(no subject)

Source.

The Copenhagen climate summit is in chaos after poor countries walked out en masse on Monday morning.

The poor countries left negotiations because they are concerned that the Kyoto protocol, which aims to tackle climate change, will be abandoned.

As it should be.

Some rich countries want a brand new climate treaty out of the Copenhagen summit to replace Kyoto. But poor countries want to make sure the Kyoto protocol, which forces rich countries to limit their greenhouse has emissions, has a future.

Because it ignores what they do?

Monday's walkout has left the summit in limbo as ministers, including Australia's Climate Change Minister Penny Wong, frantically try to fix the problem.

Penny Wong couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery. Her chosen solution has been shot in the back of the head twice by the Senate and she STILL DOESN'T GET THE MESSAGE.

'It is regrettable that we appear to have reached a gridlock on process,' Senator Wong told reporters from the conference centre, adding the situation was 'most unfortunate'.

What's even more regrettable, Senator, is your massive contribution to that gridlock, at least in this country. WE DO NOT WANT YOUR EMISSIONS TRADING SCHEME, AND WE HAVE TOLD YOU SO TWICE.

'(This) is not a time to play procedural games.' She did not support the developing countries' focus on the need to commit now to a future for the Kyoto protocol. 'An extension only of the Kyoto Protocol is not going to achieve the environmental outcome the world needs,' Senator Wong said.

You're right there, Senator. Only its abandonment will do that.

Australia does not want the Kyoto Protocol to be the only vehicle to tackle climate change because it does not include the US, nor major developing countries like China and India. Senator Wong said that without countries like China and India on board, global efforts to tackle climate change would not work.

So why aren't you selling India uranium to feed nuclear power reactors, Senator? And why aren't you putting a carbon levy on the coal (the evil, filthy coal) you sell to China?

She said the situation at the summit was 'absolutely' salvageable. 'We can resolve these issues if nations have the political will.'

Liar.

Senator Wong is playing a high-profile role at the UN summit, which has entered its second week and is due to finish on Friday. Together with her Indian counterpart, she was supposed to be leading special talks to try to resolve issues around the greenhouse targets of developing countries, and around international verification of countries' emissions. Those talks are on hold now.

And so they should be, because what this is all about is paying these nations' governments to keep their populations dirt-poor.

There have also been complaints from some developing nations of bullying on the part of Australia, including personal calls from Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. Ian Fry, the chief climate change negotiator for the tiny Pacific island nation of Tuvalu, said Mr Rudd had told him his position was unhelpful in securing an agreement at Copenhagen.

Mr Rudd is alleged to have a tendency to explode in a temper, if not streams of obscenities, when he does not get what he wants. At least one of those episodes was denied by staff working for this overgrown schoolyard bully, but the truth eventually came out.

'Yes, we've had approaches from the prime minister of Australia to ask us to, well, to say our approach is unproductive,' he told ABC television on Monday. 'Of course, we don't agree with that.' Earlier in the day, Mr Fry made an emotional plea calling for a legally binding agreement to cut carbon emissions. 'I woke up this morning crying, and that's not easy for a grown man to admit,' he said. 'The fate of my country rests in your hands.'

Aww... poor baby.

Australian scientist and environmental activist Tim Flannery said part of the reason for the walkout was because of a push by Canada for commitments established under the Kyoto Protocol to be disregarded.

Tim Flannery is a mammologist and palaeontologist. Scientist he may be, but he has no right to wave about his scientific credentials as if they implied expertise in his chosen area of activism, nor does any journalist have that right. Were he perhaps a geologist, an atmospheric physicist or a practically-oriented meteorologist, he would arguably have the right to do so.

Because of breaches of its emissions target under the Kyoto Protocol, Canada owes about $1 billion, and will owe $1.3 billion if commitments under Kyoto continue.

The Government of Canada is possibly thinking of its duty of care towards its people, some of whom live in inhospitable climes and will freeze to death if the nation cannot guarantee reliable continuous access to energy supplies. That it should be penalised for caring about what happens to its own citizens just beggars the imagination.

'Canada and some other developed countries of course would like the Kyoto commitments to cease and then move on with a fresh slate,' Prof Flannery said. But he believes a global agreement to cut emissions can still be reached. 'To be honest, I think that the key elements are now there,' he told ABC television on Monday night. 'We've seen commitment by developed countries to an accumulative 18 per cent reduction in emissions.'

