The UN COP 21 meeting opens in Paris in about ten days. Very little “progress” towards a new worldwide agreement on carbon dioxide (CO2) emission reductions appears to have been made at numerous preparatory meetings for it. Two issues are likely to be particularly troublesome. One is whether an agreement should be legally binding. The other is whether the agreement should mandate large payments from the developed countries (DCs) to the less developed countries (LDCs), as originally proposed by President Obama and then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the failed COP 15 in Copenhagen in 2009.
Will the Proposed Agreement Be a Treaty?
The Obama Administration wants an agreement that is not legally binding so as to better argue that they need not submit it for Senate ratification as required by the Constitution. They know that no such ratification is possible given the current makeup of the Senate. Other countries, particularly some of those in the European Union, want it to be legally binding, possibly in part because the current EU proposal on climate is contingent on an enforceable agreement.
Will the Agreement Mandate Large Payments to the LDCs?
Equally problematic is the LDC funding issue. Many LDCs are balking at signing onto an agreement unless the developed countries provide substantial funding to the LDCs through the UN. In the US case this is a major problem, and it is also probably for many other DCs. In the US case it requires a specific Congressional appropriation since it is a new spending category and would not be covered by a continuing resolution which Congress is apparently going to use to fund the US Government in Fiscal Year 2016. Congress appears unlikely to fund such a new appropriation, which could lead to a breakdown of the 2016 appropriation process if the Administration pursues its efforts to try to force Congress to fund something that it does not want to fund for this purpose.
These and other issues will be playing out in Paris against the background of the ISIS massacre of some 130 people there last week. As noted last week a number of prominent Democrats nevertheless claim that “fighting” climate change is the most important national security issue we face despite the evidence provided by the worst loss of life in France due to hostilities since World War II.
My expectation is that there will be a last minute “agreement” that attempts to hide these and other still unresolved problems. The climate alarmists will attempt to portray this as a victory, despite the probable absence of a meaningful, enforceable agreement that would oblige every nation to make a significant contribution towards CO2 emission reductions. If so, this will highlight one of the important reasons that meaningful, worldwide CO2 reductions are a fantasy, as described in my book, Environmentalism Gone Mad.
[…] that Are Not Likely to Be Resolved By Alan Carlin, Carlin Economics and Science, Nov 19, 2015 http://www.carlineconomics.com/arch… 1. Will the Proposed Agreement Be a Treaty? 2. Will the Agreement Mandate Large Payments to the […]
The calculations by Lukes and Warmists are WRONG because they do NOT explain the required energy flows. The direct solar radiation cannot and does not account for the observed surface temperatures on Earth, let alone Venus. Back radiation has nothing to do with such temperatures. It could only slow the rate of cooling by radiation, but the solar radiation is not what gets the surfaces of such planets up to the observed temperatures. How does the surface actually warm each morning? How does the required new thermal energy get into the surface? YOU GUYS HAVE NO UNDERSTANDING AT ALL IN REGARD TO THE THERMODYNAMICS OF PLANETARY TROPOSPHERES. You need to think in a wholly different paradigm – one which has been explained correctly by only one writer in all of world literature. When you understand the maximization of entropy it will blow your mind as to just HOW WRONG all Lukes and Warmists are. The biggest single problem is that they don’t understand thermodynamics and radiation, and they are not prepared to try to learn and understand such. They just scoff at the author of that breakthrough science (already endorsed by other physicists) and think they know better. But water vapor does not raise surface temperatures and they cannot prove it does with any valid study of temperature/precipitation records. THAT SINGLE FACT DEMOLISHES THE GREENHOUSE.
What a sham. CO2 is good for the universe it makes things grow greener. Temperatures are relatively flat for the last 12-18 years according to satellite data even though the CO2 content has gone up each year, The world temperatures do not agree with the Equations that have been written to scare us into believing future generations will drastically be impacted by the world burning, coal, oil and gas. For more information on this subject go to my web : http://TheWorldEnergyDilemma.com under news.
I have filed two petitions to the 2016 General Conference of the United Methodist Church to have the subject of Global Warming-Climate Change ie CO2 removed from our Book of Discipline and Book of Resolutions because it is not a religious topic. It is political. A review of history does not support the claims by the scare mongers. My petitions are listed as an April 2015 blog.
Low Carbon production is tied poor economies. I do not understand why we should be driving up the price of electricity which will hurt poor the most by forcing CO2 reductions.
Louis W Powers Member of Memorial Drive United Methodist Church Houston, Texas
Author “The World Energy Dilemma” PennWell 2012