Posts Tagged ‘Cancún’

Cancun won’t because it can’t

December 5, 2010

The  Cancun jamboree enters it’s second week with efforts being made to reduce expectations even further.  It is clear that any extension of Kyoto will be deferred till next year – again- and the pressure is now to get sufficient at Cancun next week to be able pronounce a success.

But the mood of the world has changed. Politicians lag the world by a few months and it is apparent that there are vry few who are leaders.

From the Hindu:

With Japan’s forthright statement on Monday and reluctance on the part of the other countries such as Russia, Canada and Australia to commit to a second phase, the entire negotiation is fraught with uncertainty.

To add to this the ALBA or the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, which comprise nations of the South America and the Caribbean, has upped the ante by demanding a firm commitment from developed nations to the second phase of the Kyoto protocol, putting pressure on the main polluters. Matters were worsened by rumours of a secret text floated at the conference, which was strenuously denied by Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), on Thursday. The secret text, according to a statement released by NGOs says the presidency of the conference of parties, Mexico, has convened an exclusive small group of countries aimed at agreeing on a text on the most sensitive topic, the mitigation efforts of developed and developing countries.

Ms. Figueres, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), briefing the press, denied there was any secret Mexican text. Japan was clear about its position for a long time and it comes as no surprise that it had made a statement on its position, she reiterated. “The challenge of Cancun is how to formulate the broad array of proposals from developed countries under the UNFCCC framework,” she said. Even the position of the ALBA countries was known and there was no news there. Their position was 180 degrees opposite to Japan. “I don’t think it will be possible to guarantee a second commitment to the Kyoto Protocol. And it could be addressed later, but not at Cancun,” she said.

Expectations are being walked back.

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Some good news from Cancun: Japan refuses to extend Kyoto protocol

December 2, 2010

Jun Arima, an official in the government’s economics trade and industry department, in an open session at Cancun bluntly stated that  “Japan will not inscribe its target under the Kyoto protocol on any conditions or under any circumstances.”

Kyoto stop

The Guardian is concerned which is a good sign in itself:

The brief statement…. was the strongest yet made against the protocol by one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases.

“For Japan to come out with a statement like that at the beginning of the talks is significant,” said one British official. “The forthrightness of the statement took people by surprise.”

If it proves to be a new, formal position rather than a negotiating tactic, it could provoke a walk-out by some developing countries and threaten a breakdown in the talks. Last night diplomats were urgently trying to clarify the position. The move provoked alarm among the G77, the grouping of developing countries who regard the Kyoto protocol as the world’s only binding agreement on climate change cuts. Japan gave no reasons for making its brief statement on the second day of the talks, but diplomats said last night that it represented a hardening of its line. “Japan has stated before that it wants only one legal instrument and that it would be unfair to continue the protocol,” said one official who did not wish to be named.

Bloomberg writes:

China and Brazil led developing nations in saying Japan’s refusal to help extend the Kyoto Protocol to curb greenhouse gas emissions may halt work on a global accord to combat global warming.

A total of 37 developed countries, including Japan, ratified the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, agreeing to set limits on fossil fuel emissions. The Kyoto accord expires in December 2012 and with no other agreement to replace it, delegates at the United Nation climate talks in Cancun, Mexico, say extending the protocol is crucial.

“The Kyoto Protocol is the very basis of the framework to address climate change through international cooperation,” China’s envoy, Su Wei told reporters in Cancun. “If the pillar is collapsed, you can guess the consequences.”

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Nasa/University of Colorado establish Sun-Climate Research Center

November 30, 2010

The “settled science” of climate change seems to be opening up to real science  – at last. Nasa and the University of Colorado are establishing a new research centre dedicated to studying the effect of the sun on climate.

And about time too.

Perhaps they could let the 15,000 gathered in Cancun know about the importance the Sun may have!

Today the University of Colorado Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center announced the formation of a new collaborative research center dedicated to the study of the Sun’s effect on Earth’s climate. The Press release goes on to say:

Solar Image

The newly announced Sun-Climate Research Center, a collaboration between LASP and Goddard, will focus on research areas such as how solar variations shape Earth’s atmosphere and climate. This image of the sun is from the LASP-built NSF Precision Solar Photometric Telescope (PSPT). (Courtesy NASA/GSFC Scientific Visualization Studio; source data courtesy of HAO and LASP PSPT project team)

The center, called the Sun-Climate Research Center (SCRC), will be directed by Peter Pilewskie, a LASP research scientist and CU professor, Robert Cahalan, Head of Goddard’s Climate and Radiation Branch, and Douglas Rabin, Head of Goddard’s Solar Physics Laboratory.

