[dissident]

BAU includes using climate change action to further the old ambitions and goals. The west is trying to claim some BS moral high ground so it can engage in more colonialism in the name of all things holy and just. Same old, same old as for the last 1000 years.

But the sanctimonious, bloody hypocrisy is hard to take. Finger wagging from clown states that emit more per capita than the countries they pour their hate excrement over. And we have the ludicrous bimbette, Greta, a Soros project to use emotional thinking to spread the agenda.

[vtsnowedin]

The west is trying to claim some BS moral high ground so it can engage in more colonialism in the name of all things holy and just.

I see zero evidence of any country desiring to engage in any more colonialism. It has long sense been observed to be an unprofitable enterprise while merely engaging in commerce with whatever government holds the power is more profitable without the expense of defending the 'colony' and administrating it's government.
Even China looks to get their fingers into the commercial aspects of African and South American counties with their Road and Belt projects without actually 'colonizing' those countries.

[Tanada]

China cuts off vital US contacts over Pelosi Taiwan visit

WASHINGTON (AP) — China cut off contacts with the United States on vital issues Friday — including military matters and crucial climate cooperation — as concerns rose that the Communist government’s hostile reaction to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Taiwan visit could signal a lasting, more aggressive approach toward its U.S. rival and the self-ruled island.

China’s move to freeze key lines of communication compounded the worsening of relations from Pelosi’s visit and from the Chinese response with military exercises off Taiwan, including firing missiles that splashed down in surrounding waters.

After the White House summoned China’s ambassador, Qin Gang, late Thursday to protest the military exercises, White House spokesman John Kirby on Friday condemned the decision to end important dialogue with the United States as “irresponsible.”

The White House spokesman blasted China’s “provocative” actions since Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan, which China claims as part of its territory. But Kirby noted that some channels of communication remain open between military officials in the two countries. He repeated daily assurances that the U.S. had not changed its policy toward the Communist mainland and the self-ruled island.

“Bottom line is we’re going to continue our efforts to keep opening lines of communication that are protecting our interests and our values,” Kirby said. He declined to speak about any damage to long-term relations between China and the United States, calling that a discussion for later.

Taiwan has put its military on alert and staged civil defense drills, but the overall mood remained calm on Friday. Flights have been canceled or diverted and fishermen have remained in port to avoid the Chinese drills.

On the Chinese coast across from Taiwan, tourists gathered to try to catch a glimpse of military aircraft.

A minister at the Chinese Embassy in Washington, Jing Quan, told reporters that Pelosi’s mission of support for the democratic government of Taiwan has had “a severe impact on the political foundation of China-U.S. relations, seriously infringed upon China’s sovereignty and (territorial) integrity and ... undermines peace and stability across the Taiwan Straits.”

Long term, a significantly more confrontational relationship between China and the U.S. threatens an equilibrium under which Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping’s governments have sparred on human rights, trade, competition and countless other issues but avoided direct conflict and maintained occasional top-level contacts toward other matters, including cutting climate-damaging emissions.

A joint U.S.-China deal to fight climate change struck by Xi and then-President Barack Obama in November of 2014 is credited as a turning point that led to the landmark 2015 Paris agreement in which nearly every nation in the world pledged to try to curb emissions of heat-trapping gases. Seven years later during climate talks in Glasgow, another U.S.-China deal helped smooth over bumps to another international climate deal.

China and the United States are the world’s No. 1 and No. 2 climate polluters, together producing nearly 40% of all fossil-fuel emissions.

Ominously, experts in China-U.S. relations warned that China’s diplomatic and military moves appeared to go beyond retaliatory measures for the visit and could open a new, more openly hostile era, and a more uncertain time for Taiwan’s democratic government.

China-U.S. relations are “in a downward spiral,” said Bonnie Glaser, head of the Asia program at the German Marshall Fund.

“And I think that China is likely to change the status quo in the Taiwan Strait in ways that are going to be harmful to Taiwan and are going to be disadvantageous to the United States,” Glaser said.

In recent years, other rounds of tensions between China and its neighbors over the India border, regional islands and the South China Sea have ended with China asserting new territorial claims and enforcing them, noted John Culver, a former East Asia national intelligence officer, now a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. The same could happen now over Taiwan, Culver said. “So I don’t know how this ends. We’ve seen how it begins.”

China’s measures this week are the latest steps intended to punish the U.S. for allowing the visit to the island it claims as its own territory, to be annexed by force if necessary. China on Thursday launched threatening military exercises just off Taiwan’s coasts, running through Sunday.

