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The Real Copenhagen Fraud?
Submitted by Leo Kolivakis, publisher of Pension Pulse.
Johann Hari reports in the Independent on the truths Copenhagen ignored (hat tip Tom Naylor):
So
that's it. The world's worst polluters – the people who are drastically
altering the climate – gathered here in Copenhagen to announce they
were going to carry on cooking, in defiance of all the scientific
warnings.
They didn't seal the deal;
they sealed the coffin for the world's low-lying islands, its glaciers,
its North Pole, and millions of lives.
Those of us who watched this conference with open eyes aren't
surprised. Every day, practical, intelligent solutions that would cut
our emissions of warming gases have been offered by scientists,
developing countries and protesters – and they have been systematically
vetoed by the governments of North America and Europe.
It's
worth recounting a few of the ideas that were summarily dismissed –
because when the world finally resolves to find a real solution, we
will have to revive them.
Discarded
Idea One: The International Environmental Court. Any cuts that leaders
claim they would like as a result of Copenhagen will be purely
voluntary. If a government decides not to follow them, nothing will
happen, except a mild blush, and disastrous warming. Canada signed up
to cut its emissions at Kyoto, and then increased them by 26 per cent –
and there were no consequences. Copenhagen could unleash a hundred
Canadas.
The brave, articulate Bolivian
delegates – who have seen their glaciers melt at a terrifying pace –
objected. They said if countries are serious about reducing emissions,
their cuts need to be policed by an International Environmental Court
that has the power to punish people. This is hardly impractical. When
our leaders and their corporate lobbies really care about an issue –
say, on trade – they pool their sovereignty this way in a second. The
World Trade Organisation fines and sanctions nations severely if (say)
they don't follow strict copyright laws. Is a safe climate less
important than a trademark?
Discarded Idea
Two: Leave the fossil fuels in the ground. At meetings here, an
extraordinary piece of hypocrisy has been pointed out by the new
international chair of Friends of the Earth, Nnimmo Bassey, and the
environmental writer George Monbiot. The governments of the world say
they want drastically to cut their use of fossil fuels, yet at the same
time they are enthusiastically digging up any fossil fuels they can
find, and hunting for more. They are holding a fire extinguisher in one
hand and a flame-thrower in the other.
Only
one of these instincts can prevail. A study published earlier this year
in the journal Nature showed that we can use only – at an absolute
maximum – 60 per cent of all the oil, coal and gas we have already
discovered if we are going to stay the right side of catastrophic
runaway warming. So the first step in any rational climate deal would
be an immediate moratorium on searching for more fossil fuels, and fair
plans for how to decide which of the existing stock we will leave
unused. As Bassey put it: "Keep the coal in the hole. Keep the oil in
the soil. Keep the tar sand in the land." This option wasn't even
discussed by our leaders.
Discarded Idea
Three: Climate debt. The rich world has been responsible for 70 per
cent of the warming gases in the atmosphere – yet 70 per cent of the
effects are being felt in the developing world. Holland can build vast
dykes to prevent its land flooding; Bangladesh can only drown. There is
a cruel inverse relationship between cause and effect: the polluter
doesn't pay.
So we have racked up a climate
debt. We broke it; they paid. At this summit, for the first time, the
poor countries rose in disgust. Their chief negotiator pointed out that
the compensation offered "won't even pay for the coffins". The cliché
that environmentalism is a rich person's ideology just gasped its final
CO2-rich breath. As Naomi Klein put it: "At this summit, the pole of
environmentalism has moved south."
When we
are dividing up who has the right to emit the few remaining warming
gases that the atmosphere can absorb, we need to realise that we are
badly overdrawn. We have used up our share of warming gases, and then
some. Yet the US and EU have dismissed the idea of climate debt out of
hand. How can we get a lasting deal that every country agrees to if we
ignore this basic principle of justice? Why should the poorest restrain
themselves when the rich refuse to?
A deal
based on these real ideas would actually cool the atmosphere. The
alternatives championed at Copenhagen by the rich world – carbon
offsetting, carbon trading, carbon capture – won't. They are a global
placebo. The critics who say the real solutions are "unrealistic" don't
seem to realise that their alternative is more implausible still:
civilisation continuing merrily on a planet whose natural processes are
rapidly breaking down.
Throughout the
negotiations here, the world's low-lying island states have clung to
the real ideas as a life raft, because they are the only way to save
their countries from a swelling sea. It has been extraordinary to watch
their representatives – quiet, sombre people with sad eyes – as they
were forced to plead for their own existence. They tried persuasion and
hard science and lyrical hymns of love for their lands, and all were
ignored.
These discarded ideas – and dozens
more like them – show once again that man-made global warming can be
stopped. The intellectual blueprints exist just as surely as the
technological blueprints. There would be sacrifices, yes – but they are
considerably less than the sacrifices made by our grandparents in their
greatest fight.We will have to pay higher
taxes and fly less to make the leap to a renewably powered world – but
we will still be able to live an abundant life where we are warm and
free and well fed. The only real losers will be the fossil fuel
corporations and the petro-dictatorships.
