Bishop Hill Philip Stott calls Durban a win
Dec 11, 2011 Climate: IPCC This has just gone up at the GWPF site:
The basic truth about Durban, the latest and 17th Feydeau farce passing as serious UN climate talks, is simple: the BASIC countries - Brazil, South Africa, India, and China - played a blinder.
They outwitted comprehensively the ever-zealous, naive, and hypocritical EU to ensure that they achieved their fundamental goals, which were to delay any agreement on a replacement for the failing Kyoto Protocol until at least 2015, and any actual action to cut emissions until at least 2020. And, of course, by then, the plate tectonics of world politics may have altered even more radically, so that further delays will be eminently possible, or the global warming narrative - we can only hope - will have withered away permanently into perennial greenhouse history.
Reader Comments (23)
It is interesting that Durban is proclaimed a victory, but that was the story after Copenhagen also.
Durban is a step backwards
Russia, Canada and Japan's combined emissions of CO2 are 46% of the total emissions of the industrialized countries who are paying and are obliged by the Kyoto treaty.
Now, 46 % of the demand side for AAUs (carbon credits) are lost. The supply side is unaffected. I wander what the price or ton CO2 now will be?
I like this quote:
I keep saying that Huhne is the most dangerous person in the country. Come on CPS.
I cannot disagree with the mapping of the long game in that piece.
However, I am not entirely convinced we have a long game in the EU.
The loss of competitiveness will be kick in more and more. For example Hungary, where I live, is totally ******. The foundations of the EU are crumbling, yet those in the Penthouse issue directives to build more floors.
Jeremy Clarkson, Gary Speed ( may he rest in peace and condolences to his family )and the Euro crisis talks
They have all kept Durban of the front pages
Also why wasnt Roger Harrabin out there reporting for the BBC they had enough people out in South Africa for the World Cup And they didnt wheel out Mandella
Harrabin is on a year's sabbatical.
No different to what the BASIC countries did in Copenhagen. They are not going to destroy their economies for anybody.
They will however happily accept any 'guilt' money on offer from naive westerners anxious to appease and atone for some imagined sin against Gaia.
Your analysis is spot on.
The meeting has finished as predicted long before it started; agreement to have another meeting next year and claims it was a great success.
The USA won't bring in a carbon tax. Canada, Russia, Japan, South Korea, India, Brazil and South Africa (and NZ) aren't going to put lots of money into the jar. How much can Europe afford?
A circus with 15,000 clowns. I wonder what the carbon footprint was for their travel there and back home.
But then again, it is summer there, isn't it, and therefore warmer. Perhaps that is what they are calling Global Warming, one hemisphere at a time.
This somehow appeared in the New York Times:
"The European Union had pushed hard for what it called a “road map” to a new, legally binding treaty against fierce resistance from China and India, whose delegates argued passionately against it. They said that mandatory cuts would slow their growth and condemn millions to poverty.
“Am I to write a blank check and sign away the livelihoods and sustainability of 1.2 billion Indians, without even knowing what the E.U. ‘road map’ contains?” asked India’s environment minister, Jayanthi Natarajan. “Please do not hold us hostage.”"
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/12/science/earth/countries-at-un-conference-agree-to-draft-new-emissions-treaty.html?_r=1&hp
Yet some seem to think we should give them a blank check.
The AGW Crisis Research-Industrial-Political Complex will be desperately trying to spin this failed conference as a glorious victory. I guess this is what it was like living in the USSR.
P.S. Don Pablo de la Sierra - Thanks for that link to 'The Power Elite.' That author (in 1956) could see the world as clearly as Orwell.
JAMSPID
But Richard Black was there, desperately applying lipstick to this pig.
And he has his own take on the winners and losers:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16131111
(including a handy glossary for the bemused)
The first report on Durban I have believed, thanks Dr Stott. I haven't taken much interest because, as Simon Jenkins said this morning, nobody is really taking notice any more. But interesting that we need Brazil, South Africa, India and China to save us from our own folly these days.
"I no longer give to global-warming embracing charities." Do you think that would fit on a bracelet? I think it could catch on.
As always, at these events, it is revealing to look past the statements of those such as Huhne, Hedegaard and Figueres to the reactions of the green NGOs. For instance, Kumi Naidoo of Greenpeace (link):
And Tasneem Essop of the WWF (link):
I think their conclusions certainly chime with Philip Stott's analysis.
Phillip Scott at GWPF
"The basic truth about Durban, the latest and 17th Feydeau farce passing as serious UN climate talks, is simple: the BASIC countries - Brazil, South Africa, India, and China - played a blinder."
Kumi Naidoo, Greenpeace International Executive Director
"“The grim news is that the blockers lead by the US have succeeded in inserting a vital get-out clause ....."
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/11/kumi-brings-the-good-news
The fundamental truth, that is agreed upon by all serious commentators, and backed by 97% of scientists is that the US is always at fault. It is true by definition :)
This is the commitment of EU:
" European Union and its member States
9. The EU and its member States communicated an independent quantified economywide
emission reduction target of a 20 per cent emission reduction by 2020 compared with
1990 levels. Under the conditions set out by the European Council of December 2009 and
as part of a global and comprehensive agreement for the period beyond 2012, the EU
reiterated its conditional offer to move to a 30 per cent emission reduction by 2020
compared with 1990 levels, provided that other developed countries commit themselves to
comparable emission reductions and that developing countries contribute adequately
according to their responsibilities and respective capabilities.
