The Official Climate Change Conference 2009 Thread

[Ziggy Stardust]

Luiz, are you 100% sure that the menace is imaginary?

 

[REDY]

How the heck would that work?

Well from kyoto we were doing same as we would do without it, with exception that our companies were getting money from Japanese ones. If major polluters in China would pay too I am fully for something similiar

 

[Winner]

You keep making this catastrophic predictions, and demading ridiculouslu harsh action against the developing world that will achieve nothing.

I am making realistic predictions, it's not my fault people refuse to believe the situation is really that bad. I understand why developing nations see this is a sort of conspiracy of the rich to keep them poor, but it isn't like that. It's going to be them who will collapse the first if they don't cooperate, so it is in their interest to shut up and listen.

I would like to see you provide any evidence of the "collapse" that the moderate warming we will experience will trigger. Really, do you have anything? Because nobody does. So if you don't know that there'll be a collapse, maybe you should stop making such ridiculous remarks.

Maybe you should stop using ridiculous strawman argument tactics and read what I write.

I am not saying that climate change alone will cause a collapse (OK, it's perhaps true for some tropical islands, but they're irrelevant from the larger perspective). I am saying that climate change will make it much harder to deal with the effects of environmental destruction, overpopulation, resources depletion, pollution and other very bad things.

I can't give you an example of a continent-wide collapse because it has never happened before. Doesn't mean it won't happen if humanity continue to consume this planet at the present rate.

While you can "afford" to be all preachy, there is nothing you can do about the fact that developing nations will not cut emmisions as much as you and the others environmental talibans want.

A friendly note - take your insults and shove them where the sun doesn't shine. You can use them when you actually find some environmental Taleban, because I haven't seen any in this thread.

And you can do nothing about it; it's not like Europe wants to speed up it's already fast economic decline with idiotic trade wars against the likes of China and India all for the sake of fighting an imaginary manace.

Lashing back, isn't that cute Look, even if it goes as you predict and the developing countries continue going down that road, it's not going to be Europe who'll suffer the first and most. Europe has many natural, social, and economic advantages over most developing countries, which will allow it to weather the storm and adapt. We'll lose many of our first-world luxuries for sure, but we'll probably not suffer an all-out collapse.

That fate awaits Africa, the Middle East, India and maybe even China, South-East Asia, parts of Latin America and Australia.

For all our sakes, it would be better to cooperate so that nobody suffers that fate, but if you guys want to do it the hard way...

 

[Winner]

Well from kyoto we were doing same as we would do without it, with exception that our companies were getting money from Japanese ones. If major polluters in China would pay too I am fully for something similiar

You realize we're one of the biggest per-capita polluters in Europe, right? The next deal won't be even nearly as profitable as Kyoto was.

My suggestions:

1) let's redirect agriculture subsidies to a massive programme of reforestation. We don't need 1/3 of our farmland for food production, so let's cover it with forests - it will filter out CO2 and thus reduce our overall emissions. Plus there would be other benefits; we'd protect our biodiversity and eventually attract more tourism, not to mention we'd have much healthier environment here.

2) let's build new nuclear power plants. One or two will ensure we can close most of the remaining brown coal power plants.

3) let's stop supporting short-term manufacturing-oriented investments. They're not gonna help us in the future. We need to become an education-based economy. I am not saying we abandon our industrial tradition, on the contrary - old Czechoslovakia was successful because its industry was highly competitive and innovative. We can do that again, if we start investing into people's education, science and technology. The present situation in which science and education are low on the list of priorities of political governments must be dealt with.

4) let's support only those renewables which make sense in our geographic setting. We don't need solar plants here, we don't need wind farms in such numbers.

Common sense, that's what I am asking for.

 

[REDY]

You realize we're one of the biggest per-capita polluters in Europe, right? The next deal won't be even nearly as profitable as Kyoto was.

I havent known it.

My suggestions:...

You are my man! But until you would change mind and create new political party, its not politically possible. Not only on national level, but also on European one. Parties which would support one point would be strictly againist next ones.

 

[luiz]

Luiz, are you 100% sure that the menace is imaginary?

