Thursday 20 December 2007

Bali climate conference best described as tragi-comedy

I must admit that I am getting a huge amount of enjoyment watching the impossible position that the global climate religionists conjure up at each of their so-called planet saving conferences.

15,000 people converged on Bali to attend the 13th climate junket since the whole global warming scam was conceived. What a great gig that really is. Live off the public teat, swan around to exotic locations every year, not have to do any real science, not have to worry about the mainstream media doing anything other than report the most extreme, hysterical hypotheses and, best of all, not have to worry about dealing with the myriad of opposing views and contrary science.

Seriously, if CO2 was a huge problem - a 'planetary emergency' as Al Gore and others say - then there'd be a better outcome from Bali than simply organising another conference in Copenhagen.

Imagine if an asteroid was headed toward earth or we'd worked out that the ebola virus was becoming more virulent then I'm sure we'd see much more action than what the Climate Faithful can organise.

Here's Benny Peisner's take on the Bali debacle.
The success of the major Anglosphere nations at last week's United Nations climate conference in Bali marks the beginning of the end of the age of climate hysteria. It also symbolizes a significant shift of political leadership in international climate diplomacy from the once-dominating European continent to North America and its Western allies.

This power shift has perhaps never been more transparent and dramatic than in Bali, when Australia's Labour government, under the newly elected Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, announced a complete U-turn on the thorny issue of mandatory carbon dioxide emissions targets. Only days after Australia's delegation had backed Europe's demand for a 25% to 40% cut in emission by 2020, Mr. Rudd declared (his signature under the Kyoto Protocol wasn't even dry) that his government would not support such targets after all.

Indeed, Australia's position hardened further when Trade Minister Simon Crean announced that developing countries like China and India would have to accept tough binding emissions targets before Australia would ever agree to any post-Kyoto agreement beyond 2012.

Similar stipulations were made by Canada and Japan. Surprisingly, even the British government appeared to deviate from the European Union position when Britain's Trade and Development Minister, Gareth Thomas, told the BBC that developing countries would also be required to accept targets for CO2 emissions.

Rather than being isolated, the decision by the United States and Canada to take the lead in international energy and climate diplomacy appears to have galvanized key allies, who are gradually rallying around a much tougher stance vis-a-vis China and India.

In Bali, the Anglosphere nations have in effect drawn a red line in the sand: Unless developing countries agree to mandatory emissions cuts themselves, much of the Western world will henceforth reject any unilateral burden imposed by future climate deals.

As a consequence, the so-called Bali road map adopted last Saturday has shifted the pressure further on to developing nations to share responsibility for CO2 emissions, a move that is widely regarded as a significant departure from the Kyoto Protocol.

For the first time, there are now firm demands for developing nations to tackle CO2 emissions by taking "actions in a measurable, reportable, and verifiable" way. There can be little doubt that the words adopted in Bali herald increasing pressure on China and India to accept mandatory emissions targets.

Australia's public endorsement of this line of attack attests to the fact that the West's climate strategy no longer depends on party politics. Nobody has made this new reality more obvious in recent days than Democratic U.S. Senator John Kerry. Speaking to reporters at the Bali meeting, he notified the international community that a rejection by China and other emerging economies to cut their own greenhouse gases would make it almost impossible for any U.S. administration to get a new global climate treaty through the U.S. Senate -- "even under a Democratic president."

Yet, neither China nor India will be able to agree to any emissions cuts in the foreseeable future. While their CO2 emissions are expected to rise rapidly over the next 20 to 30 years, there is simply nothing in the world of alternative energy or clean technology existing today that has the capacity to arrest this upwards trend. Any forceful attempts, on the other hand, to rein in the dramatically rising energy consumption in almost all of Asia would, inescapably, trigger economic turmoil, social disorder and political chaos.

In Bali, more than perhaps ever before, climate alarmism has finally hit the solid brick wall of political reality. It's a reality that won't go away or be changed any time soon. After more than 20 years of green ascendancy on the world stage, green politicians and climate campaigners are for the first time faced with a conundrum that looks as impenetrable as squaring the circle.

Reflecting on this predicament and the results of the Bali conference, Germany's former foreign secretary, my old friend Joschka Fischer, declared that nothing short of divine intervention would be required to reach a post-Kyoto agreement by 2009, in face of insurmountable obstacles.

"Perhaps something will happen in the meantime, something that does not normally happen in politics, namely a small miracle. After all, given past experiences, one must fear that international climate policy won't probably advance without the direct intervention of higher powers."

