If Kyoto Dies In Durban, It Will Be A Death Knell For The Climate Fight

At the opening ceremony of Climate Week New York last month, Tony Blair drew a laugh from the crowd when he quipped: "It's a relief after the weeks I've spent deep in the entrails of the Middle East peace process to talk about something that's relatively easy to solve."

In some respects he's right. The solutions to climate change are relatively straightforward (phasing out fossil fuels for one), if somewhat challenging to implement. But the negotiations? The politics driving them are as difficult as they come, with the future of the Kyoto protocol at the centre of the conflict.

Read the whole story: The Guardian

Comments

[Richard2]

09:52 AM on 10/24/2011

"... the global warming clergy has preached apocalyptic doom -- and is now facing an increasingly skeptical public. The idea that we can be so completely certain of climate change 70 to 90 years hence that we must inflict serious economic damage on ourselves in the meantime seems increasingly absurd.

If carbon emissions were the only thing affecting climate, the global-warming alarmists would be right. But it's obvious that climate is affected by many things, many not yet fully understood, and implausible that SUVs will affect it more than variations in the enormous energy produced by the sun.

Skepticism has been increased by the actions of believers. Passage of the House cap-and-trade bill in June 2009 focused politicians and voters on the costs of global-warming religion. And disclosure of the Climategate emails in November 2009 showed how the clerisy was willing to distort evidence and suppress dissenting views in the interest of propagation of the faith.

We have seen how the United Nations agency whose authority we are supposed to respect took an item from an environmental activist group predicting that the Himalayan glaciers would melt in 2350 and predicted that the melting would take place in 2035. No sensible society would stake its economic future on the word of folks capable of such an error." -Michael Barone

[realpolitic]

01:07 AM on 10/25/2011

True Costs Of Fossil Fuels
By Rand Clifford

Fox News contributor "Michael Barone recently returned from Venus, where runaway greenhouse effect from an atmosphere that’s mostly carbon dioxide keeps surface temperatures averaging about 900 degrees Fahrenheit (Ryabov, 2000). Venusian religious leaders and politicians are sweating out final details of an Official Proclamation questioning the effects of carbon dioxide on climate. They still have a lot of work to do before issuing an Official Assessment of Blame, which is why Barone hurried back to Earth for a running start on blaming Al Gore for our own climate dilemma. Seems Gore has been twisting science, and history (2007). Of course things are warming, concedes Barone—but that’s just how the planet works. Change has always been the name of the game. And while climatologists concur that our runaway carbon emissions are to blame for current unprecedented warming, Barone insists that "scientists" are confused about what is natural warming, and what is caused by human activity. Stepping up the heat, Barone likens Gore to an Old Testament prophet ranting that we gotta quit sinning, that scientists with views diverging from his own oughta be squished, and that scientific inquiry must be replaced with faith."

http://www.countercurrents.org/clifford010507.htm

[StephenBP]

09:53 AM on 10/17/2011

“In 2004 Stephen Pacala and Robert Socolow published a paper in Science in which they argued that a pragmatic, but still difficult, way of stabilizing atmospheric CO2 levels over the long term was via the implementation of seven “stabilization wedges” over the next 50 years.” Science. You know, the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science?

Unfortunately, the unimaginative, the uninformed, the uneducated, the unscrupulous, and the unintelligent keep insisting that we should blunder on ahead towards endless global consumption, and now , seven years later, we have increased instead of decreased our consumption of carbon fuels.

Just about every home in America receives enough solar energy to satisfy all or most of its heating needs. There is no need to give your teenager a 300 HP vehicle. Every light in your house doesn’t have to blaze night and day. Eating more vegetables and less meat won’t kill you, but the obverse of that might. Implementing new technologies can create millions of jobs.
So why do the Richard2’s of the world keep trying to cast doubt on the scientists of the world?
Because they are [self censored] [self censored] who deserve to be [self censored].
A pox upon their ignorance.

[Richard2]

09:05 AM on 10/17/2011

CEI has learned of a UN plan recently put in place to hide official correspondence on non-governmental accounts, which correspondence a federal inspector general has already confirmed are subject to FOIA. This ‘cloud’ serves as a dead-drop of sorts for discussions by U.S. government employees over the next report being produced by the scandal-plagued IPCC, which is funded with millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars.

As our FOIA request details, the UN informed participants that it was motivated by embarrassing releases of earlier discussions (“ClimateGate” key among them), and to circumvent the problem that national government transparency laws were posing the group.

CEI reminds OSTP that this practice was described as “creat[ing] non-governmental accounts for official business”, “using the nongovernmental accounts specifically to avoid creating a record of the communications”, in a recent analogous situation involving lobbyist Jack Abramoff. CEI expects similar congressional and media outrage at this similar practice to evade the applicable record-keeping laws.

This effort has apparently been conducted with participation — thereby direct assistance and enabling — by the Obama White House which, shortly after taking office, seized for Holdren’s office the lead role on IPCC work from the Department of Commerce. The plan to secretly create a FOIA-free zone was then implemented.

