Rudd's cliché-ridden comments on CHOGM

30 November, 2009 by

Still trusts the IPCC, bless…

Still trusts the IPCC, bless…

Like a cracked record, Kevin Rudd churns out the same tired old clichés about climate change, despite the fact that we are now in a post-CRU world. Poor Kevin still believes every word the IPCC says, despite the fact that his, and indeed the entire globe’s, policy on climate change is, in all probability, based on fudged data.

But they’re not going to let the chance of global government and global socialism slip by just because the science is fraudulent. And Kevin Rudd isn’t going to let the chance of a cushy job at the UN in about 2015 slip by either. So he’s still pressing ahead at full speed:

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who helped draft the document, said yesterday the consensus at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Trinidad and Tobago was a “significant step forward” to a Copenhagen deal.

“That single voice is saying to the world that we, as the Commonwealth, representing one-third of the world’s population, believe the time for action on climate change has come,” Mr Rudd said.

“The clock is ticking with Copenhagen. We’ve achieved one further step, a significant step forward, with this communique and we believe that the political goodwill and resolve exists to secure a comprehensive agreement.”

The declaration does not set emission targets but calls for “an internationally legally binding agreement” at Copenhagen. It recognises “the need for an early peaking year for global emissions”. (source)

And after all the excitement at India coming on board following Obama’s magic touch a while ago, one of their number candidly reveals their true intention, which is virtually “business as usual”:

INDIA’S chief climate change negotiator has flatly rejected taking on emission reduction targets a day after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the country would commit to cuts conditionally.

India, one of the world’s top greenhouse gas emitters, has yet to offer figures on reining in its carbon output, with just over a week to go until UN climate talks start in Copenhagen.

Singh said yesterday that India is “willing to sign on to an ambitious global target for emissions reductions or limiting temperature increase” provided developed countries share in the burden of funding mitigation.

But in an interview broadcast today, chief negotiator Shyam Saran told the NDTV news channel that India is under no pressure to join the United States and China – the world’s top two carbon sources – in announcing firm numbers ahead of the summit.

“There cannot be any emission cuts,” said Saran, adding that the developed world does not expect countries like India to adopt emission reduction targets but instead to accept “deviation from business as usual”. (source)

So there’s as little chance of a global deal at Copenhagen as ever.

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China to "cut emissions 40% by 2020"

27 November, 2009 by

ABC-style carbon dioxide

ABC-style carbon dioxide

This has to be some kind of joke, right? China, which depends on coal for something like 70% of it’s entire energy requirements, and which is building a new coal fired power station every two weeks, has apparently  stated that it will cut its emissions by 40% on 2005 levels by 2020:

“This is a voluntary action taken by the Chinese government based on its own national conditions and is a major contribution to the global effort in tackling climate change,” the statement said.

It added that China faced “enormous pressure and special difficulty in controlling greenhouse gas emissions”.

The announcement marks the first time China has put specific numbers on a September pledge by President Hu Jintao to cut carbon intensity by a “notable margin”.

So what is “carbon intensity”? And here is the get out clause:

Carbon intensity refers to emissions per unit of economic activity. Emissions would continue to grow under China’s plan as economic growth is expected to continue. Beijing is not offering an absolute cut in carbon dioxide production.

So it’s nothing like a 40% cut in emissions. It’s a 40% cut in emissions tied into economic growth, which isn’t a cut at all. The ABC fails to mention that in it’s headline, of course.

Read it here.

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"What can we do?"

22 November, 2009 by

Difficult questions ahead

Difficult questions ahead

Gary M comments in a previous thread:

What do we do about Turnbull and Rudd next week? The Liberals will sign up with Wong and Co. and Copenhagen will go ahead. I cannot believe that there are so few of us that our voices will make no difference. How do we make this ground-swell attract more momentum…what can we do??

It’s a very good question. What can we do? Malcolm Turnbull is a climate change believer and will try to negotiate an ETS through the Senate. The government are completely in thrall to whatever the IPCC says, and refuse to even consider the science may not be as 100% settled as they keep telling us it is. Unfortunately, so are a number of the Liberal senators.

Our only hope is those in the Senate like Nick Minchin and Tony Abbott, who are smart enough see through the spin and bluster of Rudd, Wong, the IPCC and all the dodgy scientists on the alarmist funding bandwagon. If they can persuade enough of the remaining Liberal senators to vote against the ETS, we are in with a chance. Alternatively, with time for debate reduced to two days, running out of time becomes a real option.

