Copenhagen: The Munich of our time?

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

Days were, if you wanted to be a journalist, you had to have some grey matter between your ears. Nowadays, it seems if you can read - you think you can write.
PAUL KINGNORTH - is one of these.
I mean, what sort of person with any intelligence would write:

"We have pushed back the forests, denuded the oceans, exhausted the soil, tipped other species into extinction, expanded our population to the point where we can barely feed ourselves, and changed the chemical composition of the atmosphere. There is no quick fix for this, and possibly no fix at all."

Without any substantiation whatsoever.
Everyday one reads of newspapers going down the tubes for lack of readership. Now I can understand why.
Spare us this garbage, rather expand your classified section to compensate for your lack of readers.

Hear, hear, a questioning and challenging article...

It appears that the world's politicians are either supreme liars or they fools (I suspect the latter is the truer of the two) and actually believe we can "sort of" go on as before but slowly go greener and it will be OK.

Just as in the financial state of the world which assumes that things will always get better, this is a falsehood.

This thinking assumes that infinite resources (be they the earth's or financial) are not only desirable but in fact possible.

We have finite resources on the globe, and we carry on as if there is no tomorrow or that the planet's resources are infinite. Any mathematician should be able to explain that this is impossible.

The future will be an interesting place; what will our children and grandchildren inherit one wonders? How we, each and every one of us, responds can and does make a difference but can we, individually and collectively do what needs doing? Nothing we see suggests we have the intelligence or the will to collectively do the job.

Above all else, I wish to be proven wrong - good luck world but please, let's all get serious.

To link democracy with flooding due to global warming is absolute rubbish. The worst (air) pollution was (is) in the former communist countries of Europe including Russia. Today several wealthy non-democracies in Asia have a huge unnecessary consumption of electricity. (Many democracies elsewhere are no better). Change of subject: What about the way people are driving/accelerating/speeding - especially in South Africa? The C02 emission is enormous. Any talk of reducing speed for that reason? Haven't heard any. There is only one incentive anywhere - democracy or not - to change people's behaviour in this respect and reduce CO2 emission - namely taxes/levies.

Well I agree that this is an ordinary article. Pity the M&G imports such views when SA has a range of very interesting thinkers and writers on this very topic. As always, we prefer something imported to local, cos it better - even anaesthetics (hahah).

It was the mainstream northern NGOs (and Ban Ki-Moon) who were pushing to "seal the deal" as the clock was ticking. Few of them (Ban was open but off the mark) asked if replies or proposals were received in the Copenhagen talks from the rich countries. They we just pushing for the poor countries to cut their emissions while the rich countries made a buck from the technology... this is democracy in the North (the deficit is not only in the current account). But hey we like imported stuff here...

Dennis, read this and report back: http://opinion-nation.blogspot.com/2008/12/when-old-men-kill-their-children.html

I wrote this more than a year ago, and we still have not conclusively passed out of the solar minimum. We are in fact in the deepest solar low for nearly 100 years. Yet still, we are close to record maximum temperatures.

Philip Machanick wrote: "We are in fact in the deepest solar low for nearly 100 years. Yet still, we are close to record maximum temperatures. "

Nice try Philip, but read the climategate memos and you will see that this is not the case. Temperatures are dropping but have been cheated by Phil Jones and his crooked scientist chums to satisfy their "global warming" predictions.They also cheated the Mann hockey stick to get rid of a previous warming periods in history.

Yes, yes. We all know about the climate story (im not sure it needs much additional information, the earth is largely speaking for its-self in that regard), China has also made that clear with their rain-cloud manufacturing antics and the sudden rush for African oil/land; not to mention the marked changes in weather patterns and influx of natural disasters. Not to marginalize this discourse... But there may be something of far greater importance that will be discussed there. Actually, not even all of the nations partaking in this candy-coating session will have privy to the other agenda on the tables. I am far more interested in finding out about this other side, because 2050 might be a very long time to be forecasting the existence of life here; if what is being said by a fast growing movement is infect correct. Things are seldom ever as they seem at face value. When one says look left... You should look also at your right side, for added measure; look up and down also lest you be caught off-guard...

