Son of Kyoto: Copenhagen ll

In WaPo no less.

 Slowdown In Warming Last Year Not Permanent

 

 

Gee, I wonder what they are going to discover. Perhaps that a lot of humans are idiots.

Climategate: UN panel on climate change to investigate claims
The United Nations panel on climate change is to investigate claims that scientists at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit manipulated global warming data.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/6724249/Climategate-UN-panel-on-climate-change-to-investigate-claims.html

 

Gordon Brown attacks 'flat-earth' climate change sceptics

'Dangerous, deceitful' attempts to derail Copenhagen summit condemned

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/04/flat-earth-climate-change-copenhagen

I suspect that little of substance will come from the Copenhagen Summit.

But, maybe we'll be surprised.

I guess we're doomed then.

Gee, i can't find the National post, the vancouver sun, the province, the calgary herald, the montreal gazette. Strange that.

Fourteen days to seal history's judgment on this generation'

 

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/dec/06/copenhagen-editorial

This is all smoke and mirrors just like the previous meetings. As if our political leaders are actually going to do anything that is going to impact negatively on corporate profits. Our track record says it all: Just not gonna happen. 

 

Hoped-for climate change climax may just fizzle out 

For 20 years, as this crowded planet grew warmer, countries have gathered annually to try to do something about it. History now brings them to this chilly northern capital, and to a crossroads.

The world looks to Copenhagen "to witness what I believe will be an historic turning point in the fight against climate change," says Yvo de Boer, United Nations organizer of the two weeks of talks opening Monday.

It may witness, instead, history put on hold.

The change in U.S. administrations a year ago had aroused hopes the long-running climate talks might finally produce an all-encompassing package in 2009 to combat global warming and help its victims.

Too little time and too little agreement, however, especially between rich and poor countries, mean the 192-nation Copenhagen conference is likely to produce, at best, a framework — a basis for continuing talks and signing internationally binding final agreements next year.

Two key building blocks for that framework may take shape here:

•Setting targets for controlling emissions of carbon dioxide and other global-warming gases, including by the leading contributors, China and the United States.

•Agreeing on how much rich countries should pay for poor nations’ clean energy technology and for seawalls, irrigation and other projects to counter a changing climate.

Under the grand roof of Copenhagen’s modern Bella Centre, delegates will also deal with a heavy agenda of other issues: the technicalities of protecting forests, measuring emissions, setting rules for "carbon credits," enforcing an eventual treaty, and other concerns.

Underlining Copenhagen’s importance, at least 100 national leaders, led by President Barack Obama, will converge on the Danish capital to offer high-level backing to the talks.

On Friday the White House announced Obama would come to Copenhagen on Dec. 18, the conference’s last scheduled day. That’s when the UN talks perennially go into overtime in last-minute wrangling and when other leaders are planning to take part.

The U.S. chief executive’s change in plans indicated the Americans see a chance for important political agreements in those final hours.

Slow progress has marked climate talks since the 1992 Rio treaty calling for voluntary controls on greenhouse gases. It took five more years to get the Kyoto Protocol, which ordered emissions cuts by 37 industrialized countries, an accord the U.S. rejected. American resistance through eight years under president George W. Bush then blocked most progress.

While diplomacy has inched along, climate change hasn’t waited.

 

http://thechronicleherald.ca/Front/1156277.html

 

I call BS to your stats as you are not sourcing them with any links whatsoever.

Nobody wants to do anything.

Nobody wants to pay the price.

It is always someone else's fault, isn't it. 

That kind of attitude is going to do wonders, not for climate change, but for the funeral businesses.

No one interested in hearing what you are not going to do - what is it that you are going to do to fight climate change.

How many climate change refugees from Bangldesh are you going to take into your community when their delta where they presently live gets covered over by the sea? Or do you think it is better to just let them drown. Probably the latter, eh! 

Thank goodness. I was very worried about that.

Canada won't be swayed by Copenhagen hype: Prentice

http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/Canada+swayed+Copenhagen+hype+Prentice/2303866/story.html

The most hopeful thing I saw this week on Canada at Copenhagen was that there were countries talking about trying to get Canada kicked out of international organizations.

Canadians like to think of themselves as having an international reputation. I think this type of action could be helpful in getting Canadians attention.

