Doha blah blah blah

Written By: - Date published: 2:12 pm, December 10th, 2012 - 14 comments
Categories: climate change, disaster, national - Tags: , ,

The calls for “urgent action” on climate change have been going on for a long time now. There were calls for urgent action before and after the annual climate change talks in Copenhagen 2009. The failure of those talks constitutes, in my opinion, the point where we pretty much doomed ourselves as a civilisation (if not as a species). The talks still grind on every year, but nothing useful seems to happen as a result. The recently concluded Doha talks are no exception. Doha blah blah blah.

What was agreed? “Damage aid” to poor countries – a recognition of the principle that they are going to be most affected by the coming disasters – but with no concrete plans and commitments that will make it happen. An “extension” of the Kyoto Protocol, but with so few participants as to be nearly useless (our very own National government shares a chunk of the blame). Plans for a more comprehensive agreement to be negotiated by 2015 and to come into force in 2020 (how’s that for urgent!). The same sort of talk and promises that have characterised every such conference as the world warms and warms.

Perhaps the only moment of genuine passion was the tears of the delegation from the Philippines, in the wake of typhoon Bopha, which left 600 dead and nearly 1000 missing. (Didn’t get as much coverage as Sandy for some reason.)

Also of interest, the moment which should mark the end of treating climate change deniers as anything other than the lunatics that they are, the expulsion (and permanent banning) of professional denier Christopher Monkton for impersonating a delegate from Burma so as to address the conference.

New Zealand under the Nats covered itself in ignominy, of course. For the first time ever (joint) winners of the grand prize, the Colossal Fossil, for obstruction of progress, our tattered environmental reputation takes a further nosedive.

It should be abundantly clear by now that the current generation of world leaders are not up to the challenge. By the time the Power Shift generation takes over they will be facing a near impossible task. I wonder what they will decide to do with the dwindling band of old fogies who got them in to this mess.

14 comments on “Doha blah blah blah ”

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  1. Bill 1
    10 December 2012 at 2:54 pm

    …they will be facing a near impossible task

    No. We already face a near impossible task. From info I’ve been gathering for an upcoming post, it seems that keeping any rise in the global mean surface temperature below 2 degrees just isn’t possible any more.

    And keeping any rise to between 4 and 6 degrees would require immediate and wide ranging action. And it’s just not happeneing.

  2. NoseViper (The Nose knows) 2
    10 December 2012 at 3:23 pm

    Listen to Tim Groser if wanting the best Doha hoo hah.

  3. OneTrackViper 3
    10 December 2012 at 6:25 pm

    So, the power shift generation are going to solve global warming with a flash mob? Well, tell them to get on with it then.

    • karol 3.1
      10 December 2012 at 6:29 pm

      flash mob, after an international summit.  I’m sure somewhere in there they were discussing policies and plans of action.

  4. Reacher 4
    10 December 2012 at 7:45 pm

    Christopher Monkton declared in his brief address that there has been no statistically significant global warming based on the CRU data set for the past 16 years. Was he incorrect on this point? If correct then is this not highly relevant to the discussion?

    • MrSmith 4.1
      10 December 2012 at 10:05 pm

      Who gives a fuck what Monkton said Reacher the man is a Moron, and as I understand it he was thrown out and permanently barred from the UNFCCC process.

      But Reacher it’s not all bad as I have some magic beans and do you want to buy them?

      • GregJ Viper 4.1.1
        10 December 2012 at 11:34 pm

        I don’t think he is a moron – rather he is pretty shrewd, canny, and more dangerously, plausible.

        He has spun his climate change denial into a pretty lucrative attention getter and is a disruptive distraction to the real issues which should be confronted. Unfortunately time and effort has to be put into refuting him which should be better spent elsewhere on the climate issue.

    • GregJ Viper 4.2
      10 December 2012 at 10:14 pm

      Almost certainly he is incorrect – not only that he often misrepresents what scientists actually say – he doesn’t conduct original climate research he simply reads scientific papers and reports and then selectively uses parts of them to come up with his spin.

      Monckton is not a scientist – he is a consultant, policy adviser, writer, columnist, and a journalist (and a damn good self-publicist). He has a MA in Classics (don’t we all)

      Perhaps you could start here to see how he goes about it: Monckton Myths

    • r0b 4.3
      10 December 2012 at 10:55 pm

      Monkton is flogging a version of the nonsense refuted here:

      http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2006/04/warming-stopped-in-1998/

    • Doug 4.4
      11 December 2012 at 10:46 am

      The temperature record is noisy, which means that it varies from year to year. The long term underlying trend only appears from the noise over a period of time. So it can be expected that over any 16 year period that the warming trend will not be statistically significant.

      Another couple of points that highlight what misleading scum Monkton et. al. are for repeatedly making this statement.

      Short term analysis of the trend data is very sensitive to the starting and finishing points used. 1998 was one of strongest El Nino years on record and the annual global temperature was something like 3 standard deviations from mean global temp. If 1997 or 1999 is used as a starting point the result changes significantly. This behaviour is called cherry picking.

      Second, the CRU temp data series is always referred by the deniers as it excludes the Arctic from the data set. The Arctic is where the fastest warming is occurring but if GISS, or GHCN data sets are used, which include this region, there is a greater temp increase over that period.

      Having said this it is likely but not conclusive that the slight decline in solar insolation over the period and increased emissions of aerosols from China may have had the temporary effect of slowing the rate of increase, but these effects, if they have occurred, are only temporary.

  5. MrSmith 5
    10 December 2012 at 9:40 pm

    “Perhaps the only moment of genuine passion was the tears of the delegation from the Philippines, in the wake of typhoon Bopha, which left 600 dead and nearly 1000 missing. (Didn’t get as much coverage as Sandy for some reason.)”

    Because poor brown people don’t matter do they Mr Groser, Afuckinamerica stubs it’s toe and the whole world needs to know, some inbred stick-insect gets pregnant the whole world needs to know, but dead brown people! lets step over that or look the other way, what a shallow selfish race we have become.

  6. bad12 6
    12 December 2012 at 10:50 am

    The ‘problem’ with Kyoto is that those willing to sign up to it’s regime are only a small percentage of those who produce carbon to the atmosphere and the largest producers flatly refuse to sign up to the Kyoto regime,

    This then makes the emissions trading scheme a non-entity as far as a global reduction in carbon emissions goes,

    My view is that we, as in New Zealand, should withdraw from Kyoto and impose a carbon tax,(my preference would be that imports be carbon taxed on a scale of their perceived production of carbon at the point of extraction or manufacture),

    Such a tax i would envisage as being spent in 3 areas, (a), research into finding the means of lessening carbon production from industrial/agricultural production,and, research into industrial solutions for the removal and sequesture of carbon from the atmosphere,

    (b), a program of afforestation of marginal lands and roadway/highway corridors,

    (c),a program of retrofitting solar arrays to the roofs of all state owned property’s,(where possible), so as to allow for the electricity generated to be directly fed to the National Grid with the tenants of the property’s to be the benefactors of that electricity by subtracting the amount generated from the amount used at the property….

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