The copenhagen climate conference 2009

whether India should commit to carbon intensity cuts?

  • Legally binding Cuts

    Votes: 5 17.9%
  • Voluntary Cuts

    Votes: 18 64.3%
  • None

    Votes: 5 17.9%

  • Total voters
    28

Daredevil

On Vacation!
Super Mod
Joined
Apr 5, 2009
Messages
11,615
Likes
5,772
Can you post a related article which can be used as a starting point for the discussion.??

Thanks
DD
 

bengalraider

DFI Technocrat
Ambassador
Joined
Oct 10, 2009
Messages
3,779
Likes
2,666
Country flag
Copenhagen prostitutes offer freebies to climate change delegates
Fri, 12/04/2009 - 2:09pm
Der Spiegel reports that Copenhagen's mayor has sent postcards to local hotels asking delegates to the upcoming climate conference not to patronize prostitues during their stay in the city. But the city's sex workers are not taking this...er...lying down, and have made it known that they will offer free sex to any conference delegate who can produce one of the postcards:

According to the report, the move has been organized by the Sex Workers Interest Group (SIO).





"This is sheer discrimination. Ritt Bjerregaard is abusing her position as Lord Mayor in using her power to prevent us carrying out our perfectly legal job. I don't understand how she can be allowed to contact people in this way," SIO Spokeswoman Susanne Møller tells avisen.dk.
Oh, Scandanavia.
http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts...es_offer_freebies_to_climate_change_delegates

looks like things other than climate change may be on the cards!
 

Quickgun Murugan

Regular Member
Joined
Oct 1, 2009
Messages
778
Likes
22
PM to attend Copenhagen summit: India Today - Latest Breaking News from India, World, Business, Cricket, Sports, Bollywood.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will attend the Copenhagen summit on climate change on December 18, reflecting the seriousness attached by India to the meet where it is expected to play a crucial role.

Singh will undertake a two-day visit from December 17, the Prime Minister's Office said on Saturday.

The decision of the prime minister to attend the summit comes against the backdrop of insistence by world leaders, including US President Barack Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Earlier, India had decided that it will be represented by Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh at the meeting.

Singh, during his meeting with Obama last week, was asked by the US president to attend the summit. Subsequently, when Sarkozy met Singh in Port of Spain, he also requested him to join him at Copenhagen.

The French president later told a press conference, "If India is to be heard, it needs to be present", apparently referring to the need for Singh's presence.

Some 80 presidents and prime ministers are expected to attend the two-day summit on December 17-18.

Obama might drop-by at the Copenhagen conference on December 9 on his way to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway, and announce a US offer on financing.
 

ppgj

Senior Member
Joined
Aug 13, 2009
Messages
2,029
Likes
168
Key negotiator pulls out of India's Copenhagen talks team



Key negotiator pulls out of India's Copenhagen talks team
New Delhi, Dec 6 (PTI)

India's campaign at the crucial climate change talks appeared set for a rocky start with key negotiator Chandrashekhar Dasgupta pulling out of the delegation to Copenhagen, apparently upset over the government's announcement of undertaking voluntary carbon intensity cuts.

Former IFS officer Dasgupta has not joined the other negotiators who left for Copenhagen last evening to participate in the talks to decide a successor to the Kyoto Protocol to tackle global warming.

A section of the negotiators were unhappy after Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh announced voluntary carbon intensity reduction to the tune of 20-25 per cent by 2020 in Parliament on Thursday.

Ramesh is later understood to have spoken to the negotiators clarifying that the carbon intensity reduction target was voluntary and not binding.

The negotiating team comprising Shyam Saran, Prime Ministers' Special Envoy on climate change, Jai Mathur, head of the Bureau of Energy Efficiency, Vijai Sharma, Environment Secretary and Prodipto Ghosh, former Environment Secretary left for Copenhagen last evening.

