19 December 2009

Worst possible outcome at Copenhagen?

So says the Centre for Science and Environment in Delhi, quite persuasively, in my opinion ...

19 December 2009
CSE

Worst possible outcome at Copenhagen, says CSE. Climate meet is a failure.

From the CSE team at Copenhagen, December 19, 2009: The Copenhagen Accord that India plans to sign here [PDF text] will instantly forgive industrialised countries’ historical responsibility for climate change, eliminate the distinction between developed and developing countries, prevent effective action to curb global warming, and fatally undermine efforts to renew the Kyoto Protocol. This will be disastrous for the climate, and for India’s most vulnerable communities, says Centre for Science and Environment (CSE).

  • India buckles under pressure in Copenhagen
  • The Copenhagen Accord (which has not been adopted by the Conference of Parties) agrees to weak and non-legally commitments from developed world. The agreement will be disastrous for the world, particularly the poor and the most vulnerable, as it will allow emissions to increase in the rich world.
  • The Copenhagen Accord agrees to a process, which will ultimately kill the Kyoto Protocol and undermine the legitimacy of the UNFCCC. It changes the framework based on equity and historical emissions
  • It agrees that developing country action, which are not supported through international finance and technology also be open “international consultation and analysis”, which could become a backhand way of bringing in international commitments on these countries. This is euphemistic language for international monitoring, reporting and verification
  • “The Accord will not only be disastrous for the climate, it will freeze the inequity in the world for perpetuity,” said Sunita Narain, director, CSE.
The Copenhagen Accord will not curb global greenhouse gas emissions fast enough to avoid a climate catastrophe; the world’s and India’s most vulnerable populations will pay the price.

The accord uses weak and inconsequential language on the matter of cutting emissions from industrialized countries. In fact, it sets up a framework for cutting future emissions, which is bound to take the world to climate catastrophe. It must be noted that as yet, there has been an agreement that industrialized countries must cut emissions by at least 40 per cent by 2020. The Copenhagen Accord destroys this agreement through the following provisions.

It does not set time-bound targets for emission reduction from industrialized countries. Instead it simply says that these countries commit to implement individually or jointly the emission reduction targets that they will themselves submit to the secretariat.

In other words, these countries will be allowed to set their own domestic targets, whatever these may be. The targets will not be based on internationally agreed burden sharing arrangements – how much industrialized countries must cut to keep the world within the 2C temperature increase (which itself is too high) by when. In the climate agreements, the targets are currently set based on the historical and current emissions of countries. This provision will be disastrous for the world and set up a framework based on inequity and unfair burden sharing. It must be rejected. This virtually guarantees that the world will not be able to prevent runaway global warming. An analysis by the UNFCCC, leaked yesterday, shows that current pledges by industrialised countries will put the planet on track to an average temperature increase of 3°C.

The Accord does not set a firm peaking year for Annex 1 countries. It is well known that these countries should have already peaked in their emissions. The Accord in fact gives them a cop-out as it will allow them to use their domestic pledges to actually increase and not decrease emissions fast. The US pledge in fact allows it to increase it emissions for the next 10 years or more. This will be disastrous for all.

The Accord proposes a pledge-and-review model for emissions reduction, which means that developed countries are only asked to take voluntary, domestic actions. This is a step backwards from the current Kyoto Protocol, which legally requires industrialised countries to make modest emissions cuts between 2008 and 2012.

In May 2009, India, China and 35 other developing nations had submitted an ambitious proposal to the UNFCCC to strengthen Kyoto by requiring nations to cut their emissions by 45 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020. This is what scientists say is needed in order to avoid dangerous temperature rises of 2°C or more.

By agreeing to a pledge-and-review deal today, India has done an extraordinary about-face. The UN has estimated that current pledges by developing countries would sentence the world to temperature increases of at least 3°C. There is nothing in the Copenhagen Accord that can compel industrialised countries to take stronger near-term targets in order to avoid dangerous global warming.

18 comments:

Chris M said...

Copenhagen has failed. The UN has failed to address the most important crisis in human history. This is now the time for sanctions, boycotts and embargoes. A new alliance is needed. An alliance of hope and peace and justice must be built to oppose the axis of pollution, extinction and self destruction.

http://www.selfdestructivebastards.com/2009/12/beyond-copenhagen.html

Anonymous said...

