The clamour of the times...

...is the blog title under which Emeritus Professor Phillip Stott writes. Stott occupies a prime position in the right hand column on this blog as you may have noticed, by virtue of his observation that global warming "...has become the grand political narrative of the age, replacing Marxism as a dominant force for controlling liberty and human choices." Now, under the heading: Global Warming; the collapse of the grand narrative; Stott compares the turbulent events after Copenhagen as akin to the great triumph in 1989; the collapse of Communism...

...The swing of power to the BASIC group of countries (Brazil, South Africa, India, China) had likewise been signified for some time, but, again, it came with precipitate ease, leaving even the American President, Barack Obama, with no doubts as to where the political agenda on climate change was now heading, namely to the developing world, but especially to the East, and to the Pacific Rim...‘Old Europe’, with its love of meaningless targets and carbon capping, will no longer carry weight, while Obama himself has been straitjacketed by the voters of Massachusetts, by the rust-belt Democrats, by a truculent Congress, by an increasingly-sceptical and disillusioned American public, but, above all, by the financial crisis. Nothing will now be effected that for a single moment curbs economic development, from China to Connecticut, from Africa to Alaska.
And, as ever, capitalism has read the runes, with carbon-trading posts quietly being shed, ‘Green’ jobs sidelined, and even big insurance companies starting to hedge their own bets against the future of the Global Warming Grand Narrative. These rats are leaving the sinking ship far faster than any politician, many of whom are going to be abandoned, left, still clinging to the masts, as the Good Ship ‘Global Warming’ founders on titanic icebergs in the raging oceans of doubt and delusion...I have long predicted, and in public too, that the Copenhagen Conference could prove to be the beginning of the end for the Global Warming Grand Narrative. It appears that I may well have been right, and, indeed, I may have considerably underestimated the speed, and the dramatic nature, of the demise...
...Where this all leaves our politicians and political parties in the UK; where it leaves climate science, scientists more generally, and the Royal Society; where it leaves energy policy; where it leaves the ‘Green’ movement; and, where it leaves our media will have to be topics for many later comments and analyses. For the moment, we must not underestimate the magnitude of the collapse. Academically, it is jaw-dropping to observe. And, the political, economic, and scientific consequences will be profound...more here...

...and we need to give some thought to where this new paradigm leaves N.Z. and of course Australia under its future new AGW sceptical PM; Tony Abbot...

Phillip Stott is obviously angry, and so is James Delingpole, writing in the UK Telegraph...Now suddenly it has all changed utterly. And you know what? I’m in no mood for being magnanimous in victory. I want the lying, cheating, fraudulent scientists prosecuted and fined or imprisoned. I want warmist politicians like Brown and disgusting Milibands booted out and I want Conservative fellow-travellers who are still pushing this green con trick – that’ll be you, David Cameron, you Greg Clark, you Tim Yeo, you John Gummer, to name but four – to be punished at the polls for their culpable idiocy.
For years I’ve been made to feel a pariah for my views on AGW. Chris Booker has had the same experience, as has Richard North, Benny Peiser, Lord Lawson, Philip Stott and those few others of us who recognised early on that the AGW thing stank. Now it’s payback time and I take small satisfaction from seeing so many rats deserting their sinking ship. I don’t want them on my side. I want to see them in hell, reliving scenes from Hieronymus Bosch.
Yeah, maybe it isn’t the Christian way. But screw ‘em. It’s not as though they haven’t all been screwing us for long enough.

Norwich; the WW2 acronym...

...that when added to the end of the lonely serviceman's letter stood for "nickers off ready when I come home." Norwich marketing people would no doubt prefer that bawdy association to the present day smell of corrupt science and impropriety that hangs around Norwich's Climate Research Unit now, a smell that threatens to topple the UN IPCC establishment...

...Norwich's flagship university was at the centre of a new row today after it emerged it broke the law by refusing to hand over its raw data for public scrutiny in the climate change row over stolen emails.The reputation of the University of East Anglia's world renowned climatic research unit (CRU)was shaken to the core last year after emails posted on the internet from researchers including its director Prof Phil Jones appeared to suggest ways of avoiding freedom of information requests together with a “trick” to explain away an apparent fall in global temperatures...The row has reverberated around the world and it emerged today the Norwich university breached the Freedom of Information Act by refusing to comply with requests for data concerning claims by its scientists that man-made emissions were causing global warming.The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) decided the UEA failed in its duties under the act but said it could not prosecute those involved because the complaint was made too late. The revelation comes in the week that Prince Charles visited the university pledging support for the university's work on climate change...Details of the breach emerged the day after John Beddington, the Chief Scientific Adviser, warned there was an urgent need for more honesty about the uncertainty of some predictions. His intervention followed admissions from scientists that the rate of glacial melt in the Himalayas had been grossly exaggerated. In one email, Professor Jones asked a colleague to delete emails relating to the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.....The complaint to the ICO was made by David Holland, a retired engineer from Northampton...Mr Holland said: “There is an apparent Catch-22 here. The prosecution has to be initiated within six months but you have to exhaust the university's complaints procedure before the commission will look at your complaint. That process can take longer than six months.” The row has given a shot in the arm to climate change sceptics ...H/T WuWT, more here... and more, from local blogger PONEKE, here...

The White Flag is waving...

...from the green camp, and I feel a little like my father, who as a lowly member (LAC2) of RAF ground crew in North Africa in WW2, was proud to have "done his bit." It is now becoming very clear to many sceptics and greens alike that the full time whistle on the AGW scare has been blown by the statement from the UK Government’s chief scientific adviser John Beddington that “I don’t think it’s healthy to dismiss proper scepticism...Science grows and improves in the light of criticism. There is a fundamental uncertainty about climate change prediction that can’t be changed.” It is now also very clear that green credibility is in tatters and that the whole "global warming" scam has been motivated by political ideology and greed, not science. I am totally confident that further revelations re the IPCC will reinforce those facts.

However, in light of Beddington's statement above, I visited the warmist blog Hot Topic and had a very interesting exchange with its co-author, journalist Bryan Walker. I am reproducing the exchange here in full, for the sake of posterity...

