Did China Kill Copenhagen?
Tags: Angela Merkel, Barack Obama, China, china, climate change, Copenhagen, Emily Murgatroyd, Emission Targets, General, Killing Copenhagen
The Guardian published an interesting and depressing article yesterday on China's behind-the-scenes involvement in killing Copenhagen.
A fascinating peek into the closed door meeting between Barack Obama and around 50 other international representatives during their last ditch effort to cobble together an internationally binding treaty. You might want to add some extra spike to your eggnog when you've finished reading.
I don't think China is the onbly country to blame, when you consider events before the meeting. Naomi Klein points out several things Obama could have done since he was elected:
"...Imagine if these three huge economic engines—the banks, the auto companies, the stimulus bill—had been harnessed to a common green vision. If that had happened, demand for a complementary energy bill would have been part of a coherent transformative agenda.
Whether the bill had passed or not, by the time Copenhagen had rolled around, the U.S. would already have been well on its way to dramatically cutting emissions, poised to inspire, rather than disappoint, the rest of the world..."
http://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2009/12/obama-no-opportunity-too-big-blow
Hmm I think she's being a tad harsh, considering the circumstances.
The only thing the Republicans didn't do to trash the Nation before they (and their cronies) lost power was set the Whitehouse ablaze before they threw Obama the keys.
As far as the bi-partizan ploy I think he had to to hold the country together, you know how the republicans act like screamin' banshees in a psych ward(read:ClusterFox)imagine if he had've taken the bull by the horns, and said we're doing it my way, they'd start beating the civil war drums
Far as the banks, not sure who was on who's knees, Sachs has the strings maybe
He hasn't been in a year yet, and he's still dealing with a lot of bush era bull, let's give him a chance
He would dump AGW and get an energy policy that makes sense. I am not expecting it though, as he has swallowed Al Gore's fibs..
here is the real headline:
The climategate global warming deception is “much worse than thought.”
I am very much hoping the editors of desmog condemn dianne feinstein for blocking the creation of 13 solar power plants in the mojavi desert. This is why I get upset with environmentalists because they talk about these alternative energies and when the times comes they shut it down. I am increasingly worried there is an anti energy movement manifesting and I think the desmog editors need to take a stand and condemn dianne feinstein.
According to Wikipedia, "Feinstein objected to certain proposed solar and wind projects in California's Mojave Desert, asserting that such projects would harm the desert, and violate the intention of the environmentalists in their donation of the land to the state."
Even though they're thought of as wastelands, deserts are diverse ecosystems in their own right, and if areas were donated for preservation, it would seem wrong to choose those particular spots for development. There are plenty of good sites for renewable energy that aren't fragile or diverse.
Yeah the article I read did not cite any of the environmentalists who donated the land but their wishes should be respected. True, deserts are ecosystems but the best place to build solar plants would be in the desert so at some point there has to be a compromise. Maybe not in the Mojavi desert but there is plenty of space in other deserts.
... trashing the White House FOR REAL, recall how the philandering Democrat departed from that "home of the nation" to our South -- they didn't just leave, they departed with booty (in the vernacular of pirates) including dinner plates and cutlery boasting the presidential seal -- at least that is what was reported.
LOL! - John must wake up everyday and ask himself - "how can I be nice to people on the internet today?"
It isn't a co-incidence that those who are the True Believers in the AGW faith are fast and loose with the insults, yet us skeptics are not and do not insult.
Insults are the mechanism leftists/socialists use to impose their will through intimidation. It also shows a total lack of evidence to back up their position. Weak people get controled by such intimidation, the rest of us see insulting and intimidation for what it is, the weak position of the people who do the insulting.
