And so another chapter in the strange, fantastic history of global warming has come to an end. As over a hundred heads of state return home from a freezing Copenhagen, the process of trying to work out exactly what, if anything, has been agreed begins. But spokesmen from the UN, the EU, the UK and the US are already busy trying to salvage something – anything – from the wreckage. They must try to encourage the belief that a document called the Copenhagen Accord was a creditable outcome. There seems little chance that domestic audiences will buy into this myth.
Over 130 of the participating nations were only prepared to ‘note’ the existence of such a piece of paper. Even the vast army of environmental ‘observers’ who were present at the conference are not pretending that there are any words other than ‘disaster’ and ‘failure’ that accurately sum up what has happened. So far as I am aware, there is a vast difference in diplomatic terms between ‘noting’ an accord and signing up to one.
For the weary politicians and their teams of negotiators and advisers, the next task will be to try and explain this fiasco to their own people. In the past, and particularly after the Bali conference two years ago, a vague and inconclusive agreement has been a great advantage in this process. Such a document is a blank canvas on which spin-doctors can exercise their creative skills. This time things are different, and the shortcomings are clear for all to see.
After two weeks of negotiations between over 190 countries it is difficult to detect any real progress towards a low carbon world. There is no more than a vague aspiration to try to limit global warming to 2oC. No medium or long-term emissions targets have been set. The all-important question of how the war on global warming will be financed has yet to be answered or even seriously addressed.
The ‘road map’ hammered out at Bali has lead only into a cul-de-sac. Worse, that fudged agreement, forged to the accompaniment of hysterical sobs from the UN’s Yvo de Boer, has been revealed for the fudge that it was; a diplomatic assemblage built on foundations so shaky that now the whole edifice has collapsed. The idea that in the course of the coming year Humpty Dumpty can be put together again and a legally binding global treaty brought into being is fanciful.
This piffling accord, signed by only a handful of countries and scorned with derision by the rest, lays bare the extent of the fiasco for all to see.
Heads of state and climate change ministers will now have to try and justify the doom-laden rhetoric that most of them have pitilessly inflicted on their fellow countrymen during the run-up to the summit. If the diet of climate porn, apocalyptic claims, and outright propaganda promoting the IPCC’s dogmatic prognostications that we have suffered in the UK is anything to go by then this is likely to be an all but impossible task. Only a few weeks ago our prime minister was warning that Copenhagen was the last chance to save the planet and that if it did not succeed then disaster would surely follow, and very soon. As a general election approaches, how will he explain that measures to prevent global catastrophe that were desperately urgent just a month ago can now wait for another year or two?
No doubt there will be a desperate search for someone to blame, with China and the US are already being measured for the long drop.
And what will be the reaction of the general public who have merely followed the headlines on television and in the newspapers. Will it appear to them that the UN – the organisation that has discovered and has promoted the notion of climate catastrophe, and has taken upon itself the task of averting it – cannot even organise a conference competently?
Then there must be the nagging suspicion, even in the minds of those who neither understand the scientific nor the politics of climate change, that if the problem really is all that it is cracked up to be then surely the summit would have ended differently.
The delegates from every corner of the globe who gathered in Copenhagen were actually in a position to deliver on the dreams that were forged at Bali. Will no one wonder whether their commitment must now be in doubt? Would they really have wasted a fortnight wrangling over procedure if they truly believed in the IPCC’s prophesies of doom? What does this failure to reach any kind of workable agreement say about their priorities? And what priority can be greater than averting Armageddon if you truly believe that it is imminent.
At the beginning of this post I described the Copenhagen debacle as being fantastic, and so it is, in the sense that the political process has been shown to be remote from reality. All the bargaining, the confusion, the hostilities and the rhetoric has taken place against a background of a planet that for a decade has failed to confirm the IPCC’s predictions by getting any warmer. Although no one at the summit has dared mention this during the last two weeks, there can be few who attended who are not well aware of this fact.
Were the majority of the delegates ever really serious about tackling climate change? Or was this just another exercise in power politics? The endless conflict between leading competitors in the global market place, a continuation of the age-old struggle for the redistribution of wealth from the affluent industrialised countries to the impoverished majority.
And so the page turns, and a new chapter begins: but are the authors of the global warming saga still in control of the plot?
The true catastrophe will occur when the dollar finally crashes. Iran doesn’t need a bomb, merely to sell oil in Euros or Yen.
American debt apparently exceeds the GDP of the entire world.