That Europe's most famous and most eminent green politician is prepared and desperate enough to publicly call for heavenly support is a strong indication that the age of climate alarmism is now being gradually replaced by fatalism. That's what the encounter with a brick wall tends to do to hot-heads. One can only hope that a period of sobering up from green dreams and delusions will provide political leaders with the prerequisite for a realistic, pragmatic and most of all a manageable approach to climate change.
(Nothing Follows)

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Seriously, if CO2 was a huge problem - a 'planetary emergency' as Al Gore and others say - then there'd be a better outcome from Bali than simply organising another conference in Copenhagen

You could have said this in 1938 after Chamberlain came back from Munich. You cannot infer a lack of danger from the inaction of people unwilling to acknowledge it. In this case, the intense lobbying of the deniers, who prey on the opinionated but stupid to spread their misinformation, has done an extraordinary job of delaying the action necessary to stop the disruption of Earth's climate·

Jack Lacton said...

You're slipping, Lenny. That is complete drivel.

The problem for the Climate Faithful is that there is NO, NIL, NADA, NONE evidence that the climate is being disrupted or will be disrupted.

Anonymous said...

Who's Lenny? And what do you think of the retreat of glaciers, the rising of sea levels, the warming of the oceans, the warming of the atmosphere, the disappearance of Arctic sea ice, and the collapse of ice shelves in Antarctica? What do you think has caused that, in a time of steady or declining solar activity but precipitously rising concentrations of CO2?

The level of stupidity you need to think there's no evidence of climate disruption is quite spectacular.

Jack Lacton said...

You must be another thick-as-a-brick Anonymous poster that sounds like one I call Lenny.

1. Glaciers have retreated all through history and they're both retreating and advancing at the moment. Note that Greenland is currently gaining ice mass.
2. Warming of the ocean is shown to be a very slow process. It doesn't respond as quickly as Climate Faithful need.
3. If you do any basic research you'll find that the mid- to upper-troposphere, which must have increased in temperature to support climate models' predictions - showing very minor warming completely consistent with the rate of change since the end of the LIA
4. Ice shelves collapse in Antarctica every year. It's called calving. Look it up. Antarctica is gaining ice mass.

Correlation between solar activity and temperature is much, much higher than CO2 in the 20th century and doesn't need the scam of so-called dimming added into models to account for the temperature fall 1940-1975 while CO2 rose steadily.

Anonymous said...

I hope you'll take this as an attempt at a balanced view as Ihave no agenda. I simply have taken the time to look into the science of climate change because it worries me, and I look at both sides.

I'm afraid anonymous that I am currently under the distinct impression that we are being horribly lied to by Gore et al.

The hansen pine cones, the mann hockey stick, even the iconic pictures of apparent warming like ice shelves accross a sea outlet calving as they do annually.

Whats happening smacks of a deliberate (and successful) attempt to create hysteria.

What I really object to is being told the debate is over, when I have read (on both sides) good debate, and I hate the demonisation of anyone who dares disent from the perceived collective view.

This is Stalinism mate. What really is your agenda anonymous?...Convince me it's the planet, because at the moment I'm not sure I believe you.

RW said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

1. A very small number are advancing right now. The vast majority of the world's glaciers (outside the parts of Antarctica where the temperature never rises above freezing) are receding. This tells us (like so many other lines of evidence) that temperatures are rising.

2. Yes, the heat capacity of the oceans is enormous. This is bad news, because it means that the full impact of the 30% rise in CO2 so far will not be seen for quite a while yet.

3. Read some science

4. Ice shelves like Larsen B do not collapse every year. Look it up.

Hoppers - convince yourself. Read scientific papers. Get educated. It's the only way.

Anonymous said...

Yes but Larsen B started breaking up in the early 90's didn't it? when I believe the world was warming, but now all the science I read tells me that we're close to a decade with no warming at all, despite an increase in C02.

Yet all the graphs I see projecting global warming from IPCC type institutions show the last decade as warming, when it didn't.

I just want to be told the truth & I've decided that I'm not.

I watched Al Gores film yesterday for the first time. Very powerfull I must admit, if a bit overblown. It was funny to see the bit where he goes on about how someone was demonised for trying to tell the truth about climate change.

Poacher turned gamekeeper?

Anonymous said...

What makes you think the last decade hasn't seen rising temperatures consistent with the long term trend? You can hope to be told the truth (which leaves you at the whim of the loud but wrong, like Mr Lacton here), or you can find out the truth for yourself by reading the journals. I recommend the latter option.