As I've indicated elsewhere on DeSmogBlog, I came to Canada as a WWII refugee. I did not know the language, but I learned quickly. Coming from a loving home, it was a shock to find out that there are some kids who enjoy bullying other kids, especially bullying those who do better in the classroom than do they. Inevitably, these bullies were people of 'little brain'. They struggled with schoolwork. So, had to bully to raise self esteem somehow. Bullying worked for a little while. Back in the early fifties, these mental weaklings were often left to sit in the same grade for another year. [Automatic promotion with other kids in your age cohort just did not happen.] Then survival of the (intellectually fittest) took over, and ruthlessly, rooted out the weakest ones, and more and more of remaining bullies. In my experience, as the years have rolled by, very few such miscreants survived -- until, believe it or not, this website. Some such mental midgets have resurfaced. They resort to use of insulting, hurtful words, and name-calling, presumably because they have trouble comprehending the science which inevitably has to pop up here, now and then.
As an afterthought, John, I wonder, what's your day job: a frustrated prison guard, mall security guard, or the "muscle" right here at DeSmogBlog? It certainly does not seem to have anything to do with any of the hard sciences.
You must be talking about Al Gore.
...I am already true to myself.
"Read the responses"? If by this you mean, read the comments of the other writers, then I'd say at least 50% are trying very hard to shine the light of knowledge in lives of the remaining 50% who seem mixed up.
"I will continue to call out ignorance and willful blindness. Science is not a matter of faith." No, I have tried to do that for benefit of readers like you.
The rest is too silly to deserve a response.
Klein's Green Shock Doctrine. No thanks.
And is it just me, but does anybody else break out in a full-body rash after reading something by Naomi Klein? ;)
It's probably just you.
That explains Harpers visit beforehand, what a lap dog
Explains that pipeline from McMurray to the Pacific as well
Confucius says
"To see what is right, and not to do it, is want of courage".
Hope they get their eyes checked
China's intransigence - even denying the industrialized world to name it's own targets is very interesting.
They have huge power and they are running up the emissions over the next 50 years - running them way up.
Obviously they won't be part of any international climate deal in the foreseeable future.
Generally when this point is made, climate activists refuse to concede it. Get realistic and concede that China is running up emissions and no one is stopping them anytime soon.
RJ, can you clarify your post? Are you saying climate activists refuse to concede that China's emissions are increasing? Or that China won't be a part of any international climate deal?
It's hard to vote on this comment when your actual point is unclear.
I think what's definitely obvious that everyone at DeSmogBlog has been abundantly realistic that NONE of the big polluters, whether developed or developing, want to be a part of an international climate deal in the foreseeable future. Copenhagen was a disappointing example of that.
But because you're so enigmatic, I don't know whether you're happy China helped scuttle any agreement, or sad that there's so many obstacles to something constructive being done.
"I don't know whether you're happy China helped scuttle any agreement, or sad that there's so many obstacles to something constructive being done"
I for one am very happy the Chinese scuttled Copenhagen. The science is by no means settled, and CO2 has lost the arguement to the sun(and its interaction with galactic cosmic rays).
Climategate alone put the entire AGW arguement into question since there is NO verifyable temperature record, and plenty of evidence of tampering. It will take years to build another data base from original records.
Thank you China. No thank you to "peerreviewedlitterachur"
The most basic point is this: Emissions are going up for the next 50 years - not down.
So when people say we must turn it around by 2020 - well it's not going to happen.
You can want it to turn around by 2015 or 2020 but it won't happen.
It's only reasonable to make plans around what you know is going to happen rather than what you dream is going to happen.
I'm neither happy or unhappy about the facts. I'm just identifying them.
I hope you're wrong, but I fear you're right on this one. Pessimism gets the better of me after an event like Copenhagen.
They make $$$ by bamboozling western Liberals:(I think corruption is the norm in India, and it exists at the IPCC)
Dr Pachauri's TERI – of which he is Director General - admits to receiving over $300,000 for "services rendered by Pachauri."