Mikh January 27, 2010 at 3:06 pm

From today’s London Times, reporting on the UK Government’s chief scientific adviser John Beddington…

“Professor Beddington said that climate scientists should be less hostile to sceptics who questioned man-made global warming. He condemned scientists who refused to publish the data underpinning their reports.He said that public confidence in climate science would be improved if there were more openness about its uncertainties, even if that meant admitting that sceptics had been right on some hotly-disputed issues.He said: “I don’t think it’s healthy to dismiss proper scepticism. Science grows and improves in the light of criticism. There is a fundamental uncertainty about climate change prediction that can’t be changed.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7003622.ece
You may like to drop the terms denialist, flat earther and your other intolerant insults now Bryan and Gareth… I mean, if it’s good enough for the UK’s chief science adviser to admit that the science isn’t settled, and the sceptics may have a point or two to make, do you think a little more manners and a little less intolerance might be called for ?

Bryan Walker January 27, 2010 at 4:13 pm
Mikh, may I suggest you have a look at the Guardian’s report of what Beddington has to say. The Times on Line report is heavily slanted and buttressed with extremely doubtful statements about sea ice, sea level rise and global temperatures. I have no problems with what Beddington is saying as reported in the Guardian. None of the work I read written by scientists is light on caveats. Uncertainties abound and are recognised and often emphasised. His comments are extremely general, and I would have thought unnecessary. I don’t think it’s healthy to dismiss proper scepticism either, but I haven’t come across examples of that happpening. If you come up with a body of scientific work which demonstrates that my alarm at climate change is quite unnecessary I’ll be greatly relieved and happily drop the term denialist.

mikh January 27, 2010 at 4:32 pm
So the Guardian Bryan, presents an accurate account of Beddington’s sentiments, while the Times is “heavily slanted and buttressed…” That “slanting and buttressing” couldn’t happen on the objective pages of the idealogically sound Guardian of course, could it ?
So… even the Guardian swallows the dead rat, and reports Beddington’s key points…”There is a fundamental uncertainty about climate change prediction that can’t be changed…All of these predictions have to be caveated by saying, ‘There’s a level of uncertainty about that’.”
Someone who put that statement forward to you a week or two ago would have been dismissed by you, and the more intemperate Gareth, as a denialist, flat earther and/or crank, and I see you still use the word crank in your most recent post. At the very least Bryan, you could offer your polite, unabusive critics the courtesy of acknowledging their very valid sceptical viewpoint, and perhaps use your derogatory terms such as denialist, flat earther and crank with a little more reservation.

Bryan Walker January 27, 2010 at 5:02 pm
Mikh, I can’t recall ever dismissing anyone for saying there’s a level of uncertainty about climate change prediction. I do use the term denialist for those who deny the science on grounds which lack scientific backing, and make no apology for that. You’ll have to ask Gareth about crank – it’s not a word I use.

mikh January 27, 2010 at 5:06 pm
…well, do you agree now, that the science of global warming/climate change is characterised by a level of “fundamental uncertainty…that can’t be changed…” ?

Bryan Walker January 27, 2010 at 5:48 pm
Mikh, you’re quoting from the Times account of what Beddington said. I agree that a level of uncertainty has to be part of most climate science predictions. If “fundamental uncertainty” means that the whole basis of climate science is shaky of course I don’t agree. I note the Guardian reported him: “While it was unchallengeable that burning fossil fuels released CO2 that warms the Earth, ‘where you can get challenges is on the speed of change’.” That statement seems OK to me. Will it do for you?

mikh January 27, 2010 at 7:31 pm
Bryan, you are very much mistaken, and I’m afraid, are resorting to evasion. Below are direct quotes from The Guardian, and as you noted above… “I have no problems with what Beddington is saying as reported in the Guardian.”…
“I don’t think it’s healthy to dismiss proper scepticism,” he tells the Times newspaper today. “Science grows and improves in the light of criticism. There is a fundamental uncertainty about climate change prediction that can’t be changed.”
Do you now agree Bryan with Beddington’s statement that…
“There is a fundamental uncertainty about climate change prediction that can’t be changed.” ?

Bryan Walker January 27, 2010 at 8:05 pm
Mikh, oops you caught me out, not in deliberate evasion I assure you, but in an overhasty reading of the Guardian article. The answer to your question is still that it depends what he means by fundamental uncertainty. I presume he is not referring to the finding that burning fossil fuels releases CO2 that warms the Earth, which he explicitly says is unchallengeable. So I’m not sure exactly what he means, and I’m not going to be tied to a declaration the import of which is not clear to me.

mikh January 28, 2010 at 6:36 am
All right Bryan, I won’t labour the point, except to say that Beddington’s statements are a total exoneration of the sceptical position, that has always insisted, (despite vigorous and abusive retorts from people like yourself and Gareth), that the science of AGW ISN’T settled.
In addition, the revelations of IPCC overstatement re glacier melt are a further nod towards those of us who have pointed out similar exaggerations in the past. And that, when taken with clear evidence of scientific mishandling and fudging of data, and now alleged financial impropriety by Pachauri, effectively ends the AGW debate.
A victory I think, for the denialist scum.
Can you hear me Gareth ?

See also comment from: Climategate, Bishop Hill, The Australian, Andrew Bolt, Poneke,

...I note too, this morning, that the wonderful offshoot of ALDaily; ClimateDebateDaily, carries as its lead article Beddington's comments from the London Times, referred to above. I believe I was the first to draw that article to the attention of the site moderator. All in all, a very satisfying day's blogging !

STOP PRESS !

...the new UK science czar (what happened to David King ?) has just admitted, in the London Times...The impact of global warming has been exaggerated by some scientists and there is an urgent need for more honest disclosure of the uncertainty of predictions about the rate of climate change, according to the Government’s chief scientific adviser. John Beddington was speaking to The Times in the wake of an admission by the IPCC that it grossly overstated the rate at which Himalayan glaciers were receding.
Professor Beddington said that climate scientists should be less hostile to sceptics who questioned man-made global warming. He condemned scientists who refused to publish the data underpinning their reports. He said that public confidence in climate science would be improved if there were more openness about its uncertainties, even if that meant admitting that sceptics had been right on some hotly-disputed issues.

He said: “I don’t think it’s healthy to dismiss proper scepticism. Science grows and improves in the light of criticism. There is a fundamental uncertainty about climate change prediction that can’t be changed.” ...read the complete article here...

Al Gore: “I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is.” WRONG

Sir John Houghton: first Chairman of the IPCC ..."Unless we speak about disasters, no-one will listen to us..." WRONG...add your favourite alarmist in the comments below...

..and please if you have the time, visit the comments section of the warmist blog Hot Topic, here...

