PrintDecember 14, 2009
Climategate TKO in Copenhagen?
Will "cooler heads" prevail in Copenhagen? Have the scientists who have been working overtime in the past two weeks to make "climate sense" out of the global warming nonsense carried the day? Or is the idea of cutting back drastically on industrial production as we know it and transferring billions of dollars from rich nations to poor nations as "reparations" for the "sins" of carbon emissions and drowning polar bears simply so stupid that it is finally failing for lack of merit? Is global warming getting a technical knockout in Copenhagen?
The good guys may have won. Deep breaths, everyone. We won't know for sure until Friday.
Today's London Times carries what might eventually be considered the most important headline in the world for the last twenty years -- and the most hopeful news for the next twenty years if it is correct:
Copenhagen Stalls Decision on Catastrophic Climate Change for Six Years
The key decision on preventing catastrophic climate change will be delayed for up to six years if the Copenhagen summit delivers a compromise deal which ignores advice from the UN's science body.World leaders will not agree on the emissions cuts recommended by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and are likely instead to commit to reviewing them in 2015 or 2016.
The Times says that industrialized countries have not been able to agree to the draconian 25%-40% cuts in carbon emissions by the year 2020 demanded by the poor nations and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
President Obama has reportedly agreed to only a 4% reduction from the 1990 levels by 2020.
Leaders of the industrialized world are set to arrive on Friday, the last day of the summit. It is speculated that if an agreement is not worked out in the next few days, some of the leaders may not bother to come.
The bad news "messenger" in Copenhagen is former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who spoke at the climate conference yesterday and then gave newspaper interviews.
The Times says that Blair admits that recent developments of leaked e-mails from the leading climate change research institution in the world have caused doubt about when world temperatures might be rising and by how much: "When you come to very precise dates, percentages and so on ... then the figures are somewhat more fudgeable."
The Times goes on with its exclusive report:
A source close to Britain's negotiating team said Britain would continue to press publicly for a deal in line with the IPCC's recommendation, but acknowledged that the targets emerging from the summit would need to be reconsidered at a later date.
How does the careful parsing of the Times' source piece translate? "To acknowledge the mighty pressure -- to at least appear to be 'signing something' -- the industrialized nations might agree to a set of admission standards that can't realistically be met with the intent to review standards in six years"?
If this is true, it must still be considered a body blow, even a "technical knockout," for the global warming theory and its effect on future world economics.
To hear a former head of state and global warming proponent finally admit to the "fudge factor" of this discredited climate catastrophe theory is remarkable.
"Fudgeable" figures are what the past twenty years of scientific furor is about. In the past weeks, the evidence showed conclusively that leading global warming researchers had e-mailed each other about removing certain results and changing others to achieve the desired "hockey stick" rise in global temperature predictions. They have refused to divulge their original data to experts for peer review.
Lord Christopher Monckton of the Science and Public Policy Institute was uninvited to the "big show" at the United Nations climate change conference. Monckton held a "counter-conference" of his own in Copenhagen with a contingent of sixty scientists and climatologists. He issued a 34-minute video statement where he named each global warming scientist and expert who had been involved in the alleged "fraud" of global warming research and to what extent.
If the London Times is correct about the conference going bust, the biggest losers in Copenhagen will be the various and sundry contingents of "undeveloped" countries who have spent the last week asserting their entitlement to ever-increasing "reparations" from wealthy nations.
Leaders of fifty African nations came to Copenhagen asking $400 billion for the next three years to "offset" carbon credit "damages" which they claim to suffer. Inexplicably, two days ago, that demand was increased to an eye-goggling 5% of GDP (gross domestic product), estimated at $722 billion from the United States alone. There never was a response from the industrialized world.
The London Guardian reports today that the disgruntled Africans may boycott the rest of the climate summit. The conference's own web page quotes the Ethiopian prime minister as saying he will "scuttle" talks unless there is discussion of "real money" and "not an illusion."
If indeed Copenhagen finishes without the intended climate "treaty" climax this week, there will be major, and probably loud, disappointment in "Hopenhagen Nation." Approximately 100,000 protestors created the "side-show" at climate change's temporary world capital over the weekend, with about 1,200 of them ending up in jail.
Some global "warners" paraded in their skivvies in the brisk Denmark breezes, ostensibly to show us how warm it is at the Arctic Circle in December. The protestors who were arrested were allegedly throwing bricks and breaking windows while chanting about "saving the world." The group is threatening to "take over" the summit this week unless their demands for something or other are met. They might want to conference with the Africans.
One unusual traveling "exhibit" at the Copenhagen climate change summit is a small group of fasting students (at 36 days so far). They fascinate for their increasingly sticky-mouthed webcast news conferences. Very few people are ever in the audience to hear their updates on what they are not eating, but even so, the food deniers for "climate justice" invite everyone "in the world" to fast with them on Thursday as they await the "final announcement" on Friday.
The shameful thing about the London Times story is that if it is true, the liberal American news media have either missed or studiously ignored the story of the century: "global warming fraud" and the aborted attempt to craft a worldwide, economy-busting treaty based on fake science.
And if the London Times' sources are right, one wonders how those "fasters" will feel about going without food for a month for...nothing. Cheeseburger, shake, and fries to go?
Jane Jamison is publisher of the conservative news/commentary blog UNCOVERAGE.net.