This, however, only covers "some of the payments made to TERI". It includes €100,000 from the Deutsche Bank, $25,000 from Credit Suisse and $80,000 from Toyota Motors. The institute also received $48,750 from Yale University, $4,425 from the Asian Development Bank - which has given loans to Tata - and €1,200 from the French electricity giant EDF. At current conversion rates, that totals $302,746.
The periods for which the payments were made are not specified and neither are the precise "services rendered" identified. For some organisations, such as Yale University, Pachauri performs more than one service – and his current post as head of the Climate and Energy Institute has only just started.
Pachauri's institute denies that it has received any payment from the Risk Governance Council in Geneva, the Chicago Climate Exchange, or the New York Investment Fund Pegasus for which he is "strategic advisor". This is difficult to believe in respect of the latter two, but the phrasing of the "rebuttal" does not rule out the possibility of benefits in kind being offered by these companies.
China would have had a big hand in scuttling the Copenhagen treaty, thank goodness, but guess what "natural" events produce much more CO2 than ALL anthropogenic sources of CO2, including people, cars and industry in China, and in fact, everywhere worldwide? -- Why it's VOLCANOES -- like the big one ready to erupt in the Philippines right now; i.e. at end of December, 2009, as this "comment" is being written. So here's another reason NOT to worry about AGW, because natural sources, like volcanoes, spew out much more CO2 than human activity could every produce. Let me assuage your worries: Green plants of our planet will gladly "eat" the extra CO2 from ALL sources, including from anthropogenic sources, to make more of their own biomass. It is the green plants which maintain the atmospheric balance of CO2 at extremely low concentrations... less than 0.04% CO2, or less than 400 parts per million parts of air at sea level.
Com'on, John, be consistent. Why are you not piling on Autocalypso? This looks like a nom de plume, too. -AND- Furthermore, John, Get Autocalypso to publish something under his real name. How does anyone know that John Lefebvre is an authentic name? What have you, and Autocalypso, ever published; what peer reviewed journal(s)? "Amabo" and "Autocalypso" are equally OK for DeSmogBlog... so why harp about names so much, for Pete's sake?
The internet is full of anonymous posts and anonymous blogs.
I had a non-anonymous blog once but my boss got nervous and told me to shut it down. It happens all the time. When you are your own boss, you call the shots but when you work for someone else and what you say might reflect on them in some way - anonymous happens.
You can say that no one should be anonymous, but it's the price we pay for not being rich and independent. My first and middle names are Rick James, but my last name is not mentioned. My boss can be cranky sometimes.
I don't see the harm in anonymity, unless you're posting under false pretenses, ie, "I publish peer-reviewed papers, but I can't tell you which ones."
I don't pretend to be a climate scientist, so I don't think it matters if anyone knows my real identity. Sorry, John. I like the cut of your jib, but in this instance, I don't think it's relevant.
Cheers!
... foul-mouthing other guests. What a sorry lot from top to bottom.
Just out of curiosity, if the ~50 of your guests who are "deniers" (your label) were to leave, what would the rest of you write about? John L. would probably still turn the air blue with his meaningless rubbish. I believe the deniers just might make this site more interesting for you DeSmogBlogers, and your other readers, and perhaps we even make you wonder a little about attacking good, clean, SCARCE, non-toxic CO2 at the cause of AGW; sending precious tax $$$ to third world potentates, and Al Gore; and correcting faulty reasoning about scientific matters; etc. Admit it, Admin, you need us!
Hey, who am I? "Blah blah blah. Everything the discredited idiot Pilmer says. Blah blah blah."
If you guessed Amabo, you're correct.
In my universe, sadly, the green plants of our planet are on hunger strike and have let the CO2 go up by more than 35% already. Perhaps we could find a wormhole so you could send us some of your plants.