Dasgupta is expected to meet Ramesh and seek a clarification on India's stand at the climate change talks. There was a feeling among the negotiators that the last minute announcement on carbon intensity cuts could weaken India's bargaining position at the climate change talks.

Analysts believe that India's announcement was made under pressure after China declared that it would undertake a carbon intensity reduction of 40-45 per cent by 2020.
The US had also announced 17 per cent carbon emission cuts ahead of the Copenhagen talks.
 

Rage

DFI TEAM
Senior Member
Joined
Feb 23, 2009
Messages
5,419
Likes
1,001
With roma's permission, I'd like to recommend that this thread be amended to include: a poll, with Yes and No options to the question of whether India should commit to carbon intensity cuts; a question on whether these commitments should be legally binding or voluntary; and on whether legally binding emissions are an effective way of capping the growth of fast developing countries or are beneficial to the economies of developing countries as a whole.

All from the point of view of a discussion ofcourse, and it will give us a good idea on guaging public opinion on what they think of climate change commitments.
 

prahladh

Respected Member
Regular Member
Joined
Apr 20, 2009
Messages
864
Likes
152
How will a country realize this % of cuts announced. What actions will be undertaken for this
 

Rage

DFI TEAM
Senior Member
Joined
Feb 23, 2009
Messages
5,419
Likes
1,001

Fresh off the press: Key negotiators rejoin India delegation on Ramesh's 'assurances' - dnaindia.com

How will a country realize this % of cuts announced. What actions will be undertaken for this
Largely through self-regulatory measures. The summit has no mandate to impose legally binding emissions norms on any country, but it will try to thrash out a new climate treaty as a successor to the Kyoto protocol, and will try to arrive at an agreement through consensus on:

- How much industrialised countries willing to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases
- How much major developing economies are willing to do to limit the growth of their emissions
- What kind of assistance, physical, technological or pecuniary transfers are required to evince that cooperation
- What is the protocol for handling those transfers (because financial and/or technological incentives are rarely one-way, and those that avail of it would be required to commit to certain legally-binding emissions cuts).

Those that do accept legal commitments are bound to enforcement, erstwhile under the Kyoto protocol by an emissions branch, that determined whether a country was in compliance with emissions limitations or not. Those that weren't were required to make up the difference, plus an additional 30%. In addition, that country would be suspended from making transfers under an emissions trading program (the 'cap and trade' or carbon trade as it is commonly known as).

In reality, in the absence of a global consensus and suprastructure, the summit or the protocol has little to enforce responsibilities by. It is largely a "monitoring compliance with the commitments and penalties for non-compliance."
 

roma

NRI in Europe
Senior Member
Joined
Aug 10, 2009
Messages
3,582
Likes
2,538
Country flag
ndtv sunday 2000 hrs w europe time

Key negotiator pulls out of India's Copenhagen talks team



Key negotiator pulls out of India's Copenhagen talks team
New Delhi, Dec 6 (PTI)

India's campaign at the crucial climate change talks appeared set for a rocky start with key negotiator Chandrashekhar Dasgupta pulling out of the delegation to Copenhagen, apparently upset over the government's announcement of undertaking voluntary carbon intensity cuts.

.
one of the well know ( by face ) officers of the communist part ( cant remember name ) suspects the radical change of policy by cong is a "gesture of goodwill" , a concession to the good '0L USA .
 

Rage

DFI TEAM
Senior Member
Joined
Feb 23, 2009
Messages
5,419
Likes
1,001
And these are the young climate change leaders who will be accompanying the Ministry of Forests & Environment to the Copenhagen summet. Apparently, and mildly astonishing to me, the four young negotiators were shortlisted after months of intense competition, and will join world leaders in addressing issues related to climate change in Copenhagen.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-6UIprueP4
 

IBRIS

Tihar Jail
Banned
Joined
Aug 6, 2009
Messages
1,402
Likes
796
Country flag
Maldives Government Holds Parliament Under Water in Protest

The Maldives, that little stretch of paradise off the coast of India, is living in fear of the impact of climate change. With rising sea levels predicted, the chain of 1,200 islands and coral atolls could disappear under the ocean. The president, Mohamed Nasheed, has been relentless in his campaign to save his homeland.

