Saturday, October 24, 2009

Climate change is all politics

The Philippines's President Gloria Arroyo signed yesterday the Philippine Climate Change Act of 2009 or Republic Act 9729. PDI says that the law "seeks to mainstream climate change into the formulation of government policy by setting up a National Framework Strategy and Program on Climate Change. It also creates the Climate Change Commission that will coordinate, monitor and evaluate the government's programs and actions to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change." It is reported that the law includes an initial P50 million spending money.

While everything about the law isn't made yet (I guess the famous IRR isn't fully made,a s usual), I hope that the Commission in charge get into the real business of climate and environmental concerns. Rep. Roilo Golez expressed a hope that the commission involve real climate scientists and not just politicians. This is great. But who are the real climate scientists? It seems they are those who have the alarmist streak in them. And actually play politics. And what of Al? Everyone believes this politician who fared pretty bad in his undergraduate science subjects. And how about UNFCC's Yvo de Boer, who used to be in the Netherlands national government and has a technical degree in social work? They seem to believe in him. And the IPCC? They are not all climate scientists in there.

Climate change is as political you can get. I am sorry to say.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Scenario

When government is powerful enough to dictate how we care for our bodies and those of our families, this could happen. H/T: Jill

Friday, October 16, 2009

One world government through climate change "legislation"

Yesterday, I posted my take on RP government's demand for "compensation" for being a climate change victim. I said that this way of thinking was the reason that nothing will happen in Copenhagen. Today, I read a transcript of part of the speech given by Lord Monckton at the Minnesota Free Market Institute's Bethel University activity as quoted in Watts Up with That. I might change my mind, y'know.

What Lord Monckton practically says is that something will happen in Copenhagen. Some treaty will be signed. But the treaty will eventually be the start of what we have been cautioning many about: the move toward one world government.

I read that treaty. And what it says is this, that a world government is going to be created. The word “government” actually appears as the first of three purposes of the new entity. The second purpose is the transfer of wealth from the countries of the West to third world countries, in satisfication of what is called, coyly, “climate debt” – because we’ve been burning CO2 and they haven’t. We’ve been screwing up the climate and they haven’t. And the third purpose of this new entity, this government, is enforcement.

How many of you think that the word “election” or “democracy” or “vote” or “ballot” occurs anywhere in the 200 pages of that treaty? Quite right, it doesn’t appear once. So, at last, the communists who piled out of the Berlin Wall and into the environmental movement, who took over Greenpeace so that my friends who funded it left within a year, because [the communists] captured it – Now the apotheosis as at hand. They are about to impose a communist world government on the world. You have a president who has very strong sympathies with that point of view. He’s going to sign it. He’ll sign anything. He’s a Nobel Peace Prize [winner]; of course he’ll sign it.

[laughter]

And the trouble is this; if that treaty is signed, if your Constitution says that it takes precedence over your Constitution (sic), and you can’t resign from that treaty unless you get agreement from all the other state parties – And because you’ll be the biggest paying country, they’re not going to let you out of it.

So, thank you, America. You were the beacon of freedom to the world. It is a privilege merely to stand on this soil of freedom while it is still free. But, in the next few weeks, unless you stop it, your president will sign your freedom, your democracy, and your humanity away forever. And neither you nor any subsequent government you may elect will have any power whatsoever to take it back. That is how serious it is. I’ve read the treaty. I’ve seen this stuff about [world] government and climate debt and enforcement. They are going to do this to you whether you like it or not. ...

WUWT concludes his post:

Skimming through the treaty, I came across verification of Monckton’s assessment of the new entity’s purpose:

38. The scheme for the new institutional arrangement under the Convention will be based on three basic pillars: government; facilitative mechanism; and financial mechanism, and the basic organization of which will include the following:

World Government (heading added)
(a) The government will be ruled by the COP with the support of a new subsidiary body on adaptation, and of an Executive Board responsible for the management of the new funds and the related facilitative processes and bodies. The current Convention secretariat will operate as such, as appropriate.

