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How low is too low? Do we want to live in a world where groups of countries gang up on non-compliant countries by randomly picking a target nation, and punishing it until it gives in? Perhaps you’d prefer a world where voters or evidence matter and where our leaders persuade each other with rational argument? Me too.
“Divide and conquer” is as old as witchdoctors
Warwick University and the Royal Society published game theory “research” which argues that it might be useful to (unethically) single out a few countries randomly that are not performing “up to climate expectations”. The researchers admit that the whole approach depends on the players being irrational.
“In the mathematical model,” said Dr Johnson, “the mechanism works best if the players are somewhat irrational. It seems a reasonable assumption that this might apply to the international community.”
No matter how they dress it up, it’s just bullying by one bunch of countries to pick on one single other one until it acquiesces. Then the next wave begins with different targets, gradually picking off one state at a time. It fails if the non-compliant states get coordinated and treat any unfair attack on one member […]
Here’s a new form of climate control. Red-tape. Count the laws for the climate!
[ScienceDaily] London School of Economics (LSE)
Three-quarters of the world’s annual emissions of greenhouse gases are now limited by national targets, according to a new study published today (1 June 2015) by the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at London School of Economics and Political Science.
Obviously, it’s all taken care of then, and we don’t need to do any more? We’ll just hound and hassle the last few stragglers who haven’t set a limit. But wait… despite the heart warming momentum implied there, apparently this global circle of covenants might not save the world. Oh No! Is there a chance these nations won’t deliver? The sad truth makes a brief appearance in paragraph four: The pledges are unlikely to be “consistent” (read, they’re “inadequate, empty wishes”). Red tape, it seems, will not stop heatwaves exactly, but provides atmospheric things called “confidence” and “credibility”, “opportunity” and “ambition”. But the 75% “limit” makes for a good headline.
The Grantham Research Institute speaks. Your job is to figure out what they are saying:
Lead author of the study, […]
How is Doha going? (Where was that, again?)
The Indians have gone home, The Chinese are being told off. Nobody else is very interested, except developing nations looking for a handout. The Australians already agreed to everything whatever it is. (Great negotiation ploy by our Labor Government that.) The EU wants to do what it’s already doing.
Mike Haseler at the Scottish Climate and Energy Forum says it’s all over, bar the shouting. Kyoto ends on December 31, and there is no treaty to replace it, and there can be no ratified treaty by Jan 1.
“Contrary to what many green NGOs are saying, the Kyoto commitment to CO2 reduction will cease effect on the 31st December. This is because the treaty requires amendments to be ratified well before they come into effect (by 3rd October). It took some 4 years for a quorum of countries to ratify Kyoto. Even if there were total agreement at Doha on any amendment (there isn’t) the earliest change to Kyoto is 2015. Without agreement the earliest if there were agreement at the end of next year is that a change to the Kyoto Commitment could come into force in 2016. “
Tory Aardvark […]
Geoff Sherrington analyzes the words in the Durban agreement, and finds a telling tale of politics, money and influence, but not one of probability, maths, food, shelter or freedom (which do not appear at all). The word science appears 6 times in 21,313 words. It’s the mere token excuse that underlies everything else. This is a legal style document, so it is to be expected that it’s dominated by “parties” and “reports” but given the uncertainties involved in predicting the climate, a rational document, designed to serve the people, would surely include statistics, cost benefits, and mentions of probabilities. But then, we always knew that the big greenhouse scare was not about the emissions or the atmosphere, but about status, power and money. — Jo
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By guest author Geoff Sherrington. The killing fields of Durban have produced agreement by many countries to one of the more extraordinary and preposterous documents one could read. It is so contrived by the UN that it is hard to know if it is the correct document, or maybe an unadopted working draft in progress.
The winners and losers at Durban were? The losers were the John and Joan Citizens of the World, who […]
Good news. The talented strategists left the UNFCCC team before COP17 in Durban. The A-graders saw the trainwreck coming and moved on.
Everyone knows it’s a herculean task to get 190-odd countries to sign anything, and with a typical pragmatical approach the UN drafting team have gone for … not just a new “International Court” (crikey!) but rights for Mother Earth (can we be sued by a rock?), and oh boy, the holy grail, the whole kit and caboodle … we demand Peace On Earth, and a Partridge in a Pear Tree, as Part 47a, and starting by morning tea tomorrow.
Monckton reports that the funereal collapsing Durban talks still held the highest of ambitions. Godlike even. The real action behind the posters of parrots and pleas to save pygmy corals, or spotted limpets is the plea to make some unelected bureaucrats the totalitarian Kings of The World.
In part it’s chilling, a New International Court — which could presumably try you for crimes against coastlines, clouds, or (more likely) against endangered windfarms. Those with their hands on the legal wheel want the power to direct money (was that $1.6 Trillion?) from the richest nations to their friends, patrons, or […]
What do skeptics have to do to break the spell of government appointed experts?
Many journalists are apparently trapped in a fit of ideological blindness — they can’t acknowledge emails leaked from their favourite scientists. What do you do when your religious idol turns out to be a mere fallible human — caught deleting emails, hiding data and pretending that their models are accurate when they privately admit they’re “all wrong”? The “overwhelming evidence” for the prophecies of a coming man-made disaster are exposed in the emails as based on biased research, petty trickery, flawed assumptions and an all too human desire to “keep me employed”.
The trance of big-government appointed prophets is so strong, skeptics such as Christopher Monckton and Craig Rucker (CFACT) are going to skydive into Durban to see if they can shake journalists out of their stupor.