The Chinese call it The Nuclear Option. Perhaps the Weimar Option could be closer to the truth.
Old-school enviros will re-group around specific issues like saving a particular bit of woodland or a rare butterfly. Hell I may even join in myself again.
Probably more in our own countries and less interest in amazonian left-handed tree frogs.
Big movements like WWF and Greenpeace have bet the ranch on AGW and don’t have anywhere else to go. A lot of ordinary people are going to say: “Screw you and screw your dolphins too”.
Expect a high-profile stunt like blowing up a power station as the extremists lash out.
The Big Greens will then become 100% fake charities getting all their money from the taxpayer via the govt.
There are still a lot of people who believe in this stuff – so expect the normal cult behaviour of the more sensible people peeling off leaving a smaller and smaller band of faithful making more and more bizarre statements.
De-programming got a bad name and is now re-branded as “exit counselling”. Maybe needed for a few like Monbiot and Milliband, but just getting a hobby or even a pet will help most people to move on.
Ed Miliband remains upbeat, it seems, from this entry on Edspledge.com.
I’m sure someone will spot this and change it pronto, but 8 paragraphs down, Ed says:
“[For the first time, the new Copenhagen Accord will also:] *Commit developed countries to work to provide long term financing of 0 billion a year by 2020, a figure first put forward by Prime Minister Gordon Brown in June of this year.”
Maybe a new realism has set in. £0 billion a year to combat climate change? I think the taxpayers can live with that. Sounds sensible to me.
TonyN: a well-judged commentary. Congratulations.
And well spotted, Alex (BTW it’s still there).
Alex Jones: Copenhagen births World Gov’t framework despite fallout over science fraud
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fl9fESYVFY&feature=player_embedded
Pretty good summary of what happened at Copenhagen, to go along with Tony’s excellent summary.
Max
TonyN, You ask what comes next? Here are a few ideas I have; I’ll start with the MSM.
Comments about the MSM becoming irrelevant I think must have reached those that are ultimately responsible for the well-being of these outlets as some of them have started to change direction. These comments have been appearing on blogs in the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. That is the majority of the English speaking first world, and certainly where these countries go the rest of the English speaking world aspire to go and this block represents the supposed free English speaking democratic world. Any self-respecting media outlet owner or proprietor is bound to take notice, even if their correspondents have been coerced into supporting AGW. The Copenhagen thing was grossly over played by some outlets to the extent that the public switched off even further than they were, and the MSM has a short time in which to re-engage the public and understand the current mood.
Climategate has continued to unravel the temperature record. This will be a continuing slow process of unpicking the established science. It will also stimulate a look at all the other areas of so called “proof” of AGW. The IPCC and various governments are very worried about this more so than they are letting on. They have controlled events up until the last 2 months when the public started to ignore the MSM and engage with the blogosphere, an area our government cannot yet control. Watch out for the legislation that Mandelson is looking to push through to control the internet, using the twin excuses’ of terrorism and copyright. Our government has misused anti-terror legislation previously, and will not think twice about doing it again.
Science has a short time to redeem itself. The choice is stark, come out and tell the truth and face up to a funding loss, arguing correctly there are many relevant areas for continuing funding, or continue as is and lose the confidence of the public, and ultimately all funding. This confidence is currently paper thin with issues over advice on health, the Military and many other areas being called into question. Here the Royal Society has to take a decisive lead, something that has been disastrously lacking over the last 10 to 15 years.
All this will burn in the background as attention turns in the UK at least to the coming general election and the state of the economy. Labour are going to harp on about their environmental credentials, using Climate Change as their central plank. It has bored the electorate in the run up to Copenhagen and will be a turn-off in the general election. If Cameron continues on his current path trying to match Labour he will find his support will continue to founder. He can play the environmental card simply by emphasising real areas of concern such as energy saving, insulating homes and recycling etc. without climate change. But the real issue of this election is going to be freedom and democratic accountability.
With the Lisbon treaty kicking in the EU is set to over regulate our financial centre, further hampering our economic recovery. There is a lot of in-built jealousy of the success of the city amongst the French and Germans, and the UK has been suckered into something by a very carless Gordon Brown as he sort personal glory. And again unless Cameron and Osborne grow up and stop playing politics with the city their support will slip towards UKIP. That it is fashionable to kick the bankers is entirely missing the point and the Tories are missing a trick by not emphasising where the real fault lay, with the Government and the FSA.