To Redistribute Wealth (heading added)
b) The Convention’s financial mechanism will include a multilateral climate change fund including five windows: (a) an Adaptation window, (b) a Compensation window, to address loss and damage from climate change impacts [read: the "climate debt" Monckton refers to], including insurance, rehabilitation and compensatory components, © a Technology window; (d) a Mitigation window; and (e) a REDD window, to support a multi-phases process for positive forest incentives relating to REDD actions.

With Enforcement Authority (heading added)
© The Convention’s facilitative mechanism will include: (a) work programmes for adaptation and mitigation; (b) a long-term REDD process; © a short-term technology action plan; (d) an expert group on adaptation established by the subsidiary body on adaptation, and expert groups on mitigation, technologies and on monitoring, reporting and verification; and (e) an international registry for the monitoring, reporting and verification of compliance of emission reduction commitments, and the transfer of technical and financial resources from developed countries to developing countries. The secretariat will provide technical and administrative support, including a new centre for information exchange [read; enforcement].

So what are we going to do about it? Will RP be a party to a treaty like this? Perhaps, since we are signatory to Kyoto. We get money out of this, right? But at what cost to our liberties? At what cost to our economy? After Ondoy and Pepeng, many of those affected were complaining that they did not have electricity to their homes, no water in their pipes, no batteries in their torches, no fuel in their cars? Are we ready to move back to the Dark Ages?

Food for thought:
To mitigate just 1 C (2 F) of warming, one must forego the emission of 2 trillion tons of CO2. The world emits just 30 billion tons a year. So the analyst, as a thought-experiment, would shut down the entire world economy, emitting no CO2 at all. Even then, and even on the incorrect assumption that the UN's exaggerated projections of the effect of CO2 on temperature are correct, it would take 67 years to mitigate 1 C warming. Preventing the 3.4 C (6 F) warming that the UN's climate panel thinks would occur in 100 years would take 225 years without any transportation, and with practically no electrical energy. The national security advisor would at that point advise his head of government that there has never been any security threat less grave, or more expensive to prevent, than the non-problem that is "global warming". It is the fearmongers that are the real national security threat.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Doused with cold water so soon

A soon as the BBC came out with its report on the Catlin Arctic Survey of Pen Hadow, Watts up with that came out with its top ten reasons why the Catlin Arctic Survey cannot be trusted. Take that for speed.

So the question to readers and media is: with these sorts of issues listed above, do you really want to trust the data from a group of people that perform and present “science” in this way? If you do, it would seem to me that you are putting form over substance. Even if we didn’t have these trust issues, are 39 datapoints over a short section of the Arctic really that useful given the other tools shown to be at the disposal of real science?

The Catlin Arctic Ice Survey is in my opinion, nothing more than a badly executed public relations stunt covered with the thinnest veneer of attempted science.

If the science is resolved, why the need to lie? Oh, because the science isn't.

Why Copenhagen will fail like Kyoto

This is one clear reason why nothing will happen at Copenhagen come December.

Rich nations should fund RP rehabilitation - GMA
By Paolo Romero (The Philippine Star) Updated October 15, 2009 12:00 AM

MANILA, Philippines - President Arroyo called on rich countries yesterday to provide the bulk of funds for rehabilitating areas ravaged by tropical storm “Ondoy” and typhoon “Pepeng,” saying the country had been a victim of climate change.

Mrs. Arroyo said the Philippines would need much more money to fund relief and reconstruction efforts following the recent record rains brought by the two weather disturbances that left more than 710 people dead and caused billions of pesos in damage.

Speaking at the Mid-Year Economic Briefing at the Shangri-La Hotel in Makati City, Mrs. Arroyo said that in seeking foreign help, the country will stress that it is “not a culprit of climate change.”

“We are a victim. We are not a climate maker but we certainly are a climate taker,” she said.


While I believe that we need funds to help us rise from the devastation brought about by the typhoons of the past weeks ( and if the global warming zealots are to be believed, we will have more of these), even from foreign governments, I do not think that the victim-of-climate-change rhetoric is good. We seem to be washing our hands off the responsibility of failing to mitigate the effects of environmental disasters through our lack of infrastructure and environmental management.

