Outcomes of Copenhagen Climate Summit
Filed under: International News, Politics and Policy
The only certainty from the climate summit was that in the process of hosting the summit they would spent a lot of money, generate a lot of CO2 and attract a lot of crazy people.
I must say that I am half impressed with the outcome – I was half expecting that the summit would be terminated by a walkout by disgruntled countries, but I am sure they realised that would be bad PR.
Instead, they have announced a non-binding declaration – a US-brokered deal with India, China, Brazil and South Africa - that they say will limit global warming to 2 degrees.
Here are a couple of links:
http://www.dnaindia.com/world/report_copenhagen-climate-summit-comes-to-an-end_1325458
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/climate-draft-accord-agreed-20091218-l1jo.html
I am trying to work the meaning and impact of the declaration. My understanding is that they have a few pledges from countries to achieve certain drops in CO2 emissions by 2020, but the specific figures have not been disclosed.
Also, they may impose additional tax air and sea travel to raise billions of dollars yearly to assist island nations who believe that they are at risk of being submerged.
Naturally, most opposition and criticism is coming from countries that don’t thing the measures go far enough, and other countries who do not want to harm their economies atoning for the sins of the developed world.
More to come as things are clarified in the media.
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ClimateGate: What It Means
Filed under: Australian News, Australian Politics, International News, International Politics, Science
‘ClimateGate’ is the name given to the controversy surrounding the leaking of emails belonging to the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia that took place in late November. This institute is a major research centre that played a key role in promoting Global Warming Alarmism and contributing to the IPCC report on Global Warming.
There has been some coverage in the Australian mainstream media, but most of it has completely ignored the meat of the issue, and instead focussed on ’computer hacking’ or how it could impede the Copenhagen climate summit. The most thorough coverage has been in the Australian newspaper and the blogs of News Ltd. columnists Andrew Bolt and Tim Blair.
For those of you that are unfamiliar, emails contained in these archives strongly suggest that academics at CRU have prepetrated widescale scientific fraud and engaged in highly unprofessional, if not criminal conduct. Furthermore, it casts a strong shadow of suspicion and doubt on their conclusions of future global climate catastrophe.
These practices include:
- Suppressing the views of dissenting scientists
- Mathematically manipulating climate data to hide features of the curve that disagree with alarmist opinions
- Knowingly incorporating poor quality, unreliable data into their research
- Subverting the peer review process
- Withholding and destroying information in response to Freedom of Information requests
I have no doubt that ClimateGate played a significant role in increasing opposition to the Australian ETS legislation and the fall of Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull.
Plenty of great posts have been written that explain the content of these emails and surrounding issues in depth, so I will just include the links:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/11/global_warming_fraud_and_the_f.html
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2009/11/20/climate-cuttings-33.html
http://biggovernment.com/2009/11/23/media-missing-the-plot-on-climate-gate-its-the-fraud-stupid/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/25/climategate-hide-the-decline-codified/
http://fascistsoup.com/2009/11/25/more-on-the-climategate-source-code/
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Emissions Trading Scheme Set To Increase Food And Grocery Prices By 7%
The Food and Grocery Council, together with large Australian retailers have warned that the proposed Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) will result in more expensive food and groceries, with food price increasing at the checkout by up to 7%.
What this means to you is that if this mangled, complicated and utterly useless ETS legislation is passed, food prices WILL increase by 7%, as farmers, wholesalers and retailers will have a solid excuse to justify their profiteering.
Such price increases occurred when the 10% GST was introduced in the year 2000, and you may remember when a cyclone hit a banana-producing region of Queensland, ALL banana prices went up by up to ten times – 1000% for almost a year, even though other banana producing regions were unaffected and we could have easily allowed cheap imports from New Zealand.
I am conservative when it comes to my belief in human nature. Most people will pretend to believe in something whilst they believe it is socially beneficial [cool] or financially beneficial to do so. People are happy to make token gestures like sticking a ‘go green’ bumper sticker to their car or have a fun day out at a protest rally with friends, but when it comes to pulling money out of one’s wallet, people show their true selves. We are seeing increased voices in the media questioning the basis of evidence for catastrophic predictions of climate doom.
The proposed ETS legislation, that has been the subject or negotiation (horse-trading) between the major political parties and independents is complicated and full of exception clauses for all industries with powerful political lobbies.
Its phasing in has been drawn out over a number of years to try and stem public outrage. I question whether this legislation will result in a single molecule of CO2 from being generated. If there are any savings, the CO2 emission growth of our crucial trading partner China will cover them within a week.
If talks over this legislation collapse and resulting an election. I know who’ll be getting my vote - the party that promises to rip up this worthless piece of paper.
Oh yes – the disclaimer - I will take a complete U-turn on my position once I see:
- Falsifiable scientific evidence proving that human CO2 emissions have a significant and detrimental impact on climate – i.e. an experiment that makes a clear prediction that can be tested.
- Evidence that any plan to mitigate this will be effective and based on sound science.
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2008 is the Coldest Year of the 21st Century
I am sure that this does not come as a surprise to anyone living through the current Australian Winter, but this year, 2008, has been the coldest this century. So reads a fantastic post at slashdot.
But does this reality make the anthropogenic global climate change believers start having some doubts?
Of course not! It appears that they now say that a combination of phenomena – the La Niña effect and “Atlantic Multidecadal Information” will buy us another decade or so of unusually cold temperatures - plenty of time to concoct a new explanation to resolve their past inconsistencies.
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