Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 04/17/2008 11:44:47 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
PARIS - President Bush has finally set a target date for reining in U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases but the plan is falling flat in the international arena, where critics have long accused him of not moving quickly enough on tackling global warming.
"Losership instead of leadership," Germany's environment minister said Thursday of Bush's new strategy. A major disappointment, South Africa said. Too little and too late, a Chinese official added.
Bush's speech Wednesday, in which he said the United States must stop the growth of its emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases by 2025, dominated U.S.-sponsored climate talks in Paris involving the world's major economies.
Beyond the buzz over Bush, negotiators at the closed-door meeting pushed ways to expand the production of biofuels from sources beyond corn and other food crops, the chief French delegate said. The growing use of biofuels is blamed in part for grain shortages and rising food prices that have caused recent riots in several countries.
Bush's speech hung like a shadow over all the discussions.
Since Bush rejected the Kyoto Protocol in 2001, many nations have viewed him as an obstacle to the fight against global warming, which scientists say is worsened by carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Bush argued that the risks of climate change weren't clear and that the Kyoto pact's mandatory emissions cuts for industrialized nations would hurt the U.S. economy while not covering rapidly growing economic competitors like China and India.
Over the past year or so, Bush has gradually acknowledged the dangers of planetary warming, amid increasingly alarming studies about human-caused carbon emissions. His White House address Wednesday marked the first time he set a specific target date for reductions in U.S. emissions.
American environmentalists and congressional Democrats criticized the Bush plan for not setting an earlier deadline for curbing emissions, and his speech was widely viewed elsewhere as being out of touch with the rest of the world.
Bush is "lagging hopelessly behind the problems with his proposals," German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel said in a statement in Berlin.
"His speech follows the motto: 'losership instead of leadership,'" Gabriel said. "We are glad that there are other voices in the USA."
In Paris, Chinese delegate Su Wei said it was good news that Bush was talking about emissions. But he joined critics in saying the United States needs to cut its emissions — not just limit their growth.
"We think the United States should already have cut emissions," Su said, because that would have encouraged other countries to follow the lead of the world's biggest economy.
China's emissions have soared with its economic boom and it now rivals the U.S. as the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases. But China and other developing nations say they should not be saddled with binding cuts when their per-capita gas emissions are much below those in rich countries.
Australia's climate change minister, Penny Wong, welcomed Bush's announcement as "a significant step" but said the United States must do more.
South African Environment Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk said Bush's speech "takes us backward," because it does not call for mandatory emission cuts.
France's chief climate negotiator, Brice Lalonde, said, "The current American administration is just beginning to wake up, a bit late," to the dangers of global warming.
The chief U.N. climate change official, Yvo de Boer, was diplomatic about Bush's speech, saying, "I see it as an offer on the table."
Bush's chief adviser on climate change, Jim Connaughton, defended the U.S. position.
"It was a speech directed at domestic audiences," he said. Bush's aides said the president's plan was aimed at heading off a "train wreck" of varying emission legislation in Congress.
Connaughton confirmed the Americans and their negotiating partners remain divided over how to figure the steps needed to rein in emissions.
The U.S., he said, will calculate its emissions goals based on the most modest U.N. scientific projections of overall global warming in the coming decades. The European Union is basing its goals — reducing emissions by 50 percent of 1990 levels by 2050 — on more dire projections.
A U.N. climate panel of scientists released reports last year warning of fast-rising seas, extensive droughts and flooding, severe heat waves and other dire effects from global warming. Its estimates ranged from a 3.6-degree rise in global temperatures by 2100 to an 11-degree jump.
While long critical of Bush's approach to global warming, the EU's member states have had varied success in meeting their commitments under Kyoto. But the bloc has been a key backer of the protocol and is pushing for more dramatic global cuts in the Kyoto follow-up negotiation process launched in December.
Washington has been sponsoring talks in parallel to the broader negotiations. The meeting in Paris involves countries that produce about 80 percent of the world's greenhouse gases, including the U.S., China and India. Previous sessions were New York in September and in Honolulu in January.
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The chinese official comment is more than laughable.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Expel some German diplomats for the “Losership” comment.
typical of leftists,, insult someone that disagrees with you.
The Pres can't. The Senate can. 95-0
Don't the Germans always brag about their nuanced and polished diplomacy? Polished as rusty barbed wire.
He's slowed the whole thing down, giving the fervor time to cool (no pun intended) and also giving opponents time to prove that the whole thing is a sham.
“must stop the growth of its emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases by 2025”
The pols are completely ignorant of reality. There is no way that our carbon-dioxide emissions are going to continue to grow for another 17 years with the price of oil well on its way to $200 a barrel. If you don’t have oil to burn, you’re not going to burn it.
They ALL missed this....
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2002545/posts
Nobel Prize-Winning Peacekeeper Asks UN to Admit Climate Change Errors
Photo of Noel Sheppard.
