outraged about something. and 3. those that see it as a scam but ride it anyway cause they can raise taxes and have more money to play with.
1’s like mann, McKibben and Maurice strong.
2’s like all the delegates to Poland that like to be the in group, get the merch.
3’s like gov. Inslee in Washington, good excuse to grab some cash to play with.
Just my observations…
The horrible truth is this, and it’s why we are almost in need of a revolution
Our political elites across the West have quickly and completely accepted the AGW “science”, and in fact promoted it, WHILE AT THE SAME TIME VERY DELIBERATELY MARGINALIZING ANY AND ALL LEGITIMATE SCIENTIFIC DEBATE. Despite the obvious terrible consequences of the ensuing policies for the poorest and weakest citizens of our “democracies”. This has involved a fantastic amount of straight out lying, which we should ll be used to by now. But our modern society and democracy itself is under assault from a class of professional liars. If we can’t figure out how to correct this, all the hard won progress of the West will be lost in a hundred years or less.
““With focusing on ‘ambition’ for the rule book, the EU Commissioner tries to avert attention from the total lack of ambition when it comes to the most important part of this COP: concrete commitment to stricter climate targets to fulfill the Paris Agreement and limit the global warming to well below 1.5 degrees,” he said.””
I continue to be overwhelmed by the unimaginable hubris required for human beings to think we can actually “limit global warming” to less than (or in this case, the even more preposterous “well below”) 1.5 degrees from an anomalously COLD period through our minuscule contribution to CO2 input into the atmosphere.
In a climate system whose NATURAL range of variability is from an average of zero to an average of 24 degrees, and all without ANY impact from CO2 levels, to which we contribute a piddling 4% vs. nature’s 96%.
Details, details. What goes around comes around. Meanwhile the great (green) nation of Denmark is using faster, larger container mega ships to move the carbon goods from the emitter nations to the consumer nations with a tariff (tax) of course. So with the consumer wealth created from low cost imports we raise energy and labor costs making the consumer nations less competitive and relying more and more on those mega container ships from the emitter nations to move the carbon-intensive goods to market. CO2 emissions are headed much higher with this mass balance equation.
So what this study confirms is the “shit hole ” countries are clawing their way out of abject poverty
by using fossil fuels provided largely from less “shit hole ” countries .
And we are expected to pay for that ? How about they pay us for helping to improve their standard of
living by emptying our resource basins . What if we just said screw you, we are keeping it in the ground or to run our own economic engines ?
We could stop all those avoidable fuel poverty deaths caused by a con game based on made up
from bought and paid for science fiction .
$180 billion peed away on rent seekers and fraudulent government pork .
The one thing the devolution to modern day tribalism has offered both sides
is grievance over no accountability .
As long as $trillion deficits are just peachy keen gross distortions like man made up planet fever
grow in the petri dish .
People have woken up to the sad reality Washington is a drifting ship of self dealers and the deplorables can go F themselves .
Maybe in the next world.