Posted on 07/10/2009 9:13:02 AM PDT by FromLori
China and India have rejected calls from G8 leaders for them to make deep cuts in their carbon emissions.
The refusal of developing nations to sign up to a climate change deal overshadowed an agreement between rich nations to limit the rise in global average temperatures.
G8 leaders meeting in L'Aquila, Italy, agreed for the first time to work to prevent global temperatures rising by more than two degrees Celsius.
The summit also agreed that developed economies should aim to cut their carbon emissions by 80 per cent by 2050. The agreement will force G8 economies to make significant changes in the way they operate to meeting that target.
Gordon Brown hailed the G8 statement on climate change as "historic" and a precursor to global climate change talks in Copenhagen in December.
"We have laid the foundations for a Copenhagen deal that is effective," he said.
But the deal was marred by the failure of fast-growing Asian nations to sign up. The G8 had wanted them to agree to cut their carbon output by 50 per cent in the same time.
However, the 50 per cent carbon targets faced resistance from India and China, which argued that the targets would hamper their economic growth.
"For any long-term goals there have to be credible midterm goals in the range of 25-40 per cent," said Dinesh Patnaik, an Indian climate policy negotiator.
And the proposal received a further blow when, within hours of his boss, Dmitry Medvedev, apparently signing the deal, the Russian President’s top economic aide said found the emissions target set for developed countries “unacceptable and likely unattainable”.
“We won’t sacrifice economic growth for the sake of emission reduction,”Arkady Dvorkovich said.
Greenpeace accused G8 leaders of "watering down climate ambitions" while other green groups complained there were no earlier targets for cutting emissions by 2020.
The G8 leaders will formally debate climate change on Thursday with the leaders of China, India, South Africa, Mexico and Brazil, the so-called "plus five" economies.
As well as resisting the 50 per cent target, those countries have not yet signed up to the two degree Celsius limit on global warming.
Mr Brown admitted winning that acceptance was the real measure of success on climate change policy. He said: "That's the test of whether we're making progress."
However, G8 officials admitted that the climate change talks would be complicated by the absence of China's President Hu Jintao, who has returned home early because of violence in Xinjiang
They get it.
Leaders of China and India have more sense than the G-8 leaders have. Or perhaps it’s a simple matter of which leaders care for their country more.
Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. Carbon dioxide does not “cause” global warming, and its absense would not affect global cooling either.
Carbon dioxide could climb to 1500 parts per million, more than three times the current level, with absolutely no ill effects whatsoever, except that growing green plants would become much more luxuriant, and the oxygen content of the air would INCREASE. As well as the world’s total amount of carbohydrates (cellulose, lignin, sugar, starches, you know, stuff we EAT and USE every day).
If somebody wants to do something about carbon dioxide, then reclaim the substance from smokestacks, cool and compress it into liquid form, and use it as an industrial chemical. Where did you think the fizz in your Coke came from? Soft drinks do not generate the CO2 on their own in the bottle, as does wine. It is intentionally added in the process of bottling. And it snorts back out your nose when you gulp the soft drink down.
There are many other uses for CO2, both as a liquid (great for charging up fire extinguishers), and as a solid (”dry ice” is an excellent agent for preserving substances with cold). Carbon dioxide, pressurized and injected into rock formations as a liquid, also flushes out hydrocarbons trapped in the interstices of rock, by DISSOLVING the hydrocarbons, and washing them out, thereby restoring what had been considered a “dry” oil well. Injected very deep into the earth at the Mohorovicic Discontinuity, the boundry between the earth’s rocky mantle and the molten interior, the chemistry there turns the carbon dioxide into free carbon, which forms coal, or in the presense of water molecules (really superheated steam that is not allowed to expand because of the pressure), the precursor to petroleum, kerogen, is continuously being formed. The world is not, and never will, run out of petroleum, as it is continuously being generated by abiotic means.
That is another myth, that there is somehow a “peak oil” beyond which we shall only have declining supplies. This is blatant nonsense, because if we really NEED petroleum, we can make it, and we already do, by several different processes all based on the Fischer-Tropf reactions, in which water and coal are converted to carbon monoxide and free hydrogen. In the presence of catalysts, the carbon monoxide and the hydrogen recombine into various forms of hydrocarbons, while the catalysts capture and hold the excess oxygen. It takes heat, it takes pressure, and it takes a lot of perserverance, but we CAN make petroleum.
Chinese and Indiam leaders are a lot smarter than our own.
Maybe we could exchange our Kenyan President for a Chinese one.
The above photographs are of actual Chinese and Indian border troops.
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