Kyoto Accord losing steam

There is quite a bit of coverage of climate change in today’s National Post, all of which seem to echo the same theme: the Kyoto Accord has lost its appeal and will not likely be replaced with anything more effective when the current agreement expires at the end of 2012.

Canada—which has had an ambiguous relationship with the Kyoto protocol, first signing and ratifying it, then virtually ignoring its obligations—is rumoured to be planning to formally pull out of the international treaty before the end of this year. “Kyoto is the past,” Environment Minister Peter Kent is quoted as saying recently. Mr. Kent also described a previous Liberal government’s decision to agree to the protocol as “one of the biggest blunders they made.” The minister, however, declined to confirm the rumour that Canada will formally pull out by year’s end.

That Kyoto has not worked should not come as a surprise to anyone; it was flawed from the start. Countries that are sources of the vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions either never signed the agreement (the United States) or were not required to make reductions (Brazil, China, India, Russia) under the protocol. Japan, the world’s third largest economy, voted to “accept” (but not ratify) its Kyoto reduction targets, then passed a law making those targets not legally binding. And several major economies have made it clear they’ll not sign a new agreement without the signatures of all major emitters, both from the developed and developing worlds.

Consequently, the 17th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Durban, South Africa will not likely see much progress in its objective of replacing Kyoto.

To too many observers, Kyoto is seen to be less about climate change and more about massive (hundreds of billions of dollars) income redistribution from the developed world to everyone else. And for many, this is a non-starter.

Here’s a quote from Tasha Kheiriddin’s piece in the National Post:

Environmental policy analyst James Taylor noted recently in Forbes magazine that while global carbon emissions have soared 33% over the past decade (according to the U.S. Department of Energy), global temperatures flatlined over the same period—and rose merely 0.2 to 0.3 degrees Celsius during the past third of a century.

Is it any wonder I remain a man-made climate change sceptic?

© Russell G. Campbell, 2011

Bad climate science: IPCC exposed as unreliable reporters

There seems to be an increasing number of media people, especially among conservative writers, who question the role human activity plays in climate change, and, more specifically, anthropogenic global warming. For many like me the idea that the science is now “settled” couldn’t be farther from the truth.

“Before they were sucked into the giant vortex of global warm­ing, environmentalists did useful things. They pro­test­ed against massive Third World dams that would ruin both natural and human ha­bitats. They warned about in­vas­ive species and diseases that could tear through our forests and wreck our water systems. They fought for national parks and greenbelts and protected areas. … They believed in conservation… rather than false claims to scientific certainty about the future, unenforceable treaties and radical utopian social reform.” – Margaret Wente, Nov. 27, 2010 The  Globe and Mail

Terrance Corcoran and Peter Foster of the Financial Post, Lawrence Solomon of the National Post, Margaret Wente of the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Sun’s Lorrie Goldstein are among those who write critically of the inconsistencies and flaws in the science of climate change.

To this group I am adding Canadian investigative journalist and photographer Donna Laframboise whose new book, The Delinquent Teenager Who was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert has singlehandedly destroyed the credibility of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—or, if it hasn’t, it should.

Donna Laframboise’s book is published by Ivy Avenue Press (ISBN: 978-1-894984-05-8) and is available as a Kindle e-book for $4.99 at Amazon.com or as a downloadable digital PDF edition, complete with embedded Webpage-like hyperlinks to supporting articles and research. I purchased the PDF edition. The book will also be available soon at Amazon.com as a $20 paperback.

Ms. Laframboise’s excellent exposé is reviewed here, with the first of a two-part excerpt here, and there is another review here. So, given the aforementioned reviews, I’ll limit myself to a few points from the book and not duplicate the excellent efforts of others.

Firstly, let me say for the record that it does seem to me that Canada’s climate has become warmer since I arrived here over 50 years ago. Why else is Prime Minister Stephen Harper so excited about the new promise of the Canadian Arctic? I believe, though, the phenomenon is unlikely to have been caused by human activity and that we’re being bulldozed, if not bamboozled, into wasting trillions of dollars to slow, stop or even reverse the warming trend.

This does not mean I’m not an environmentalist—quite the contrary, I’m a paid-up member of a naturalist and conservation group—notwithstanding the fact such organizations can be like the ones the Financial Post’s Peter Foster calls “professional environmental alarmists and eco-activists.” In that group I’d include the global Green parties, the World Wildlife Fund, David Suzuki and his foundation’s campaign to demonize companies producing oil and gas in Canada, and followers of former U.S. vice president Al Gore, who has managed to turn climate-change into a get-rich-quick scheme.