Some missiles were sent flying over Taiwan itself, Chinese officials told state media — a significant increase in China’s menacing of the island.

China routinely complains when Taiwan has direct contacts with foreign governments, but its response to the Pelosi visit — she was the highest-ranking American official in 25 years —has been unusually strong.

It appears to derail a rare encouraging note — high-level in-person meetings between top officials in recent months including the defense chiefs at an Asia security conference in Singapore and Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Secretary of State Antony Blinken at a Group of 20 meeting in Indonesia.

Those talks were viewed as steps in a positive direction in an otherwise poisoned relationship. Now, talks have been suspended even on climate, where the two countries’ envoys had met multiple times.

China stopped short of interrupting economic and trade talks, where it is looking to Biden to lift tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump on imports from China.

On Friday, China’s Foreign Ministry said dialogue between U.S. and Chinese regional commanders and defense department heads would be canceled, along with talks on military maritime safety. Cooperation on returning illegal immigrants, criminal investigations, transnational crime, illegal drugs and climate change will be suspended, the ministry said.

China’s actions come ahead of a key congress of the ruling Communist Party later this year at which President Xi is expected to obtain a third five-year term as party leader. With the economy stumbling, the party has stoked nationalism and issued near-daily attacks on the government of Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, which refuses to recognize Taiwan as part of China.

China said Friday that more than 100 warplanes and 10 warships have taken part in live-fire military drills surrounding Taiwan over the past two days. Also, mainly symbolic sanctions against Pelosi and her family were announced.

On the China coast, fighter jets could be heard flying overhead, and tourists taking photos chanted, “Let’s take Taiwan back,” looking out into the blue waters of the Taiwan Strait from Pingtan island, a popular scenic spot in China’s Fujian province.

Pelosi’s visit has stirred emotions among the Chinese public, and the government’s response “makes us feel our motherland is very powerful and gives us confidence that the return of Taiwan is the irresistible trend,” said Wang Lu, a tourist from neighboring Zhejiang province.

China is a “powerful country and it will not allow anyone to offend its own territory,” said Liu Bolin, a high school student visiting the island.

China’s insistence that Taiwan is its territory and its threat to use force to reclaim control have featured in Communist Party statements, the education system and the state-controlled media for more than seven decades since the sides were divided amid civil war in 1949.

Taiwan residents overwhelmingly favor maintaining the status quo of de facto independence and reject China’s demands that the island unify with the mainland under Communist control.

Beyond Taiwan, five of the missiles fired by China landed in Japan’s Exclusive Economic Zone off Hateruma, an island far south of Japan’s main islands, Japanese Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi said. He said Japan protested the missiles to China as “serious threats to Japan’s national security and the safety of the Japanese people.”

In Tokyo, where Pelosi is winding up her Asia trip, she said China cannot stop U.S. officials from visiting Taiwan.

AP.com

[vtsnowedin]

That will make zero difference in the end as China had no intention of doing anything positive about climate change that was not also immediately profitable for their economy.
They will build electric cars and probably some nuclear plants to charge them but that is about it.

[yellowcanoe]

That will make zero difference in the end as China had no intention of doing anything positive about climate change that was not also immediately profitable for their economy.
They will build electric cars and probably some nuclear plants to charge them but that is about it.

I think the fact that China is actively building nuclear plants and evaluating alternative forms of nuclear power is a significant step towards dealing with their carbon emissions. In this respect they are far ahead of western countries which for the most part are doing diddly squat to further the use of nuclear power. Building coal fired plants was the quickest way to increase power generation but aside from the carbon emissions problem, it has also greatly added to China's air pollution problem. It appears that China's population has plateaued and economic growth is slowing down. If there is no longer a great need to increase power production due to a high economic growth rate, my expectation is that China will start to focus more on phasing out coal fired generation in favour of cleaner forms of generation.

[vtsnowedin]

That will make zero difference in the end as China had no intention of doing anything positive about climate change that was not also immediately profitable for their economy.
They will build electric cars and probably some nuclear plants to charge them but that is about it.

I think the fact that China is actively building nuclear plants and evaluating alternative forms of nuclear power is a significant step towards dealing with their carbon emissions. In this respect they are far ahead of western countries which for the most part are doing diddly squat to further the use of nuclear power. Building coal fired plants was the quickest way to increase power generation but aside from the carbon emissions problem, it has also greatly added to China's air pollution problem. It appears that China's population has plateaued and economic growth is slowing down. If there is no longer a great need to increase power production due to a high economic growth rate, my expectation is that China will start to focus more on phasing out coal fired generation in favour of cleaner forms of generation.