By Noel Sheppard | April 14, 2008 - 17:14 ET
When Global Warmingest-in-Chief Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize last year, the media’s prideful gushing was so obvious it was almost sick-making.
Now, six months later, a fellow Nobel Peace Prize recipient is part of a group asking the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change “admit that there is no observational evidence in measured data going back 22,000 years or even millions of years that CO2 levels (whether from man or nature) have driven or are driving world temperatures.”
Since it is a metaphysical certitude media will ignore this Prize winner, the following is a complete reprint of a letter sent to the IPCC on Monday (with permission):
14 April 2008
Dear Dr. Pachauri and others associated with IPCC
We are writing to you and others associated with the IPCC position – that man’s CO2 is a driver of global warming and climate change – to ask that you now in view of the evidence retract support from the current IPCC position [as in footnote 1] and admit that there is no observational evidence in measured data going back 22,000 years or even millions of years that CO2 levels (whether from man or nature) have driven or are driving world temperatures or climate change.
If you believe there is evidence of the CO2 driver theory in the available data please present a graph of it.
We draw your attention to three observational refutations of the IPCC position (and note there are more). Ice-core data from the ACIA (Arctic Climate Impact Assessment) shows that temperatures have fallen since around 4,000 years ago (the Bronze Age Climate Optimum) while CO2 levels have risen, yet this graphical data was not included in the IPCC Summary for Policymakers (Fig. SPM1 Feb07) which graphed the CO2 rise.
More recent data shows that in the opposite sense to IPCC predictions world temperatures have not risen and indeed have fallen over the past 10 years while CO2 levels have risen dramatically.
The up-dated temperature measurements have been released by the NASA’s Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU) [1] as well as by the UK’s Hadley Climate Research Unit (Temperature v. 3, variance adjusted - Hadley CRUT3v) [2]. In parallel, readings of atmospheric concentrations of CO2 have been released by the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii [3]. They have been combined in graphical form by Joe D’Aleo [4], and are shown below.
These latest temperature readings represent averages of records obtained from standardized meteorological stations from around the planet, located in both urban as well as rural settings. They are augmented by satellite data, now generally accepted as ultimately authoritative, since they have a global footprint and are not easily vulnerable to manipulation nor observer error. What is also clear from the graphs is that average global temperatures have been in stasis for almost a decade, and may now even be falling.
A third important observation is that contrary to the CO2 driver theory, temperatures in the upper troposphere (where most jets fly) have fallen over the past two decades. [Footnote 2]
IPCC policy is already leading to economic and unintended environmental damage. Specifically the policy of burning food - maize as biofuel - has contributed to sharp rises in food prices which are causing great hardship in many countries and is also now leading to increased deforestation in Brazil, Malaysia, Indonesia, Togo, Cambodia, Nigeria, Burundi, Sri Lanka, Benin and Uganda for cultivation of crops [5].
Given the economic devastation that is already happening and which is now widely recognised will continue to flow from this policy, what possible justification can there be for its retention?
We ask you and all those whose names are associated with IPCC policy to accept the scientific observations and renounce current IPCC policy.
Yours sincerely,
Hans Schreuder, Analytical Chemist, mMensa, hans@tech-know.eu
Piers Corbyn, Astrophysicist UK, Dir. WeatherAction.com, piers@weatheraction.com
Dr Don Parkes, Prof. Em. Human Ecology, Australia, dnp@networksmm.com.au
Svend Hendriksen, Nobel Peace Prize 1988 (shared), Greenland, hendriksen@greennet.gl
The Kyoto Protocol was reject by the Senate during the Clinton administration. Any effort by any president to enforce the treaty would be unconstitutional.
“Too little and too late, a Chinese official added.”
One of the funniest things I’ve read in a while.
The whole subtext of “international cooperation” among the players is nothing less than international carbon credit trading, “cap and trade.” Anything less will be laughed at. Bush can’t explain it away with meek assertions, he has to hit its fallacies full force.
Worse, the belief in man made global warming is tracking downward, Bush hitched himself to a loser, again.
I think he does this as a modicum of “cooperation” before British prime ministers visit him.
Yeah, there’s alot of leftist who, not knowing how to produce anything but hot air, are scared that their ‘cap and trade of emissions’ scheme may be over before it begins.
Not looking too good for Freeper Land.
“The world wants America to stop its economic growth. The complaints about “global warming” tardiness is merely cover for recrudescent anti-Americanism”
Agreed - they want to reduce America to a third world class country.
“His speech follows the motto: ‘losership instead of leadership” German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel said.
Speaking of losership, Mr. Gabriel, how’d those two world wars you Germans started turn out?
Seriously though, Merkel should force this clown to resign, or at least apologize. Personal attacks are unbecoming of a government spokesman.
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