Philip, I have read your 'when-old-men-kill-their-children' blog where you refer to an anomaly in the relationship between sunspot activity and temperature. What has that to do with whether or not man made CO2 emissions are responsible for global warming? Does every unexplained event prove anthropogenic climate change? I think not.
More to the point is the relationship between temperature and CO2 levels in the atmophere over a period of 420,000 years as demonstrated by the Vostok ice core samples. Changes in CO2 levels lag temperature changes by 800 years. NOT the other way round. The 800 year lag is the time constant for atmospheric temperature changes to be propagated through the oceans causing dissolved CO2 to be released or reabsorbed depending on whether the temperature is rising or falling.
An increase in temperature causes a higher level of CO2 not vice versa.
Douglas Laing

This debate sounds more and more like " intelligent design". There you have: if you can't explain something ; it must be god.
Here you have: if you can't explan something ; it must be carbon emissions.
What happened to thinking it through?

Yes Sydney, we have 'evolved' beyond a need for God...pity that the world we have created for ourselves is very different to the world that He created for us...not sure where progress has gotten us after all, other than a world of really anxious and fearful people looking for the 'messiah' in political buffoons like Obama...but then again, man never learns from history anyway, and certainly never adheres to sounds warnings, choosing rather to dismiss them as the ramblings of prophets of doom or dimwitted 'intelligent design' theorists...the Bible says it best,"...if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land." - 2 Chronicles 7:14...guess this doesn't apply to us anymore, so lets invent a reason why Earth is collapsing around us...global cooling, global warming, climate change, solar flares...whatever, only time will tell...

It's amazing that the greenies still huff and puff about global warming when it has become widely known recently that the CRU (the UK Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia) fraudulently manipulated temperature data to produce a warming trend. These data were used by the United Nations IPCC and are the basis for the global warming hysteria in Copenhagen.

A whistle-blower at the CRU has revealed emails and computer programs which clearly show that the CRU deliberately falsified climate data and conspired against the reputation of scientists who did not follow the party line. The head of the CRU has stepped down and is under investigation.

Even the UK Guardian (Big Brother to the Mail & Guardian) newspaper's climate commentator, George Monbiot, has admitted that "It’s no use pretending that this isn’t a major blow" [to his position on global warming]... [the information about the fraud] "could scarcely be more damaging"... "I’m dismayed and deeply shaken"...

Little mention of this in the SA media. Why?

The greenies are the problem, not the solution. Had they not made it impossible to build nuke power plants in the US, more than 90 percent of their power would have by now been emission free nuke power. No country is going to commit economic suicide by choking off carbon bearing fuels. Barring Nuke power, there is and will not be a replacement. Again in the US they are trying to have hydropower dams demolished. How stupid is that

The reasons behind and underpinning Copenhagen have been shown to be false.

This attack on the very foundation of western secular democracy is simply another route that the failed liberal/ left has found.

There is no evidence that CO2 is a cause of heating, it's concentration in the atmosphere cannot be linked in any causative way. There is no evidence that the last few decades are significantly warmer than at other times. The "evidence" produced by the AGW movement has been manipulated and contrary data that doesn't fit the orthodoxy have been omitted or "tricked".

Cancel Copenhagen. Get back to all the raw data and have the hundreds of millions of networked computers in the hands of ordinary people analyze it. It would be particularly interesting to see why CO2 is seen as such a climate threat.

Al Gore has canceled his lecture in Copenhagen, Obama has shifted his attendance from the beginning to the end probably so he can see which way the wind is blowing. The Australians, India, China, Brazil have all said that they will not do much about their CO2 no matter what.

The boys at CRU have destroyed the raw data they have used for climate change evidence, just as Jones said he would.

All in all it is obvious to anybody not caught up in the belief system that this whole AGW enterprise is built on shifting sand where propaganda and lies have completely obscured the truth.

Cancel Copenhagen. Tell the third world begging bowl brigade that this wagon on the gravy train has been withdrawn for repairs. Nothing said at Copenhagen will have any value because the whole failed enterprise is built on FUD. Fear, uncertainty and doubt.

Cancel Copenhagen.

If there wasn't global warming before, the heat on this page certainly will add a few degrees.
Whether the denialists are correct or not (and how else do they account for the unprecedented thawing of Alphine snows, polar glaciers, Siberian permafrost?) the heating may be less of an issue than running out of carbon energy.

It must have taken approximately the time of the dinosaurs (judging by the amount of vegetation they needed), say 10 - 100 million years, to lay down all the organic matter (plants, algae, etc) which we know as coal, oil or diamonds and will have depleted in just two or three centuries. Most of the "first world" or "developed" economies are based on cheap energy, not just for transport and manufacture, but for food (fertiliser and transport) and clean water.