I am 100% sure that there will no Global Warming induced apocalypse in the next few centuries.

The amount of damage caused by GW is open to debate, and nobody has any conclusive proof either way. The net result may turn out positive for all we know. All this nonsense about impending doom, all this media circus around what should be a civilized conference, make me sick.

 

[vesley1987]

Well, about bargaining power... for the foreseeable future, developing countries need developed countries more than vice versa. If the developed countries decided to use their leverage to force developing countries to act more responsibly, they'd have to comply.

Sure, I agree that developing countries are more dependent to developed countries, but seriously I don't foresee any scenario that EU would be stupid it enough to take the risk of waging a trade war against developing countries for this climate change thing. I mean, come on, if you want to have a trade war, at least find one decent casus belle, like, "we just don't want you to catch up". And no I don't think China or India would comply. During a 8% ecnomic growth, trying to reduce the gross carbon dioxide is simply impossible or suicidal (improving energy efficiency and emission/GDP ratio is possible and realistic though). Any Chinese government official that agrees to comply on this issue better seek political asylum soon.

......, so it's unlikely to happen.

True.

Oh no, I am not one of those "climate change will kill us" nuts. I am more of a follower of Diamond's environmental collapse theory of which climate change is only a small part. I believe the world would be going to hell even if there was no climate change at all, simply because we're straining the environment too much, overdrawing natural resources, pushing the environment to the breaking point.

Didn't know you're even more pessimistic than those "climate change will kill us" guys.

By "green economy", I don't mean just low-carbon economy, I mean a sustainable way of life, some sort of equilibrium between humanity and nature.

This is something we can agree with. Global warming is hardly the most dangerous and imminent evironmental issue developing countries are facing. Traditional, or post-modern kind of pollution is.

 

[REDY]

During a 8% ecnomic growth, trying to reduce the gross carbon dioxide is simply impossible or suicidal (improving energy efficiency and emission/GDP ratio is possible and realistic though). .

Would you rather do it in smaller growth or in depression?

 

[vesley1987]

Would you rather do it in smaller growth or in depression?

Enforcing a, say, 20%-gross-carbon-dioxide-emission-reducing-in-the-next-twenty-years will cause depression anyway. There's no deal here.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

I am 100% sure that there will no Global Warming induced apocalypse in the next few centuries.

The amount of damage caused by GW is open to debate, and nobody has any conclusive proof either way. The net result may turn out positive for all we know. All this nonsense about impending doom, all this media circus around what should be a civilized conference, make me sick.

Can we go without the exaggerations for a minute, and talk like level headed individuals? I am reading from your post that you at least acknowledge the fact of GW, but have doubts about the implications. Not that outlandish of a position to take. And we agree about the media circus which has done more harm to the Science behind GW than good. Because people are debunking the sensationalist scenarios presented by them and then think they have debunked the Scientific understanding of GW and the resulting Climate Change.

Since we seem to be agreeing that there is a distinct possibility that Climate Change is on the menu, and it's effects can have negative implications ("can" not "will") should we not be careful in how to proceed from here before we have a better understanding on what is going to happen if we continue trucking the same way we have been?

 

[Winner]

I havent known didn't know it.

You are my man! But until you would change mind and create new political party, its not politically possible. Not only on national level, but also on European one. Parties which would support one point would be strictly againist next ones.

That's why we're so screwed Let's hope that once all the old commies die out, things will get better

Sure, I agree that developing countries are more dependent to developed countries, but seriously I don't foresee any scenario that EU would be stupid it enough to take the risk of waging a trade war against developing countries for this climate change thing. I mean, come on, if you want to have a trade war, at least find one decent casus belle, like, "we just don't want you to catch up". And no I don't think China or India would comply. During a 8% ecnomic growth, trying to reduce the gross carbon dioxide is simply impossible or suicidal (improving energy efficiency and emission/GDP ratio is possible and realistic though). Any Chinese government official that agrees to comply on this issue better seek political asylum soon.

I don't think that going "green" (I lack a better term here) and going rich are mutually exclusive.

First, most of China's pollution comes from ineffective industries, so improving effectiveness will serve both China's people and help protect the environment. I am entirely supportive of developed countries giving the advanced technologies to less developed ones, provided that certain conditions are met (mostly concerning the intellectual property).

