Global Warming...New Report...and it ain't happy news

I recognize that global warming is a metaphor for stupid environmental risk.

If one takes out a mortgage and cannot make the agreed payments then the property that secures the loan is forefit in accordance with the mortgage contract. If a bank makes too many unwise loans and suffers financial reverses after a market turn, it will get swallowed up by another that made fewer such errors. I don't call that a mess - it is simply the fulfillment of a contract and the fortunes of business conducted unwisely. The problem is largely self-correcting. At best government can moderate such cycles and reverses - it can't prevent them. Moreover equivalent and worse outcomes are often the byproduct of government intervention.

i just want to say that the damage done by many unsavoury commercial actions (sub-prime mortgages , pollution , oil spills ... ) is usually unloaded on the many innocent people who bear no responsibility for it

imo having FREEDOM also means being RESPONSIBLE for one's actions and not expecting others to carry the burden .
'nuff said .
hbg

Chumly wrote:

I recognize that global warming is a metaphor for stupid environmental risk.

I recognize that global warming is a metaphor for what humans cannot control.

U.S. agrees to Bali compromiseStory Highlights


U.S. first rejects and then accepts a compromise at Bali climate conference

Final result was a pact that provides for negotiating rounds to conclude in 2009

U.N. climate change conference had been scheduled to end Friday
BALI, Indonesia (CNN) -- The United States made a dramatic reversal Saturday, first rejecting and then accepting a compromise to set the stage for intense negotiations in the next two years aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions worldwide.

The U.N. climate change conference in Bali was filled with emotion and cliff-hanging anticipation on Saturday, an extra day added because of a failure to reach agreement during the scheduled sessions.

The final result was a global warming pact that provides for negotiating rounds to conclude in 2009.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the pact "a good beginning." "This is just a beginning and not an ending," Ban said. "We'll have to engage in many complex, difficult and long negotiations." Watch as emotional conference declared a success ».

The head of the U.S. delegation -- Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky -- was booed Saturday afternoon when she announced that the United States was rejecting the plan as then written because they were "not prepared to accept this formulation." She said developing countries needed to carry more of the responsibility.

While rhetoric at such conferences is often just words, a short speech by a delegate from the small developing country of Papua New Guinea appeared to carry weight with the Americans. The delegate challenged the United States to "either lead, follow or get out of the way."

Just five minutes later, when it appeared the conference was on the brink of collapse, Dobriansky took to the floor again to announce the United States was willing to accept the arrangement. Applause erupted in the hall and a relative level of success for the conference appeared certain.

Watch CNN's Dan Rivers on Bali 'rollercoaster ride.' »

Saturday's session, a roller coaster ride for delegates and the media, began with optimism after the European Union and the United States reached agreement on a compromise for their differences on a global warming pact.

The U.N. climate change conference had been scheduled to end Friday. But the delegates returned to the negotiating table early Saturday after talks went well into the night before. The new pact is meant as a roadmap for future climate talks, which will culminate in Copenhagen in 2009.

Humberto Rosa, a Portuguese environmental official, said the two sides had come to an agreement over wording about future emissions cuts that would not include specific guidelines. The United States objected to the specific guidelines, saying including them was moving the process too quickly and would preempt any future negotiations.

The EU wanted an agreement to require developed countries to cut their emissions by 25 to 40 percent of 1990 levels by 2020. The United States opposes those targets, along with Japan and Canada.

The latest draft of the agreement removes the specific figures and instead, in a footnote, references the scientific study that supports them.

While the EU and the United States appeared to have ended their impasse, India had objections to other parts of the agreement, notably the contributions developed nations would make to help developing nations clean up their emissions problems. Talks were expected to continue for several more hours.

Environmental groups said the new pact makes the agreement less forceful than it might have been, but agreed that it is probably the best that could be had given the staunch objections of the Bush administration.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who attended the conference earlier this week but left for a visit to East Timor, announced Saturday that he was unexpectedly returning to Bali to help shepherd the talks as they apparently neared a conclusion.

At one dramatic point Saturday, Ban took the podium to say urge compromise before adjournment.

"Frankly, I'm disappointed at the level of progress," he said.

Without specifics, however, some believed the final agreement would amount to failure.

"Let me underline once again that the Bali road map must have a clear destination," said Stavros Dimas, the EU environment commissioner.

But Rajendra Pachauri, who heads the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said such a stance would ignore the other progress being made at the conference. He said simply having a strong statement paving the way for future action would suffice.

"I wouldn't term that a failure at all," Pachauri said. "I think what would be a failure is not to provide a strong road map by which the world can move on, and I think that road map has to be specified with or without numbers. If we can come up with numbers, that's certainly substantial progress, and I hope that happens."

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change passed the Kyoto Protocol 10 years ago, with the goal of limiting greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.

While 175 parties -- including the European Union -- ratified it, the United States has not.

CNN's Dan Rivers contributed to this report.

ican711nm wrote:

Chumly wrote:

I recognize that global warming is a metaphor for stupid environmental risk.

I recognize that global warming is a metaphor for what humans cannot control.

So Quasars are a function of global warming.

Climate has been a factor in religious strife stretching back more than a millennium. The crop shortages that resulted from the so-called Little Ice Age that began in the late 13th century underlay some of the subsequent period's religious persecution, including witchcraft trials and pogroms on Jews. Related shortages of resources in the Middle East and Mesopotamia provoked similar violence against Christian minorities.

This past suggests that the scarcity brought about by warmer temperatures will make it hard for religious minorities to survive and force splinter groups to move to nations that are more sympathetic to them.

not perfect ... but a step in the right direction imo .
hbg

hamburger wrote:
not perfect ... but a step in the right direction imo .
hbg

Its nothing more than politics, not science, hamburger.

As long as it doesn't harm our economy greatly, why not humor other countries for political purposes? I don't see that it accomplishes anything, but if they think it does, perception trumps reality in today's world.

As long as it doesn't harm our economy greatly, why not humor other countries for political purposes? I don't see that it accomplishes anything, but if they think it does, perception trumps reality in today's world.

I do believe that reducing our consumption of imported petroleum will indeed help us economically.

To achieve that I believe we should encourage the rapid doubling of our nuclear power generating potential as a means of displacing the huge quantities of domestic natural gas, wastefully burned in the inefficient production of electrical power in gas turbine plants (about 16% of our total electrical production), enabling the gas to be used in our vehicle transportation system. In addition this nuclear resurgence will be an important bridge in enabling us to develop and sustain the cadre of nuclear engineers and designers who will be needed to get us to the eventual practical use of fusion reactors - which are the only long-term solution to human energy needs.

We should also encourage continued reserarch in improved applications of solar power. However we should avoid subsidizing it precisely because that would be a disincentive to the needed development of more economical approaches to this source. Right now solar is far too expensive to yield any net economic benefit to us.

I am opposed to any treaty obligation to some extra national body that might assert its ability to enforce limits on CO2 emissions or anything else like it. In the first place the current Kyoto signatories have so far shown no inclination to themselves act on the obligations they so proudly and solemnly undertook. They are a disreputable group that has no claim whatever to the moral authority they so cynically claim to exercise. Secondly there is no basis for agreement among nations like Russia, China, and India or any other developing nations to any options whatever in the name of limiting greenhouse gas emissions. Thus the notion of an extranational authoritarian enforcement of greenhouse gas limitations no credible basis in reality. It is merely an illusion put forward by immature tinkerers who, Walter Middy-like, amuse themselves with absurd notions for the perfection of mankind. They are not to be taken seriously.