Trust and credibility...

...are qualities we value highly in our advisers. Whether we are dealing with our mechanic, accountant, doctor or lawyer, we pay them on the basis of their reputations. Has greenpeace or the WWF or the IPCC earned our trust ? Do they enjoy wide public esteem ? In this editorial from Spiegel Online, authors Richard Tol, Roger Pielke jnr. and Hans von Storch itemise the fatal shortcomings of the IPCC and call for its reform and the resignation of its chairman, Rajendra Pachauri......

...We have seen a crisis of confidence gathering momentum around climate science in recent weeks. Following the unauthorized release of e-mails from the University of East Anglia, showing climate scientists not at their best, ( cue pathos alarm !) now comes a flurry of attention to errors in official reports and accusations of conflicts of interest. The crisis centers on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), set up by the United Nations Environment Programme and World Meteorological Organization, and its chair, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri. Without significant institutional reform, the IPCC, and climate science as a whole, risks more than just bad press. It risks losing its credibility and trust...Sustaining a climate policy that is effective, acceptable and durable can only be based on sound and impartial advice from institutions that do their science sustainably over many decades. The IPCC was supposed to provide that advice, but its standards have slipped, its procedures have turned out to be insufficient and its credibility has been questioned. Climate policy matters, and so too does the IPCC. Its importance means that reform is needed before the reputation of all of climate science is irreparably damaged...more here...

...while a new broom may be perceived to be sweeping the IPCC clean, it is vital that a new ethos of open, accountable science is also instituted. Pachauri mustn't simply be a fall guy, taking the rap for the decades old pseudo-scientific scare of "global warming". If, as the alarmists say, man made climate change is the "issue of the century" we demand the highest scientific standards involving reports based on transparent and open science to help deal with it. The old tactics of corrupt science, fear and scare stories won't work any more. Without real reform we can be sure another whistleblower waits and another Climategate looms just around the corner...

...AND just who benefits from IPCC lies ?

Why the sceptics are winning...

...well it's always been a foregone conclusion that the green alarmists won't win THIS battle.
Here on the sceptical side of the fence we have had a massive ammount of funding from big oil, the tobacco industry, the Vatican and the estates of George Orwell and Ronald Reagan; none of us have proper day jobs so we have become a highly organised subversive cadre schooled in all the black arts of propaganda and disinformation; we have the backing of all the influential politicians, insurance companies, pop stars, actresses and Hollywood moguls, and in addition to all that - we have a total stranglehold on the major organs of the main stream media, so that we can limit green scare stories about climate change...

This anyway, is (my version of) the view of the green apologist Prof. Andy Pitman co-director of the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales. As my friend at Australian Climate Madness observes, the good professor ignores the obvious reason sceptics are winning the climate change battle; that the so called "consensus" science of the IPCC... is riddled with errors, fudged data and spin, (and) is hugely politicised...the IPCC is starting to resemble a bunch of losers who will be so discredited that they won't be able to show their faces in polite society for decades...more from ACM here...

...AND from Dr Pachauri himself..."All of this is very bad timing, it is very unfortunate," he said on Saturday "...Climate sceptics have seized upon the errors as evidence the IPCC is biased or unreliable. At this point in time, things don't look very good at all. They look very bleak," Pachauri said about the status of climate talks...

...AND from Andrew Bolt of the Sun Herald...When wild and baseless scares are pushed by a man who makes serious money from them, it’s time to call in the auditors. Pachauri may be innocent of any wrong doing, but only a fool would be blind to the danger of corruption when so many millions are being thrown at pushers of the warming faith.
Question: could the Nobel Prize be withdrawn from the IPCC if more such revelations come to light?

Cheats, crooks and frauds, and the silence in court...

...is deafening. Allegations of fraud dominate the field of climate science these days. In the USA lawyers are permanently poised to leap into lawsuits. Climate sceptics however, have over the last 18 months described high profile warmists as liars, crooks and frauds. (See this example.) No lawsuits have been presented against these specific allegations of scientific dishonesty. Today's article from The American Thinker details new allegations of fraud at two of the USA's leading scientific institutions...

...the blatant corruption exposed at Britain’s premiere climate institute was not contained within the nation’s borders. Just months after the Climategate scandal broke, a new study has uncovered compelling evidence that our government’s (USA) principal climate centers have also been manipulating worldwide temperature data in order to fraudulently advance the global warming political agenda...Not only does the preliminary report [PDF] indict a broader network of conspirators, but it also challenges the very mechanism by which global temperatures are measured, published, and historically ranked...the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) stands accused by the two researchers of strategically deleting cherry-picked, cooler-reporting weather observation stations from the temperature data it provides the world through its National Climatic Data Center (NCDC). D’Aleo explained to show host and Weather Channel founder John Coleman that while the Hadley Center in the U.K. has been the subject of recent scrutiny, “[w]e think NOAA is complicit, if not the real ground zero for the issue.”
And their primary accomplices are the scientists at GISS, who put the altered data through an even more biased regimen of alterations, including intentionally replacing the dropped NOAA readings with those of stations located in much warmer locales...we’d be nuts were we to surrender our freedoms, our economic growth, and even our simplest comforts to duplicitous zealots before checking and double-checking the work of the prophets predicting our doom should we refuse...more here...

...I wonder if the silence in court is due to articles such as THIS from today's Times of London...

"UN wrongly linked global warming to natural disasters..."

Food for weekend thought...

...where are the fathers ? And does it matter, and does anyone care ? If it does matter, and if an absent Dad equals more youth crime (and our statisticians tell us it does) then we have a chance to improve our standard of living and our social circumstances by developing political policies and supporting political parties that encourage stable families. And which party if any, actually supports and promotes family stability ? Which party and whose ideology does the reverse ? H/T David Thompson...

...From Heather MacDonald in City Journal ...The official silence about illegitimacy and its relation to youth violence remains as carefully preserved in today’s Chicago as it was during Obama’s organizing time there. A fleeting reference to “parental” responsibility for children is allowed, before the speaker quickly moves on to society’s more important role... Press coverage of teen shootings may mention a participant’s mother, but the shooter and victim may as well be the product of a virgin birth, for all the media’s curiosity about where their fathers are. I asked John Paul Jones of Obama’s old Alinskyite outfit, the Developing Communities Project, if anyone ever tries to track down the father of a teen accused of a shooting. The question threw him. “Does anyone ever ask: ‘Where are the fathers?"... A brief silence. “That’s a good point.”