Write, email or call your Liberal senators (we know the Nats will vote it down) – contact list here (PDF). Direct them to materials (see here for example) that they should read and consider before voting on the ETS. If any of you actually know your senators personally, so much the better. Personal contact is far more effective than unsolicited correspondence.

Unfortunately, until the stranglehold of the alarmists is broken once and for all, no one will ever get the full story from the mainstream media. Hence the importance of the blogosphere in the climate debate.

Send links to this blog and other sceptic blogs (see the Blogroll) to your friends and colleagues – the more readers we and the other blogs can reach, the more chance of creating a groundswell of public opinion.

Above all, remain positive!! The truth will out – in the end.

If anyone has more suggestions, leave a comment!

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Nations seek "billions in climate debt"

21 November, 2009 by

luis_ferrate

"Put your hands in the air - this is a stick-up."

We did warn you. The Copenhagen treaty (if it were ever signed) would signal the beginning of an era of massive global wealth distribution, with wealthy nations forced to hand over billions to less developed countries as “compensation” for their “climate crimes.” And, as expected, the first demands are already starting to appear:

CENTRAL American nations will demand $US105 billion ($114.2 billion) from industrialised countries for damages caused by global warming, the region’s representatives say.

Central American environment ministers gathered in Guatemala overnight to discuss the so-called “ecological debt” owed to them and to set out a common position ahead of climate talks in Copenhagen next month.

Guatemalan environment minister Luis Ferrate [pictured right] said the $US105 billion ($114.2 billion) price tag was “an estimate” of the damage done by climate change across 16 sectors in Belize, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Panama.

[Minister Ferrate] said the region “had never faced” so much drought, aridity, flooding, and precarious food security.

A formal proposal will be presented in Denmark, officials said.

I bet it will. Expect many more demands like this in the future…

Read it here.

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Another day, another hysterical prediction

20 November, 2009 by

Unbelievable hype

Unbelievable hype

As we always knew, the stories are getting even more hysterical as we get closer to Copenhagen, and this is no exception, where the journalists clearly get a kick out of writing this sort of stuff, even producing a scary graphic (see right) :

THE world is spinning toward a catastrophic climate change scenario with temperatures now far more likely to rise by 6C by the end of the century, a leading international team of scientists warned.

An increase of 6C would have irreversible consequences, rendering large parts of the globe uninhabitable and destroying much of life on Earth.

The study by Professor Corinne Le Quere of the British Antarctic Survey and East Anglia University is the most comprehensive so far of how economic changes and shifts in the way people have used land over the past 50 years have affected CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.

It also claims the Earth’s natural ability to absorb CO2 into soil, forests and oceans is declining.

The nightmarish possibility of a 6C temperature rise was made public by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007, when it was then only a worst-case scenario.

And then the inevitable:

Professor Le Quere said next month’s UN climate conference in Copenhagen had to come out with a clear and decisive global policy.

“If the agreement is weak or the commitments not respected, it is not 2.5C or 3C we will get, it’s 5C or 6C, that is the path we’re on,” she said.

If scientists really believe that publishing such alarmism will make people believe what they are saying, they are sorely mistaken. It’s far more likely to do the opposite.

Read it here.

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Obama: delusional optimism over Copenhagen

18 November, 2009 by

Obamessiah

Walks on water as a party trick

Part of President Obama’s Messiah complex is that it brings on delusions which makes him believe that he can single-handedly save the world, or in this case, raise a binding deal at Copenhagen from the dead. This is despite the fact that there is absolutely no hope of such a deal, and they’ve just chucked the 200-page draft treaty in the dumpster. But The Australian swallows it, resurrecting Obama’s vacuous campaign slogan at the same time:

Yes we can: climate hopes revived

CHINA and the US last night resuscitated hopes for a binding deal at next month’s Copenhagen climate change talks after President Barack Obama said the two countries had agreed to aim for a comprehensive accord to take “immediate operational effect”.

…

Mr Obama said after talks with Mr Hu in Beijing that the countries had agreed “to work toward a successful outcome in Copenhagen”.

“Our aim there is . . . not a partial accord or a political declaration, but rather an accord that covers all the issues in the negotiations and one that has immediate operational effect,” he said.

I don’t know what Obama knows that we don’t, but this just isn’t going to happen.

Read it here.

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Rudd ploughs on regardless

17 November, 2009 by

I know 5 facts about climate change, all of them wrong

I know 5 facts about climate change, all of them wrong

So now we can be 100% certain that forcing the ETS through parliament is nothing more than political vanity on the part of Kevin Rudd and Penny Wong. The circumstances have changed so much in the last few days, and there will be no binding deal at Copenhagen, but that doesn’t deter the great Chairman Rudd (and I have to warn you, there is a stack of tired climate clichés ahead):

On Sunday, Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen told leaders of the 21-nation Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation group, meeting in Singapore, there was little prospect of the Copenhagen meeting producing a formal agreement on reducing carbon emissions.