But our politicians have not chosen this sane path. No: they have
chosen inertia and low taxes and oil money today over survival
tomorrow. The true face of our current system – and of Copenhagen – can
be seen in the life-saving ideas it has so casually tossed into the
bin.
You can watch Johann
explaining some of the appalling loopholes being smuggled into the
Copenhagen treaty below.
You can watch Johann explaining some of the appalling loopholes being smuggled into the Copenhagen treaty below. Also, listen carefully to this CBC interview with James Hansen.
He's widely regarded as the most influential climate scientist in the
world and rightly dismisses cap & trade as pure "gimmickry".
It's a shame but it looks like Copenhagen was
another climatic bust, just like Kyoto and Rio were. Next up, the
global pension bust.
»
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Leo,
Apparently we are emerging from the "Little Ice Age" which ended around 1850, thus the observed warming...which has leveled off since 1998, and the climate now is actually cooling...as we head back into another "Little Ice Age", in as little as 20 - 30 years. The Sun is THE driver of our climate.
I suggest you watch all 4 parts of this;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOLkze-9GcI
Great videos. Thanks for posting, Rusty.
Leo...
Do me a flavor and just watch the first segment OK?
When I was taking paleoclimatology back in the early '80s this is the way things were taught... before Al Gore came on the scene.
Nice one Rusty!
I suggest that we are simultaneously doing three things to the planet.
1.) Heating by producing green house gasses
2.) Cooling by creating particulate polution in the atmosphere that blocks the suns energy from reaching the sruface/Contrails from jets creating cirrus clouds/creating clouds from other particulate pollution.
3.) Melting glaciers when soot lands on ice and absorbs sunlight and raises the temperature.
Whats the net effect on the planet?
No one knows - Either we are going to have an ice age, or global warming or both. The system isn't going to hang out in equilibrium, and it sure as hell isn't just as simple as C02 emissions blah blah blah
Heads-up Leo;
After bouncing on the bottom the last couple of months FXP just spiked the downward trend line. I don't know if it's headed for the moon or not. It might be a sign the communists are gonna start shutting things down. Without Cap and Trade or a deal in Copenhagen. The Chinese have no use for solar panels. At least not in mass quantity anyway.
"The Chinese have no use for solar panels."
anonymouse, if you ever go to china, you will see that they have plenty of use for solar, deal or no deal. whatever you may think of their gov't, their culture has a much deeper understanding of cycles (in all forms) than does the west with its linear processes of thought & pathological need to consume everything in its path. plus, the gov't understands the impossibility to lift the standard of living (a political necessity) of 2 billion people with the current remaining supply of cheap fossil fuels.
they are way beyond in the technology towards inexpensive mass-production and efficiency and many of their solar companies have been structured from the beginning to not need to be dependent on an export-based business model in order to survive.
short-term, the hot money may bolt, but i don't think the chinese give a shit about the hot money crowd anymore, especially when it comes from the west.
Leo;
Just like Tiger's wife. You seem to be, the last one to find out, about all the lies.
The only deniers left are the Climategate deniers. Pollution is real it's harming our atmosphere and the planet. It's not AGW or co2. Those two things are a diversion. The scam of climate change is a straight up money-power grab by NWO natzi's, communist dictators, and money hungry zealots. In pick-pocket fashion while everyone stared at co2 and sounded the alarms about globle warming. China and India have been getting away with the destruction of an entire continent.
+1
Relax Leo. This shouldn't hurt your extremely overweighted portfolio of Chinese solar companies. Or will it?
I like your ideas and thoughts. While chat and sohbet with my friends talking about it.
In the near term, I hope it does, so I can buy more solar shares. I am very relaxed and will profit in a huge way on my Chinese solar positions. All my predictions usually come true sooner or later, including this one on global warming. Watch and learn how real money is made.
A mild bit of hubris?
And if you're wrong? Massive losses. What's your hedge? I'd rather invest in that.
What I can't figure out is why Tyler lets just any troll post on ZH.
Leo, your cause had been ridiculed and refuted. Have you no shame? After the last 10 years of cooling, it will take at least 10 years of warming before anyone will listen to any more of your drivel.
If your faith in your warmist god is so strong, I suggest that you become celibate, give up all your worldly goods, and join a warmist monestary where you can pray to gaia 27 times a day.
Otherwise any energy you use makes you no better than all the other warmist hypocrit glitterati jetting around the world to be seen to be saving gaia.
I guess you can then donate all of your vast profits to ending AGW given how strongly you feel about this issue....
You wrote: "All my predictions usually come true sooner or later, including this one on global warming."
In that case, you will do a lot better than the global warming models. They have yet to make any useful forecasts--by that, I mean predictions that have any meaningful relationship with temperature.
It's OK to have faith-based opinions so long as you acknowledge they are based on religious conviction. But don't let such convictions masquerade as science--then you get faith-based movements like eugenics and global warming.
Whoa, now! Step back, everybody. He's put on his dancin' shoes. Give the man some room; I hear the DJ turning up the beat and I think there's a breakdance comin' on.
No profit for you , hoax believer.
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