From the comments..."Children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of school and 20 times more likely to end up in prison."
Is having a father the new "white privilege"?
The problem is it's easier to win votes with more public spending and more social programs even if that won't fix family breakdown. Individual responsibility and changing the culture is a lot harder to sell but without it nothing will really improve".

...AND relevant to the issue...The Domestic Violence Industry’s War on Men
...we can learn from looking at the black community. One lie that we hear is that black boys are spoiled and loved too much. The truth is, many of these boys are unloved by their single mothers. Without the father, the mother abuses her power over the boy. One day she may be almost seductive and tell him he is her little man. The next day she tells him he is no good. When the father is there, the mother’s tremendous power is checked. Often the boy stands for the men that disappointed the mother. There is a reason why these boys cannot wait to leave home and hang out with gangs. Home is female dominated... I predict we will see the same kind of thing happening with white males.
Brian Tamaki and Destiny Church members...any comment ?

Scott Brown, the new kid on the block...and the crisis in the green church...

...this bloke will make a name for himself if he keeps this up...

"...And let me say this, with respect to those who wish to harm us, I believe that our Constitution and laws exist to protect this nation, they do not grant rights and privileges to enemies in wartime. In dealing with terrorists, our tax dollars should pay for weapons to stop them, not lawyers to defend them." H/T Michael Phillips at ProCommerce...

...and, on December 17 of last year, while campaigning for the Massachusetts Senate seat, the Boston Globe published Scott Brown's answer to the question, “Do you think that whole global warming thing is a big fraud?’’
“It’s interesting. I think the globe is always heating and cooling,’’ he said. “It’s a natural way of ebb and flow. The thing that concerns me lately is some of the information I’ve heard about potential tampering with some of the information.’’...“I just want to make sure if in fact . . . the earth is heating up, that we have accurate information, and it’s unbiased by scientists with no agenda. Once that’s done, then I think we can really move forward with a good plan.’’ Al Gore, Michael Mann, et al, meet Scott Brown.

"...In Scott Brown we have an irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary, ex-nude model, teabagging supporter of violence against woman (sic)." Keith Olbermann, MSNBC host. To which Mark Steyn responded, under the heading "Homophobic Nude Teabaggers on the March":
"That's certainly why I'm supporting him. But who knew there were so many of us?" H/T Samizdata.

...and, as if Climategate and failure at Copenhagen wasn't enough of a disaster for the left, here's Mr. Brown. His election will force the red greens of the US environmental movement into further agonised debate and disarray. Already, with the debacle of 2009 weighing heavily on their backs they are facing huge policy changes and cultural contradictions; the most obvious being their attitude to nuclear energy. For decades their mantra has been that...“The biggest threat to our environment is global climate disruption, and the greatest problem in that context is America's energy use and the policies that undergird it.” (James Speth "Red Sky at Morning: America and the Global Environmental Crisis"). Green activists, and James Speth in particular, have been instrumental in curtailing the US nuclear energy programme. Speth himself filed a crucial 1973 lawsuit against a government plan to commercialize fast breeders. And, as Ronald Bailey of Reason Magazine observes...Fast breeders are nuclear power plants that can produce more fuel... than they use. They can also produce electricity by burning up highly radioactive nuclear waste and the plutonium removed from nuclear weapons. On top of that, the radioactive waste that fast breeders generate after their fuel is recycled decays after just a few hundred years instead of the tens of thousands of years it takes for the waste from conventional reactors to decay. Plus, since fast breeders produce more fuel than they use, there's no need to mine additional uranium. And finally, new fuel processing technologies have largely allayed concerns that the plutonium produced by fast reactors could be diverted and used to produce nuclear weapons. In other words, fast breeders could be the ultimate in renewable energy...So here’s the really aggravating part of Speth's self-congratulation about stopping the commercialization of breeder reactors: In an alternative universe where 200 fast breeders come online, U.S. carbon dioxide emissions would be about a third lower than they currently are... Speth, and thousands like him are now awake to the fact that the world has moved on past the glory days of green self indulgent righteousness. Green hypocrisy and green cultural contradictions are now dragging them down towards irrelevancy....more here...

Is the emergency really over ? and are we all going to die ?

...well yes and yes. The dire warnings of famine, floods and inundations, species extinction and civil wars seemed to have lessened somewhat since the alarmists had a cold bath at Copenhagen, and the oranges froze on the trees in Florida. As the rhetoric cools so public attention and concern about devastation and climate change quietly fades away. It just remains now for the alarmists to readjust their rhetoric and their tactics. The first thing that's very clear is that democratic checks and balances have worked (so far) to help prevent draconian and useless carbon regulatory policies. And, with the help of another Republican vote in the Senate (Scott Brown, Massachusetts) the US rush to commit economic suicide may be finally thwarted. However, the interview below shows that although the words have changed, the tune is just the same. Former chief science advisor to the UK government David King once said that last month’s talks in Copenhagen would be the “last chance saloon” for tackling climate change. What does he think now ? and where does he see the negotiations going ?

A sympathetic warmist Olive Heffernan reports.... in your book The Hot Topic, you said that Copenhagen was the “last chance saloon” for avoiding dangerous climate change. Is that still your view? I don’t think the protocol that I would like to see replace Kyoto could possibly have emerged at Copenhagen. The point when I understood that Copenhagen couldn’t deliver on this was when the US cap-and-trade bill got watered down and took a long time going through Congress. And it has yet to be considered by the Senate. Everything, in my view, hinged around the ability of President Obama to deliver at Copenhagen. He couldn’t because he is hostage to his Senate. So I wasn’t expecting any other decision precisely because of [that] position.

What should we be hoping for from the UN conference in Mexico? I’m all for a simplification and a re-examination of the Kyoto Protocol. Global trade is the ultimate objective. We need a single scheme with a single price on carbon dioxide. Gordon Brown’s idea of creating a flow of money of US$100 billion a year by 2020 to poor nations is micromanaging a process that would be much better managed through a trading scheme. I think it’s unrealistic to expect to have cap and trade [among] all developed nations by 2012, but I think this will be more feasible by 2020.
In the meantime I’m fairly certain that we will have a set of parallel processes, with the US, the EU and [others] having their own cap-and-trade systems. I’m very keen to see the EU Emissions Trading Scheme invite some African countries into it, if their emissions are below two tonnes of carbon dioxide per person per annum and they can stay below two tonnes.