That may well come to pass but it will have nothing to do with negotiations with the US. They still have a billion people that want to move up to the Western middle class existence and while they may build some nuclear plants it is not physically possible for them to build and fuel enough of them to dramatically reduce their total emissions of green house gasses.
The will be hard pressed to just make all new generation nuclear or renewable wing and solar and I doubt they can even achieve that so they will be forced to keep building new coal plants for years yet to come. .

[Doly]

The will be hard pressed to just make all new generation nuclear or renewable wing and solar and I doubt they can even achieve that so they will be forced to keep building new coal plants for years yet to come.

The Chinese are several things: a civilization with a very old history, a river people who understand very well how devastating floods can be, an empire that has been limited to a geographical area, and a society with a social structure that is still significantly based on clans and can be considered neo-feudal. All this makes me think that they are capable of understanding climate change much, much better than Americans with a very short history, focused on the sea more than rivers, children of an expanding empire ideology, with a society that has lost a lot of the traditional family ties and is trying to substitute the social glue with artificial sweeteners coming from their screens and obviously failing. While I doubt that Americans will be able to show restraint in building new coal power plants, I think the Chinese can do it.

[Tanada]

The will be hard pressed to just make all new generation nuclear or renewable wing and solar and I doubt they can even achieve that so they will be forced to keep building new coal plants for years yet to come.

The Chinese are several things: a civilization with a very old history, a river people who understand very well how devastating floods can be, an empire that has been limited to a geographical area, and a society with a social structure that is still significantly based on clans and can be considered neo-feudal. All this makes me think that they are capable of understanding climate change much, much better than Americans with a very short history, focused on the sea more than rivers, children of an expanding empire ideology, with a society that has lost a lot of the traditional family ties and is trying to substitute the social glue with artificial sweeteners coming from their screens and obviously failing. While I doubt that Americans will be able to show restraint in building new coal power plants, I think the Chinese can do it.

It boils down to long term vs short term thinking IMO. One thing Eastern Asian cultures excel at is long term planing. Where an American or a German is looking to next year or more likely next quarter the Chinese, Japanese, South Koreans all too to the next decade and in a tentative sense the next century.

IMO the Chinese have long since understood that humans are pushing the climate into the northern hemisphere greenhouse condition. They have a large well educated population of scientists who study the same paleoclimate data as westerners and if we have ten brilliant paleo climate specialists they have a hundred. Having discovered humanity is set on its course I believe what the Chinese leadership are actually doing is planning for the adaptation to the forthcoming climate conditions. For example they are building several new cities every decade in the interior regions where they will not be subject to flooding even if the entire ice mass of Greenland and Antarctica were to rapidly collapse and melt. They are also developing nuclear technologies for both electricity and process heat, the kind of tech which can desalinate vast volumes of saline water for irrigation and other human uses. Just like the Desert Southwest American states the inner Mongolian lands have deep saline aquifers that are useless as is due to salt content but which can be processed into fresh water while recovering useful chemicals as a side product. In point of fact there big nuclear energy research facility is planted right in the middle of Inner Mongolia where those applications might be very important to the next generation.

So having accepted that the climate will flip no matter which course they follow the Chinese are taking advantage of cheap fossil fuels while they can to develop their country as completely as possible and prepare themselves for the coming changes. I admire the coldly rational logic of the decision making while at the same time being rather disgusted that the "western democracies" are all behaving like blithering idiots mouthing pretty words about reduced greenhouse impacts while simply offshoring all their industry possible to the east Asian nations willing to ignore pretense.

We now have a situation where German and UK power stations are paying for North American trees to be cut down, converted into pressed wood pellets and shipped across the Atlantic to be burned in power plants designed for coal so they can claim to be carbon neutral. That is simply insanity on several levels not the least of which is if you account for the harvesting and transport of the wood pellets in your carbon calculations they are just about as intensive as simply burning hard coal. Then there is the fact that they are taking recently sequestered carbon and releasing it back into the atmosphere as if the natural forests had no intrinsic or natural value as they were before being harvested as biofuel. I am all for forest management, I grew up in Michigan where lumbering is still a fairly significant employer. The difference is in Michigan in the 1980's there were lumbering operations getting lots of praise because they used scrap from their lumbering operations as fuel for their wood processing systems making them fossil fuel independent, more or less. They also spent a fair amount to reforest the areas they harvested to make lumbering a sustainable business with sections being cut in rotations with fast growing trees planted every spring in newly harvested areas. The modern biofuel wood practices are reducing forest lands at a high rate, far faster than natural growth can replenish the harvested ground.