No Anne, the plants didn't let the CO2 go up. Its called every 5 years a molecule of co2 is added into the atmosphere, which has a whopping .0038 percent or something. Like most woman, you fall for tricks and hoaxes very easily. Anne, you cannot believe in God and believe in global warming. I think these issues are closely related because humans cannot fathom the billions of years the earth has been in existence. Anne, let's go back to the time of the dinosaurs. Much hotter, 10 times the amount of CO2, plants were much bigger and therefore the dinosaurs could get more nutrients from eating them. And guess what, the planet did not blow up. I can't understand what people think is going to happen. Anne, do you think there is a giant black cloud of CO2 shooting carbon induced lightning bolts at the polar ice caps or something?
Who said I believe in God? And who said I'm a woman? The internet is an international business and in some countries Anne can be a male name.
Ok, so you think 0.038 percent is nothing. Try inhaling a 0.038 percent concentration of sarin and come back to report on your experience.
Only the gullible will believe that 0.038 percent is too little to matter without demanding any proof.
It's not really the .038 that's the issue, because you need most of that for basic life support. So really we're talking about .01 percent of CO2 that seems to be the concern.
CO2 isn't Sarin either. CO2 is life support - so I don't think the sarin comparison is useful.
What you stated, Anne, seems reasonable, but in reality it's as false as can be. Your argument is out and out sophistry, plane and simple. Sarin is a deadly toxin. I wouldn't want to be exposed to sarin in any concentration, either. On the other hand, all of our own cells produce CO2, and upon exhaling, we expire more CO2 than is present in the air we inhale. So, in the extremely LOW amount that CO2 exists in air all over the globe at close to sea level, (0.038% like you stated, Anne), it is NOT toxic, thank God. As a matter of fact, the ability to regulate the rate of respiration by human beings, and all other Metazoans, evolved in response to the concentration of CO2 in air; NOT in response to the concentration of CO2. So, let's be honest and admit that CO2 gas of air is NOT a toxin, and certainly NOT a pollutant, and that it is a good, clean and ecologically essential nutrient required by the green plant life of the planet for the so-called "dark", synthesis reactions of the Calvin Cycle of photosynthesis. If plants live, we and all other heterotrophs live, and moreover, plants would love to grow in air with an even much higher concentration of CO2. We heterotrophs are really fortunate that plants have the ability to still gobble up CO2 molecules from air which contains only 0.038% CO2.
Nonsense to try and equate the two. All toxic compounds have differing doses that are lethal. Hell. having an O2 concentration of less than 15% is lethal, just as (non)relevant a comparison as yours. You people really have little to stand on if this is the only level of argument you have. As I said before, mindless arguments.
CO2 is not toxic to humans until it's at least 9%. 0.038% is nothing for CO2.
You don't take issue with anything shooshman said?
I and We know that these leaders were facing a great challenge on weighing things up.. we may think for some time that this certain thing will make a change without knowing the possible effect...I should say cause and effect.. Let's just hope that things will work out just fine and they will do things for the greatest good and greatest number.
Watch 90210 Episode (http://watch90210.biz)
I put this comment up yesterday and today it is not there.
I will try again. You do invite a diversity of opinion here?
Copenhagen was DOA. You can only pile B.S. so high then in collapses into small piles around the ankles of the Marxist/anarchists who so lovingly sculpted that great steaming heap for so long.
What killed the entire global warming scam was the common sense held by most people who know that climate change is natural and not caused by my car or my cat.
What buried it was the leaked Emails and code from East Anglia and a lot of great people such as Lord, Monckton, Steve McIntyre, Tim Ball, Roy Green, Rush Limbaugh, Kate McMillan and many others.
My advice is to leave er' lay where she is. Maybe go on to whatever frightful pandemic or catastrophe do have planned for your next run at world dominance by the few. Make it solid this time because we are on to you and we don't scare easily.
Q: What do you call a person who digs up dead climate theory graves?
A: A climate Ghoul.
Merry Christmas
and if in 100 years time, climate change is found to be man made, will we be able to turn back the clock to save the world?
Then start to move everyone and all cities from active tectonic zones. How many millions will die in 100 years from tectonic activity? Far more than any climate change.