Next week his cabinet will hold its first meeting underwater. The ministers will don wetsuits and air tanks and meet in "parliament" 20 feet under the sea. It's all part of his efforts to draw the attention of the world's leaders to the gravity of global warming, in the lead up to the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December.

There are a number of technical details to be worked out. According to an article in the Guardian, ministers will communicate through hand gestures and use waterproof pens. Their documents will be covered in waterproof plates and pinned down to the table.

Not everyone can attend: the education minister isn't in good enough shape to make it under. This will probably be the only meeting to take place in the azure blue waters, as one official said "If it were to go on the paperwork would be very, very challenging."

President Nasheed is a very serious environmentalist and a qualified scuba diver. Earlier this year he announced that the Maldives would become carbon neutral within ten years.. He has also said that he is searching for a new homeland for the country's citizens. And he is imposing a climate change tax on tourists to pay for this.

As for the cabinet meeting: it is intended to "draw the attention of the world leaders to the issue of global warming and highlight how serious are the threats faced by Maldives as a result. If we can stop climate change, the lowest-lying nation on earth will be saved."
Maldives Government Holds Parliament Under Water in Protest : TreeHugger


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zizVixspBEU&feature=featured
Maldives to Be First Carbon Neutral Country

Let's all move to the Maldives and live out our principles. This country of 1,200 atolls and 380,000 people is set to become carbon neutral within ten years. The newly and first democratically elected president, Mohamed Nasheed has made the environment a top priority because of the rising sea levels that are threatening to swamp the land.

Last year the President announced that he was looking to buy an alternative homeland for his country because of his fears of the effects of climate change. The country has already spent £30M on a three-metre high flood defence wall around the capital, Male, but 80% of the islands are just one metre above sea level.

Now he has announced plans to eliminate fossil fuel use on the islands. The scheme includes "a new renewable electricity generation and transmission infrastructure with 155 large wind turbines, half a square kilometre of rooftop solar panels, and a biomass plant burning coconut husks. Battery banks would provide back-up storage for when neither wind nor solar energy is available."

Cars and boats with gas and diesel engines would be replaced with electric. It would also power homes and businesses. The cost for the measures will be about £110M a year, for ten years. It should pay for itself because the Maldives won't have to import oil products any longer.
Maldives to Be First Carbon Neutral Country : TreeHugger
 

ppgj

Senior Member
Joined
Aug 13, 2009
Messages
2,029
Likes
168
Even before kickoff, a self-goal by Team India
Surya P Sethi 8 December 2009, 03:17am IST

One has heard of self-goals in the heat of competition, but it is indeed a distinction to land a self-goal even before negotiations start in Copenhagen. I truly empathize with the Indian negotiators for their reluctance in boarding the green plane to Copenhagen. In all fairness, the stalwarts who believe that India's hand has been strengthened by the recent turnaround in our climate policy should be the ones negotiating. Fielding a team that does not believe in its mission is a sure recipe for failure.

Being a team player and a patriot, I am prone to the belief that this was not intentional. However, when I look at the three-page analysis used by the Planning Commission to support a monumental shift in policy, I cannot avoid thinking about one of my recent bosses who first commits himself to the outcome he wishes to deliver and then seeks an analysis that is tailor-made to support the said outcome from compliant foot soldiers.

The above conclusion is inescapable when one considers the process that used a three-page draft material for the midterm appraisal of the Eleventh Plan to completely undo what the Prime Minister stated just a few weeks ago at an international heads of state forum.

