I am an optimist and maybe I am over-reacting but I see clear signals that the “establishment” is beginning to back away from the hype and hysteria surrounding Global Warming and carbon dioxide. The reduction of temperatures in the last decade while carbon dioxide concentration has increased but where the increase is less than half of that which should have been caused by man-made emissions is beginning to bring common sense back into play.
Yesterday it was Caroline Spelman the new UK Environment Secretary. Today Yvo de Boer the former head of the UN climate negotiations, has acknowledged that the long debate over targets and timetables for the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions is irrelevant. Asked by Bloomberg about emissions reductions targets in the context of the upcoming climate negotiations in Cancun, de Boer replied:
“Discussions about targets have become largely irrelevant in the context of the Copenhagen outcome. I don’t think that we’re going to see a dramatic increase in the level of ambition.”
image: treehugger.com
The failure of both the UN climate negotiations and domestic cap-and-trade policies has opened up new opportunities for progress on our long-stalled climate and energy goals. That progress will be driven primarily by direct public investment in energy technology, not by carbon markets, and will focus explicitly on making clean energy cheap through innovation.
Even though I don’t believe that carbon dioxide has any significant impact on Climate change I can only agree that innovation and technology development – rather than carbon trading scams or futile subsidies for renewables (which can never be more than intermittent) is the way to go.
The k2p blog 