My hope for the environment can be nicely summed up by Lorrie Goldstein’s suggestion in the Toronto Sun that:

“We need a made-in-Canada policy focusing on clean air, safe drinking water, cleaning up toxic waste dumps, safely disposing radioactive waste, tougher vehicle emission standards, boosting research into practical ‘green’ energy sources such as natural gas, putting scrubbers on coal-fired electricity plants and creating more national parks.”

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a creature of the United Nations. It is recognized as the world’s leading climate change body. Its mandate is to survey the relevant scientific literature, decide what it means, and write reports—reports that Ms. Laframboise refers to as the “Climate Bible.”

The IPCC’s Climate Bible is referred to and cited by governments and NGOs worldwide. More than any other literature, the Climate Bible is the reason carbon taxes and cap-and-trade schemes are being introduced. And governments in jurisdictions like Ontario, Canada have launched expensive searches for alternative sources of energy—so-called green technology. Because of what they have read in Climate Bible, governments seem prepared to see heating bills rise at rates doubling and tripling the rate of inflation. Furthermore, it is in large measure due to the IPCC’s reported evidence that our government is providing costly financial subsidies to everyone whose green energy can reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

In such high regard is the IPCC held, the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to it for its “efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change…”.

Yes, the IPCC is a very big deal. As Ms. Laframboise’s tell us:

“The IPCC has lounged, for more than two decades, in a large comfy chair atop a pedestal. When the IPCC is mentioned in broadcasts, newspapers, and books it is portrayed as a paragon of scientific truth and authority.”

But, thanks to Ms. Laframboise’s The Delinquent Teenager, we now know that, far from objectively weighing and selecting the best available science-based evidence, the IPCC—in reviewer Peter Foster’s words—“cherry-picks egregiously to support its main objective,” i.e., to serve its government masters.

“The real moral of this story is that scientists are merely human. They can be as short-sighted and as political and as dishonorable as the rest of us.” – Donna Laframboise, The Delinquent Teenager

And contrary to its claims, the IPCC’s lead authors are not always the world’s leading scientists. All too frequently, in fact, they are more recent graduates and/or eco-activists from environmental NGOs. Many of whom are described as owing their selection to their gender and country of origin, i.e., diversity, than to their expertise.

Moreover, The Delinquent Teenager shows this famous boast attributed to Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the IPCC, to be baseless: “IPCC studies only peer-review science. Let someone publish the data in a decent credible publication. I am sure IPCC would then accept it, otherwise we can just throw it into the dustbin.”

Ms. Laframboise tells us that she oversaw a Citizen Audit of the 2007 IPCC’s report (Climate Bible) and that auditors examined the 18,531 references cited in the report. Of these, an astonishing 5,587 (30%) were determined not to have been peer-reviewed.

I remember that day I first discovered Santa Claus did not exist. I was a heart- broken little boy. My family had fibbed to me, leaving me with a mild sense of betrayal and loss. They’d white-lied for my own sake, it must be said, and keeping me in the dark about my beloved St. Nick’s real identity, or his lack of one, did me no long-term harm, at least as far as I can tell.

Has Ms. Laframboise discovered that, like Santa, man-made global warming is a myth and that governments, Green parties, environmental NGOs and a certain ex-politician have deliberately lied to us? If so, it is not—as in the case of the Santa Claus deception—for our own sakes, but because the truth does not fit their own self-interests. And, for their transgressions, the developed countries of the world will be billions of dollars and millions of jobs poorer. Whether global warming is a myth or not, Ms. Laframboise has called into question the merits of further government reliance on the IPCC for anything.

I’ll close with this quotation from The Delinquent Teenager:

“For years we’ve been told the IPCC is a reputable and professional organization—a grownup in a pinstripe suit. In reality, it’s a rule-breaking, not-to-be-trusted, delinquent teenager.

“Surely climate activists and climate skeptics can agree on this one thing: the future of the planet is too important to be left in hands such as these. Governments should suspend funding immediately. The IPCC must be disbanded.”

And to this I add, amen.

 

 

© Russell G. Campbell, 2011.
All rights reserved.
 