Bet Al Gore and Goldman Sachs and other Global Warming con artists have put up a tent there and are asking villagers to be "responsible" and buy carbon off sets for volcano green house gases and ash.. LOL


Philippine volcano gets louder, could erupt soon
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091221/ap_on_sc/as_philippines_volcano

Anonymous said...

Global warming hysteria is only the latest in this long line of notions, whose main argument is that there is no argument, because it is "science." The recently revealed destruction of raw data at the bottom of the global warming hysteria, as well as revelations of attempts to prevent critics of this hysteria from being published in leading journals, suggests that the disinterested search for truth-- the hallmark of real science-- has taken a back seat to a political crusade.

An intercepted e-mail from a professor at the Climate Research Unit in England to a professor at the University of Pennsylvania warned the latter: "Don't any of you three tell anybody that the UK has a Freedom of Information Act" and urged the American professor to delete any e-mails he may have sent a colleague regarding the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

When a business accused of fraud begins shredding its memos and deleting its e-mails, the media are quick to proclaim these actions as signs of guilt. But, after the global warming advocates began a systematic destruction of evidence, the big television networks went for days without even reporting these facts, much less commenting on them.



Factual data are crucial in real science. Einstein himself urged that his own theory of relativity not be accepted until it could be empirically verified. This verification came when scientists around the world observed an eclipse of the sun and discovered that light behaved as Einstein's theory said it would behave, however implausible that might have seemed beforehand.

Today, politicized "science" has too big a stake in the global warming hysteria to let the facts speak for themselves and let the chips fall where they may. Too many people-- in politics and in the media, as well as among those climate scientists who are promoting global warming hysteria-- let the raw data on which their calculations have been based fall into the "wrong hands."


People who talk about the corrupting influence of money seem to automatically assume that it is only private money that is corrupting. But, when governments have billions of dollars invested in the global warming crusade, massive programs underway and whole political careers at risk if that crusade gets undermined, do not expect the disinterested search for truth.

Among the intelligentsia, there have always been many who are ready to jump on virtually any bandwagon that will take them to the promised land, where the wise and noble few-- like themselves-- can take the rest of us poor dummies in hand and tell us how we had better change the way we live our lives.

No doubt some climate scientists honestly believe that global warming poses a threat. But other climate scientists honestly believe the opposite. That is why the raw data have had to be destroyed before the latter get their hands on it.

This is tragically the case as regards many other issues, besides global warming, where data are made available only to the true believers and kept out of the hands of those who think otherwise.

Anonymous said...

Q: Why is it now called "climate change" rather than "global warming"?
A: Because it's a more accurate term. The hottest year on record was 1998 and the Earth has been cooling since then.
Q: So you're worried that the Earth is cooling?
A: No, we're worried about "climate change".
Q: So you want to control the climate by reducing CO2?
A: Yes! The UN IPCC has said that if we spend forty-five trillion dollars we can reverse global warming because CO2 makes the Earth warmer!
Q: I thought you said the Earth was getting cooler?
A: It's complicated! Reducing CO2 makes the Earth warmer in areas where we want it to be and cooler in other areas. It will make everything the exact perfect temperature that everyone wants it to be AND YOU WILL DIE IF YOU DON'T!!!

Well, you convinced me!
lol

Anonymous said...

The balancing of interests between those who want to preserve their standard of living and the emerging economies that want to soon reach such levels of prosperity is impossible.

The question of whether binding and dramatic limits of CO2 emissions are the only correct way to protect the climate must also be revisited. This is not only dogmatic but would also cost a fortune (Trillions of $) and have little effect. The plan to limit the average rise in the global temperature to 2 degrees Celsius is the most expensive task of all time. … Besides, it is a figure that has been set arbitrarily. The one-sided fixation on CO2 limits could be a greater detriment to the global economy than climate change itself."

Replanting forests would be more useful than the rabid caps in emissions at the cost of economic growth.

An insurance policy is not any good if it costs so much (45 Trillion$) with so little evidence of a possible accident.

Anonymous said...

The "deal" that the West were pushing for in the final days of Copenhagen would have locked Chinese (as well as other developing countries) emission per capita to be much lower than the Western ones forever. Thus capping their devlopment forever. Good for them that they killed any such deal.