How important is US domestic legislation for an international treaty? The US president is creating two approaches to managing the CO2 problem. The alternative to a cap-and-trade bill is for the president to turn to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and regulate CO2 as a pollutant. Much more stringent measures would come through the EPA, and that’s a threat being held over the Senate. For a bill to pass, it has to happen before the November election; after that Obama will face real challenges in getting it through. And there are attempts to block the EPA regulation. The worst-case scenario is that the rest of the world goes it alone without the US.

You gave evidence last week to the UK government on geoengineering. To what extent should we be investigating the potential of geoengineering? I think the focus of research ought to be defossilizing the economy, but we may need to fall back on geoengineering. In terms of regulation, this would need to be addressed at a G20-level meeting, and it’s of such importance that it should be raised to that level. For now, we need to move rapidly towards an international interim ban on the use of aerosols in the atmosphere for geoengineering. Once we’ve opened the door to field trials, we’ll be slipping into larger-scale operations. This is something that needs to be put in the back drawer for 30 years...more here...

I always knew it. UK Tories are revolting...

...the UK Conservatives are discarding their cardigans, slippers and pipes in exchange for more radical accessories. While they aren't all scrambling to put on their chic black berets, they are displaying an independance of thought re climate change policies. The humiliating admission from the arch warmist propagandist cheerleaders at New Scientist (right) may well have something to do with it. According to a well placed UK source...

“The new generation of Conservative MPs due to take power after the election does not share [Conservative Party leader] David Cameron’s professed commitment to tackling climate change, a survey being published this week suggests.
“Reducing Britain’s carbon footprint” was rated as the lowest priority, out of 19 policies, by 144 Conservative candidates responding to the survey of the 240 most winnable Tory target seats... The results of the survey … suggest a gap might be opening up between the leadership and rank-and-file MPs on the issue. Mr Cameron is under pressure to drop pledges such as his commitment to increasing green taxes, as the right questions the rationale for taking unilateral action to combat global warming.
“There’s almost no support among centre-right think-tanks for all this climate change … ,” Tim Montgomerie, editor of Conservativehome, told the Financial Times.
“I’m confident the sceptics are going to win,” Mr Montgomerie said. “It’s for Cameron to decide how he’s going to get out of this – he’s lost the battle already.”
The survey reflects a belief that the leadership should rethink its stance on green issues …”

Of course greenpeace liars and Friends of the Earth are mortified...H/T's Jas.D. and Heliogenic...

...and the redoubtable UK blogger Bishop Hill takes the NZ Herald to task...

Glenn McGregor is a climatologist who is best known to sceptics from his appearances in the Climategate emails where Hockey Team members explain that he is willing to delay sceptic papers and pick "suitable reviewers" for warmist ones, in order to make life difficult for those who might question the global warming hypothesis.
McGregor made a brief appearance in the New Zealand Herald over the weekend, where he is quoted in an article about Kiwis' lack of confidence in global warming science:

"Dr McGregor said if climatologists explained their research processes better, they might be able to avoid popular criticisms, such as recent accusations of scientists "fiddling" with climate records."When people don't understand the process they just pick up on, 'oh they've adjusted the (climate) record'," he said. "That probably creates a lot of mistrust."

Professor McGregor has been caught red-handed and nobody is going to be fooled by an argument that they are too stupid to understand.
When in a hole, one is normally best advised to stop digging.

...AND talking about green screw ups, how's this for green pieces ?

The Pacific Century is underway...

...and was introduced onto the world stage in Copenhagen, accompanied by international rejection of the UN/EU'S climate policies. The antiquated and alarmist scare policies of the bureaucratic green left have been discredited and the hope for green resurgence and triumph at the next climate gabfest in Mexico this year looks very forlorn...

...The failure of the UN climate summit in Copenhagen is a historical watershed that marks the beginning of the end of climate hysteria...The extent of the debacle and the shift in the balance of geopolitical power was demonstrated by the fact that the final accord was made without the participation of the European Union. The exclusion of Europe is a remarkable symbol of the EU’s growing loss of influence, a green bureaucracy that was not even asked whether they agreed with the non-binding declaration of China, India and the USA. Although the Copenhagen conference was held in a European capital, the negotiations and the final result of the conference were totally outside European involvement...The failed climate summit caused a tectonic shift in international relations and left behind a new political landscape. After Copenhagen, green Europe looks rather antiquated and the rest of the world looks totally different...a concrete timescale for the curtailing of global CO2 emissions, not to mention the reduction of the CO2 emissions, has been kicked into the long grass. The green dream of industrial de-carbonisation has been postponed indefinitely...The developing nations are not stupid. They have ensnared the West in a climate trap that green politicians set for themselves...in the Western world, the general climate hysteria shows a marked cooling. If recent opinion polls are to be believed, the obsession with climate change, which was a common feature during much of the 1980s and 90s no longer exists. In its place, climate fatigue is spreading... the biggest losers of the Copenhagen fiasco appear to be climate science and the scientific establishment who, with a very few distinguished exceptions, have promoted unmitigated climate alarm and hysteria. It confirms beyond doubt that most governments have lost trust in the advice given by climate alarmists and the IPCC...Climate science too is facing a crisis of credibility. It is confronted by growing doubt and criticism, not in the least as a result of the so-called Climategate scandal, the revelations about the behind-the-scene shenanigans by leading climate researchers...In order for a new climate realism to be successful, governments and government agencies should start, at last, to engage and involve critics of conventional climate politics. Instead of continuing to follow the futile approaches and failed policies promoted by climate alarmists for far too long, governments would be well advised to be introduce more balanced and more transparent assessments of climate science and policy research...more here...

But southward (Poms and Yanks) look, the land is bright...

...students of international affairs who like to speculate about power shifts and the end of empires tend to focus on economic and ideological issues and their reflections are often written in hindsight as a post mortem. As a proud Kiwi Pom, I have posted before that this part of the world will rise to a become a major player on the world scene. We (that is Australia and NZ) are blessed by our geography and by the fact that we were colonised by a benevolent power whose institutions we have gratefully accepted and exploited.

Now, with the benefit of distance from our so called mother country we can see for ourselves the trail ahead clearly, and if we are clever enough we can avoid the pitfalls and minefields that continue to paralyse and degrade other nations. As an example see today's posting from Cranmer : Nick Clegg (Leader of the UK opposition Liberal Democrats) : Faith schools must teach that homosexuality is 'normal and harmless'...