Before you agree to anything, you have to determine whether it's possible for you to meet your obligations at a reasonable cost to your country and to the standard of living of its people. Little wonder that, despite having signed Kyoto, former PM John Howard got cold feet about ratifying it. Little wonder that other developed nations now want to back out or wash their hands of the thing. Among other matters, the way a multinational appears to be able to log and clearfell in the Third World (thus gaining advantage of 'economic development' exclusions there) and then sell biofuels for burning on the autobahns of Western Europe (thus picking up 'Climate Change' kudos there too) is a gaping hole in the protocol.

Prof Flannery, who is also chairman of the Copenhagen Climate Council, a collaboration between business and science, says progress has been made towards reaching an agreement. 'It's far from perfect yet but I think we're beginning to see the elements fall into place for what I'd call a good agreement.'

A collaboration between business and science? Perhaps Mr Flannery would like to consider a more appropriate collaboration, which is between Government and science, with science (primarily engineering, geology, oceanology and meteorology) firmly in control. Here in Australia we have no shortage of empty space, no shortage of uranium, and no shortage of near- and intermediate-term energy requirements. The three go together like birds of a feather. If we're going to be setting targets for 2050, that's plenty of time to set up a nuclear power grid (like the one France has), with which one might do the following...

1) Electrify and expand the national rail grid and power it with nuclear-generated electricity.

2) Transfer long-distance freight (e.g. between state capitals, or from capitals to large regional centres currently served by rail links) from trucks to rail, thus...
2a) Decongesting the roads and thereby improving fuel economy
2b) Burning a hell of a lot less diesel
2c) Reducing wear and tear on said roads, and indirectly reducing utilisation of the heavy-fraction petroleum products used to form asphalt/bitumen (alternatively, concrete could be used as I have seen done in mainland China).

3) Construct high-speed (350kph and up) rail links between the major cities on the Eastern seaboard (e.g. Brisbane/Sydney/Melbourne/Adelaide/Canberra), which would provide a viable alternative to the air travel which is, today, the only reasonable option for travelling at high speed between these cities. Such rail systems would have the capacity to move a jumbo jet's worth of passengers at a little under half the speed of an airliner, and do it all without burning a scrap of coal or diesel.

4) Divorce electricity production (which is essential for a decent standard of living, unless you want to go back to burning coal in your fireplace or hunting sperm whales for lamp oil) from fossil fuel consumption.

There are more fantastic schemes (e.g. underwater tunnels across the Bering Strait, which might in the long run render air travel between Eurasia and the Americas obsolete, if we can make the trains fast enough), but I think for these we're looking towards the technology maturing more towards 2100 or so. By then, we'll hopefully have worked out nuclear fusion (an imperative, because uranium and thorium aren't going to last forever), and possibly the efficient beam transmission of electrical energy (which will enable us to put up solar-power satellites and have a continuous stream of free, limitless power with absolutely no waste at all).

This is the sort of thing the technocracies (Western Europe, Russia, Britain, the United States, China and India) should be talking about NOW. It offers almost limitless opportunities for economic and technological development, employment, advancement, hope and international co-operation. It would solve most of the world's problems in one fell swoop. It is the sort of thing into which a developed nation should be happy to pour far more money than is being demanded at this fucking useless gabfest we are seeing in Denmark, because it would yield concrete benefits for all.

As for the mindless sheep demanding "climate justice now", they can go fuck themselves. What do they want, the fucking Climate Fairy? SOLUTIONS TAKE TIME. They also take a bold spirit.

Do we still have that bold spirit?

Not in Australia, we don't. At least, not while the current mob of technophobes and green Quislings is in charge.

A thinly-veiled apologia for Climate Change, and why I don't subscribe to it.

Jonathan Abrams: Why I am no longer a skeptic on climate change

When I read this article, something struck me as immediately being very, very wrong. The more I read it, the more wrong it got. And so, sporkage.

Before any discussion of global warming (or climate change if you prefer) can begin, one unfortunately is expected to state up front if they accept it or are a skeptic. So my disclosure is that I currently accept anthropogenic (i.e. human caused) Global Warming (AGW) as a scientific fact, despite considering myself a 'skeptic' in general. I wasn't born believing that AGW is real though.