For example, China's industry is powered by rapid expansion of coal power plants, which is wrong on many levels. If China built smaller number of large and modern nuclear power plants, it could cut emissions, pollution and produce more electricity. The technology to build these power plants could be delivered by France, the US, Canada or other developed countries.

Didn't know you're even more pessimistic than those "climate change will kill us" guys.

Pessimism is a result of having enough information about the subject

This is something we can agree with. Global warming is hardly the most dangerous and imminent evironmental issue developing countries are facing. Traditional, or post-modern kind of pollution is.

It's all interconnected, really.

For instance, this is how climate change will affect China, India and other countries in South-East Asia. Rising temperatures will mean less ice in the Tibetan plateau, which in the summer melts and supplies water for the large Asian rivers (including the two big ones in China and the other two big ones in the Indian subcontinent). This in turn will lead to droughts, less water for irrigation, less water for industry and less water for the people. It's one of the hard impacts of the climate change that it will soon be impossible to ignore.

Climate change will, in the next few decades, make arable land scarcer - exactly in the same period in which the growing human population will need more arable land. It's not that hard to extrapolate the results: massive famines in many parts of the world.

I'd say that the most dangerous thing is deforestation, which is in itself a result of overpopulation and the need to find more farmland. Unfortunately deforestation usually leads to the exact opposite - less arable land in the long term, since tropical and sub-tropical forests are natural reservoirs of water, nutrients and biodiversity which is keeping the adjacent lands fertile.

I could rant for several more pages, but I hope you got the idea by now

 

[Dragonlord]

Since we seem to be agreeing that there is a distinct possibility that Climate Change is on the menu, and it's effects can have negative implications ("can" not "will") should we not be careful in how to proceed from here before we have a better understanding on what is going to happen if we continue trucking the same way we have been?

Quoted for Truth! My man!

My position exactly.

 

[MeteorPunch]

Your link:
In the 1970s there was increasing awareness that estimates of global temperatures showed cooling since 1945. Of those scientific papers considering climate trends over the 21st century, only 10% inclined towards future cooling, while most papers predicted future warming

Higher than I would've thought.

@People:Sometimes scientists get things wrong. There's hardly a consensus now, thus no reason to use it to propel the tax scheme.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Higher than I would've thought.

Really? If you look at the present, people seem to be thinking warming has stopped, or even that temperatures are declining, just because one hot year. Now imagine that temperatures had dropped like '45-'55, when they actually did drop. Now imagine that trend of cooling continuing for almost 3 decades. You would have to be pretty sure of the Science on Global Warming not to budge to the pressure of politicians, the public and media alike after 3 decades of cooling. There are always scientists who will budge. I am pretty impressed on how steadfast they were. It's easy for us to look at that period and see the warming trend set in again during the 70's, but for these people that was the future and unknown to them.

 

[vesley1987]

I don't think that going "green" (I lack a better term here) and going rich are mutually exclusive.

First, most of China's pollution comes from ineffective industries, so improving effectiveness will serve both China's people and help protect the environment. I am entirely supportive of developed countries giving the advanced technologies to less developed ones, provided that certain conditions are met (mostly concerning the intellectual property).

In case you haven't noticed, I'm all for going green and improving effectiveness.

improving energy efficiency and emission/GDP ratio is possible and realistic though.

What I'm arguing against is your perception that it'is practical for develping countries to

commit themselves to massive CO2 reductions

now. Not to mention your wierd proposal of some sort of arbitrary tariff.

For example, China's industry is powered by rapid expansion of coal power plants, which is wrong on many levels. If China built smaller number of large and modern nuclear power plants, it could cut emissions, pollution and produce more electricity. The technology to build these power plants could be delivered by France, the US, Canada or other developed countries.

Did you know that we started to build 24 new nuclear power generating units last year alone? And yes, we're importing French, Jpanese and American technology and design for all these. Coal power is, and will remain in the near future, the primary power source, however.