There appears to have been no peer review, none of the three core negotiators that I spoke to had seen this draft material, and, most importantly, is this the way to craft a policy shift that will impact every citizen of the world's largest democracy. The policy shift was announced publicly on the floor of the House but the extensive analysis backing this shift was privy to just a handful working behind closed doors. Do we doubt the strength and commitment of our intellectuals, our civil society and indeed our political fabric to have thrown open the underlying draft analysis to a wider audience for review. Surely, we are not a banana republic.

Coming to the substance of the draft and without getting into technical jargon, a 7-8 year past trend of reducing emissions intensity has been used to project the future of India, a country undergoing radical structural change. And indeed, a 5-year trend has been used to justify the legitimacy of the targeted reduction in emissions intensity. The 62-year trend since Independence that has left this country with more poor, more hungry, more sick, more malnourished and more disempowered weltering mass of humanity than any other country or region in the world has been ignored.

The four studies that are quoted are based on very different underlying assumptions and models and their results vary by as much as 50% — was this uncertainty taken into account? GDP is the denominator in the intensity numbers quoted and a higher GDP number lowers the intensity. Yet, for some strange reason, they do not use GDP in PPP terms, a globally accepted metric, that would have rightly shown India in much better light than the numbers in the analysis do. We have used a basis that suits the arguments of the US and other developed countries against India.

Finally, reducing emissions intensity is not a solution to climate change. This is so because the emissions intensity can come down while total emissions rise. Indeed, this is the case for the entire world as the draft clearly shows. Hence, a reduction in emissions intensity should not become our key negotiating ploy.

What we should seek is environmental space to continue our development process. Today, there is no environmental space left for India to aspire to rise even to the poverty levels of the developed countries.

What we need is an agreement wherein every citizen of the world has an equal entitlement to the globally common environmental space. And the developed world that is occupying our legitimate share of environmental space must agree to vacate the space and pay rent for having occupied it till it does.

Self-goals like quantified emission intensity targets as opposed to clear policy measures to support sustainable development will limit the ability of our climate team to match the feats of our Test cricketers and come out on top. This self-goal has put us on a path that cannot be in our long-term interest. We are better served if negotiating is left to seasoned campaigners in the climate team. After all, can we really imagine fielding our cricket team today without Tendulkar, Sehwag and Dhoni?

Even before kickoff, a self-goal by Team India - India - The Times of India
 

ppgj

Senior Member
Joined
Aug 13, 2009
Messages
2,029
Likes
168
China's climate games
Venkatesan Vembu
Friday, December 4, 2009 10:24 IST

Chinese officials have demonstrated often enough that they are the ultimate 'climate change' artists. At the Beijing Olympics of 2008, and during the celebration earlier this year to mark the 60th anniversary of China's founding, Beijing's weather modification bureau officials demonstrably changed the skies over the capital city from a muggy grey to a shining blue, to the wonderment of the world.

Ahead of next week's climate change conference in Copenhagen, Chinese policymakers have demonstrated that they are equally skilled at the smoke-and-mirrors game that will see China spew ever more toxic waste into the atmosphere over the next 10 years, and yet pass it off to the world as a significant contribution that advances clean-energy initiatives.

Indian climate-change policymakers have been comprehensively bamboozled by China's political games of the past two months. In the process, along with other leading 'developing countries', India has allowed itself to be used by China as a shield to defend itself against justifiably trenchant criticism that was due in Copenhagen to end its slow-poisoning of the world.

To get some perspective on this, it helps to zoom out and get an overview. In the months leading up to Copenhagen, the heat really was on the world's two leading emitters of greenhouse gases -- the US and China -- to lead the way on climate-change initiatives. To be fair to both countries, they've initiated some efforts, including some joint initiatives, that go some way towards addressing this global concern. Yet, when it comes to setting and abiding by emissions reduction targets, both have proved more than a little delinquent.

Although China is a monstrous polluter, as a developing country it was given a 'free pass': It did not have to take any quantified actions to reduce its carbon emissions because even the developed economies, including the US, had not delivered on their reduction 'commitments'.