I don't know how old this person is; but if they're old enough to be published in an online newspaper as anything other than a brilliant teenage prodigy, they would not have been born an AGW supporter. Not as it's now defined, anyway.


When I first heard of AGW years ago, it was through the mainstream media. I got the impression from the media that there was a strong legitimate debate about the veracity of AGW. At first I did not know what to believe, but suspected that humans weren't the cause of global warming, if it was happening at all. I never much liked the environmentalism movement and was therefore skeptical of all their claims, whether they made sense or were hyperbolic. As I got more involved with the skeptical community, I learned which sources were trustworthy and which were less so on various scientific issues.

Fascinating that he neither clarifies what these are, nor links to them.

I also learned about the non-rational psychological processes that can lead people to believe or not believe certain ideas. But honestly, I do not know exactly when, how, or why my views changed, but it's interesting to briefly look back and examine why I did not accept AGW, and perhaps it can give us some clues as to why others still don't.

I can give you a very good reason - they are unconvinced by the scientific argument, or see problems with it as a scientific absolute (the way that gravity, for example, is an absolute), or perceive it as having been corrupted by political or economic interests, or are unhappy with the way requests for raw data have been obstructed or denied (which ought to cast doubt on the veracity of the findings).

I find that most people that are skeptical of global warming do not have good rational reasons for their skepticism.

How do you conclude this? This statement sounds just like an article of faith.

According to a recent article in my local paper (originally from Agence France-Presse), people do not accept global warming because it would negatively impact their desire to consume.

Link to article? Otherwise it's just more unsubstantiated pap. Please note the original source as claimed by this person - within France, that nation which more than any other has divorced its energy production from CO₂ generation.

I think this theory may help explain some AGW doubt.

But not all. Perhaps you would like to consider the effect of solar cycles on climate, as well as indicators such as the cessation of the last Ice Age without any possibility of meaningful human intervention and the previous existence of migratory land bridges where bodies of water now lie. On what do you lay the responsibility for these shifts?

People do not want to feel guilty about their habits. In order to assuage guilt, we either attempt to fix the cause of the guilt, which takes effort, or we deny that the problem exists, which is much easier.

You, sir, are sounding very much like the Fundamentalist street preacher who I used to see haranguing people outside Flinders Street Station every Friday and Saturday night.

This denial is not done purposefully, it is done subconsciously. Through psychological factors such as cognitive dissonance, our brain decides for us what we should believe, on an instinctual level. We don't actively choose what to believe, we are influenced in many ways and our beliefs are then formed.

I think you're attributing to cognitive dissonance far more influence than it actually has.

Rational judgement of scientific evidence is only one of these influences on our beliefs.

It's actually a fairly large one.

In fact, for the case of AGW, I'd even argue that the scientific evidence plays an even smaller part in someone's acceptance.

What you seem to be saying here is that scientific evidence plays little part in someone's decision to accept that anthropogenic global warming is real. So the science is settled, eh? 'Nevertheless, it does turn'.

The more complex a topic is, the harder it is to rationally judge the scientific evidence, therefore we use other methods to subconsciously decide what to believe.

Bullshit. The more complex a topic is, the more important it is to rationally judge the scientific evidence. Your position is a cop-out.

Before someone can confidently say they accept or don't accept AGW for rational reasons, they must first honestly admit that they have seen, and understand, the relevant scientific evidence.

Which we are being instructed to take on faith by governments, activists and powerful vested interests (e.g. Al Gore) as being 'settled'.

But most people, myself included, can be intimidated by all the climate models, core samples, and temperature charts that are tossed around. Because of this intimidation, we turn to other non-rational belief influences.

You, sir, sound dangerously close to declaring that your belief in AGW is irrational or based on faith. Yet this is what you claim for your AGW-skeptic opponents.

I have not yet seen Al Gore's Nobel prize winning film "An Inconvenient Truth". I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because I was a AGW skeptic when it came out and now that I accept AGW I don't feel the need to go rent it.

Or maybe because you're aware of the British court decision which found multiple errors of fact in this piece of work, and don't want to be confronted with the imperfections of your messiah.

Regardless, I think the title is brilliant. It perfectly sums up why I think people have trouble accepting AGW. AGW truly is an inconvenience. If it were true, not only would we have to consume less, but more importantly it can shake our very core beliefs.