Rich countries, the geese that lay the golden eggs, will not give us what we so badly need if we blame them for our miseries. Richer countries, the US in particular, did not want to sign up for Kyoto, because Kyoto wanted the US to pay for global warming mitigation that "vulnerable" countries needed, but exempting some "very polluting" countries, China and India, for example, from any accountability.

Don't count on the UN for help either. Even if the UN thinks that climate change is the most urgent problem our beloved world faces. Or, precisely because it thinks that climate change is the most urgent.

Meanwhile, some more enterprising people are earning a whole lot from carbon credits without helping cut so-called dangerous, anthropogenic greenhouse gases or world temperatures.

Why not ask Al Gore-bal warming for funds?

Monday, October 12, 2009

"So what on Earth is going on?"

This is the "obligatory" post on the One's winning the Nobel Peace Prize.

Huh? What were they thinking?

Ok. On to another topic.

The BBC reports in "What happened to global warming?" that there indeed was no significant warming for the past 11 years, and that the hottest year in recent years was 1998. This even as the level of supposedly "deadly to the environment" carbon dioxide has increased in the last several years. She asks: "So what on Earth is going on?"

This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.

But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.

And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.

So what on Earth is going on?

Climate change sceptics, who passionately and consistently argue that man's influence on our climate is overstated, say they saw it coming.

They argue that there are natural cycles, over which we have no control, that dictate how warm the planet is. But what is the evidence for this?


Oh, by the way, the One promised (again) that he will do away with the "Don't ask, don't tell" policy in the military, as well as the Defense of Marriage Act. Spurned on by a crowd with Lady Gaga. Already his allies in Congress have passed "a hate crimes legislation attached to a military spending bill," which "critics have argued its provisions create “special rights” based on sexual behavior and could threaten religious freedom."

Friday, October 09, 2009

When death rates drop ...

... due to extreme weather, the MSM is silent.

Indur Goklany studies pronouncements in the past months that global warming deaths are on the rise by looking at available data. Guess what? Death rates are dropping.




















Goklany:

Despite the recent spate of deadly extreme weather events – such as the 2003 European heat wave and the 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons in the USA – aggregate mortality and mortality rates due to extreme weather events are generally lower today than they used to be.

Globally, mortality and mortality rates have declined by 95 percent or more since the 1920s. The largest improvements came from declines in mortality due to droughts and floods, which apparently were responsible for 93 percent of all deaths caused by extreme events during the 20th Century. For windstorms, which, at 6 percent, contributed most of the remaining fatalities, mortality rates are also lower today but there are no clear trends for mortality. Cumulatively, the declines more than compensated for increases due to the 2003 heat wave.


H/T: WUWT

There are more deaths from road accidents on a daily basis, or even dengue. Although, MSM in this part of the world (which will be one of those feared to be greatly affected by climate change) are not remiss at reporting on these causes of deaths. Still the hype that supposed deaths from extreme weather take more prominence.

Not even mentioning numbers of deaths due to abortion. That is to say, there are many more important causes of deaths that we need to address now.

Here's more from Goklany.

Wednesday, October 07, 2009

Seven years ago today

In the morning, at St. Peter's Square for the Thanksgiving Mass, the day after the canonization of St. Josemaria Escrivá on October 6.

Later, Ric and I joined Jude and Hurley on a walking tour from Stazione Termini area to the Colosseo, and dinner at Trastevere.





Tuesday, October 06, 2009

The trees speak

Watch how this graph will change the global warming debate!




















How will this impact Copenhagen in December? Read all here.

See a similar post here.

Monday, October 05, 2009

The Last Olympics

Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara told reporters before the October 2 Olympics 2016 vote that "Global warming is getting much worse... It could be that the 2016 games are the last Olympics in the history of mankind."

Tsk, Tsk, Tsk.

Mr. Ishihara, what are you saying?

Don't you know that the One (no, the other One, not the One that you trashed, not the One "whose speech seemed to be just for granted") has already spoken. It's only about 6 years more to doomsday. See the widget on the right or see this.

By that accounting, London 2012 will be the last Olympics.

GW Alarmist Prince Charles will still see a 2016 Olympics by his accounting. Did you talk with the Prince? Hmm.