For instance, this is how climate change will affect China, India and other countries in South-East Asia. Rising temperatures will mean less ice in the Tibetan plateau, which in the summer melts and supplies water for the large Asian rivers (including the two big ones in China and the other two big ones in the Indian subcontinent). This in turn will lead to droughts, less water for irrigation, less water for industry and less water for the people. It's one of the hard impacts of the climate change that it will soon be impossible to ignore.

I like that you can get the whole mechanics wrong and think you "have enough information" If the temperature go up 2-2.5C in the next 40 years, that would cause the precipitation along the Yangtze River to increase 10-20%.(Can't find an English source now, you can google global warming and Yangtze flood yourself.) Seriously, whenever people talking about global warming here, they're going to warn about the increasing precipitation and flooding along Yangtze River.

I'd say that the most dangerous thing is deforestation, which is in itself a result of overpopulation and the need to find more farmland. Unfortunately deforestation usually leads to the exact opposite - less arable land in the long term, since tropical and sub-tropical forests are natural reservoirs of water, nutrients and biodiversity which is keeping the adjacent lands fertile.

You're talking about Ethiopia, right?
The very limited cases of deforestation in China these years are mostly paper making or rubber industry related. Thanks to the family planing policy and Hybrid Rice, we can feed our population with ease. We did undergo massive deforestation during Mao-era, we're still paying for it. So I get your point.
Back to topic, do you also propose a tariff to make Ethiopians or Indians have less children?

 

[Winner]

In case you haven't noticed, I'm all for going green and improving effectiveness. What I'm arguing against is your perception that it'is practical for develping countries to now. Not to mention your wierd proposal of some sort of arbitrary tariff.

It's not weird, it's pretty logical. If the countries refuse to do it voluntarily, they'll need some... stimulation

Did you know that we started to build 24 new nuclear power generating units last year alone? And yes, we're importing French, Jpanese and American technology and design for all these. Coal power is, and will remain in the near future, the primary power source, however.

Which is wrong.

I like that you can get the whole mechanics wrong and think you "have enough information" If the temperature go up 2-2.5C in the next 40 years, that would cause the precipitation along the Yangtze River to increase 10-20%.(Can't find an English source now, you can google global warming and Yangtze flood yourself.) Seriously, whenever people talking about global warming here, they're going to warn about the increasing precipitation and flooding along Yangtze River.

Actually you're right about the Chinese rivers, I just checked ( ). What I said is true for India, however, which will be very hard hit by the climate change.

You're talking about Ethiopia, right?

Ah, not only Ethiopia, it's also true for many other countries all around the world.

The very limited cases of deforestation in China these years are mostly paper making or rubber industry related. Thanks to the family planing policy and Hybrid Rice, we can feed our population with ease. We did undergo massive deforestation during Mao-era, we're still paying for it. So I get your point.

China's problems are mostly related to desertification in the North and growing industrial pollution, as far as I know. You're lucky that your environment isn't so fragile as in India or the Middle East. You're somewhere between Europe and India in that respect.

Back to topic, do you also propose a tariff to make Ethiopians or Indians have less children?

No, but I'd stop sending them any sort of humanitarian aid that allows them to have more children... Aid should be given only to those countries which do what is necessary to reduce population growth.

 

[El Koeno]

My criticism of strict per capita allotments is that not all of our countries are equal. Each country has biomass that sequesters carbon & each country has ocean borders that are scrubbing carbon. If a country were to pollute an amount less than they are sequestering, there'd be no net impact.

Alright. So equal per capita allotments are bad due to physical/biological/geographical reasons. What about economic reasons? Personally I see no reason why developing nations are allowed to emit more that developed ones. I mean, the technologies needed to curb emissions will only get cheaper the more countries use them. The whole "we need to burn coal for development" argument seems based on the fact that Western economies burnt coal in order to allow development. But we can now use all the capital we've accumulated using fossil fuels to develop new technologies that allow all nations to rely less on fossil fuels.

I like carbon credits in theory, but they're too complex & thus wildly open to contempt. In strict economic theory, they're vastly better.

Well. It seems there are some dodgy things going on with off-sets, in which people claim reductions that are never materialized. But couldn't we do without these. Just auction off rights to pollute and if you'll have to go to someone else who bought rights to get theirs.