For a reference:

2007 per-capita CO2 emissions from energy

use, in tonnes per person:

World 4.52
China 4.75
United States 19.94
Russia 11.83
India 1.25
Japan 9.91
Germany 10.13
Canada 17.91
UK 9.28
S.Korea 10.69
Iran 7.50
Italy 7.92
Australia 18.12
Mexico 4.17
South Africa 9.35

Source: EIA. Dept. of Energy

Anonymous said...

FORGET CAP AND TRADE racket, !! biggest windfall for Wall Street since Credit Default Swaps that will end up INCREASING carbon emissions and DECIMATING FORESTS.

Obama's obsession with Cap and Trade represents another sweetheart deal already made with his Wall Street handlers.

Instead work on Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (LFTR)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-kirsch/the-most-important-invest_b_402685.html

Anonymous said...

Science: Another Ice Age

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,944914,00.html

Science in 1974 was convinced of an imminent ice age..

Anonymous said...

Cap and Trade is the replacement for Subprime and securitized mortgages, just 1000s times bigger . Without a housing bubble, the only way the bankers can continue to make money at our expense is cap and trade. Why? BECAUSE THEY WILL BE RUNNING THE MARKET FOR CARBON OFFSETS or carbon derivatives!!! The UBS’s, Goldman Sachs, etc of the world will game the system the same way they made liar loans, 110% mortgages, etc.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/26/business/26norris.html?em

Anonymous said...

French Court Rejects Carbon Tax Plan
France's constitutional court threw out a planned tax on carbon emissions set to take effect Jan. 1, saying that sweeping exemptions in the law made it unfair

http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/dec2009/gb20091230_971328.htm

Anonymous said...

Lets hope great 'global warming scam' will be exposed for what it is, a total fraud. A ticket for scientists to get lucrative grants and conferences in exotic places.
Dubious politicians to tax us 'for the good of the planet' and to try to hold back competition from developing countries.

Anonymous said...

John Mackey, Whole Foods CEO: I Don't Believe In Climate Change

(Whole Foods - Well known Organic and healthy Foods Chain store in USA)

"no scientific consensus exists" regarding the causes of climate change; he added, with a candor you could call bold or reckless, that it would be a pity to allow "hysteria about global warming" to cause us "to raise taxes and increase regulation, and in turn lower our standard of living and lead to an increase in poverty."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/waylon-lewis/john-mackey-whole-foods-c_b_409842.html

Anonymous said...

Like the Chinese, they argued that it is fundamentally unjust to cap the greenhouse gas emissions of poor countries at a lower level than the emissions of the US or the European Union; all the more so since the industrialised west is responsible for the great bulk of the carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere.

Revealingly, devloping countries leaders have made the same pointed joke – likening the US to a rich man who, after gorging himself at a banquet, then invites the neighbours in for coffee and asks them to split the bill and sign a pledge that they will live of nothing more than coffee and and snacks for rest of their lives, while rich continues to live of large meals if not all you can eat banquet.

Anonymous said...

A cold spell soon to replace global warming


Carbon dioxide is not to blame for global climate change. Solar activity is many times more powerful than the energy produced by the whole of humankind. Man’s influence on nature is a drop in the ocean.


http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20080103/94768732.html

Anonymous said...

In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Dr Lal, the co-ordinating lead author of the report’s chapter on Asia, said: ‘It related to several countries in this region and their water sources. We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.

‘It had importance for the region, so we thought we should put it in.’

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1245636/Glacier-scientists-says-knew-data-verified.html

Anonymous said...

nder US law RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act), a person who is a member of an enterprise that has committed any two of 35 crimes—27 federal crimes and 8 state crimes—within a 10-year period can be charged with racketeering. Those found guilty of racketeering can be fined up to $250,000 and/or sentenced to 20 years in prison per racketeering count. In addition, the racketeer must forfeit all ill-gotten gains and interest in any business gained through a pattern of “racketeering activity.” RICO also permits a private individual harmed by the actions of such an enterprise to file a civil suit; if successful, the individual can collect treble damages.

Anonymous said...

THE United Nations climate science panel faces new controversy for wrongly linking global warming to an increase in the number and severity of natural disasters such as hurricanes and floods.

It based the claims on an unpublished report that had not been subjected to routine scientific scrutiny — and ignored warnings from scientific advisers that the evidence supporting the link too weak. The report's own authors later withdrew the claim because they felt the evidence was not strong enough.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7000063.ece

Anonymous said...

SURFACE TEMPERATURE RECORDS: POLICY DRIVEN DECEPTION?


http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/surface_temp.pdf