However, our good mates over the ditch in Australia are likely to be the first western nation who will choose their next Prime Minister (above) on the basis of his attitude towards climate change. In this respect Australia will lead the world, and the level of intense debate will have international repercussions. Writing this morning in the WSJ, Tom Switzer observes...

...When I say the climate is changing, I do not mean, as many people do, that man-made global warming is destroying Planet Earth. I mean that the politics of climate change is changing rapidly all over the globe. Al Gore's moment has come and gone.
In the United States, Democrats, nervously facing midterm elections, are calling on President Obama to jettison the cap-and-trade bills before the Senate. In Canada, the emissions-trading scheme—another term for cap-and-trade—is stalled in legislative limbo. In Britain, Tories are coming out against David Cameron's green stance. In the European Union, cap-and-trade has been the victim of fraudulent traders and the carbon price has more than halved to $18.50 per ton. In France, the Constitutional Council has blocked President Nicolas Sarkozy's tax on carbon emissions that was set to take effect in the New Year.
In Copenhagen, meanwhile, the United Nations' climate-change summit went up in smoke. And in Mexico City later this year hopes for any verifiable, enforceable and legally binding agreement to reduce greenhouse gases—and to bring in developing nations such as China and India that were, insanely, omitted from the Kyoto protocol in 1997—are a chimera... Nowhere is the changing climate more evident than in Australia...The center-right Liberal-led opposition, moreover, is now led by Tony Abbott, a culture warrior who has described man-made global warming in language unfit to print in a family newspaper and cap-and-trade as "a great big tax to create a great big slush fund to provide politicized handouts, run by a giant bureaucracy."Australia's debate has entered a new phase, one that goes beyond the religious fervor and feel-good gestures that had held sway all too often...more here...

Climategate, the scientific scandal of our age...

...many of us are appalled by the widespread acceptance of medical quackery, are awfully insulted by the unquestioning acceptance by the MSM of psychic charlatans, aura readers and other con artists, and have never been abducted and/or probed by alien beings or even seen a UFO. Us poor unfortunates are prone to scepticism and questioning, and have always therefore been wary of the green left campaign to destroy capitalism and the lies and media collusion that sustains their hypocrisy. The debunking of the green left climate change scare after the Climategate expose continues under its own accelerating momentum. Climategate offers the most significant evidence to date that the outrageous dogmatic certainty of Al Gore and others that the science explaining catastrophic climate change is settled is pure political hogwash. A very cursory examination of the issue reveals that much is still to be determined; the interaction of clouds and cosmic rays for example, the role of the oceans, and the influence and/or absence of sunspots. Amidst all this uncertainty, many of our most lauded scientists and brightest brains kept their doubts to themselves. In this respect alone they colluded with the hypocritical greens, displayed humble obedience to their paymasters and great disdain for their fellow citizens.

Of all the quotes from the leaked Climategate emails, the comments and plaintive questions from fellow Kiwi Kevin E. Trenberth (right) carry the most weight for me. Trenberth is one of the major figures within international climate science circles. He is head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research. He was a lead author of the 2001 and 2007 IPCC Scientific Assessment of Climate Change and serves on the Scientific Steering Group for the Climate Variability and Predictability program. In addition, he serves on the Joint Scientific Committee of the World Climate Research Programme .He was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand.

Wearing his 4 star scientific general's hat Trenberth stands in the ranks of our best and brightest, aware since the third form in Christchurch of the most fundamental law of physics; that energy cannot be created or destroyed; it can only be transformed or transferred. He would always know that if the IPCC climate models do not even satisfy this elementary law, then it is questionable whether they are useful for anything at all. Trenberth openly admits that there are 3 sets of vital data that are "wanting" before they can understand how the climate functions...he writes on October 14th 2009...

"We are not close to balancing the energy budget. The fact that we cannot account for what is happening in the climate system makes any consideration of geoengineering quite hopeless, as we will never be able to tell if it is successful or not! It is a travesty..."
"Saying it is natural variability is not an explanation. What are the physical processes? Where did the heat go? …
"But the resulting evaporative cooling means the heat goes into atmosphere and should be radiated to space: so we should be able to track it with sky temperature data. That data is unfortunately wanting, and so too are the cloud data. The ocean data are also lacking, although some of that may be related to the ocean current changes, and burying heat at depth, where it is not picked up. If it is sequestered at depth then it comes back to haunt us later, and so we should know about it. "

These admissions and doubts by Trenberth seem to make him one of the most human of all the Climategate figures. After all these years of research he is saying, we still don't have a clue where all the energy is going. Without this knowledge, how can he or anyone else construct and obey computer models that will predict our climate destiny ? Unfortunately of course, Trenberth followed the lead of fellow catastrophist Dr Stephen Schneider instead who in 1989 advised "Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective,and being honest."

...For another stunning timeline summary of the most significant Climategate revelations, click here...

...and OffTopic, but unquestionably the quote of the day, courtesy and H/T Evan C., from Labour MP Kelvin Davis, responding to arch fool and racist nincompoop Hone Harawira...

"We (Maori) are generally dumber, sicker, poorer, more pissed, drugged and pregnant than any other group of people in New Zealand. We know the problem, but what's the solution? Well let's repeal the Foreshore and Seabed and put the F&S into Maori title. We can be dumber, sicker,poorer, more pissed, drugged and pregnant at the beach. That'll make all the difference."

Dolts of the day. Now fighting among themselves...

...further to yesterday's post. The realities of Climategate, international stasis at Copenhagen together with a bitterly cold northern winter, are forcing climate scientists into dispute. Firstly from WuWT, uncomfortable news for the warmists that... the release of embarrassingly candid emails from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia has intensified, if not vindicated, suspicions that scientific misconduct has played a significant role in fueling alarmism over supposed catastrophic manmade global warming. Just days after news broke about what has been dubbed “Climategate,” Penn State University (PSU) announced that it would investigate the conduct of Michael Mann, a professor in PSU’s Department of Meteorology and a prominent figure in the Climategate emails... more, from WuWT here...