Then you have the madness of "blue hydrogen" which is hydrogen manufactured by stripping it from methane gas and then mixing the hydrogen into the natural gas distribution network. This is patently insane as the stripping and theoretical sequestering of the CO2 generated reduces the energy value of the Hydrogen to the point where it is a net negative fuel source. What I mean is an honest energy accounting clearly demonstrates that they would be better off burning the methane directly and then dedicating some small portion of the renewable energy that arrives at random times to pure sequestration duty. In fact if all wind and solar energy were dedicated to sequestering you would actually come out further ahead at both keeping the grid stable and removing some of the released CO2 from the atmosphere.

It has even been claimed though I have not seen the numbers myself that if you take the liquid biofuels like corn ethanol and soybean oil and simply poured them down injection wells into depleted oil formations you would gain more benefit by sequestering the carbon they carry than you get by using them as substitutes for fossil fuels they offset. You gain even more advantage if you dump the corn liquor, the sweet liquid they grow the yeast in, because un-fermented syrup doesn't release CO2 during the yeast growth phase. Sequestered deep in a depleted formation there is no yeast and even if it does somehow get contaminated the resulting CO2 is trapped in the formation instead of vented into the atmosphere.

For a third example it was proposed back in the 1990's right after the Kyoto Protocol was signed that the government could gather American yard waste, bale it into big blocks like farmers do with straw and alfalfa and either sequester it by burial in the desert or by dumping it in the delta region of the Mississippi River where the silt coming off the continental shelf would entomb it on the sea floor. You could even stack it out on the vast salt flats of glacial lake Bonneville where the natural salt would preserve it from biological processes that would reduce it back to CO2. Heck with all the old coal underground mines around you could stuff bales into the empty mined out rooms left behind when the coal was pulled out.

There are 1,001 things the government could do to reduce CO2 releases from fossil fuel many of which would not much effect business as usual. A simple $0.05/gallon fuel tax would pay for any or several of the above proposals with minimal economic impact. Unfortunately we are in the end stage of democracy where decisive action is no longer considered important compared to soft soaping the voters for the next election cycle.

[JuanP]

Tanada makes way too much sense, as usual! I wonder whether this is still socially acceptable behavior in today's world. I think not!

Jokes aside, I can't begin to tell you how much I value your contributions to this site, T!
Long live Tanada! Long live logic! Long live knowledge! Long live civility!

[Newfie]

Tanada;

Here is to hoping you are correct. I kind of doubt it, I think you give then too much credit. BUT I do think they are up to something, what I don’t know. There Covid responses do not well align with their outward position. So like always, time will tell.

[C8]

I am not convinced that China is a wise steward of the environment. They seem to see it as something to be conquered rather than worked with (despite Taoism). To wit: the cloud seeding programs and the 3 Gorges dam along with a vast poisoning of their waters with industrial chemicals (this is hurting the aquaculture fishing industry).

Communism doesn't have a good environmental record, capitalism doesn't either- and a dictatorship of both combined seems like the worst possible combination.

I agree about the West offshoring its pollution to Asia and feigning virtue.

[vtsnowedin]

...
Communism doesn't have a good environmental record, capitalism doesn't either- and a dictatorship of both combined seems like the worst possible combination.
....

That sounds plausible but the capitalist countries have made quite a bit of progress on environmental issues sense the 1970s while nothing on the communist side comes to mind.
Remember leaded gasoline and raw industrial waste and sewage being dumped directly into rivers and streams?

[Newfie]

Part of the problem is the longer we delay action the more drastic, and more difficult to enact, meaningful changes need to be.

I am fairly sure we are already past the point where the necessary changes are palatable. Change will come only when forced by nature.

Regarding China, there actions have been an enigma to me for quite a while. I get that they are under central leadership, at least to some extent, and that should make climate change efforts easier. Yet I see them do things that befuddled me; zero Covid, ethnic discrimination, ghost cities, Taiwan belligerence. Hard to draw a straight line between those points. Surely their leadership has the same climate data as we do, yet they build coal plants. Maybe their leadership is just as blinkered as our western leadership.

[Plantagenet]

Regarding China........Maybe their leadership is just as blinkered as our western leadership.

Or maybe China's leadership is EVEN WORSE then our western leadership.