Of all the countries, only China seems to be tackling the problem at source - through birth control. The rest of the world, whether capitalist, marxist, free enterprise, centralised/decentralised, command or market economies seem content to adopt laissez faire attitudes to family planning. It won't be long before "we are all Mathusians now". Any effort to cut back on carbon footprints is a step in the right direction.

While the temperature is rising some comments are dropping below the lowest common denominator and such as thinkingmen are showing strange passions. I suggest Common Dreams.org where the following comment was made by abuelo December 6th, 2009 8:40 pm in response to Why Copenhagen May Be a Disaster.

'I think the problem is people need to understand what the stakes are. Like if you bet on climate change, and then it turns out you are wrong, what happens? we have saved so much energy, have so many alternatives, the air is clear, the water is clean, and what's more we are all still alive.

But if you bet on "no climate change" and lose, we are all doomed.'

It is not complicated and there is little more to be said. So enough talk! We need action, now!

Governments are clearly and decidedly incapable of dealing with a matter of this nature.

My suggestion is that we have a World Climate Plebiscite. The sovereign question is, Is unified action on Climate Change the world's most pressing need?

A yes vote will take the decisions away from governments and give it it someone who can act sensibly for all. A no vote will give it back to the the governments.

The recent initiatives and actions within the UN have shown leadership and, although perhaps too, too human, the UN has shown it is indeed a the best we now have in this regard. If the vote is yes they must have sovereign power to call the shots, and obviously not through the security council or any of the bodies tilted towards maintenance of big power (USA)advantage, but on a purely academic basis. After all we do not allow an untrained person to drive our taxi or fly our plane so why should we have untrained politicians flying our planet. Such a situation is reminiscent of superstition at its worst. Even with the normal academic strictures the process will be interesting to say the least but it is our best shot.

The 'no' alternative is also interesting, but as in the Chinese curse.

V3: Right on!

Dennis Hoines: the "climategate" allegations are rubbish. The number of stolen emails represents about 6.5 emails per month, an absurdly low number for such an active research group. They have obviously been carefully selected for examples where someone has made loose use of language open to misinterpretation. I'd like to see anyone's emails stretching over 13 years that contain NO examples of language open to misinterpretation. I've followed up on a fair number of allegations arising out of the emails and so far all can be debunked by one of 3 methods. Reading the rest of the email, finding a follow-up email that makes it clear that there is no big issue, or going to published material subsquent to the emails to find that nothing untoward actually happened.

What is missing is evidence of a big conspiracy to create world government by getting thousands of researchers to fiddle millions of data points so they are at variance with reality. As conspiracy theories go that one is particularly feeble. The emails were released a few weeks before Copenhagen, having been stolen several weeks earlier. The most obvious conclusion: this is a deliberate strategy to destabilise Copenhagen. Had the emails contained anything of real substance, there would have been no need to go for such strategic timing.

More here: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack-context/
and here: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/12/cru-hack-more-context/

And as a special treat just for you, I issued an update on my article When old men kill their children: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=9787

Enjoy.

thethinkingman: Sufficient data is freely available from other sources for your project; parts of the CRU raw data was obtained from various international met services on condition they didn't redistribute it but NASA among other agencies managed to escape such conditions. A good fraction of the programs used to generate and analyze the data is also available.

In case you are too lazy to find this stuff for yourself, here's a good place to start: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/data-sources/

Does anyome remember Maggie Thatcher asking for something to be done about climate change thirty odd years ago. I think the article is good, seeing that we have not done anything about it yet. It may be too late to fix the problem. If you have ever boiled an egg, you now that even the inside changes. Well our egg has been boiling for thirty years now and we have had tsunami's, quakes and other seismic activity. If we keep on boiling it soon we may have a major eruption that ushers in an Ice age again. The forces of Nature will correct the problem if we dont. The question that arises is how close are we too the tipping point tha ushers in a winter of discontent?

Through all the nonsense V3 still aims true.

Whether we are the ones causing this or whether it is caused by planetary life cycle changes or inter galaxtic forces or God just getting fed up with humans, the only logical thing to do is to have way more sex than we are currently having, but just to use way more condoms.

When in doubt... condomize