And this from the UK Daily Mail... The bitter winter afflicting much of the Northern Hemisphere is only the start of a global trend towards cooler weather that is likely to last for 20 or 30 years, say some of the world’s most eminent climate scientists...Professor Mojib Latif, a leading member of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) told The Mail on Sunday: ‘A significant share of the warming we saw from 1980 to 2000 and at earlier periods in the 20th Century was due to these (oceanic) cycles – perhaps as much as 50 per cent. 'They have now gone into reverse, so winters like this one will become much more likely... Prof Latif and Prof Anastasios Tsonis, head of the University of Wisconsin Atmospheric Sciences Group are not climate change ‘deniers’. There is...a measure of additional ‘background’ warming due to human activity and greenhouse gases that runs across the MDO cycles. 'This isn't just a blip. We can expect colder winters for quite a while' But he added: ‘I do not believe in catastrophe theories. Man-made warming is balanced by the natural cycles, and I do not trust the computer models which state that if CO2 reaches a particular level then temperatures and sea levels will rise by a given amount...

All of this of course is upsetting the diehards, among them Dr David Viner, (left) who in March 2000 as a member of the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit, the body now being investigated over Climategate said that within a few years snowfall would become ‘a very rare and exciting event’ in Britain, and that ‘children just aren’t going to know what snow is’.
Now promoted to head a British Council programme with an annual £10 million budget that raises awareness of global warming among young people abroad, Dr Viner last week said he still stood by that prediction: "We’ve had three weeks of relatively cold weather, and that doesn’t change anything. This winter is just a little cooler than average, and I still think that snow will become an increasingly rare event". The longer the cold spell lasts, the harder it may be to persuade the public of that assertion...

Green faces have become permanently red...

...with shame and embarassment as news of record snow falls, global cooling and IPCC scandal continues to dominate the headlines. (See the Sunday Express below.) Among the reddest must be Dr David Viner's (see box left) and red faces must abound too on the Nobel prize committee, (will winning the the Nobel Prize ever mean what it used to ?) after their accolades last year to Al Gore and Rajendra K. Pachauri, chairman of UN's Nobel Peace Prize-winning IPCC. Dr Pachauri is under investigation in India regarding possible financial misdealings. However, today's post is from the UK Daily Mail, and will resonate with its freezing readers...

...Britain's big freeze is the start of a worldwide trend towards colder weather that seriously challenges global warming theories, eminent scientists claimed yesterday. The world has entered a 'cold mode' which is likely to bring a global dip in temperatures which will last for 20 to 30 years, they say. The predictions are based on an analysis of natural cycles in water temperatures in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans... Some experts believe these cycles - and not human pollution - can explain all the major changes in world temperatures If true, the research challenges the science behind climate change theories, and calls into question the political measures to halt global warming.
According to the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado, the warming of the Earth since 1900 is due to natural oceanic cycles, and not man-made greenhouse gases. It occurred because the world was in a 'warm mode' and would have happened regardless of mankind's rising carbon dioxide production And now oceanic cycles have switched to a 'cold mode', where data shows that the amount of Arctic summer sea ice has increased by more than a quarter since 2007.
The research has been carried out by eminent climate scientists, including Professor Mojib Latif. He is a leading member of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He and his colleagues predicted the cooling trend in a 2008 paper, and warned of it again at an IPCC conference in Geneva in September. Working at the prestigious Leibniz Institute in Kiel University in Germany, he has developed methods for measuring ocean temperatures 3,000ft under the surface, where the cooling and warming cycles start.
For Europe, the crucial factor is the temperature in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean. He said such ocean cycles - known as multi-decadal oscillations or MDOs - could account for up to half of the rise in global warming in recent years. Professor Latif said: "A significant share of the warming we saw from 1980 to 2000 and at earlier periods in the 20th century was due to these cycles - as much as 50 per cent. 'They have now gone into reverse, so winters like this one will become much more likely. All this may well last two decades or longer. 'The extreme retreats that we have seen in glaciers and sea ice will come to a halt. For the time being, global warming has paused, and there may well be some cooling ...more here... more detail from the good professor in the Guardian, here...

The mask of the beast is slipping...

...and it is becoming evermore apparent that an inconvenient democracy continues to thwart the one world utopians of the green left. After the failure at Copenhagen the alarmists are now openly stating that we, the unconvinced, unconcerned and unfrightened sceptical general public need to be controlled and led by authoritarian dictatorship. Doubters such as ourselves have recognised the face behind the green mask long ago. Now we have confirmation of the truth; that fear, overstatement, misrepresentation and lies have all been employed by the green left in an attempt to herd us into the collective fold where we can be told to lie down and accept scientific "consensus". As Brendon O'Neill has observed in Spiked...It’s almost as if one of the pious nuns who taught me at school, and who frequently spouted (her) prejudices, suddenly happened upon scientific evidence to back up her worldview. Well, I say to the new green hectors what I often dreamt of saying to that nun, but never did: F*** off.
...As we enter 2010 we are moving into new territory and new tactics from the green left. After Climategate the myth of an untarnished, unbiased pure scientific consensus over AGW has vanished, and we see the totally unmasked face of the adversary. (And it looks remarkably like Helen's.) However misshapen, this new face and openess from the green left is to be welcomed...This, from Roger Pielke jnr, H/T Climate Change Daily...


...Leading climate scientists insist that humanity is at a crossroads. A continuation of present economic and political trends leads to disaster if not collapse. To create a globally sustainable way of life, we immediately need in the words of German climate scientist Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, a "great transformation." What exactly is meant by the statement is vague. Part, if not the heart of this great transformation is in the eyes of some climate scientists as well as other scientists part of the great debate about climate change a new political regime and forms of governance: "We need an authoritarian form of government in order to implement the scientific consensus on greenhouse gas emissions" according to the Australian scholars David Shearman and Joseph Wayne Smith their book The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy. The well-known climate researcher James Hansen adds resignedly and frustrated as well as vaguely, "the democratic process does not work". In The Vanishing Face of Gaia, James Lovelock emphasizes that we need to abandon democracy in order to meet the challenges of climate change head on. We are in a state of war. In order to pull the world out of its state of lethargy, the equivalent of a global warming "nothing but blood, toil, tears and sweat" speech is urgently needed...more from Roger Pielke Jnr here...

...and note this, from the archives of arch alarmist George Monbiot of the Guardian, "Black Shirts in Green Trousers"...here...