The existential problem with dictatorships like Russia and China is that there are no dissenting voices and no political opposition and no hope of changing or even criticizing the leadership.

When Putin makes a crazy decision like the invasion of Ukraine, or Xi's draconian covid lockdown rules in China, there is no way for Russia and China to change course. There are no elections to change congress, and no Fox news or alternative media to present an alternative viewpoint. AND No protests are allowed.....not even on social media.

IMHO, China's continued expansion of the number of carbon intensive coal-fired power plants is a catastrophe for China and the rest of the planet. When you look at CO2 emission numbers, China is now emitting TWICE AS MUCH CO2 as the USA and is by far the largest greenhouse gas emitter on the planet. Biden and the Ds are celebrating Biden's climate bill, but all the gains mandated in the bill will quickly be wiped out on a global basis by the rapid gains in China's CO2 emissions.



Cheers!

[FamousDrScanlon]

International Climate Negotiations do not exist Planty. At least not how the hopefuls think. International Climate Negotiations are theater, similar to elections. TPTB put on a little climate show to make you think they are going to do something...next decade...we promise...again. Why would anyone believe them when all the data indicate that less than nothing was done and done in bad faith?

Below are a few paragraphs from a Robert Hunziker article from 2 years ago (COP out 26). He says it all.

"The upcoming 26th COP (Conference of the Parties) to be held November 2021 in Glasgow is on the docket for scientists and bureaucrats, as well as big moneyed interests, to knock heads in a formal setting to discuss the state of the planet. If all goes according to plan, like past COPs, powerful economic interests will sabotage what would otherwise be a rather dim forecast of a planet in various stages of collapse, some terminal.

We’ve seen this act (COP) repeat over and over, ever since COP1 in Berlin in 1995, as each successive COP-ending-ceremony finds the Parties congratulating each other, slaps on the back, for one more successful climate conference of 20,000-30,000 able-bodied professionals wiped-out from overconsumption of Beluga caviar and Domaine de la Romanee-Conti, but subsequently carbon emissions increase the following year, and every following year thereafter. What’s to congratulate?

More to the point, the annualized CO2 emissions rate is +60% since COP1, not decreasing, not going down, not once. After 25 years of the same identical pattern, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the take-home-work from all 25 COPs mysteriously turns into the antithesis of the mission statement of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change."

https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/11/20 ... peaks-out/

The PTB never had any intention of giving up the goodies...ever. The IPCC was created by the wealthy governments to control the information. The IPCC is corrupt as hell, especially the policy recommendations which has important input by lawyers and professional negotiators who wear down the scientists over as little as a word or two until the scientists cave in and agree to their particular nations must have wording. Usually Saudi Arabia and the Americans are the worst. Also, the less horrific pathways are based on not yet invented and/or not at scale inventions. If you see any major carbon capture efforts it's likely that they are another Big Gov handout. Like with climate change itself the proof is in the pudding. The consequences are happening and faster than expected. So as far as climate negotiations I just look at the same graphs, all hockey sticks, that tell me that flying to climate conferences is the only thing going on in the fake believe world of climate negotiation. BTW, your country and a few others have consistently hid and/or fudged the emissions data for their military, so as far as I'm concerned y'all need to go sit at the liars table. Civilized nations don't negotiate with climate terrorist.

...


Daily CO2

Aug. 7, 2022 = 417.92 ppm

Aug. 7, 2021 = 415.03 ppm

July CO2

July 2022 = 418.90 ppm

July 2021 = 416.96 ppm

https://www.co2.earth/

...

Global CO2 emissions rebounded to their highest level in history in 2021

Increased use of coal was the main factor driving up global energy-related CO2 emissions by over 2 billion tonnes, their largest ever annual rise in absolute terms

The increase in global CO2 emissions of over 2 billion tonnes was the largest in history in absolute terms, more than offsetting the previous year’s pandemic-induced decline, the IEA analysis shows. The recovery of energy demand in 2021 was compounded by adverse weather and energy market conditions – notably the spikes in natural gas prices – which led to more coal being burned despite renewable power generation registering its largest ever growth.

https://www.iea.org/news/global-co2-emi ... ry-in-2021

Planty, I know perhaps you and many others are trying to find something to be hopeful about, but if it's not there it's not there.

[AdamB]

Planty, I know perhaps you and many others are trying to find something to be hopeful about, but if it's not there it's not there.

