Posted on 04/28/2007 6:45:41 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
As the world warms and scientists' warnings grow urgent, climate negotiators are counting down toward make-or-break talks later this year, hoping for progress on a long-term deal to sharply reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.
Experts are beginning to fear, however, that as time runs down the best that can be hoped for may be an extension of the relatively weak Kyoto Protocol, due to expire in 2012. The alternative is a world without any carbon-reduction rules at all.
The year's bad news on climate change is coming in installments.
In February, a U.N.-sponsored scientific network reported that unabated global warming would produce a far different planet by 2100, from rising seas, drought and other factors. In early April, the scientists said animal and plant life was already being disrupted.
In the third installment, coming Friday in Bangkok, Thailand, the authoritative panel is expected to say the world could still head off severe damage if all countries act urgently, with the best policies and technology, to rein in carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping emissions — an improbable scenario.
There are signs of movement. In March, the European Union formally committed to at least a 20-percent cut in emissions, below 1990 levels, by 2020. The Democrats newly in control of Congress are pushing for mandatory caps on U.S. emissions. China is talking more seriously about controls.
"There's a lot happening. Whether that translates into a change in negotiating positions is a complicated story," said Leon Charles, a veteran negotiator for the Caribbean nation of Grenada who will have a lead role in the upcoming talks.
The key complication is a "you first" standoff between the United States, on one side, and China and the developing world on the other.
President Bush, who is expected to veto any Democratic effort to reduce carbon emissions, rejects the Kyoto Protocol and its mandatory cutbacks, complaining they would hobble the U.S. economy and should have applied to China, India and other industrializing countries that were exempted because they're poorer.
China, meanwhile, isn't expected to submit to an international regime unless the U.S. takes on a major commitment. It points to the fact that its per-capita emissions of carbon dioxide, byproduct of power plants, automobiles and other fossil fuel-burning sources, has stood at less than one-sixth the American per-person emissions.
"Prematurely" committing to mandatory cutbacks could keep China from climbing out of its poverty, the Beijing government said in a climate report April 23.
The Kyoto pact, a 1997 annex to a 1992 U.N. climate treaty, requires 35 industrialized nations to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by, on average, 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. But specialists say 50-percent reductions will be needed to stabilize concentrations of the global-warming gases in the atmosphere.
The annual U.N. climate conferences — this year's is in December in Bali, Indonesia — have made no real progress toward turning such deeper cuts into treaty obligations once Kyoto expires.
In a discussion forum that's a sidebar to the conference, government delegates have been talking about narrower, innovative ways for fast-developing countries like China to contribute without committing to blanket, quantified reductions.
"They could commit to a certain share of renewables," that is, a higher proportion of wind, solar or other non-carbon power sources in their energy mix, said Hermann E. Ott of Germany's Wuppertal Institute, which has conducted in-depth studies of post-Kyoto paths.
"You could also think of efficiency standards for electrical appliances," Ott said, "or measures for certain sectors — for the steel industry, for example."
That non-negotiating forum ends this year. If, as expected, no mandate emerges in Bali to negotiate binding post-Kyoto targets, the U.N. process risks running out of time, given that it will take years to produce a new agreement and win ratification worldwide.
That would open a post-2012 gap — a world without carbon-reduction rules — that could wreck the emerging, Europe-centered market in trading carbon allowances among industries. The allowances would become unnecessary and worthless.
Elliott Diringer, international strategist at Washington's private Pew Center on Climate Change, said at Bali "it may be time to think about bridging strategies," that is, extending Kyoto's limited quotas past 2012 while working on deeper cuts.
Ott agreed a "bridge" looks ever more likely. He doesn't want to sound pessimistic, he said, but "it is important to stress that time is of the essence."
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, left, and President Bush, talk in the market place in the north German town of Stralsund, in this July 13, 2006, file photo, as Bush stopped there to talk with his newest European ally before heading to the Group of Eight summit. Merkel arrives in Washington Sunday, April 29, 2007, and will meet with Bush Monday at the White House in an effort to bridge differences on major issues like global trade and climate change. (AP Photo/Peter Kneffel, Pool, File)
make or break talks!!!!!!! LOL
Everywhere I look, millions of CHICKEN LITTLES.....this scam is just amazing.
But what about GLOBAL WARMING ON MARS??? How do we stop the Martian SUVs???
My God, they make it sound like the earth is going to burst into flames any second. Sheer lunatics in all their glory, and the sad part is they`re taken seriously.