Along with other 'developing economies', including India, China insisted that its clean-energy efforts should be paid for and otherwise supported -- with, for instance, technology transfers -- by rich economies. So far, so good: Although India and China were in vastly different leagues as polluters, they were in the same camp when it came to pressing for international funding for clean-energy initiatives.

But China's 'free pass' was at risk of being revoked at Copenhagen. There has in recent months been a movement to 'decouple' China from the category of other developing nations, given the perception that it was better placed -- as the world's third largest economy, and the fastest growing major economy -- to contribute to mitigation efforts. Other developing nations, including India, were to be made primary beneficiaries for international funding to support clean-energy and other climate-change mitigation efforts.

It may perhaps have been unflattering to India to be retained in the category of 'developing economies' and to see China being 'promoted' to the league of developed economies that were required to fund their own clean-energy initiatives. But it's reflective of some realities: China's economy is over three times bigger than India's. And such an arrangement would'verightly 'penalised' China, on course to be the world's biggest polluter.

It was to avert this eventuality that China moved fast, roping India into its stratagem . In October, when India's environment minister Jairam Ramesh went public with his stand that India mustagree to some emission reduction targets, China sensed a breaking of the developing economies' ranks. It paused long enough from its hectoring of India over the Dalai Lama's visit to Arunachal Pradesh to suddenly signal a solidarity of interests: It sent its minister to New Delhi and got India to sign an agreement that the two countries would 'work together' to address climate change.

Commentary in India naively misinterpreted this as a manifestation of China's commitment to the cause of developing economies. They were doubly dumbfounded, therefore, when last fortnight China announced a voluntary pledge to trim its carbon intensity by 40 to 45% by 2020. That claim was well received by those who couldn't see that it was a smokescreen. It's been estimated that even with a 40% cut in carbon intensity, China's emissions in the absolute sense will increase by over 200% by 2020.

And just last week, China invited Ramesh to Beijing, along with ministers from Brazil and South Africa, signed a joint agreement under which the four leading 'developing economies' would walk out together from the Copenhagen talks if the heat was turned on them. That too was part of the gameplan.

China, which was at risk of being 'decoupled' from the developing economies' club at Copenhagen and being held accountable for its polluting, has effectively taken the moral high ground with a 'carbon intensity' reduction target under which it will pollute even more -- and has used India and others as a shield to deflect likely criticism away from itself.

China's climate games - dnaindia.com
 

ppgj

Senior Member
Joined
Aug 13, 2009
Messages
2,029
Likes
168
Copenhagen climate summit: the climate change sceptic's Q&A

Climate sceptic's questions answered by Fred Pearce of the New Scientist

By Fred Pearce, New Scientist senior enviroment correspondent
Published: 7:00AM GMT 08 Dec 2009


Whilst nothing is irrefutable, the evidence for climate change caused by human activity is overwhelming. Photo: REUTERS

How can scientists claim to predict climate change over 50 or more years when they can’t even get next week’s weather forecast right?

They can’t tell us in detail. But forecasting climate change is more like forecasting the seasons than the weather. We know winters are cold and summers are warm. Always. And it’s like that with greenhouse gases. Physicists have known for 200 years that gases like carbon dioxide trap heat. These gases are accumulating in the atmosphere, thanks to our pollution. They will heat up the atmosphere just as certainly as the summer sun heats us.

But surely it’s the job of scientists to deal in irrefutable evidence rather than predictions?

Nothing is absolutely certain or irrefutable. We could be hit tomorrow by an asteroid or a mega-volcano that wipes out warming for centuries. But I’d say climate science is a good deal more reliable than most economic predictions, because it is based on natural laws rather than how markets behave.

Anyway, how can they be sure that the earth has warmed in the last few centuries?

