G 8 meeting and climate change

Well, at least we didn’t get railroaded into a signing a bad “global warming” deal.

The G8 summit of the world’s most industrialised countries is set to hammer out a compromise on climate change.

The leaders will adopt the final text today, Friday (8 July), due to the delay caused by the terrorist attacks on London yesterday.

The agreement will not suggest concrete cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, because of Washington’s opposition to such a provision – similar to the internationally endorsed Kyoto protocol, in force since February 2005.

But the declaration will include a paragraph on the scientific evidence of climate change and will point to it as largely a result of human activity, previously also doubted by the US, media report.

It will also refer to the urgency of tackling the problem, while pointing out there are several ways to do so – not only by cutting emissions, but also with new technological solutions on “green” energy sources, such as wind or solar power.

Britain, France, Germany and Canada had been pressing for a stronger text, aiming to put pressure on the White House, because of its isolated position, but both sides are reported to have moved from their initial stance.

Some environmental lobbies suggest the G8 agreement will not prove crucial for tackling the contentious issue, as it does not include any concrete enforcing instruments.

Others argue it is still better to have a weak declaration of this kind, rather than nothing but the Kyoto protocol, which has been rejected by the US.

The final G8 text is to pave the way for a post-Kyoto framework for climate change, that would involve all the leading industrialised countries.

Melanie Phillips takes a very dim view of this whole “global warming” charade, and rightly so.

A pink object with trotters and wings has just flown past my window. An official committee has cast doubt on the science and politics of global warming. The cross-party House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee has rubbished the Kyoto protocol, saying that climate targets will make little difference to global warming and that the science of climate change presents a number of significant difficulties which need to be resolved. As the Scotsman reports:

‘In a report seemingly timed to have maximum impact on the G8, which is due to release its climate change communique tomorrow, the peers said that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations-backed environmental watchdog, is tainted by “political interference”. Policymakers were too focused on mitigating climate change, rather than adapting to it, they said. Lord Lawson, a former chancellor and committee member, was critical of the way that Kyoto targets for greenhouse gas emissions had been “subcontracted” to the IPCC, which he described as “very, very flawed”.’

In the Times, Rosemary Righter administers a much-needed dose of reality to the climate change psychosis:

‘The major point this report makes is that the links between economic growth and global warming have “not been sufficiently rigorously explored”. Put less gently, some of the IPPC “scenarios” — including the ones that predict global warming in excess of 5C — are based on fantasy.

‘Climate change modelling involves combining scientific data, observed and projected through models, with economic forecasts. Assumptions about per capita emissions of greenhouse gases, for example, are critically affected by things such as the future size of the world’s population, global growth rates, energy efficiency, and the prospects of developing new technologies that reduce future reliance on fossil fuels. The IPPC’s “high end scenarios” assume not only that carbon and methane emissions rise steeply, when they are currently stable or actually shrinking, but artificially inflate the magnitude of global warming by assuming that the world’s population will be half as large again 2100 as it is expected to be. The IPPC also consistently factors in global growth rates that are far higher than those historically recorded.

‘These “worst-case scenarios” are constantly cited, erroneously, as forecast, and they are seriously distorting policy. It is urgent to arrive at more realistic estimates, to be clearer about the trade-offs involved and to be more honest about the high costs that generations now living will asked to bear, for benefits that lie far in the future.’

It will be fascinating to see how the climate change lobby now reacts to these overwhelming truths. So many vast reputations have been made from this scam, so many empires created on the back of it and so many billions invested in it that its proponents simply cannot admit that it is utter tripe. Stand by for the Lords committee to be fingered as oil industry patsies and worse. But the fact is, they have begun to puncture the illusion by telling the truth; and eventually, however long it may take, truth will always drive out the lie.

How much longer do we need to keep hearing this climate change rubbish?