Free Republic

A new International Climate Court will have the power to compel Western nations to pay ever-larger sums to third-world countries in the name of making reparation for supposed “climate debt”. The Court will have no power over third-world countries. Here and throughout the draft, the West is the sole target. “The process” is now irredeemably anti-Western. Ø “Rights of Mother Earth”: The draft, which seems to have been written by feeble-minded green activists and environmental extremists, talks of “The recognition and defence of the rights of Mother Earth to ensure harmony between humanity and nature”

Sleepy time at Sibudu. Researchers have found microscopic evidence (inset) of 77,000-year-old bedding at this South African cave. "Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise," wrote Benjamin Franklin in his Poor Richard's Almanack. That may have held true a couple of hundred years ago, but when it comes to our ancient human ancestors, researchers don't know much about how—or even where—they slept. Now a team working in South Africa claims to have found the earliest known sleeping mats, made of plant material and dated up to 77,000 years ago—50,000 years earlier than previous...

Carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels have soared in the last 20 years, giving the world much less chance of avoiding dangerous climate change, new data show. The research was published as lead negotiators were arriving at the UN climate talks in Durban, South Africa, where prospects of a new global treaty on climate change appeared to have stalled, with deep divisions between developed and developing countries. Emissions from burning fossil fuels rose by 5.9% in 2010, bringing the total rise since 1990—the baseline year for calculating emissions under the Kyoto protocol—to 49%. Measured over two decades, that is...

DURBAN, South Africa (AP) — An all-encompassing climate deal "may be beyond our reach for now," the U.N. chief said Tuesday as China and India delivered a setback to European plans to negotiate a new treaty that would bind all parties to their pledges on greenhouse gas emissions. The European "road map" toward a new accord that would take effect after 2020 is a centerpiece of negotiations among 194 countries at a U.N. climate conference in the South African coastal city of Durban. It has been presented as a condition for Europe to renew and expand its emissions reduction targets...

It. Ain’t. Gonna. Happen.From Christopher Monckton of Brenchley in Durban, South AfricaIt. Ain’t. Gonna. Happen. This is the ghastly secret that almost all the delegates here in Durban are desperate to conceal. Paper after paper, result after result, shows that the “global warming” we can expect from a doubling of CO2 concentration this century is just one Celsius degree or perhaps 2 Fahrenheit degrees, not the 3-4 C° once predicted by the UN’s well-tarnished climate panel. When a journalist with South Africa’s national broadcaster interviewed me in the conference center, I told him the climate scam was just that –...

As environmental activists fly to Durban, South Africa to attack Canada’s climate change position at the UN climate change talks, I can’t stand idly by while false allegations continue to be made about one of Canada’s most innovative and important industries: The oil sands. Canadian oil is no “dirtier” than any other oil. When the full life-cycle is calculated, oil from the Canadian oil sands emits between 18 percent higher and 8 percent lower greenhouse gases compared to other sources of crude oil. I strongly favour reducing our dependence on fossil fuels by adopting technologies that use less of them....

The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa, opening on Nov. 28, called COP-17, is one of a series of U.N. meetings working toward a specific goal. Advertising for this meeting features a long list of celebrities, including Angelina Jolie, U2's Bono, Ted Turner, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Al Gore and Michael Bloomberg. The U.N. goal is to move the United States into a global government by environmental regulations and a vast network of taxes. These newly imposed taxes will give the U.N. a tremendous stream of money in addition to U.S. dues and congressional appropriations.The plan for taxes was...

The National Climate Ethics Campaign is pleased to announce that the "Statement of Our Nation’s Moral Obligation to Address Climate Change" will be released Wednesday, November 30 from 1:00-2:30 p.m. in Room 406 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building (The Environment and Public Works Hearing Room). There are now over 1200 signers on the climate ethics statement. Please send the message pasted below to organizations, listservs, and people that might endorse it.

As delegates arrived in Durban on Sunday, dark skies gave way to thunder and lightning storms and torrential rain which waterlogged parts of the city’s conference venue and swept away tin shacks in townships on the outskirts of the city, killing eight people. On Monday, many of the estimated 15,000 delegates packed into the main hall for the opening session, only to be kept waiting for 40 minutes by South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma. Aides to the president blamed the president of Chad, saying Mr Zuma arrived on time but was forced to wait for him. The 17th Conference of...

Things don't look promising for the perennial climate confab which convenes in Durban, South Africa today. There is little chance of extending the expiring 1997 Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. Kyoto has turned into a giant international scam that has already wasted hundreds of billions, with little to show for it; in fact, the increase in atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases has been accelerating. What brings nearly 200 delegations together is a dream -- the forlorn hope that developed nations who have ratified the Protocol will come up with a $100-billion-per-year aid program. This is supposed to allow developing...