100 years of cars, nearly 200 years since the industrial revolution, all those years burning coal, oil, and guess what folks? The percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere is still ZERO POINT ZERO. (0.0383% to be exact)
Composition of
dry atmosphere, by volume
Nitrogen (N2) 780,840 ppmv (78.084%)
Oxygen (O2) 209,460 ppmv (20.946%)
Argon (Ar) 9,340 ppmv (0.9340%)
Carbon dioxide (CO2) 383 ppmv (0.0383%)
Neon (Ne) 18.18 ppmv
Helium (He) 5.24 ppmv
Methane (CH4) 1.745 ppmv
Krypton (Kr) 1.14 ppmv
Hydrogen (H2) 0.55 ppmv
And just think; This July the libs are having a massive concert on 7 continents to to protest something that DOESN`T EXIST! They are literally trying to reduce something that has a value of ZERO POINT ZERO!! How the F**K can you reduce something any lower than ZERO POINT ZERO?? GRRRRRRRRRR!
What`s next, holding concerts because someone removed a fistful of sand from Miami beach and now the beach is eroding?
Doesn’t this just shout out that rule....”if you say it enough times, people believe it”?
“”That would open a post-2012 gap — a world without carbon-reduction rules — that could wreck the emerging, Europe-centered market in trading carbon allowances among industries. The allowances would become unnecessary and worthless.””
Yes, the real reason. Carbon Credits. The Euros have invested in these markets. Indeed, the price already collapsed so they imposed new increased emissions limits beyond Kyoto in hopes of re-inflation. But if Kyoto scheme isn’t continued 2012 - they’re utterly worthless.
Best to lobby the Americans to create carbon markets now for them to dump the credits held now for dollars.
The green house stuff they want to eliminate by RAIDING YOUR WALLET FOR MONEY!!!!!!!!!!!!! THIS IS ALL ABOUT MONEY. HOW MUCH THEY CAN TAX YOU FOR. HOW THEY CAN RAPE YOUR BANK ACCOUNT TO PAY FOR THEIR MARXIST’S AGENDAS!! THAT IS WHAT THIS IS ALL ABOUT. M-O-N-E-Y!!!!!!!!!
I think he's afraid that this whole global warming cr*pola is losing traction. There was a report in the Financial Times that the whole carbon indulgences scam is nothing but a scam; Sheryl Crow is telling us how much toilet paper we can use; and the global hysterics and Hollyweirdites fly around in private airplanes while telling the rest of us to walk. I think a lot of people are starting to laugh.
Oh the horror of it all ...
I have some carbon (graphite) trapped in a jar.
I am doing my part.
Unfortunately, we are all going to stop laughing when you can't buy incandescent bulbs in a couple years, Interstate highway speed limits are lowered to 50 mph, CAFE averages are raised to 50 mpg and you can't buy any more SUVs, your office is at 82 in the summer and 65 in the winter, carbon taxes raise your gasoline to $8 / gallon, you have to pay $15/day to park in your company parking lot and cement and concrete are hit with a huge CO2 tax to boot, raising everybody's building costs (CaCO3 + Heat --> CaO + CO2). Yeah, that's all real funny.
If we realists don't get organized soon to stop the global panic, all this and more is going to be real within our lifetimes.
I used to think another revolution was impossible. But, the more I see of the insanity of our politicians, I am begging to think we will once again have to fight for our Liberties. If the likes of Gore or any leftist gets power, rough times will lay ahead. This joke that is AGW may turn into a nightmare.
Click on POGW graphic for full GW rundown
New!!: Dr. John Ray's
GREENIE WATCH
Ping me if you find one I've missed.
CO2 emissions are up 7.5 Billion tonnes since 1990. Kyoto was looking for a 6.1 Billion tonne reduction.
All the greenies in each country are lambasting their own jurisidiction for failing to meet Kyoto while all the other countries are meeting it.
But hardly any countries look like they will even come close except for Russia (the economy collapsed), France (nuclear) and a few others.
I’ve said before, Take a look at Google Earth to get an idea of how small we are in relation to our planet. Sure, we need to keep developing cleaner forms of energy. I would love to drive in my fuel celled vehicle and heat my home with the same, and tell the Saudis to stuff it. But markets will provide the answer, not Marxist government regulations.
To do my part for GoreWorld, I keep my carbon trapped inside yellow pencils.
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