Pilewskie said, “The exciting thing about this collaboration is that we believe it will promote studies to help answer a key question about the climate system: how does Earth’s atmosphere respond to the sun’s variability, and how does that affect climate? This question is particularly important now, as we seek to quantify the human-induced impact on Earth’s climate.”

The SCRC, which has been made possible by a Federal Space Act Agreement, will foster collaboration between Earth-atmosphere and solar sciences at the two institutions. Opportunities will include a scientist exchange program between the organizations, the ability for post-doctoral scientists and graduate students in science, engineering, and mission operations to move between LASP and Goddard, annual international Sun-Climate research symposia, and the ability for the two institutions to collaborate more fluidly on future research opportunities.

Robert Cahalan, SCRC co-director and Goddard scientist, said, “In recent years Goddard and LASP have worked together on several Earth and Sun missions. Now we look forward to continuing to drive growth in this key interdisciplinary field of Sun-Earth research, bringing new focus to the study of multiyear changes in the Sun and their influence on Earth’s climate.”

With a limited number of such agreements between U.S. universities and any of NASA’s ten field centers, the SCRC represents a rare and innovative step, underscoring LASP’s ability to develop high-caliber research and programmatic opportunities with Goddard.

Daniel Baker, LASP Director, said, “LASP has developed some remarkable areas of expertise that are key to studying the sun and its effect on climate and on human activities. By working with our colleagues at Goddard, we can leverage our skills—and help take an important step toward greater cooperation between NASA centers and leading university research teams.”

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Cancun kicks off with the Alarmist creed

November 29, 2010

The Cancun jamboree kicked-off today and started by reiterating the Global Warming Alarmist creed. Drastic – should we say Draconian? – measures would be needed. Some of the suggestions :

  • Stop economic growth in rich countries within 20 years
  • Introduce food rationing
  • Change lifestyles (reduce heating)
  • limit electricity usage
  • food transport be limited (to save on carbon footprint one understands!)
  • people compelled to use public transport

The usual dire warnings of rising sea levels, droughts in river basins and mass migrations were not left out.

It sounds remarkably like the rantings of Pentti Linkola and his ecofascism.

The Telegraph has the whole story but it requires a strong stomach to read it all in one sitting!

Cancun climate change summit: scientists call for rationing in developed world


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Cancún – Follow the money

November 28, 2010

Cancun Hotels & Resorts : image cancun-travelnet.com

While winter comes early to Europe and China with heavy November snow and temperatures down to minus 37 Celcius in N. Sweden, 15,000 of the faithful travel to the balmy, holiday resort of Cancún (min 21 deg C, max 29 deg C) for the UN / IPCC conference on climate change and to try and blow some life back into the carbon trading scheme.

That Cancún is just about money has become apparent especially since Copenhagen and Nagoya. But it is the unrestrained greed represented by the carbon-trading, money trail that is most telling.

A Global Investor Statement on Climate Change has been issued by:

259 investors – both asset owners and asset managers – that collectively represent assets of over US$15 trillion.

Reducing Risks, Seizing Opportunities & Closing the Climate Investment Gap

Investors are interested in the large potential economic opportunities that the transition to a low-carbon economy presents. In particular, investors are calling for:

  • Domestic policy frameworks to catalyze renewable energy, energy efficiency, and other low-carbon infrastructure, so as to provide investors with the certainty needed to invest with confidence in receiving long-term risk-adjusted returns.
  • International agreement on climate financial architecture, delivery of climate funding, reducing deforestation, robust measurement, reporting, and verification, and other areas necessary to set theglobal rules of the road, bolster investor confidence, and allow financing to flow.
  • International finance tools that help mitigate the high levels of risk private investors face inmaking climate-related investments in developing countries, enabling dramatic increases inprivate investment.

But Christopher Booker in The Telegraph gets it right:

These are the bodies (major banks, insurance companies and pension funds) calling most stridently for “government action on climate change”, because they are the ones who hope to make vast sums of money out of it. They are desperate for a treaty of the type they failed to get at Copenhagen – even more so since the collapse of the US cap and trade bill – because they see their chance of turning global warming into the most lucrative fruit machine in history dwindling by the month.

Top of their wish list is “a rapid time-frame” for implementing the UN’s REDD scheme, which would enable them to make hundreds of billions of dollars by selling the CO2 locked up in the world’s tropical rainforests as “carbon offsets”, thus allowing firms from the developed world to continue emitting CO2. Under this scheme, for instance, environmental bodies including the WWF hope to share in the $60 billion which they estimate as the “carbon value” of the Brazilian rainforest.

But nothing better betrays their gloom about any result from Cancún than that they at least want it to give “a clear mandate” for the adoption of “a legally binding agreement” at the UN’s next conference, due in South Africa next year.