Boy have you been suckered. Plant is dead set on earning the title super polluter as an individual with all the globe trotting. Got news for you Dr., Plant's concern for the climate is as ephemeral as a top quarks existence. And only visible online, no doubt.

[FamousDrScanlon]

Adam your comment is nonsensical. I don't think you comprehend the word "suckered".
Here, let me share an example of humanity being suckered.

IPCC: the dirty tricks climate scientists faced in three decades since first report

Shortly afterwards the US delegation "tabled a catalogue of attempted emasculations” of the text. Along with the Saudi and Soviet delegations, representatives of the richest and most powerful country in the world “chipped away at the draft, watering down the sense of alarm in the wording, beefing up the aura of uncertainty”.

It would be a painful three decades for people anxious to see action on climate change. For the scientists investigating the problem, it would often be a personal battle against powerful interests.

An account by Jeremy Leggett, who had thrown in a well-paid job as a geologist for Shell to become Greenpeace’s climate campaigner, reported the events of that first summit, including an encounter with coal industry lobbyist Don Pearlman.

They had their heads down, copies of the draft negotiating text for the IPCC final report open in front of them. Pearlman was pointing at the text, and talking in a forceful growl… As I walked past, I saw him pointing to a particular paragraph and I heard him say, quite distinctly, ‘if we can cut a deal here…’

Although it seems so naïve now, I was shocked.

It would be a painful three decades for people anxious to see action on climate change. For the scientists investigating the problem, it would often be a personal battle against powerful interests.

https://theconversation.com/ipcc-the-di ... ort-145126

There are untold millions who believe, like a child, that their government is looking out for their best interests when they send top people to IPCC meetings & COP conferences. The truth is that these taxpayer funded government representatives & negotiators are there to protect special interests like big oil & the US war pig machine (the empire's biggest employer). So you see it's the people who are addicted to the 24/7 political theater & vote in meaningless elections and believe in their national fairy tale and the next empty, 'fight climate change' promise who are the suckers...all time champion suckers. Once you understand why humans have evolved denial as a coping mechanism, it's hard to be angry with them since what they are denying is a horrific future of impoverishment, pain, hunger, violence and the possibility of early deaths of their loved ones.

I've known planty since 2014 - back when she/it was still a climate change denier over on the other side....until I enlighten her which then allowed for her conversion to climate minimizer (it's a process). I recall that before I departed peakoil.com for a couple of years, I told her I was proud of her for having the courage to admit that she was wrong when she was wrong. The only person to man-up at peakoil.com was a girl. Will wonders ever cease?

[AdamB]

Adam your comment is nonsensical. I don't think you comprehend the word "suckered".

Right...I don't have access to a dictionary, and definitions and whatnot, and it applying to you as it comes to concern for Plant.

Here, let me share an example of humanity being suckered.

I didn't mention humanity, I mentioned you. And Plant. Suckering you, if you think there is concern there from a super-polluter for the environment.

I have no objection to your beefs with the climate community, any more than you might have with mine for internet experts when it comes to resource economics. Thanks for the endless cutting and pasting posts though, btu i've got to tell you that it makes it appear as though you don't have any original thoughts on the topic yourself.

[Plantagenet]

The UN COP meeting now underway in Egypt.

The UN secretary general gave a bang=up opening speech where he said the world is "on the highway to climate hell".

That very catchy line.....WE"RE ON THE HIGHWAY TO CLIMATE HELL ...got the media's attention.....

Unfortunately, nobody at the UN COP meeting is going to do anything about it.



Almost certainly this will be another useless "GREENWASHING" show like the Paris Accords where people make nice-sounding promises but nothing definite is done to reduce carbon emissions.

I predicted in 2015 that it would take at least 10 years for the world to recover from the disaster Obama pulled off in Paris, where he shifted the UN Climate Treaty process from moving towards an international climate treaty that REQUIRED CO2 emissions to instead enacting a phone "Voluntary" treaty with a phony target for warming that would never be kept.

Well, here we are 7 years later and CO2 continues up and the phony commitments made in Paris all continue to be broken.....just as I predicted.

I give it another 3 years, with ever increasing climate disasters, before the world comes to its senses and abandons the idiotic Paris Climate Accords and returns again to the difficult work of negotiating a new binding treaty that will require CO2 emission reductions from participating countries.

SHEESH!!!!

[yellowcanoe]

Well, here we are 7 years later and CO2 continues up and the phony commitments made in Paris all continue to be broken.....just as I predicted.

Well the real program is to keep the pedal down on growing the economy and increasing consumption while pretending to do something about climate change!