Here we are, back on beliefs again. Not science, which is allegedly 'settled', but BELIEFS. Faith.

The sorts of beliefs that AGW would trouble include political/economic and religious beliefs.

What religious beliefs would these be?

I won't judge these core beliefs that people have, but they are key to understanding why AGW is doubted.

But you have judged them, back up where you mentioned AGW denialism as driven by guilt. If that's not a value judgement, what is?

Just as a religious world view could cause someone to not accept evolution, it too can make them less likely to accept AGW.

Nice bit of sleight-of-hand, but I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE. The one has nothing to do with the other, and you know it. You're somewhere between disingenuous and mendacious here, and IMO trending more towards mendacious.

One of these religious views holds that nature exists for humanity's benefit, and therefore, is at our whim and cannot pose danger to us.

CRAP. I offer you Genesis 41:26-36

²⁶ The seven good cows are seven years, and the seven good heads of grain are seven years; it is one and the same dream. ²⁷ The seven lean, ugly cows that came up afterward are seven years, and so are the seven worthless heads of grain scorched by the east wind: They are seven years of famine. ²⁸ "It is just as I said to Pharaoh: God has shown Pharaoh what he is about to do. ²⁹ Seven years of great abundance are coming throughout the land of Egypt, ³⁰ but seven years of famine will follow them. Then all the abundance in Egypt will be forgotten, and the famine will ravage the land. ³¹ The abundance in the land will not be remembered, because the famine that follows it will be so severe. ³² The reason the dream was given to Pharaoh in two forms is that the matter has been firmly decided by God, and God will do it soon.

³³ "And now let Pharaoh look for a discerning and wise man and put him in charge of the land of Egypt. ³⁴ Let Pharaoh appoint commissioners over the land to take a fifth of the harvest of Egypt during the seven years of abundance. ³⁵ They should collect all the food of these good years that are coming and store up the grain under the authority of Pharaoh, to be kept in the cities for food. ³⁶ This food should be held in reserve for the country, to be used during the seven years of famine that will come upon Egypt, so that the country may not be ruined by the famine."

I would hardly call that as indicating a nature bent to our whim.

AGW poses a direct threat to some forms of libertarianism and right-wing capitalism. I think that this may have played a strong role in my personal AGW skepticism, and perhaps in other libertarians. As I discussed in a previous blog post, values can determine whether someone considers themselves a libertarian, liberal, conservative, etc. One important value of libertarianism is the desire for smaller government. This rubs up against the problem of AGW. If the problem of AGW is real, and if we have any hope of solving it, we would most likely require development of gross regulations from governments.

No, we wouldn't. We would require sensible, practical solutions of the sort detailed in Genesis 41:26-36. In a modern context, such solutions would be developed by a combination of climatologists and horticulturalists, and could be passed immediately into very simple, self-evident and widely-agreed legislation by a sensible, rational and minimalist government. Your argument here is political, not scientific, and does not hold water.

This is exactly what is going on right now in Copenhagen. Those who find regulations unpalatable, when faced with AGW, will have strong psychological pressure to find themselves in what I call the AGW skeptic spectrum: deny the existence of rising global temperatures, doubt the fact that it is man made, skeptical that cutting back emissions can help, and finally, question the idea that cutting emissions can help or is economically feasible.

This is fallacious. What we doubt is that regulation will in itself do a single thing to curb the emissions you claim are so damaging. We do not start with the denial of rising global temperatures (though if the Earth is warming, why is Edmonton freezing its balls off like never before in its history?) - we start with questioning the assumption that anthropogenic carbon dioxide production is the overwhelming driver of that temperature rise; we move on to questioning the effectiveness of cap-and-trade schemes (from which major industrial nations like China and India are exempt) in reducing those CO₂ emissions; we conclude with combining those questions into serious doubt that a set of regulations which is potentially economically ruinous should be embarked upon when the actual benefit is minimal to nil.

We'd prefer other solutions, technological ones that actually work, such as giving every nation a power-generation system as fossil-fuel-independent as France's. That would automatically slash carbon dioxide emissions by huge amounts worldwide. Taking the biblical quote above as a metaphor, we'd like to lay in excess grain against the years of famine. Seems what you'd like to do is insist on starvation rations in the famine years and pile on an onerous and unproductive bureaucracy to ensure that everyone complies.