[maxwells]

11:20 PM on 10/17/2011

Orkneygal and Richard2 - two peas in a pod.

Re: Richard2's record:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/Richard2?action=comments&display=all&sort=oldest
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/Richard2?action=comments&display=all&sort=newest

Who but a PAID SHILL posts 2,600+ comments on one topic almost daily and exclusively, starting from Day 1?

Richard2's posts are 99.7%+ denials of anthropogenic climate change and its many impacts. He casts false aspersions, sows doubt, attacks climate science, science groups, and individual scientists incessantly.

But he's never given a straight answer to the simple question we've asked him many times: "Are you now or have you ever been paid to deny human-induced global warming and/or any of its myriad impacts, yes or no?"

So, he retains all the credibility and moral suasion of a tobacco marketeer's recorded phone message.

Why tobacco?

Because Richard2's backers lifted their strategy and tactics directly from big tobacco's 30 year campaign to deny links to cancer and heart disease.

Eventually they lost, but do we have 30 years on global warming?

From an old Brown and Williamson Tobacco internal memo -

"Doubt is our product, since it is the best means of competing with the body of fact that exists in the minds of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy."

http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/global_warming /exxon_report.pdf

Whether you're addicted to tobacco or fact-free, global warming denial, nobody likes SHILLs.”

[Richard2]

08:22 PM on 10/19/2011

Today's headlines from the Wall Street Journal:

1. Japan Reconsiders Plan to Cut Carbon Emissions

2. EU Weighs Pullback on Cutting Emissions

[StephenBP]

09:12 PM on 10/16/2011

The world’s foremost climatologists say that we have fouled our air with fossil fuel combustion waste gas to the extent that we are now starting to change the climate of our planet due to infrared absorption by said waste gas.

People associated with the fossil fuel industry are understandably upset that climatologists are indicating that their industry, by its very existence, is about to launch this world into a cataclysmic set of changes that could dominate and diminish the course of life on this planet. They thus fight the claims of the climatologists with a mixture of slander, falsehood, distraction, and doubt, but not with science.

Cutting to the chase- the radical magnitude of the climate gas problem is staggering, but the solution is simple.

We need to kill and replace the fossil fuel industry before it kills us.

Our current entrenched world economic system, dependent as it is upon the unending creation of mindless consumer demand is a train heading towards oblivion. Those riding in the luxury cars of good fortune, their tickets purchased with cheap fossil energy, do not want to know about the missing bridge that is ahead of them.

But those who are already starving for jobs or food know that the ride is almost over.

[Richard2]

09:08 AM on 10/17/2011

This represents politically assisting the IPCC to enable UN, EU and U.S. bureaucrats and political appointees avoid official email channels for specific official work of high public interest, performed on official time and using government computers, away from the prying eyes of increasingly skeptical taxpayers.

CEI also reminds OSTP of a similar, ongoing effort by the administration to claim that records on U.S. government computers belong to the UN IPCC, refusing to produce them under FOIA. This practice was affirmed in a report by the Department of Commerce’s Office of Inspector General earlier this year.

As talks resume next month to forge a successor to the failed Kyoto Protocol, CEI looks forward to OSTP ceasing this unlawful activity, and providing prompt access to the requested records so the taxpayer can know what they, and the IPCC, are up to.

[Richard2]

07:07 PM on 10/16/2011

Are you the teenage delinquent who was mistaken for the world's top climate expert?

[Orkneygal]

09:30 PM on 10/15/2011

So sad the environmental movement has been hijacked by the CAGW alarmists. Many world problems are being ignored as a result of the true believers religious like belief that essential plant food is somehow a pollutant. So many other of the world's problems are being left behind while the world governments throw good money after bad on the IPCC crowd and their junk science.

Over-fishing.
Destruction of native habitats.
Slash&burn agriculture.
Pollution of riverways by agricultural and industrial run-off.
Ocean pollution.
Poaching endangered animals.
Lack of clean water the third world.
Preventable diseases, especially among children.
Under-education of girls.
Enslavement of children/mothers.
Human trafficking.
The selling of virginity.
Poverty.
Killing of innocent civilians in war.

These problems fester because those environmentally minded have been tricked into believing that global warming is due to human activity, is bad thing and more important than all of these other more pressing problems. Shame on them for embracing this drivel.

[maxwells]

01:42 PM on 10/16/2011

Orkneygal shills for New Zealand's ICSC - global warming denier group funded by Heartland Institute, in turn funded by Exxon Mobil and Koch brothers (owns America's largest private oil/ gas company.)

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=International_Climate_Science_Coalition

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Heartland_Institute

Right-wing businessman, Alan Gibbs, also funds CSC.