Ahead Of Climate Talks, U.S. Leadership In Question by Richard HarrisNovember 28, 2011A new round of United Nations climate talks is getting under way in Durban, South Africa, Monday. And domestic struggles here in the United States are hampering the global talks.The United States is second only to China in emitting gases that cause global warming. Despite a presidential pledge to reduce emissions two years ago, we're spewing more carbon dioxide than ever into the atmosphere.That's putting a crimp on the 20-year-long struggle to develop a meaningful climate treaty.There was a glimmer of hope at a U.N. meeting two years...

U.S. blocks key fund in climate agreement: reportLONDON | Thu Nov 24, 2011 9:03pm EST LONDON (Reuters) - The U.S. is refusing to sign a flagship global climate fund as negotiations intensify ahead of the UN climate summit next week, the Financial Times reported on Thursday. It quoted U.S. officials as saying the United States, backed by Saudi Arabia, had still not agreed to adopt a blueprint for the Green Climate Fund. Countries agreed to create the fund last year to channel up to $100 billion a year by 2020 to help developing countries fight climate change and a U.N....

There seems little possibility that next month's climate summit in Durban will produce an emissions reduction agreement -- meaning the world will soon lack any binding CO2 targets. Europe may soon find itself alone in the fight against global warming. A climate catastrophe descended on the German Foreign Ministry in Berlin early last week. Politicians and diplomats from around the world were attending a conference to discuss how global warming will affect the world. They examined scenarios depicting how millions of people living in coastal areas could escape flooding, what will happen to the fishing and mineral rights of island...

There are those who embrace conspiracy theories of a government plan behind major attacks like 9-11 and Pearl Harbor, to lead us into war. As outlandish such theories appear to some, many embrace them because they believe that the government always manipulates public opinion to accept intended actions which the people would otherwise reject. When a government intends a war of aggression, it must first inculcate hatred of the indented victim. This is done through propaganda which follows the following principles; 1) Select a target to be hated. Personalize it. Focus attention on it. 2) Keep messages on target. Avoid...

Friday, 23rd of September, 2011. The very racist Durbin 3 aka “meeting- of-tyrants” continues at the very corrupt U.N. And as the fawning media continues to support the Hamas-driven genocidal “Fakestine”: WE MUST NOT BE SILENT.

In her Pulitzer Prize-winning book, "The Guns of August," Barbara Tuchman chronicles how a cascading series of seemingly minor developments led inexorably to World War I and the worst carnage known to man up to that time. In the future, historians may point to the present "Diplomacy of September" as the catalyst for the next horrific conflict now in the offing in the Middle East, and potentially beyond. I am thinking specifically of three agenda items slated to take place in the United Nations or on the margins of its meetings in coming days: The first is a portentous move...

Watchdog Group Demands Removal Of Libyan Human Rights Investigator By: Brian Teegarden | “AP/Foxnews.com U.N. Watch, an organization that monitors the world body, says Libyan envoy Najat Al-Hajjaji should be the ‘last person’ investigating human rights abuses, as Libyan jets drop bombs on rebel forces in her homeland. A watchdog group is asking the U.N. to immediately remove a Libyan envoy from her post as an investigator on human rights violations by mercenaries, saying that as a mouthpiece for a regime that’s “deploying hired guns to massacre its own people” it’s “outrageous” to have her in that position. But it’s...

‘Evil spirits’ disrupts teaching March 3 2011 at 09:22pm By Slindile Maluleka INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPERS Teaching at a Durban school was disrupted yesterday and today amid a wave of hysteria as pupils claimed they were being possessed by evil spirits.Durban Girls’ Secondary School in Dartnell Crescent, Greyville, was closed again today because of further disruptions.Police, who were called to the school yesterday, cordoned off the road as some pupils were reportedly seen running wildly across it soon after 10am. Some were rolling on the pavement.The school’s governing body chairman, Sam Kikine, who arrived later, confirmed that the pupils were hysterical.“The incident...

The United Nations is planning to hold “Durban III” in New York City in September 2011, marking the tenth anniversary of the 2001 Durban conference, and the non-governmental forum which preceded it, held in Durban, South Africa in 2001. Durban I produced the infamous Durban Declaration and Programme of Action (DDPA), which charges Israel with racism but names no other state in the world. Durban II, held in Geneva in April 2009, was headlined by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who saw the occasion as ideal for issuing another denial of the Holocaust and an endorsement of genocide against the Jewish...

Top 10 Reasons I Hate the UN10. UNESCO: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural OrganizationMay 28, 2009:I’d think that seriously advocating book burning at any time would disqualify you, since presumably there are equally qualified candidates for the UN’s cultural heritage agency who’ve never advocated destroying cultural heritage. But Israeli society is toxic anyway – especially compared to the glory that is the contemporary Egyptian public sphere – so no loss:Egyptian Culture Minister Farouk Hosni, a candidate for the top job at the United Nations culture agency UNESCO, apologised on Wednesday for calling for Israeli books to be burnt… Hosni...