It hasn’t. Evidence from tree rings, the pollen in the bottom of lakes, gas bubbles in ice cores and a lot else, all suggests strongly that it was warm 800 or 900 years ago; then cooler during the little ice age; then warmer again in the 19th century. All this was due to explainable natural cycles. But during the second half of the 20th century there was fast global warming for which there are no known natural explanations. Only the known physics of our soaring emissions of greenhouses gases can explain events.

But increases in CO2 follow periods of warming don’t they, not the other way round?

Both are true. The evidence here comes from gas bubbles in ice, which give us a timeline of atmospheric temperatures and CO2 levels. The two go in tandem in and out of the ice ages over hundreds of thousands of years. But temperatures change a few years earlier than CO2. That’s not surprising. The ice ages come and go because wobbles in the Earth’s orbit change solar radiation, heating the earth. So temperature changes first. But a lot of the subsequent warming (or cooling) is due to CO2 switching between the ocean and the atmosphere as a result of the initial temperature change. The world starts to warm because of a wobble; and as it warms, CO2 bubbles out of the oceans, adding to the warming.

Isn’t it a complete myth that the Arctic ice cap is melting?

Haven’t you seen the satellite pictures? It melts every summer, of course. But in recent years the melt has been greater. In 2008, probably for the first time in thousands of years, both the northwest and northeast shipping passages through the Arctic, north of Canada and Siberia, were ice-free.

And hasn’t the world stopped warming since 1998?

Yes. For now. Global temperatures have been more or less stable since the super-warm El Nino year of 1998. Even so, 2009 is expected to be the fourth or fifth warmest year on record. Some researchers predict stable temperatures, or even modest cooling, for another five years or so. This is due to natural cycles in the oceans that affect air temperature. Nobody ever said that man-made global warming would abolish natural cycles. Or if they did, they were dumb. But greenhouse gases are still accumulating in the atmosphere. Once natural cycles move back to a warming phase, global warming will go into overdrive.

If there is warming, isn’t solar radiation really to blame?

Obviously we would be frozen without the sun. But changes in solar radiation cannot explain what has happened in the past half century. If anything, they would have cooled us since about 1980, during the period of most rapid warming.

And what about water vapour?

Water vapour is a major natural greenhouse gas. Always has been. It didn’t start recent warming, but it roughly doubles the warming caused directly by CO2. That is because if you add CO2 to the air and warm it, then evaporation increases, putting more water vapour into the air, causing further warming.

Didn’t those email leaks from the University of East Anglia prove that global warming scientists suppress opinions they don’t agree with?

Yes. Sometimes. To be fair, how many of us would come up smelling of roses if a selection of our most ill-advised emails were published on the internet? But even so, the emails showed a bunker mentality among some climate researchers, who have a hard time dealing with critics who work outside the "priesthood" of peer-reviewed research. But trying to shut out the critics, however disruptive they may be, is bad for science, which is (and should be) an adversarial process of open debate. Did the researchers succeed in suppressing opinions they disagreed with? No. Did the emails reveal a conspiracy to lie to us about the climate science? I have read most of them. I am a journalist. I love conspiracies. But the answer is no.

Isn’t the whole climate change scare a plan hatched by governments as a justification to hike up taxes?

Hardly. Governments have been dragged kicking and screaming to get serious about climate change. They’d just love it to go away.

Isn’t the suggestion of Lord Stern and others that we divert 1 per cent of the world’s GDP to prevent climate change a colossal misuse of money that could be better spent on improving human life – eradicating killer diseases such as malaria, for instance?

Stern says it will cost us a great deal more in the long run if we don’t tackle climate change. The trouble is that if climate change isn’t halted, it will carry on getting ever worse. Carbon dioxide hangs around in the atmosphere for centuries. So even if current emissions stayed as they are, we won’t stop at 1 or 2 degrees of warming, we will go on up to 4 and 6 and even 8 degrees. How hot can you handle? Ultimately, the only question is whether we stop it, or it stops us.