From comments...I might be more inclined to pay attention to climate scientists if they could learn to site and calibrate their thermometers properly. Or adopted the scientific method (in re: transparency and replication). I'd be more inclined to listen to their conclusions, if their use of computer models didn't violate the principles of forecasting. And if the studies they hype the most (Mann, Rahmstorf, Steig, Briffa, et al) didn't turn out later to be large piles of gobsmackingly inept crap. And it might help their credibility a bit, if their key datasets were not amateurish messes of code, bereft of quality control, manipulated in secret, and maintained by doctrinaire extremists...more here...

Global warming ? don't talk bollocks !

...2009 was another year of global cooling, which saw numerous low temperature and high snowfall records smashed.

"Some say the world will end in fire; Some say in ice.

From what I've tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great, and would suffice." Robert Frost, American Poet

The Dutch canals froze over for the first time in 12 years, record cold came to Al Gore's home town and ironically a blizzard dumped snow on the Copenhagen convention where world leaders met to try and stop global warming. It was so cold that even the BBC was forced to ask, what happened to global warming? As Climategate would reveal, IPCC scientists had been hard at work hiding evidence of global cooling. Yet the observational evidence cannot be ignored...more from Popular Technology.net here... and this dramatic image (click to enlarge) from Nasa's Terra satellite over the UK on 7th January...

...and this, with thanks from Alan Caruba...Considering the thousands of absurd claims made about the discredited fraud of “global warming”, a recent National Geographic News story, “North Magnetic Pole Moving East Due to Core Flux”, struck me as potentially far more significant.“Earth’s north magnetic pole is racing toward Russia at almost 40 miles a year due to magnetic changes in the planet’s core, new research says.” The article by Richard A. Lovett, noted that “The core is too deep for scientists to directly detect its magnetic field, but researchers can infer the field’s movements by tracking how Earth’s magnetic field has been changing at the surface and in space.”Most people are familiar with magnetic north because that is where compass needles actually point. It is not the same as the North Pole and, currently, magnetic north is close to Canada’s Ellesmere Island on the edge of the Arctic. The movement has been erratic since first located by scientists in 1831. In 1904, it began to shift northeastward at about nine miles per year. In 1989, it sped up a bit and is now “galloping toward Siberia.”If I hadn’t read Robert W. Felix’s latest book, “Magnetic Reversals and Evolutionary Leaps”, I frankly would have paid little attention to the news, but I had to pause because Felix asks, “Could this movement be the beginning of the next reversal?...more about this intriguing possibility here...

...and "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't."- Kevin Trenberth, Lead Author IPCC (2001, 2007)

A modern day obscenity...or how Britain is f***ed...

...from the great Guido Fawkes, his calm reflection on the wisdom of the welfare state and the modern marvel that is British multiculturism...

...Here is another evidence-based chart you won’t see elsewhere; it shows how much taxpayers are forced to give to Anjem Choudary – the extremist cleric who wants to lead a protest march through Wootton Bassett. He claims £25,740 in benefits to subsidise his hate preaching. Guido questions how he can be seeking work when he spends all his time rabble rousing in broadcast studios and on demonstrations. In contrast a frontline soldier, fighting Choudary’s taliban allies in Afghanistan, takes home £17,004 for risking his life. If that private is killed in combat, his widow and children would have to live on a pension less than Choudary gets.
Why are British taxpayers paying their enemies more than their soldiers? Is Choudary really actively seeking work? The evidence suggests he has other priorities – so stop his benefits…more here...as fellow blogger Butch observes ISLAMONAUSEA...

What the hell is going on in Europe ? And is the situation any better here ? Where is there any political will to stand up to radical Islamists and the excesses of the welfare state and declare that enough is enough ? In 1988 when Salman Rushdie had a fatwa issued against him after publication of The Satanic Verses, Western intellectuals rallied to his side. However, when the Mohammed cartoons appeared in Danish newspapers 3 years ago, the cry from the liberal left, typified by France's Jacques Chirac was "anything that could offend the faith of others, especially religious beliefs, must be avoided." Although of course, that didn't apply to anti-Vatican sentiment, or to any statement at all from "progressive" gay or lesbian Anglicans. Where is there any political will to stop this slow suicide of the West ? Perhaps the blogosphere may hasten reform as the MSM lose credibility and support. Everyone, particularly those within the media, should repeat the truth expressed by Rowan Atkinson (Mr Bean), who declared that "the right to offend is far more important than any right not to be offended." More on this here...

SPIKED...right on the nail...

...while the left attempt to reclaim scientific legitimacy after the Climategate expose, and while they agonise over their failure to achieve victory in Copenhagen, commentators are relishing the passions of the conflict, and attempting to predict the way ahead. At the start of 2010 Ben Pile, writing in Spiked, adds his analysis...

...Copenhagen’s failure is the culmination of long-standing political incoherence. The government, opposition parties, special climate committees, NGOs, and activists, far from being united by their desire to save the world, only managed to deepen their differences. The government and its opposition use environmental crisis to rescue themselves from their own crisis of legitimacy. The institutions they create only serve to increase the distance between them, the public and the protesters. Sparse protest movements attract attention through absurd stunts, rather than by demonstrating their weight of numbers, further isolating themselves. One-time development NGOs abandon the notion of progress, to concentrate on mere ‘sustainability’, and through ill-conceived ideas such as ‘environmental justice’ and ‘climate poverty’, turn their campaigns against development itself...
The climate change camp cannot even agree on the reason for failure. Miliband and Brown accused China of derailing Copenhagen...Prescott chose to blame the USA, while complaining about climate activist Mark Lynas’ blaming China. As per usual Lynas’s comrade, George Monbiot, laid the blame squarely at the feet of Barack Obama, who was too busy representing ‘vested interests’ to save the planet...It was neither China nor the USA, said Martin Kohr, journalist and development economist; it was Denmark. The ‘Danish Text’ had proposed privileging industrialised countries over the developing world, causing the group representing them to walk out of the conference.
It seems that championing the climate cause precludes self-reflection. The climate crisis is but a proxy object for a much deeper crisis experienced by today’s politicians, who respond by seeking legitimacy through the environmental agenda. Defunct moral compasses point North towards melting ice caps and South towards ‘climate poverty’. But the crisis exists at home. Vacuity drives environmentalism’s ascendency, and the ever increasing incoherence of environmental politics has driven the search for authority beyond borders and above democratic politics and toward supranational institutions. The coming together of all those gripped by such crises in Copenhagen was a clumsy and blind attempt to turn disunity into something cohesive, and to turn aimlessness into direction. No wonder it failed; it was dead before it was even conceived...more here...