Among its “science” advisors are Bob Carter and Chris de Freitas.

http://deepclimate.org/2009/08/01/meet-alan-gibbs-builder-of-amphibious-humvees-and-climate-science-coalitions/#more-568

To misrepresent temperature trends, Carter draws phony negatively sloped lines through temperature, implying they're statistically valid. They're not. For detailed analysis, see:

http://tamino.wordpress.com/2011/07/13/bob-carter-does-his-business/

Real global temperature charts show seven of the eight warmest years recorded are since 2001. The 10 warmest years all occurred from 1998 on.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/faqs/climfaq14.html

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/globalwarming/ar4-fig-3-6.gif

In September 2011, Remote Sensing's editor-in-chief, Dr. Wolfgang Wagner, resigned, having published the fraudulent Spencer and Braswell paper, favorably peer-reviewed by Chris deFreitas.

"In his resignation letter, he took the unusual step of publicly criticizing Spencer and the paper's reviewers (Chris deFreitas). He criticized the science behind the paper, stating that it had "fundamental methodological errors" and "false claims,"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_W._Spencer#cite_note-20

[maxwells]

02:31 PM on 10/16/2011

Oh, and BTW, Roy Spencer, who also espouses creationism over evolution, is on the Heartland Institute's "science" advisory board.

"I finally became convinced that the theory of creation actually had a much better scientific basis than the theory of evolution, for the creation model was actually better able to explain the physical and biological complexity in the world..."

http://theevolutioncrisis.org.uk/testimony2.php

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Roy_Spencer#cite_note-20

So, if you want the who's who of serial global warming denial, a good place to start is Heartland Institute's own list:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Heartland_Institute/Global_warming_experts

[Orkneygal]

04:34 PM on 10/16/2011

I do not shill for anyone or any organisation.

If you had any courage or integrity, you would address your concerns directly to Dr Carter rather than to spread malicious Rommulan inspired nonsense behind his back here at HUFFPO.

http://tinyurl.com/3jpdow3

[realpolitic]

10:25 PM on 10/16/2011

We can not decouple climate change from many of the environmental problems we are facing today, such as sewer water runoff in the Great Lakes of the Texas fires. Former Vice President Al Gore, whom Orkney is a disciple of, said some wise words on the subject. 

"Former Vice President Al Gore linked climate change to a rash of environmental catastrophes Thursday, from floods in Pakistan to drought in Texas and rampant algae blooms sucking oxygen from Lake Erie."

"The fallout from a warming planet is being felt around the world, Gore said in a speech during the annual meeting of the International Joint Commission, which advises the U.S. and Canadian governments on issues affecting shared waterways. Things will get worse unless people reject a campaign of denial orchestrated by the fossil fuel industry and make significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, he said."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/13/al-gore-great-lakes_n_1009589.html?ref=climate-change

[fiddler3]

07:01 AM on 10/13/2011

Good riddance to Kyoto.

[julieintx]

07:10 PM on 10/12/2011

So? Kyoto has accomplished nothing. If anything, all those private jets going to all those far-flung Kyoto conferences have just spewed more CO2 into the air.

[ClimateHawk]

07:12 PM on 10/12/2011

You must have neglected to read the article.

It's not very long. Go ahead, read it.

[realpolitic]

12:55 AM on 10/13/2011

Are there any forward thinking people in Texas?

[FrankLuchan]

06:52 PM on 10/12/2011

Thank God.

Kyoto does nothing to impact climate change.

It is a joke.

Anybody with a brain knows it.

Ooooppppsssy. That will mean that most supporters of man made CO2 induced climate change don't have a brain.

[ClimateHawk]

07:15 PM on 10/12/2011

You qualify as a "supporter" of climate change. You are supporting it and helping make it happen.

I wish you would take the time to understand the science behind it.

[FrankLuchan]

07:40 PM on 10/12/2011

Darn right I am a supporter of Climate Change. I drive a HUGE truck that gets 15mph.

If I can raise the temps of the planet 1C-2C I'd be one damn happy camper. Doesn't look like we're going to get there. We're stuck at .6C.

Anywho. I hate the cold. More people die from cold every year than have EVER died from a heat wave.

People live longer happier lives in the warmer tropics than live in colder northern climates.

Not to mention that cooling a building from 102F to 72F requires 1/2 the energy of warming a building from 42F to 72F.

So you bet your sweet bippy that I support climate change.

Well and the fact that cutting 8 billion tons of carbon emmissions out of the total 190 Billion that enters the atmosphere does ZERO to impact climate change but does manage to kill millions of people. I care deeply about that.

[FTracy3]

05:45 PM on 10/12/2011

If it's truly a death knell does that mean we can give up and go back to business as usual until the world ends?

[Ragnar Danneskjold]

05:16 PM on 10/12/2011

"In some respects he's right. The solutions to climate change are relatively straightforward (phasing out fossil fuels for one), if somewhat challenging to implement."

Yea, I was all set to put the new Solyndra Mobile Panels on my Quad Cab Pickup Truck until they went bankrupt.

[eddy joe]

05:15 PM on 10/12/2011

Too late. That bell has tolled.

[blackwind]

05:06 PM on 10/12/2011

"Everyone else should simply ignore the US on this subject."
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Sad but true.