February 28, 2016

Paris Accord On Climate Change A Failure




[From article]
The PA is mainly about money transfers, designed to provide a legacy for president Obama. Unlike the KP, the PA has little to do with climate. Although it talks bravely about keeping global warming below 2degC, it never explains how to define and measure this (alleged) “critical” threshold. I recently referred to it as a big "nothing-burger" -- borrowing a term used by the late Anne Gorsuch, EPA chief under president Reagan.
As compared with Kyoto, the PA includes both industrialized and developing nations, but its legal status is not well defined: Some nations have considered it a protocol to the (Rio de Janeiro) Global Climate Treaty, the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC), and have ratified it as an international treaty. On the other hand, the White House (WH) does not label it a formal treaty and has not submitted it to the US Senate for ratification, fearing it will turn the PA down. [Even after nearly 20 years, everyone still remembers the unanimous Senate vote for the Byrd-Hagel Resolution (of July 1997) against such a treaty.] Instead, the WH planned to meet US commitments though Executive Orders and by relying on its own interpretations of relevant laws
[. . .]
The PA can be briefly summarized as follows:
Each nation proposes to reduce emissions but sets its own voluntary emission target for greenhouse (GH) gases, especially for carbon dioxide (CO2); there is no overall target for global reduction. This procedure follows the pattern of the US-China agreement of November 2014, in which China decided to continue with business as usual (BAU) until reaching a 2030 peak -- and then gradually reduce CO2 emissions. In this manner, each signatory nation to the PA can pick and choose their emission targets and timing.
Furthermore, each nation reports its own emissions; there is no overall supervision.
No sanctions are applied if a country fails to abide by its announced plan.
[. . .]
The scheme is a simple bribe; it involves transfer of resources from hard-working non-wealthy citizens in developed nations to the Swiss bank accounts of kleptocrat dictators running most of the developing nations.
[. . .]
In trying to figure out what to do, I believe the Congress will go back to evaluate the science, starting from the beginning. Once they become better informed and the warmers can no longer beat them up with unproven claims, they will see the fraud themselves. Nobody will have the patience to wait for a new outcome, or to invest in climate research, while the misled and misleading warmers try to conjure a new approach. We could be watching a major historical occurrence in scientific research, forcing "scientists" to relearn the scientific method and to return to honesty as the first postulate of scientific research. We may eventually see the collapse of the climate industry.
Gordon Fulks wrote:
[. . .]
the clear harm would have been to the states forced to follow EPA regulations that are now likely to be overturned. The problem goes far beyond the EPA coal regulations; it involves Obama exceeding his authority with an obvious end-run around the Congress.
[. . .]
If Federal agencies are to continue enjoying the deference they now get from the courts, they have to be forced to do reputable science, not merely reputable politics.
“This could be the beginning of the end of Obama's dictatorial tendencies. We can only hope that it is likewise the beginning of the end of the climate scam.
[. . .]
Wall Street Journal editorial:
[. . .]
Once the Clean Power Plan starts, it becomes self-executing. If the EPA loses down the road, it will laugh that the opinion is too late and thus pointless.
“The White House has been right about the success of its damn-the-law strategy—so far. Last year in Michigan v. EPA, the Court voided a 2012 rule on mercury emissions. The chief EPA air administrator then gloated on the EPA website that the ruling didn’t matter
[. . .]
Rivkin & Grossman in the Wall Street Journal:
“President Obama’s Clean Power Plan is dead and will not be resurrected. The cause of death was hubris. As a result, the plan’s intended victims — including the national coal industry, the rule of law, and state sovereignty — will live to fight another day.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/02/paris_climate_accord_hope_change__and_collapse.html

February 23, 2016
Paris Climate Accord: Hope, Change -- and Collapse
By S. Fred Singer

No comments: