Showing posts with label IPCC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label IPCC. Show all posts

Saturday, December 08, 2007

Bali Why

Why am I not surprised?

Blogging from Bali: The Other Canada

It does not seem that the Canadian government is playing a very constructive role at this conference thus far. Here are two examples. First, Canada refuses to commit to binding targets unless all major emitters accept binding targets - a position which goes against the principle underlying the UNFCCC, which is criticized by development economists, which has attracted opposition from China and which may lead to a negotiating impasse. Second, in sessions of the compliance committee, Canada has proposed that the countries who appoint representatives to lead enquiries regarding non-compliance should be responsible for their own travel and accommodation costs. Considering that Canada is likely to be the subject of such an enquiry, this position does not appear to be anything but defensive and self-interested.
Now that Australia has signed on to the Kyoto Accord it just leaves Steve and George to do their No Kyoto Bali Roadshow; that began at the Australian APEC meeting and ended last week in Africa at the Commonwealth meeting.














Which of course is a road to nowhere.

NUSA DUA, INDONESIA and OTTAWA — Canadian Environment Minister John Baird is urging delegates to the Bali climate change meetings to avoid "the same mistakes" made at Kyoto when large emitters like China and India weren't given binding targets to reduce carbon.

Mr. Baird, who left for the conference yesterday, said that the U.S. decision not to ratify Kyoto stemmed from the fact that large developing countries weren't obliged to sign on to targets.

"Many said that one of the big reasons Kyoto wasn't ratified is that there weren't binding targets on China and India," Mr. Baird said. "Ten years later, let's not make the same mistakes we made 10 years ago."

Yesterday, Canadian delegates to the United Nations conference were reported to have called for a "comprehensive review" of the fundamental "architecture" of the Kyoto treaty, provoking new questions about its commitment to the battle against global warming.

The wide-ranging review of Kyoto should assess its structure, its architecture, its "adequacy" in achieving its goals, and its key principles, such as the idea of differentiated responsibilities for different countries, a senior federal official said yesterday.

The official made the comments at a closed-door session at the conference in Bali. No news media were allowed at the session, but his comments were verified by environmental activists who attended.

The comments were made at a session where countries were assessing Kyoto's performance. But while some countries have called for a reconsideration of the accord, the Canadian delegation seemed to be calling for a much more far-reaching review than anything contemplated by other nations, the environmentalists said.

They said a sweeping re-examination of Kyoto could be a serious distraction at a time when the world is trying to hammer out a new climate-change agreement within the next two years to replace Kyoto when it expires in 2012.


Mr. Harper Goes to Bali

..."It's clear that Canada and Japan are talking to each other and using the same language. And Japan seems completely averse to doing anything without the United States."

Another environmentalist, Steven Guilbeault of the Équiterre group, said the Canadian position has been poorly received by most other countries. "It's a poison pill, and it makes a lot of countries very nervous," he said. "Canada is saying it wants to do less. Everyone is disappointed and appalled by it."

Japan and Canada have dominated the "Fossil of the Day awards" – sarcastic prizes given every day by environmentalists to the worst-performing nation at the Bali conference.

Mr. Guilbeault, who has been attending climate-change conferences for the past 12 years, says there is widespread suspicion among other countries that Canada may be trying to derail an agreement at Bali.

"The level of distrust toward Canada is at an all-time high," he said. "In 12 years, I've never seen such distrust.".
Canada accused of undermining climate talks

Canada is taking heat from activists at the Bali climate change conference, who are accusing it of undermining negotiations.

Climate Action Network Canada claims to have a document showing that Canada's negotiators have been instructed to demand that poorer nations accept the same binding, absolute reduction targets as developed nations.

"Canada is trying to rewrite history by putting the burden of emissions reductions on poorer countries," said spokesman Steven Guilbeault on Saturday in Bali, Indonesia.

However, Environment Minister John Baird -- who arrived in Bali on Saturday -- has said this past week that any new climate change agreement must include all the world's major carbon polluters and set binding targets.

CTV's Steve Chao, reporting from Bali, told Newsnet that a top UN official said earlier this week that Canada's government is a skeptic and that it doesn't want to do anything on climate change.

The activists say that the Kyoto Protocol is built on the recognition that industrialized countries are largely responsible for the greenhouse gas emissions that are causing climate change and must lead the reduction fight.

While emerging economies like China and India must slow their emissions growth, the activists say that they should not be subject to the same absolute reduction targets as developed countries.

Canada -- which has 0.4 per cent of the world's population yet produces two per cent of greenhouse gas emissions -- the United States and Australia are the world's biggest per capita emitters. Canada and the U.S. emitted about 20 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents per capita in 2004.

In comparison, China emitted 3.8 tonnes and India 1.2 tonnes.


Canadians should be embarrassed by the actions of our PM and his Enviro-Flunky; John Baird, not the actions of those attending the Bali conference to give voice to Canadians real views, and paying for it out of their own pockets since the Conservatives have put the kabosh on anyone but their handpicked cronies going as the official delegation.

The Stephen Harper Party on the other hand spins it this way;

Mr. Heinbecker said he didn't think it was "proper" that Mr. Dion will be in Bali and could raise a stink about the Harper government's position. "The reality is the government is the government," he said, "and the position they take is the Canadian position until such time as a different Canadian government takes a different position." (Embassy, December 5, 2007)
Once again forgetting that they are a MINORITY government representing a minority of Canadians and their politics are those of an even smaller minority.


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Sunday, November 25, 2007

Kyoto Ratification By Australia

Leaving Harper as the odd man out.

Australia's new prime minister, Kevin Rudd, made climate change his top priority on Sunday, seeking advice on ratifying the Kyoto pact and telling Indonesia he will go to December's UN climate summit in Bali.

Rudd, 50, presented himself to voters as a new-generation leader by promising to pull troops out of Iraq and ratify the Kyoto Protocol capping greenhouse gas emissions, further isolating Washington on both issues.

But while he intends to immediately overturn Howard's opposition to the Kyoto pact, Rudd has said he would negotiate a gradual withdrawal of Australian frontline forces from Iraq.

Rudd, a Mandarin-speaking former diplomat, said he discussed Kyoto ratification with his British counterpart Gordon Brown, as well as Indonesia's President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
"President Yudhoyono formally invited me to attend the Bali conference, which will of course deal with climate change and where we go to now on Kyoto. I responded positively," he said.
SEE;

APEC Is Not Kyoto

John Harper Stephen Howard


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Saturday, November 24, 2007

Harper's Buddy Goes Down Under

Australia’s Prime Minister Defeated After 4 Terms


Howard's defeat leaves Harper isolated on the international stage as he attempts to push the American agenda on climate change. And he has been an embarrassment at the Commonwealth Conference in Uganda where Canada is isolated over climate change and is seen as being obstructionist. With Howard going down and Australia's new Labour PM; Kevin Rudd proclaiming he will sign Kyoto, Harper is further isolated.

Canada holding up climate-change deal at Commonwealth: sources

KAMPALA, Uganda–Canada and Australia are trying to block Commonwealth efforts to call for binding climate-change targets, a well-placed Commonwealth official told the Toronto Star yesterday.

"It's Canada and Australia on one side and everybody else on the other," he said. Fifty-two countries are in Kampala to attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting and at the end of the three days a declaration on climate change is expected.



Canada will be further isolated come the Bali round of talks on Kyoto 2.


The most dramatic shift in the stalemate is likely to come from Australia in coming days. The country goes into an election with opinion polls consistent in their predictions of a change government, which would see the anti-Kyoto Howard government replaced by the opposition Labor Party under Kevin Rudd.

Rudd says he will “move immediately” to ratify Kyoto and go to the Bali meeting personally, no doubt to stage-manage a high-profile jumping of the fence, switching Australia to the pro-Kyoto camp while in the spotlight of world attention. It would be a largely symbolic move but one that would leave the US more isolated in its opposition to Kyoto and binding emissions cuts than it already is. The Bush administration is unlikely to budge in Bali, but it is becoming less important anyway.

The agreement of Mid-western governors last week to follow states in the US West and North East toward setting emission caps and establish trading schemes now means almost half of the USA, in population terms, is by-passing White House policy and aligning with the Kyoto approach. Bush is only a year or so from leaving office and will almost certainly make way for a successor, Republican or Democrat, that will move on caps and carbon trading nationally. In a year’s time the capping of US carbon emissions will probably be a fait accompli.

Canada may be heading a similar way, with the federal Harper government’s recent rejection of Kyoto commitments being undermined by a number of provinces moving in step with the pro-active US states.




And Canada faces further embarrassment as Harper beaks with tradition, I guess that is the meaning of his governments 'new' Conservativeness , and refuses to allow opposition politicians to attend the conference as part of the Canadian delegation.

Opposition steams at exclusion from global warming summit
Environmental groups pushing to bring opposition mps to talks in Bali

Someone should remind him that he is a Minority PM, and his party does not represent the people of Canada. Harper is embarrassing us on the international stage over Climate Change. It is one thing to claim we missed our targets, it is another to parrot the Republican agenda that says developing countries are just as responsible as developed countries.

And it is completely unacceptable to be an obstructionist when it comes to international goals and treaties, as he is doing in Uganda.

Commonwealth reaches consensus on climate

Updated Sat. Nov. 24 2007 10:12 AM ET

CTV.ca News Staff

The Commonwealth's leaders have agreed to an action plan on climate change that doesn't set out binding targets or timelines for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The statement released Saturday does call for greater co-operation between developed countries like Canada and developing nations, CTV's David Akin reported from the summit in Uganda.

Canada had opposed language that would set firm, Kyoto-style targets.

Environmentalists and Commonwealth sources claim Canada stood only with Australia in opposing firm targets.

The Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said it would like to see flexible targets with more emphasis placed on improving technology to deal with climate change issues.



Come next November, failing a spring election, Harper will be further isolated as the White House changes hands.

But to Hardheaded Harper Canada's isolation from global consensus is his way of profiling Canada in the international community; as an obstructionist. Unfortunately it is not the profile that Canadians want or need.

Making Maxime Bernier foreign affairs minister
didn't add credibility to Stephen Harper's claim that Canada is again taking its global place.

SEE;


APEC Is Not Kyoto

John Harper Stephen Howard


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Saturday, November 10, 2007

Political Vendetta

"Mr. Speaker, in no democracy in this world," cried Van Loan as the questions persisted for days, "does a prime minister and a party use their power to conduct political vendettas against their political enemies."


Oh really what would you call this then.....

Climatologists puzzled at rationale for ending research fund
"I truly think they don't understand what research means," said Dr. Andrew Weaver, a climatologist from the University of Victoria's School of Earth

Feds cutting climate studies: Nobel winners
Nobel Prize-winning scientists from Canada say the Harper government has shut down a federal climate change research network and blocked new studies on the ...

Nobel scientists deliver stinging criticism of federal government
"I can only put it down as one of two things," said Dr. Andrew Weaver, a climatologist from the University of Victoria's School of Earth and Ocean Sciences.

Canadian scientists sharing Nobel prize
University of Victoria senior scientist Ken Denman said the prestigious award raises climate change in the public consciousness.


The Conservatives of course may be upset over their flat earth 'pals' getting short shrift on CBC's Fifth Estate, the same program that exposed the Mulroney Schrieber affair that Van Loan was actually referring to in his quote.

From basic statistics mistakes to subliminal language tricks,
The Denial Machine disgraces the CBC

Another less severe, though still significant subliminal trick used by the Fifth Estate is the way they identify scientists on each side of the debate:

Climate alarmist Dr. Andrew Weaver is identified as a “climatologist” at the University of Victoria and “one of the authors of that definitive international report.”