The big jump will happen at 11am Durban time (5pm Perth, 8pm Sydney, 9am London, and 4am New York time.) Right now!
And if that doesn’t work, what next? Do they take off their clothes?!
From Marc Morano and Climate Depot:
Climategate 2.0 parachutes into COP17: – Skeptics […]
There are billions of dollars of money sneaking out the door of Western Nations and being used to feed the monster bureaucracy, the UNFCCC and its cohort.
In The Carbon Tax that Ate Australia Tony Cox and David Stockwell point out the Australian contributions fly so under the radar (despite being millions of dollars) that even the Australian government seems to have forgotten they agreed to pay them. Greg Combet, the minister for Climate Change promises “every dollar of the Carbon Tax will be given back to the people”:
Every dollar raised by the carbon price will be dedicated to supporting households with any price impacts, and supporting businesses through the transition to a clean energy economy. Because we are a Labor government, we will support the most vulnerable in our community — the people who need help the most.
But Combet in Cancun promised 10% of the Australian carbon tax as a tithe to the UN. (And there’s the $599 million as part of the Fast Start Finance program over three years that is in the pipeline.) So which commitment will the Australian government break? Or, let me guess, in the world of spin, the government can give all […]
UPDATED
After the awful post-Climategate-and-Copenhagen year, more than anything else, the Big Scare Campaign needed a PR win. And in that sense Cancun was a major victory. Nobody agreed to anything legally binding, Kyoto was not extended, and all they achieved amounted to nothing more than an extension of the yearly junkets, and the promise that the gravy train is not dead yet. But the headlines will warm the hearts of all on Team-Scare-Us. The most important thing for the side that’s losing friends, faith and face, was to regain momentum. They’re trying to stop the death spiral.
The Australian ABC is only too happy to help be a part of the cheer-squad:
Cancun climate talks reach ‘historic’ deal
BBC lends as much momentum to this as it can swing in a headline:
UN climate change talks in Cancun agree a deal
Andy Revkin, NY Times, talks about “pivotal moments” in reverential tones. It’s a bit like the second coming:
Consensus Emerges On Common Climate Path
No one has actually agreed to anything enforceable, but you’d have to read the subtext to know that.
Richard Black, BBC Environment Correspondent sums it up unusually well:
“The dog is resuscitated […]
What happened through the last long night of the Cancun talks?
The most recent news I can find suggests the Greens are partly happy, which means more money must be going to flow from the people to the bureaucratic machinery, though nothing appears to be confirmed. Ponder the power of 100 billion dollar pledges. It buys a lot of PR advertising and school propaganda, and creates millions of active patrons as jobs and industries are established that are wholly dependent on keeping the big-scare-campaign going. The ambit claim of “1.5% of GDP” appears to have been dropped.
The saving grace of this fixed monetary commitment ($100b vs 1.5%) , if it is confirmed (and if you can call it a “grace” of any sorts), is that by 2020, $100 billion may not buy much, thanks to rampant inflation on the way. Feel the relief?
See UPDATE 2 (at the bottom): It appears nothing has been signed, and the future promises are just more “talks”. But, $100 billion has been pledged each year …? If so, that’s a win for the climate industrial complex and the bureaucrats, but will be painted as a quiet partial step forward. It’s not as […]
It did seem too quiet at Cancun.
The power hungry tyrants learnt from Copenhagen. They realized that they have a far better chance of success by underselling the expectations and sliding in long impenetrable documents in front of underling bureaucrats. Due to the importance of this I have reproduced Christopher Monckton’s words in full as reported at SPPI (see below).
The UN wants nothing less than 1.5% of our GDP.
That’s $212 billion from the USA every year ($2700 per family of 4).
That’s $32 billion from the UK every year ($2000 per family of 4).
That’s $13 billion from Australia every year ($2400 per family of 4).
Figures calculated from the CIA world Factbook
The Secretariat will have the power not merely to invite nation states to perform their obligations under the climate-change Convention, but to compel them to do so. Nation states are to be ordered to collect, compile and submit vast quantities of information, in a manner and form to be specified by the secretariat and its growing army of subsidiary bodies.
Please […]
Disaster averted
There has been no breakthrough at Copenhagen.
Barak Obama has spoken, and the crowd was disappointed. He was visibly angry.
China and India have walked out. The West did not offer enough.
The departure of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was a major snub for the Western congregation, and guarantees that nothing binding or significant will arise out of Copenhagen. The walkout was exactly what they vowed to do in to the strategic plan they announced a few weeks ago.
The draft treaty has become the Copenhagen Accord, and deadlines have been dropped or postponed.
10 out of 10 based on 3 ratings […]
There were 12 of us skeptics among 12,000 believers at the Bali UNFCCC in 2007. We were a rag-tag team of passionate people, some of whom had PhDs, and most of whom were not paid to be there. We came because we were angry about the way science was being exploited.
It was a convention on a scale I had not seen before. Not just 2,000 for a weekend, which would be big, but 12,000 for two entire weeks, which was an extravaganza.
12,000 people for an two entire weeks was an extravaganza.
The UNFCCC meetings define the term “junket”. These mass climate conventions happen every year in locations like Nairobi (Kenya), Poznan (Poland), Montreal (Canada), Buenos Aires (Argentina), and Milan in Italy. Copenhagen is COP 15, meaning there have been 14 before it. (And at two weeks each, that’s over six months of non-stop PR and “staff incentives”.) Is there any larger yearly congregation in the world?
From the outset the UNFCCC did everything it could to maintain the appearance that it is a fair, transparent, and scientific based organization. Yet on the ground, it did everything it could to make sure that there would be […]
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JoNova A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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