Copenhagen climate summit: the climate sceptic's Q&A - Telegraph
 

ppgj

Senior Member
Joined
Aug 13, 2009
Messages
2,029
Likes
168
Copenhagen climate summit: global warming 'caused by sun's radiation'
Global warming is caused by radiation from the sun, according to a leading scientist speaking out at an alternative "sceptics' conference" in Copenhagen.


By Louise Gray
Published: 5:10PM GMT 08 Dec 2009


Professor Henrik Svensmark argued that the recent warming period was caused by solar activity. Photo: REUTERS

As the world gathered in the Danish capital for the UN Climate Change Conference, more than 50 scientists, businessmen and lobby groups met to discuss the arguments against man made global warming.

Although the meeting was considerably smaller than the official gathering of 15,000 people meeting down the road, the organisers claimed it could change the course of negotiations.

Professor Henrik Svensmark, a physicist at the Danish National Space Center in Copenhagen, said the recent warming period was caused by solar activity.

He said the last time the world experienced such high temperatures, during the medieval warming period, the Sun and the Earth were in a similar cycle.

Professor Nils-Axel Morner, a geologist from Stockholm University, said sea level rise has also been exaggerated by the “climate alarmists” using computer models.

He said observational data from lake sediments, coast lines and trees show sea levels have remained stable.

Professor Cliff Ollier, another geologist from the University of Western Australia, also said the environmental lobby have got it wrong on ice caps. He said the melting of ice sheets is caused by geothermal activity rather than global surface temperatures.

Professor Ian Plimer, from the University of Adelaide, claimed carbon dioxide from volcanoes rather than humans is driving warming as part of a natural process.

The meeting was organised by Danish group Climate Sense and the lobby group Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT).

Craig Rucker, Executive Director of CFACT, admitted the organisation have taken funding from Exxon Mobil in the past but pointed out that many environmental groups are also receiving funding from major corporations.

Graham Capper of Climate Sense said manmade global warming was a myth and scientists who said otherwise were lying. :

"There are people who know they are lying and do it simply for money and others who think they are doing good," he said. "But they not good scientists."

Lord Monckton, a former adviser to Margaret Thatcher, said he was speaking to delegations from the US and Canada about question marks over the science.

He said a recent poll by the Telegraph, that shows only one in two people accept man made climate change, show people are questioning the consensus being pushed by the UN summit.

“As anybody knows who follows the opinion polls in Britain and Australia and the US, in the last few weeks and months there has been a rapid collapse in the global warming chimera so while we still have our freedom, let us speak out.”

Copenhagen climate summit: global warming 'caused by sun's radiation' - Telegraph
 

woyoulaile

Regular Member
Joined
Oct 11, 2009
Messages
10
Likes
0
U.S. and China trade taunts at summit - - POLITICO.com
U.S. and China trade taunts at summit

Reaching an international agreement to curb the dangerous impacts of global warming largely depends on the two key players at the U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen — China and the United States.


But so far, the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitters seem more interested in taunting than talking.


"I don't want to say the gentleman is ignorant,” Chinese Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei told reporters Friday, referring to top U.S. negotiator Todd Stern. “But I think he lacked common sense or he's extremely irresponsible.”


The minister’s zinger was prompted by comments Stern made at his first press conference here on Wednesday, when he blasted the Chinese for not doing enough to curb their carbon emissions. Stern vowed that the United States would help some developing countries pay for cutting greenhouse gases — but not China.


“I don’t envision public funds - certainly not from the United States – going to China,” Stern said. “That’s just life, and the real world.”


The spat marks an open explosion in a previously more diplomatic stand-off between two of the world’s greatest power – and biggest polluters. Whether the Copenhagen conference results in any kind of political agreement, environmental activists say, largely hinges on the success of America and China reaching a private deal.


On Friday, Stern downplayed the divide between the two nations, which wield enormous influence with other countries at the summit – the United States with rich industrialized nations that built their wealth on fossil fuels, and China with poor developing countries that aspire to do the same.