I think we all know that Copenhagen was all about money, world government and regulation of energy use and by implication controlling the developing world. Slowly but surely I think the free world is catching on and is pushing back. MP’s expenses have been one manifestation in the UK domestically; pushing back on climate change is a manifestation on the global stage. The question now is, are we too late?
Read here to find out
advice on health
OT, I know, but this reminded me of the latest pronouncement by Sir Liam Donaldson, regarding alcohol and children, thus reinforcing my belief that government advice tends to be perfectly wrong.
E.g. turn the light off or your dog will drown…
From the Ed Miliblog:
We return from Copenhagen with an Accord which represents the start of a new chapter on climate change, even if it does not provide everything we wanted.
I pretty sure that wasn’t what he said when interviewed on his return! IIRC, he all but agreed with the suggestion that it had been an unmitigated disaster…
The big hidden agenda in all this is the “world government” idea.
6 months ago I would have rejected this as a barmy conspiracy theory. Not today.
It’s a weird coalition of the power-mad UN types, 3rd world kleptos, greedy opportunitists like Raj Pachauriand Al Gore.
Also in the mix are enviro-patsies like my delusional neighbors who religiously measure each gram of CO2. Sadly I think Miliband is one of the latter – he really does think he is doing his bit “for the planet”.
What Was Really Behind Copenhagen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNQqUACJ_Kw
PeterM would be proud.
Robin, #4:
Thanks! But that post was written in a mood of optimism on Sunday evening. On Monday I went to Chester, with two hours driving at either end of the day spanning the Today and PM + 6pm News broadcasts. I was shocked by what I heard.
Lord Stern and Sir David King were introduced by Jim Nochtie saying, ‘So where do we go after Copenhagen? ….. We’re joined by two leading figures in the debate’.
I had thought that even the BBC might introduce a little more caution into its coverage after the obvious failure of he summit, but no; we still got two people from the same side of he debate agreeing with each other.
King: ‘We can take two very positive factors away [from Copenhagen]…Full engagement of poor countries … Triumph for Gordon Brown’ … Carbon credits will solve all the problems.
Stern: ‘Using the term failure like Andrew Marr seems to be a mistake.’
Even after a couple of years running a blog, and all life’s usual rough and tumble, it still shakes me when I come across full grown adults dissembling so openly.
It seems that there is unity on one thing only after Copenhagen; the warmist cause will continue to try to transform a miserable failur by shouting ever more loudly, ‘It was a triumph!’.
At lunchtime I spotted this quote from Gordon Brown in The Times. ‘Never again should we face the dedlock that threatened to pull down the talks.’ But dedlock was not a threat at Copenhage, it was the what really happened.
Then on my way home, I heard someone – Ed Miliband I think – say in an inteview that the developing nations who had not signed up to the accord would soon agree to the accord when they realises that their choice is between taking what is on the table or getting nothing.
This was a tacit admission that no credible agreement has been reached dressed up as a claim of success.
Today I see that according to The Times David Cameron had great difficulty preventing climate sceptics in his own ranks dominating the debate after the summit, and that he will strive for a legally binding treaty.
I fear that there is a way to go yet before a our leaders begin to acknowledge the public mood.
TonyN
Cameron is signing his own failure warrent. He just doesn’t get it, he hasn’t realised just why the Tory polls went up and why Labout is so unpopular, or indead why the Tories an not currently kicking on.
I will predict right now that he won’t win the next election outright, but that it will not be Labour or the Lib Dems doing the damange and he will either do a drastic U turn or be replace in short order.
As for the BBC having King and Stern in the same room, both of these so call intelligent humans are standing behind the most incredible drivel that most 15 year old can see through it. Its just a case of the BBC’s last hurrah.
Peter G:
Perhaps the most conspicuous thing about the Tories reaction to Copenhagen is the lack of any reaction.
Benny Peiser, writing in the Observer on Sunday, said that he did not expect cross-party consensus on AGW to survive the election campaign. Benny has a very good record for getting such predictions right.
Matthew d’Ancona in the Sunday Telegraph compares politicians commitment to AGW alarmism in the face of growing public scepticism to their inability to ‘get it’ over the MP’s expenses scandal. Sooner or later they have to start listening.
Doing nothing to deter the government from taking an ever more extreme position on global warming would seem to be sensible tactics for the Conservatives at the moment.
Whatever the New Year brings, it seems very likely that there will be some surprises.