 

[RedRalph]

Article by Sarah Palin, from the guaridan

With the publication of damaging emails from a climate research center in Britain, the radical environmental movement appears to face a tipping point. The revelation of appalling actions by so-called climate change experts allows the American public to finally understand the concerns so many of us have articulated on this issue.

"Climate-gate," as the emails and other documents from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia have become known, exposes a highly politicised scientific circle – the same circle whose work underlies efforts at the Copenhagen climate change conference. The agenda-driven policies being pushed in Copenhagen won't change the weather, but they would change our economy for the worse.

The emails reveal that leading climate "experts" deliberately destroyed records, manipulated data to "hide the decline" in global temperatures, and tried to silence their critics by preventing them from publishing in peer-reviewed journals. What's more, the documents show that there was no real consensus even within the CRU crowd. Some scientists had strong doubts about the accuracy of estimates of temperatures from centuries ago, estimates used to back claims that more recent temperatures are rising at an alarming rate.

This scandal obviously calls into question the proposals being pushed in Copenhagen. I've always believed that policy should be based on sound science, not politics. As governor of Alaska, I took a stand against politicised science when I sued the federal government over its decision to list the polar bear as an endangered species despite the fact that the polar bear population had more than doubled. I got clobbered for my actions by radical environmentalists nationwide, but I stood by my view that adding a healthy species to the endangered list under the guise of "climate change impacts" was an abuse of the US Endangered Species Act. This would have irreversibly hurt both Alaska's economy and the nation's, while also reducing opportunities for responsible development.

Our representatives in Copenhagen should remember that good environmental policymaking is about weighing real-world costs and benefits – not pursuing a political agenda. That's not to say I deny the reality of some changes in climate – far from it. I saw the impact of changing weather patterns firsthand while serving as governor of our only Arctic state. I was one of the first governors to create a subcabinet to deal specifically with the issue and to recommend common-sense policies to respond to the coastal erosion, thawing permafrost and retreating sea ice that affect Alaska's communities and infrastructure.

But while we recognize the occurrence of these natural, cyclical environmental trends, we can't say with assurance that man's activities cause weather changes. We can say, however, that any potential benefits of proposed emissions reduction policies are far outweighed by their economic costs. And those costs are real. Unlike the proposals China and India offered prior to Copenhagen – which actually allow them to increase their emissions – President Obama's proposal calls for serious cuts in our own long-term carbon emissions. Meeting such targets would require Congress to pass its cap-and-tax plans, which will result in job losses and higher energy costs (as Obama admitted during the campaign). That's not exactly what most Americans are hoping for these days. And as public opposition continues to stall Congress's cap-and-tax legislation, Environmental Protection Agency bureaucrats plan to regulate carbon emissions themselves, doing an end run around the American people.

In fact, we're not the only nation whose people are questioning climate change schemes. In the European Union, energy prices skyrocketed after it began a cap-and-tax programme. Meanwhile, Australia's parliament recently defeated a cap-and-tax bill. Surely other nations will follow suit, particularly as the climate email scandal continues to unfold.

In his inaugural address, President Obama declared his intention to "restore science to its rightful place." But instead of staying home from Copenhagen and sending a message that the US will not be a party to fraudulent scientific practices, the president has upped the ante. He plans to fly in at the climax of the conference in hopes of sealing a "deal." Whatever deal he gets, it will be no deal for the American people. What Obama really hopes to bring home from Copenhagen is more pressure to pass the Democrats' cap-and-tax proposal. This is a political move. The last thing America needs is misguided legislation that will raise taxes and cost jobs – particularly when the push for such legislation rests on agenda-driven science.

Without trustworthy science and with so much at stake, Americans should be wary about what comes out of this politicised conference. The president should boycott Copenhagen.

 

[The Imp]

Article by Sarah Palin, from the guaridan

Palin's ghostwriter is an idiot.

 

[Ecofarm]

Not as much of an idiot as Al Gore's.

You'd think after the first interview (Slate) someone would have corrected him. CNN has not mentioned the error in their intervew, the second time he claimed Climategate was "10 year-old emails". Fact is, important emails are from last month.