The views I express on this blog are my own and do not necessarily represent the views or posi­tions of political parties, institutions or organi­zations with which I am associated.

Unintended consequences

This is reaching I know, but while watching Prohibition, a three-part PBS documentary film, I was struck by similarities I saw between the lead-up to the laws to enact Prohibition in the United States and the campaigns we see to enact legislation to implement a carbon tax, cap and trade or other such schemes.

After nearly a century of activism, Prohibition passed into law early in the last century as the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It had been “sold” to Americans as a way to improve their lives and to protect their families from the oftentimes devastating effects of alcohol abuse.

But almost the instant the laws were passed, formerly law-abiding Americans seemed to change their definition of morality and embarked on a binge of lawlessness that saw corruption and criminality spread from the cop on the beat to the White House, making a mockery of the U.S. justice system. 

Prohibition was a cautionary tale of unintended consequences. And I fear that we now risk unintended consequences on a world-wide scale as we follow the bleating of climate-change activists just as sheep follow Judas goats to slaughter.

Proponents of Prohibition had important things in common with those of man-made climate change/global warming. They both sought to deal with very real and important problems and to avert what they believed were pending disasters of tragic proportions. And, just as Prohibition zealots quickly silenced anti-Prohibition voices and demonized their owners as purveyors of sin, similarly treated are those who dare question the role mankind has in climate change and man’s ability to slow or reverse what some consider an un-stoppable, irreversible force of nature.

Moreover, we know the heavy toll Prohibition took on American society: law-abiding citizens became criminals, illicit drinking was seen to be glamorous and fun, neighborhood gangs became powerful national crime syndicates, government officials routinely bent and even broke the law. Prohibition fostered cynicism and hypocrisy that corroded a general respect for the law and rent the very social fabric of America—perhaps irreversibly.

And now we are beginning to see a similar pattern emerge from our earliest attempts to deal with carbon dioxide emissions.

One alarm is being sounded by the Toronto Sun’s Lorrie Goldstein who writes:

“One of the great scams of the cap-and-trade market—a regional version of which Premier Dalton McGuinty wants to bring to Ontario some day—is the purchase of carbon credits through the United Nation’s hopelessly inept and ironically named Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).”

As Mr. Goldstein points out, the CDM was one of the mechanisms defined in the Kyoto Protocol. It is part of the UN’s efforts “to save the planet from man-made global warming.” With the CDM facilitating a transfer of wealth from the developed to the developing world, rich nations and corporations can offset their carbon dioxide emissions by investing in greenhouse gas reduction projects in the developing world. Carbon credits generated in the process can then be sold for a profit. That’s the theory anyway—not a great one, but there you have it.

Unfortunately, many so-called emission reduction projects apparently should never have been approved in the first place, and fraud has entered the system. We know this from a report by the science journal, Nature, which is based on a leaked (thank you, WikiLeaks) 2008 U.S. state department cable. According to the cable, while projects are supposed to go through a two-step validation and verification process, officials in India, in this case, take project developers at their word without requiring independent evidence.

Mr. Goldstein’s tale is a cautionary one indeed. You really should read his full story, but here’s part of his conclusion:

“As Eva Filzmoser of CDM Watch, a Brussels-based organization, told Nature: ‘What has leaked just confirms our view that in its present form the CDM is basically a farce … it is no wonder the United States has backed away from emissions trading.’ Canadians should be thankful they just elected a Harper majority government. Had it been an NDP or Liberal one, or an NDP-Liberal minority, Canada would now be setting up a cap-and-trade market. This would have undermined our economy, imposing a new cost on Canadian businesses not reflected in the policies of the U.S., our largest trading partner, towards its industries.

“We would also have been walking, like babes in the woods, into the international carbon trading market, whose sole achievement to date has not been to lower emissions, but to raise consumer prices for electricity and other goods and services.”

I appreciate Mr. Goldstein’s optimism—he’s younger than I and less of a cynic—but I fear that under a provincial Liberal government we will indeed be setting up a cap-and-trade market with all the inherent risks to our economy. And it will be only a matter of time before we see the rise in “consumer prices for electricity and other goods and services” he warns us about.

Ah, those unintended consequences can be killers.

 

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© Russell G. Campbell, 2011.
All rights reserved.
 
The views I express on this blog are my own and do not necessarily represent the views or positions of political parties, institutions or organizations with which I am associated.