The leaders, including US President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao, decided to scrap a 200-page draft agreement negotiated by their diplomats and instead use the Copenhagen conference to seek a “framework agreement” under which countries would agree to cuts in emissions contingent on others taking similar action.

“Contingent on others taking similar action” – it even spells it out! But even that isn’t plain enough for Rudd:

Yesterday, Mr Rudd made it clear the change of tactics would not have a bearing on his push to create an ETS before the Copenhagen meeting.

[Cliché Alert] “The time has come to act,” Mr Rudd said.

[Cliché Alert] “The clock is ticking for the planet. It is also ticking for this parliament.”

At least one Liberal has the guts to see all this for the sham it is:

However, Liberal senator Mitch Fifield said the weekend events had “completely shot” the argument that the emissions legislation needed to be passed urgently.

“There is absolutely no reason not to wait until we know what happens in Copenhagen and, for that matter, to know what happens in the US,” Senator Fifield told Sky News.

Message to Malcolm Turnbull and the Opposition: there is absolutely no reason for this legislation to be passed before Copenhagen. For god’s sake VOTE IT DOWN.

Read it here.

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Copenhagen deal "impossible"

16 November, 2009 by

Maldives: nothing to do with climate change - it's sinking

Maldives: nothing to do with climate change - it's sinking

More from the UK Telegraph which reports that Copenhagen will, like most other climate talks, be a damp squib:

The UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December has been billed as the world’s last chance to stop global warming. But negotiations soon broke down because the US refused to sign up to targets on cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

The deadlock has forced world leaders at a summit in Singapore to step in and admit that any deal this year will be little more than a “political agreement”.

However they insisted that a legally-binding treaty will be thrashed out by the end of 2010 and even suggested a timetable and deadline to ensure negotiations stay on track.

The new “two-step” plan, put forward by the Danes, increases pressure on President Obama to attend the talks in Copenhagen and reassure the world that the US is serious about tackling climate change.

It also gives the world a chance to rescue the Copenhagen summit from certain failure by giving lawyers more time to work on a hugely complex international deal.

So remind me, why is Australia desperate to get a legally binding ETS in place before Copenhagen, when other countries will only be subjecting themselves to a political agreement?

Read it here.

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APEC waters down emissions targets

15 November, 2009 by

Rudd looks a tit in Singapore

Rudd looks a tit in Singapore

Just as it looks more likely that the ETS will be passed in Australia, the rest of the world is hedging its bets. Funny how when the crunch comes, other countries are so reluctant to put their economies where their mouth is, and name a figure on their emissions reductions:

ASIA-Pacific leaders will drop a fixed target for halving greenhouse gas emissions in a final summit statement, a Chinese official said, ahead of a breakfast meeting on climate issues organised by Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

“On the 50 per cent reduction target (from 1990 levels) by 2050, yes, it did appear in the draft,” said Yi Xianliang, a Chinese foreign ministry official who is part of the country’s negotiating team at world climate talks.

“However, it is a very controversial issue in the world community… if we put it in this (final) statement, I think it would disrupt the negotiation process,” he told reporters on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.

Leaders from 21 APEC members including US President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao are in Singapore for an annual summit ending today.

The meeting is one of the last international gatherings ahead of world climate change talks opening in Copenhagen on December 7.

Why is it that only Australia seems to want to bind itself to emissions targets ahead of Copenhagen?

Read it here.

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Climate nonsense from Mikhail Gorbachev

10 November, 2009 by

Climate change is like Berlin wall?

Climate change is like Berlin wall? Really?

Obviously there are thousands of stories today about the momentous events in East Germany back in 1989, but it’s a bit desperate to compare the Berlin wall to climate change. However, that is what former Soviet Union president is saying in an article reprinted in The Australian this morning. Gorbachev was a great agent for change in the 80s and 90s, but on climate change, he reads like a typical alarmist.

The fall of the Berlin Wall brought hope and opportunity to people everywhere, and provided the 1980s with a truly jubilant finale. That is something to think about as the chance to take another momentous leap forward appears to be slipping away.

The road to the end of the Cold War was certainly not easy, or universally welcomed at the time, but it is for just this reason that its lessons remain relevant. In the 1980s, the world was at a historic crossroads. The East-West arms race had created an explosive situation. Nuclear deterrence could have failed at any moment. We were heading for disaster.

[Read more…]

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