Climate ‘skeptics’ are ascribed lesser credentials. I (Tim Ball) am just “a retired University of Winnipeg Professor”, a “so-called expert” “who hasn’t published original research in years”.






SEE

Junque Journalism

Michael Crichton Climate Change Denier

Strange Bedfellows

Saving Capitalism From Itself

Echo Chamber

Fraser Institutes Flat Earth Report

Fraser Institute Meets Bill O'Riley

Flat Earth Society Meets In London

Capitalism Creates Global Warming


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Sunday, October 14, 2007

Junque Journalism

The National Post and its resident flat earther; Terence Corcoran attacked Nobel Prize winner Al Gore over Global Warming on their front page in yesterdays paper with another of their Fox News style Tabloid Headline; A coup for junk science

They forgot to mention that there were Canadian climate scientists on the UN IPCC committee who shared the Nobel with Gore And those scientists don't believe as the National Post and Corcoran do that;

"Global warming theory has been in political and scientific trouble for some time."

Nor would these Canadian scientists accept Corcoran's assertion that;

Onto this heap of forgotten causes and marginalia the Nobel has just tossed Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN's official climate science group. What a blow the award must be to the IPCC, self-proclaimed home of scientific rigour, to now be lumped in with Reverend Al and his Travelling Snake Oil Road Show and Climate Terror Machine.

The Post and Corcoran of course have engaged in junk journalism making political statements that they assert are facts. And in making Gore their straw man they forgot the Canadian Scientists, the guys who share the Nobel with him, who assert that their two decades of warnings about Global Warming are only in trouble because of lack of media and political attention to the problem. In other words because of articles like the Post published. Not only is it junk journalism it's failure to mention the Canadian scientists is sloppy journalism.


Unlike Al Gore, University of B.C. climate change expert John Robinson won't be going to Oslo, Norway, to pick up the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

But Robinson, who has been called "Dr. Sustainability," still felt like a winner when the award was announced early Friday.

"I've been in this area of research since the late '80s and it's been a long struggle to make the case that climate change really matters," Robinson, a professor at UBC's Institute of Resources, Environment and Sustainability, said Friday.

He is one of thousands of scientists in more than 100 countries who contributed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, including about two dozen Canadian scientists.

"It's unbelievable how climate change has risen to the top of the policy agenda and hopefully not in a flash-in-the-pan kind of way," he said.

The panel uses scientific reports and data to explore man-made climate change and ways to fight it.

Five Victoria scientists also contributed to the reports.

"It brings more awareness to the biggest issue facing humanity today. The consequences of global warming are huge," said Andrew Weaver, Canada research chairman in climate modelling and analysis at the University of Victoria.

The IPCC has been releasing regular reports on the state of climate change since it was established by the United Nations in 1988. In an IPCC report earlier this year, top scientists from 113 countries agreed unanimously that the mass burning of fossil fuels, land use and agriculture practices are melting polar ice caps.

"We are treating the atmosphere like a landfill and we're not paying for it," said Weaver.

University of Victoria senior scientist Ken Denman said the prestigious award raises climate change in the public consciousness.

"I hope it will help people and government take action. It makes the work worthwhile," he said. "If we accept collective responsibility for this it can be empowering. If we have created this, we have the capability of reversing it."

The Post and Corcoran further slighted Canadians when they deliberately overlooked Sheila Watt-Cloutier, the Canadian Inuit woman who was in the running for the Nobel Peace Prize, and who has seen the real effects of the theory of Global Warming.

The Post front page 'news' was all about attacking Gore, and promoting the myth that Global Warming is not a fact. Hence facts would just get in the way of such partisan pontificating.


H/T to Mentarch

SEE

Michael Crichton Climate Change Denier

Strange Bedfellows

Saving Capitalism From Itself

Echo Chamber

Fraser Institutes Flat Earth Report

Fraser Institute Meets Bill O'Riley

Flat Earth Society Meets In London

Capitalism Creates Global Warming


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, , , , , , ,