The mindset displayed by Lord Stern and the current UK Lib/Lab/Con leaders reminds me somehow of a cat that has climbed so far up into the high branches of a tree that it can’t safely climb down again. What can they do? They can’t back down easily without risking a serious fall. They have to somehow wait where they are and maintain their position until the fire brigade arrives (or someone with a tall ladder.) Unless the next few years show some sort of unmistakable and dramatic global warming, rescue might not be on the cards – in which case, they’ll remain stuck (until someone shakes the tree!)
For some light relief, here’s John Prescott in pugnacious mood, insisting that Copenhagen could eventually be as big a success as Kyoto, if only the media weren’t so negative.
I just checked the Edspledge site again, and “0 billion” has now been replaced by “100 billion”. Mind you, he still doesn’t say 100 billion what. Dollars, sterling, euros, yen? Quatloos might be best.
TonyN
I secretly hope you are right. In fact I think way back I thought the course of action as outlined by Benny Peiser was what I thought may happen and posted as much. It was that stupid post by Cameron on Conservatives.com that shook me and made me wonder.
And I agree with Matthew d’Ancona and would say that most MP have not understood what the expenses row was all about. Collectively they don’t get it. At some point MP’s will have stop fighting all the fringe campaigns and get back to representing their core vote.
An interesting statistic was given out my Michael Portillo on the Christmas edition of the Tonight show last week. People over 50 are twice as likely to vote as those under 50, and there are twice as many voters over 50. This means our votes are 4 times more valuable than those from the young. And currently it’s this traditional group that Cameron is ignoring.
This is a group that thinks more about the future, and further into the future than the young do, can not be fooled by Politicians, and are more likely to vote sceptically, ie conservative will vote UKIP, or Labour vote BNP (north only) or SNP (Scotland) whereas the young if faced with the same dilemma’s will just not vote. Food for thought and something that Moonbat forgot to think about when he accused climate sceptics of all being old.
Peter G:
Interesting – particularly the demographics.
Twice as many voters between 50 and 80 (arbitrary cutoff point, but the grim reaper is necessarily arbitrary) as between 18 and 50? Come on now. I don’t believe any statistics emanating from the CRU, the Royal Society, the LSE or the Met Office. Why should I believe Mr Portillo? One of the byproducts of climategate is going to be every dumb politician quoting fake statistics at us.
I suspect that Cameron ignores the older voters at his peril, as we have a nose for nonsense honed through many years of wading through stuff that turned out not to be true-I think older people are therefore naturally more ‘sceptical’ and as was said earlier the older people are far more likely to vote than the young.
As an example of the never ending hype surrounding one apocalyspe or another, does anyone remember this gem-now time expired-‘5000 days to save the planet’ from the stable of the ecologist, with no less than another Goldsmith beating his breast in anguish.
http://www.theecologist.info/page38.html
It is going to be interesting to see if the Tories will hold back a bit on their doom laden scenarios following the Copenhagen debacle or if they will just press on regardless.
Tonyb
Post #10 contains a link showing a group of communists and socialists demonstrating in Copenhagen.
My first thought was that the link was suggesting that, if they were in favour of action to curb GHGs, then it must be the wrong thing to do.
But, I quickly rejected that idea. These guys would have been favour of releasing Nelson Mandela from jail and the ending of apartheid in South Africa. You deniers, sorry, ‘climate sceptics’, wouldn’t think he should still be locked up, and that apartheid should still continue, would you?
Anyone else got any other theories that might make sense of that link?
Peter Geany,
I notice that you referred to ‘Moonbat’ rather than Monbiot which I must say I thought was a bit schoolboyish. I presume you aren’t a schoolboy. If I’m wrong on that, then I’m sure you’ll grow out of it and develop a more grown up form of humour before too long.
I quite like working out anagrams from names. my first attempt with yours was ‘a green type’. Not really!
‘Gay preteen’ would make you a very young schoolboy.
More appropriate ones might be ‘A energy pet’ or “Enrage Type”.
Peter M
And very merry Christmas to you as well.
Anyone who referred to the group that I belong by dint of my age the way Monbiot did a few weeks back does not deserve much in the way of respect. If you read the comments after his post and a similar one by Richard Black during the lost days of Copenhagen you will be left is no doubt as to what the majority of people thought of them.
Indeed I will venture that neither of those esteemed journalist will dare to venture such ridiculous suggestions again.
Sorry Peter what was your point again?