It is for this reason that I think that the AGW has unfortunately been split down the house between the political left-wing and right-wing. Once a topic has become left-wing vs right-wing, the argument is no longer scientific, it is political.

This is a false dichotomy. The issue is one of unproductive bureaucracy versus a productive alliance between technology, industry and decisive (minimalist) government.

Points are scored not by evidence but by embarrassing 'gotchas' like the recent climategate scandal and by rhetoric.

You bet it's embarrassing. You seem to miss the point that "Climategate" casts doubt upon the legitimacy of the evidence, and the way in which those responsible have been dealing with it has far more relation to rhetoric than to honest scientists defending a legitimate finding.

Another problem is that people will have the additional incentive of falling in line with their political party of choice, which for some people is their primary social group. Anecdotally, when someone tells me that they are accept AGW, or do not, I can usually guess where their political allegiances lie.

Talk about sweeping assumptions!

As someone with libertarian/right-wing values, I've learned to accommodate the inconvenient truth of AGW. I think the turning point may have been learning about arch-skeptic (and libertarian) Michael Shermer's about face on the issue.

The day I do a full about-face will be the day I wish even more to hang self-serving idiots like you out to dry. If anything, Climategate nudged me towards the believer's corner, if only because it offered a ray of hope that the fucking idiots who blundered the way they did were actually questioning the veracity of their models. This is what the skeptics have been all about from the start. If we'd proceeded on a strong balance of probabilities, and started laying out a technological solution which would have productive outcomes for all rather than a bureaucracic solution which created a huge regulatory organisation which in itself is intrinsically unproductive, it wouldn't matter who was a believer, a skeptic or an outright denier.

The fact that the founder of Skeptic Magazine could not remain an AGW skeptic made me re-examine my personal AGW skepticism. It made me take a fresh look at an issue that I realized may have been clouded by subconscious influences.

My AGW skepticism has been shifted a little by hard data - the revelation that the defenders of global warming were actually skeptical of their own model. I remain in dismay of your proposed solution, and that dismay would only increase if I shifted further towards the "believer" end of the spectrum.

After reading debunking after debunking of poor AGW skeptic arguments, I had no more excuses.

Knocking over straw men is easy.

Just as some religious people find ways to accommodate the fact of evolution, I found ways to accommodate global warming despite my political views.

Here you go, playing the creationist/denier confluence card again. You will find that all but the most hardline Catholics are free to conclude that evolution is a fact, as are the majority of high-church Anglicans, the Uniting Church, and other mainstream Christian denominations. I can't speak for Judaism, but I wouldn't be surprised to find Reform and even some theologically conservative Rabbis happy to sit down to a cuppa with Darwin, and ditto for their congregations.

As the president of a local skeptic organization I'm often asked if I've ever changed my mind due to scientific evidence, I'm proud to say that in this case I did. But I didn't write this post to pat myself on the back.

I disagree. I think you did.

This has taught me that one should be skeptical of their beliefs, especially if they fit with one's world view. Hopefully, this will encourage others to be take an honest second look at AGW science.

I've been looking at it, alright, and I've found nothing but gaping holes all the way. As I see it, the system is simply too damn complex to attribute climate shifts of the sort we're discussing to only one influence, especially since even bigger shifts of a similar nature occurred in the absence of meaningful human contributions to that influence.

I also perceive that you have not once, at any stage in your apologia (because that's what it is), quoted ONE piece of scientific evidence that would support your claim - however firm or infirm that evidence may be.

Your article reminds me of nothing more than the testimony of an impressionable youngster describing their conversion to fundamentalist or 'rapturist' Christianity, delivered in church or before a youth group, to fellow-Christians whom they seek to convince of their authenticity as believers.

Furthermore, I dispute that disbelief in the solution you propose to "AGW" can in any way be tied to disbelief in "AGW" itself.

In short, sir, you are nothing more than a useful idiot, or possibly very, very naive, and if I were an "AGW believer" I would be embarrassed to share a platform with you. So long as people like you continue to push the AGW platform the way you do, my personal integrity requires me to remain in the skeptic camp, with a toe over the denialist line. This doesn't mean I don't want action taken that would mitigate the problem if it exists (albeit with a different ulterior motive). Only a fool doesn't want that. But the pretence for 'action' that is going on right now disgusts me, and this is why I want nothing to do with the whole AGW shemozzle.