“Whether we get a deal or not hangs the in balance,” Stern said. “But there is a deal to be had with respect to all the major issues, and we are going to work on it.”


To get there, the two countries must first overcome a complex political stalemate.


China, which blames centuries of U.S. pollution for the current state of the world’s climate, won’t do more unless America agrees to make steeper emissions cuts and pay more money into a kitty that will help developing nations mitigate their emissions.


But the United States won’t commit to deep cuts unless China agrees to “robust” actions, arguing that developing countries will be responsible for roughly 28% of the world’s greenhouse gas pollution by 2020.


“This isn’t a matter of politics or morality or anything else, it’s just math,” Stern said.


One place the arithmetic doesn’t add up is for lawmakers in Congress.


Democrats from manufacturing and coal states fear that U.S. emissions caps, undertaken without similar actions by the Chinese, would send jobs and factories overseas.


Some progress was made last month when Chinese officials promised a “carbon intensity target” that would lower greenhouse gas intensity from between 40 to 45 percent per unit of their gross economic output by 2020.


Climate experts praised the move as an important step towards reaching a global agreement. The cuts would make China responsible for more than 25 percent of the reductions the world needs to limit planetary warming in coming years to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, according the International Energy Agency.


But key Senate democrats remained deeply skeptical that the target would result in an actual reduction of Chinese emissions, versus simply slowing their growth.


"There's a lot of verification we're going to have to see before I'd embrace it and say it's as positive a development as the Chinese would hope we'd say it is," said Sen. Robert Casey (D-Pa.). “I’m a little skeptical.”


Similar Senate opposition stopped the United States from signing on to the Kyoto treaty in 1997, when lawmakers refused to ratify any global accord that exempted developing nations.


Observers say the U.S. has learned the lessons of Kyoto. American negotiators have made China’s agreement for monitoring, verification, and reporting requirements a key part of any deal signed in Copenhagen. But the notoriously secretive communist nation remains reluctant to open its books to the world.


At the same time, China faces its own tricky, domestic dynamics. Its rapidly growing economy depends heavily on Africa nations for natural resources and as trading partners for cheap goods.


China also is part of the G-77 group, a block of more than 130 developing nations that is demanding steeper emissions cuts by the world’s big polluters, and more money from rich nations to help deal with the devastating impacts of climate change.


That leaves the Chinese walking a tightrope between agreeing to the types of cuts Africa and other poor nations are demanding, or potentially angering some key economic partners.


The tough politics lead some analysts here to conclude that no serious progress between the United States and China will happen only when, and if Congress passes a climate bill.


Legislation is likely to include a border tax on Chinese imports if the country fails to take sufficient emission reduction actions by a certain date – a proposal stridently opposed by China. The bill also would create a cap and trade market for greenhouse gas emission, opening up the type of economic opportunities sought out by hungry Chinese entrepreneurs.


Those issues, climate experts say, could finally force serious negotiations between the two behemoths.


“China’s moment of truth comes after the Congress acts, not at Copenhagen,” said Peter Goldmark, director of the Climate and Air program for the Environmental Defense Fund. “That’s when the real negotiation with China starts.”
 

woyoulaile

Regular Member
Joined
Oct 11, 2009
Messages
10
Likes
0
an entertainment party.After having a drink, little quarrel and photo, then go back to have a good sleep respectively.
 
Joined
Feb 16, 2009
Messages
29,799
Likes
48,278
Country flag
This carbon trading or green policy is a clever policy by the Industrialized Western nations to prevent other nations from industrializing to push the green agenda the industrialized nations which are responsible for 99% of the pollution for the last 100 years will punish the new polluters by taxing or making their pollution transferable in a monetary sense thereby capping the economy of the new polluters. This policy is aimed specifically at China and India and to some extent Brazil and Russia, it may not stop these economies but it will be a way to slow their growth using a better environment as the premise.
 

Global Defence

New threads

Articles

Top