10. The EU and its 27 member States wished to reconfirm their commitment to a
negotiating process aimed at achieving the strategic objective of limiting the increase in
global average temperature to below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels. Meeting that
objective requires the level of global GHG emissions to peak by 2020 at the latest, to be
reduced by at least 50 per cent compared with 1990 levels by 2050 and to continue to
decline thereafter. To this end, and in accordance with the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, developed countries as a group should reduce
their GHG emissions to below 1990 levels through domestic and complementary
international efforts by 25 to 40 per cent by 2020 and by 80 to 95 per cent by 2050, while
developing countries as a group should achieve a substantial deviation below the currently
predicted rate of growth in emissions, in the order of 15 to 30 per cent by 2020. The EU and
its 27 member States are fully committed to continuing to negotiate with the other Parties,
with a view to concluding as soon as possible within the United Nations framework a
legally binding international agreement for the period commencing 1 January 2013.
11. The EU and its 27 member States wished to recall that the EU climate and energy
package has already been adopted.5 Among other things, this package consolidates the
European Union emissions trading scheme (EU ETS) and expands its scope. In addition,
pursuant to the EU “effort-sharing decision”, member States are required to implement
additional policies and measures concerning the GHG emissions from sources not falling
under the EU ETS, in order to reach the overall EU emission reduction target."
And this is Australia:
"Australia
5. Australia will reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 25 per cent compared
with 2000 levels by 2020 if the world agrees to an ambitious global deal capable of stabilizing levels of GHGs in the atmosphere at 450 ppm carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2
eq) or lower. Australia will unconditionally reduce its emissions by 5 per cent compared
with 2000 levels by 2020 and by up to 15 per cent by 2020 if there is a global agreement
which falls short of securing atmospheric stabilization at 450 ppm CO2 eq under which
major developing economies commit to substantially restraining their emissions and
advanced economies take on commitments comparable to Australia’s.
Norway will buy quotas:
"Norway
21. As part of a global and comprehensive agreement for the period beyond 2012
whereby major-emitting Parties agree on emission reductions in line with the objective of a
maximum 2 °C global temperature rise, Norway will move from its initial pledge of an
emission reduction target of 30 per cent by 2020 compared with 1990 levels to a target of a
40 per cent reduction for the same time frame.
22. An important feature of Norwegian climate change policy is the flexible and costeffective
Kyoto Protocol based approach. The continuation of the Kyoto Protocol or its
basic elements as part of a future framework, in particular the availability of flexibility
mechanisms for compliance with emission reduction commitments, is therefore an
underlying premise for Norway’s emission reduction target. Norway underlined the
importance of pursuing various approaches, including opportunities to use markets, as
stated in paragraph 7 of the Copenhagen Accord."
The conundrum of our time is why Philip Stott's ridiculing of the climate deceit now represents a distinct handicap for a successful post-normal academic career.
A sample
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtPDuZzfzhw
It was too much to hope they would tip the Kool Aid down the drain instead of putting it back in the fridge for next year.
Maybe this is what victory looks like: not a dramatic surrender but just a fading away.
Just to put a little perspective on this Chinese CO2 emissions reach the annual UK output of CO2 every 4 weeks. Which means that an increase of 3.75% in Chinese output would wipe out a 50% reduction of the current UK output. If "pissing in the wind" ever had any meaning it's now.
"The hypocrisy of the UK is staggering. Figures for 2010 on 2009 give a provisional estimate for the UK of 491.7 million tonnes, up 3.8% on 2009."
And that, of course, is whilst (a) the British economy is going down the pan and (b) wind turbines are sprouting up like mushrooms.
These three facts may well be connected.
Richard Drake
>"I no longer give to global-warming embracing charities." Do you think that would fit on a bracelet? I think it could catch on.
It would fit on a bumper/window sticker. Probably worth printing on a Post-it note and sticking to the said charities' return envelopes, too.
Stott on Huhne:
"We must devoutly hope that, like one of his overly-expensive turbines, he goes down very soon in flames"
:-)
In my experience, it’s nearly always the party that proclaims success that has failed and the party that says little that has succeeded. Why shout when you know you’ve won? As Philip Stott says, it’s the BASIC countries (especially China and India) that have got what they want: a tightening of mechanisms to transfer vast funds from “developed” to “developing” countries and, above all, no commitment to GHG reduction. All they’ve agreed (and even this is unclear) is to take part in a “process” that may (or may not) lead to “an outcome with legal force” (whatever that means) by 2015 – effective 2020 (when world circumstances will be quite different). Will it be about emissions – or something else? Unclear. If emissions, what are the targets for reduction? There are none. Will it apply equally to all? Doesn’t say so. What if China and India decide that, in the meantime, the West is not doing its bit (fund transfer, emission cuts) – which BTW it won’t be – can they back out? Unclear – and anyway what are the sanctions if they do? There are none.
Yet, for all its boasts of success (Huhne: “A great success for European diplomacy”), it was Europe that said it would commit to an extended Kyoto only if there were a strong, specific legally binding deal applicable to all parties. It didn’t get it – but nonetheless it agreed to the extension. In other words, Europe blinked.
Of course, there are other winners: all those UN and national bureaucrats, NGOs, green lobbyists, committed journalists, investment bankers, energy companies etc. for whom the gravy train will roll for another decade. Perhaps that’s what it was really all about.
Just to put a little perspective on this Chinese CO2 emissions reach the annual UK output of CO2 every 4 weeks. Which means that an increase of 3.75% in Chinese output would wipe out a 50% reduction of the current UK output. If "pissing in the wind" ever had any meaning it's now.
Dec 12, 2011 at 6:54 AM | geronimo
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////.................
Canada realise this and has therefore (quite sensibly) decided to pull out of Kyoto.