(Seen first at http://climaterealists.com/index.php)

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“Be Afraid”:15,000 gather for Cancun jamboree, down from Copenhagen’s 45,000

November 24, 2010
The cub scout salute

"Be Afraid" :Image by anyjazz65 via Flickr

After the cold shower at Copenhagen, the UN Climate groupies are gathering in 5 days at Cancun in Mexico for their next jamboree. Unlike Baden-Powell’s scouts whose motto was to “Be Prepared” the motto in Cancun is “Be Afraid” and their symbol is the Hockey Stick. But the number of attendees at 15,000 is expected to be just a third of the 45,000 at Copenhagen.

In the run-up to Cancun, the public relations exercises have started. The scare stories are proliferating. The objective is to strike fear into the hearts of the non-believers. They are couched in scientific terms but they all have one simple message:

“Be Afraid”

It is perhaps worth noting that in the history of mankind not one of the soothsayers’ prophecies of doom have yet come to pass. In the scientific age and since Malthus, prophecies of impending catastrophe have always been coated with the semblance of rationality and scientific rigour. Whether prognosticating catastrophe due to population growth or due to depletion of resources ( food, oil, coal, metals, animals, plants,……..), they have all been wrong. But in almost every case a few people have gained economic advantage by spreading fear. That climate change happens and will continue to happen is both inevitable and obvious. The idea that man can have more than a very minor part to play in climate – whether intentionally or unintentionally – is a more recent phenomenon of the last 100 years. Before that catastrophes were caused by angry or avenging Gods. Change was then effected by assuaging the angry Gods or by mobilising some other more beneficial God. Of course there were certain individuals – priests, shamans, witch-doctors and their favoured Kings, chieftains and merchants – who always claimed special understanding of the problems and exclusive access to the required God and took benefit from that. These days the angry Gods have been replaced by Divine Computer Models and the scientists and politicians who see a benefit in the forecasts (sometimes pre-determined) of the models.

But Cancun is not really about science. It is about money – for those expecting to make a windfall from carbon trading or for nations looking for funding or for “idealists” looking to redistribute wealth or politicians looking to win their next election.

As I write this I have a foot of snow outside my window which came last night. This is going to be a long and cold winter just as we had last year. But it is just weather not climate. I have no doubt the weather in Cancun will be much warmer and much more salubrious next week. But it is just weather not climate.

“Be Afraid”

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The Cancun hype begins – but it is all about money not climate

November 22, 2010

With one week left before the Cancun circus begins (UN/ IPCC Climate Conference from 29th November to 10th December), the mainstream media hype has begun.

Global CO2 expected to rise to record levels screams the Daily Telegraph. Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are expected to reach record levels this year, according to a new study, despite the recession and global efforts to reduce greenhouse gases – but what that has to do with climate is uncertain. No doubt it has a great deal to do with pricing of the Carbon Trading market. As The Telegraph points out (inadvertently perhaps) this is just hype timed to come just before the UN jamboree.

The results of the study by the Global Carbon Project will be used to put pressure on environment ministers meeting in Cancun, Mexico this month for the latest UN meeting to come to a global agreement on cutting emissions.

The Cancun meeting itself is all about money and Carbon Trading. The collapse of the Chicago exchange and the growing realisation in Europe that Carbon Trading is just a scam is leading all those with a vested interest in carbon pricing to raise the spectres of carbon dioxide again.  Hopefully these efforts will be as useless as at Copenhagen but some “trading” being introduced through the back door is always a possibility.

The two main “money flows” that Cancun is concerned with is the carbon trading fraud and the diversion of funds to “developing” countries to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide. Just as with the Nagoya biodiversity conference a key objective is the redistribution of wealth. In fact biodiversity and climate are merely convenient scare stories which can act as vehicles for arranging for the flow of funds. A UN IPCC official admitted as much when talking about climate policy:

OTTMAR EDENHOFER, UN IPCC OFFICIAL: “That will change immediately if global emission rights are distributed. If this happens, on a per capita basis, then Africa will be the big winner, and huge amounts of money will flow there. This will have enormous implications for development policy. And it will raise the question if these countries can deal responsibly with so much money at all”.

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UN climate talks in China end without breakthrough

October 9, 2010

No Surprises. (I wonder what the Carbon footprint of all the delegates, journalists and other hangers-on attending the jamboree was?). Oh well, the next jamboree will be held in Cancun in November.

From the BBC.

UN climate talks in China have ended without a major breakthrough and with angry words about the US from Beijing.

It has been the old deadlock in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin during the week-long talks. China feels unfairly criticised by the US.

On Saturday, one of the Chinese climate negotiators reportedly accused the US of behaving like a preening pig, complaining about Beijing when Washington had done so little itself.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11508913

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