Since that was the most hopeful- I guess it was not a great week now was it?

NorthReport wrote:

 

I call BS to your stats as you are not sourcing them with any links whatsoever.

 

I call BS to your empty ideological splutterings.

 

Nobody wants to do anything.

Nobody wants to pay the price.

It is always someone else's fault, isn't it. 

That kind of attitude is going to do wonders, not for climate change, but for the funeral businesses.

No one interested in hearing what you are not going to do - what is it that you are going to do to fight climate change.

 

As I've stated previously, I live in a small, energy- efficient home, mostly walk to work, buy local, grow a garden, reduce consumption to the detriment of my lifestyle, wear recycled clothing from Goodwill and restrict energy use. The sacrifices of others are never enough for you zealots.

 

How many climate change refugees from Bangldesh are you going to take into your community when their delta where they presently live gets covered over by the sea? Or do you think it is better to just let them drown. Probably the latter, eh! 

 

Another empty-headed zealot whose reach exceeds his grasp in claiming the moral high ground- how many Bangladeshis are you bunk-bedding in your bedroom?

[quote=NorthReport]

 

I call BS to your stats as you are not sourcing them with any links whatsoever.

 

 

canuquetoo rabble-rouser Member: 17513 Joined: Apr 26 2009 December 3, 2009 - 8:33pm #83 (permalink)

 

jacki-mo wrote:

 

An update on highest per capita co2 polluters: Australia is number 1:

  http://www.maplecroft.com/news/australia_overtakes_usa_as_top_polluter_09.php

 

 

In Canada's case, what is 18.81 tonnes per capita divided by a billion trees per capita?

 

My stats are a part of the discourse. Try to keep up.

It is very easy when you are just one person -- who does not have a huge footprint to say "well my lifestyle already has little impact I don't need to do more."

We all can make a difference-- I know that -- but there have been times when I go by a monster home with two SUVs in the driveway and a massive air conditionner for the thousands of square feet they don't need and think well my Ford Escort, small living space and that I buy most things used, let me off the hook for doing more. I mean even if I did nothing more and that person did everything else -- I still would be less of a problem.

I know this is wrong but it is hard to get motivated on other things when you are surrounded by such waste. And I feel guilty later but there are times it is easy to rationalize not doing more even though I could.

I wonder if there are not other whole countries looking at Canada and thinking the same thing.

Does anyone know who went or is going from the NDP?

But what are we actually going to do when we are faced with the reality that we cannot continue growing economically the way we have. That we will all have to make do with less. A lot, lot less.  At least in the materially developed world.

 

 

 

Copenhagen emissions targets ‘not enough to avert catastrophic warming’

 

 

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6946675.ece

I guess they are tired of the Obama-Harper, etc. climate change lies. Saying they will do something but really not doing anything at all.

 

G77 and China criticize West for shifting responsibility on climate change

 

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-12/08/content_12610599.htm

CBC is reporting that this is the warmest decade since records began to be kept 160 years ago.

often I wonder how we are supposed to care about so many things.....

Am not sure, actually George....most everyone seems to have bought into the "big lie'..... or several of them.

 

[url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/08/copenhagen-climate-sum... climate summit in disarray after 'Danish text' leak[/url]

Quote:

The UN Copenhagen climate talks are in disarray today after developing countries reacted furiously to leaked documents that show world leaders will next week be asked to sign an agreement that hands more power to rich countries and sidelines the UN's role in all future climate change negotiations.

 

...

Quote:

The agreement, leaked to the Guardian, is a departure from the Kyoto protocol's principle that rich nations, which have emitted the bulk of the CO2, should take on firm and binding commitments to reduce greenhouse gases, while poorer nations were not compelled to act. The draft hands effective control of climate change finance to the World Bank; would abandon the Kyoto protocol - the only legally binding treaty that the world has on emissions reductions; and would make any money to help poor countries adapt to climate change dependent on them taking a range of actions.

wowwwwwwwwwwwww....left turn that is quite something, thanks.

George Victor wrote:

Bravo to you both for doing what must be done...reducing the environmental footprint through lifestyle changes. 

Explain, however, how you propose to address world audiences from your living rooms.  Please, rest on your laurels and don't go silly on us -  or overboard!

