All the world can breathe a huge sigh of relief. In Bali all of those private jets may not have gone for naught.
BALI, Indonesia - Two weeks of international climate talks marked by bitter disagreements and angry accusations culminated Saturday in a last-minute U.S. compromise and an agreement to adopt a blueprint for fighting global warming by 2009. Now comes the hard part.
Delegates from nearly 190 nations must fix goals for industrialized nations to cut their greenhouse gas emissions while helping developing countries cut their own emissions and adapt to rising temperatures.
UN Secretary-General (aside: is he a secretary, or is he a general? Steno pad or uniform with gold braid?) Ban Ki-Moon was heard to declare a decided victory significant progress major developments a tough road ahead.
"This is the beginning, not the end," U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told The Associated Press following the contentious climate conference, which stretched into an extra day. "We will have to engage in more complex, long and difficult negotiations."
I guess the Gulfstreams and Lears will have a lot more miles to fly. So why was this development just in the nick of time? Because if they don't socialize the world economy soon, somebody might point out that it's not necessary. Oops, too late. (Hat tip Wizbang!, via Moonbattery)
Contrary to the impression left by the IPCC Summary reports:
· Recent observations of phenomena such as glacial retreats, sea-level rise and the migration of temperature-sensitive species are not evidence for abnormal climate change, for none of these changes has been shown to lie outside the bounds of known natural variability.
· The average rate of warming of 0.1 to 0. 2 degrees Celsius per decade recorded by satellites during the late 20th century falls within known natural rates of warming and cooling over the last 10,000 years.
· Leading scientists, including some senior IPCC representatives, acknowledge that today's computer models cannot predict climate. Consistent with this, and despite computer projections of temperature rises, there has been no net global warming since 1998. That the current temperature plateau follows a late 20th-century period of warming is consistent with the continuation today of natural multi-decadal or millennial climate cycling.
In stark contrast to the often repeated assertion that the science of climate change is "settled," significant new peer-reviewed research has cast even more doubt on the hypothesis of dangerous human-caused global warming. But because IPCC working groups were generally instructed (see http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/docs/wg1_timetable_2006-08-14.pdf) to consider work published only through May, 2005, these important findings are not included in their reports; i.e., the IPCC assessment reports are already materially outdated.
There are no slouches among the signatories. Recall, we just had some IPCC slight of hand with sea level changes challenged. They'd better get that agreement pronto!