Its presumptuous to believe that any individual can make an impact on preconceived, scripted gabfests like Kyoto or Copenhagen. Even the stalwarts of climate change action see these gabfests for the photo ops they are and have little hope that anything of substance will be achieved.

I believe that climate change must be addressed from the bottom up - by individual acts of forebearance that raises the ante on polluters through a culture of change that is undeniable. Rather than dreaming about global climate change upheaval, try installing a solar collector and solar power system with net metering. Climate change is only one dynamic in a world that lives beyond its means

I have done what I can to change my lifestyle and consumption. Actual sacrifice, not empty emotional babbling. Talk is cheap and no one in power pays the slightest attention to it but reducing consumption and making this reduction a grassroots phenomenon will do more to effect change than all the rhetoric from all the hypocrites that talk the talk but expect others to walk the walk.

When corporations are faced with cultural change that supports climate change action, they will be forced to conform or lose business. When consumers demand real change, not empty marketing strategies, business must change or lose market share.

 

The fact of the matter is that climate change zealots who cherry-pick their data politicise the issue and play into the hands of those who intend to profit from climate change policies by tilting government policy (and subsidies) in their direction via their bought political stooges. Their motivation is profit and, it will most likely occur at the expense of climate, not to its benefit.

Climate change activists are too accepting of process when they should rightly be suspicious of it. In a nutshell, my position is that the profit motive will corrupt climate action into another transfer of wealth from the masses to the corporations and elitists.

This conference is appearing to be as I suspected a complete waste of time

Copenhagen climate summit in disarray after 'Danish text' leak

Developing countries react furiously to leaked draft agreement that would hand more power to rich nations, sideline the UN's negotiating role and abandon the Kyoto protocol

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/08/copenhagen-climate-summit-disarray-danish-text

Here's a new article on green power subsidies. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/energy-and-resources/solar-industry-lauds-ontario-incentives/article1393214/

 

Quote:

...At the Canadian Solar Industries Association annual conference in Toronto Tuesday, top executives of several Canadian solar energy firms praised Ontario's program which pays high prices for renewable power - more than 10 times the normal electricity price for certain solar projects....

 ...Essentially, feed-in tariffs "attract private capital to the business of creating solar energy, because you can make money doing this," said John MacDonald, chief executive officer of Day4 Energy Inc., a Vancouver-based solar cell maker....

(A feed-in tariff refers to a premium price paid by utilities to electricity producers who generate certain kinds of renewable power that is fed into the grid.)

 ...The province needs to "be bold about what it is they are trying to do, and then keep those rules in place so that we in industry can respond to it," he said. "If I can figure out a way to make money, I'll go after it with everything I've got."

 

My concern with this scheme is that pv cell solar panels cost ~$5 per watt when they can be profitably manufactured for $1 per watt. The thrust of this government subsidy is to provide profit for corporations by passing the cost on to consumers rather than enabling R+D to make solar systems affordable. No mention of any sort of altruistic climate change action by any of these profiteers, only greed.

If those pesky brown people would just stop having so many babies, us rich people could just keep flying and flying and [url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/03/carbon-offset-projects... not change a thing! [/url]:

 

Quote:

 
Calculations based on the trust's figures show the 10 tonnes emitted by a return flight from London to Sydney would be offset by enabling the avoidance of one unwanted birth in a country such as Kenya. Such action not only cuts emissions but reduces the number of people who will fall victim to climate change, it says.
Population control is highly contentious in rich and poor countries alike Some, such as Jonathon Porritt, the former Sustainable Development Commission chair, have said promotion of reproductive health is one of the most progressive forms of intervention. "Had there been no 'one child family' policy in China there would now have been 400 million additional Chinese citizens," he has said.
But other thinkers, such as the Guardian columnist George Monbiot, say global population increase pales into insignificance when compared with the effect of increased consumption and economic growth.

Too bad that they are ignoring the fact that citizens of developping countries are responsible for just a tiny fraction of what Western countries emit. But, we would not want to tell rich people to stop flying around the world, would we?
Access to birth control is a huge issue for women worldwide and more definitely has to be done. But this initiative just sends the message that poor people need to do more and rich people can just not change a damn thing. Grrrr, this makes me angry.

(moved to new thread)