The Copenhagen Climate Conference of 2009

The Copenhagen Climate Conference of 2009

Just like the Kyoto Climate Control Protocol, this latest United Nations effort was not about controlling pollution or global warming — it was all about controlling the world's economy and exerting the power of the United Nations by redistributing money from productive countries to unproductive ones, under the guise of "climate reparations." To accomplish this, they would have us assume that carbon dioxide is a pollutant, which it isn't; that industrial growth is a bad thing, which it isn't; and that global warming is caused by industrial activity, which it isn't.

In general, it is the poorest countries in the world that are the worst polluters, and they pollute the environment with chemicals that are genuinely harmful, not just innocuous CO2.

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A new religion complete with evangelists, tithes, indulgences and superstitions. [Scroll down] Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, said before the Copenhagen summit in 2009 that we have "50 days to save the world". Copenhagen was of course a complete flop and yet we are all still here, although his government is no longer with us. Similar predictions of impending doom have come and gone. Then we have the language used by the warmists themselves. For years the public was warned of the dangers of "global warming" and indeed such warnings were easy to believe as year after year the weather kept getting warmer. However since 1998 temperatures have been falling and the seasons have been getting noticeably colder in the Northern hemisphere.

Ice Cores Show No Significant Warming. As we enter a week of theatre from Copenhagen, it is good for everyone to become familiar with the hypothesis of man-made global warming as it compares to natural global warming. Man-made global warming seems to be the product of well crafted statistics, which have never been fully vetted. But natural climate change, on the other hand, has been around since time began on planet Earth.

Beware The Climate Change Alarmists. In the next few weeks we'll be relentlessly scrubbed with eyewash, brainwash and hogwash, all designed to cleanse us of any doubts that global warming is a proven menace to mother Earth. First, there's the Democratic global warming legislation rushing through Congress with a denouement expected soon. Second, the rush to pass the legislation is fueled by the upcoming United Nations meeting on global warming next month in Copenhagen.

A hot time in Copenhagen. This December, world leaders will gather in Copenhagen to draft a successor agreement to the Kyoto Accord. This means you'll be hearing increasing hysteria this fall — hard to imagine, I know — from all the usual "green" suspects about how we have only months left to save the planet from man-made global warming. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon warned last week we have just "four months" — until Copenhagen — "to secure the future of our planet" from runaway climate change, or face environmental Armageddon.

'The Copenhagen Diagnosis' Fails Logic 101. Before everybody arrived [in Copenhagen], to make sure those leaders were briefed, they were given a document outlining the evidence for man-made global warming (a.k.a. climate change, or AGW). This is "The Copenhagen Diagnosis." Stephen It's-Getting-Cold-No-Wait!-Hot-Out Schneider and many other environmental persons took up pen to detail the best — or at least, most frightening — arguments for action. It is thus important to understand this document to discover whether the information offered is convincing ... or even relevant.

Copenhagen Collapse. When an overblown environmental conference culminates with Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad lecturing the West on virtue, color it another shakedown. The United Nations' Copenhagen Climate Conference is going fast into meltdown. It may be because it's not about climate anymore, but fitting a noose on the world's productive economies and extracting wealth transfers.

Al Gore condemned over Arctic ice melting prediction. Al Gore, the former US Vice-President, has become embroiled in a climate change spin row after claiming that the Arctic could be completely ice-free within five years. Speaking at the Copenhagen climate change summit, Mr Gore said new computer modelling suggests there is a 75 percent chance of the entire polar ice cap melting during the summertime by 2014.

Copenhagen doesn't need Climategate to self-destruct. Even though delegates to the climate conference in Copenhagen are basically ignoring Climategate and its implications, it appears that any hope of crafting a "meaningful" treaty may be slipping away. Yesterday [12/14/2009], developing nations got themselves into a snit and walked out of negotiations because of the lack of hard targets for cutting emissions among the rich countries.

Prince Charles warns climate change will drive starvation and terrorism. The world has only seven years before climate change causes a "point of crisis" that will drive food shortages, terrorism and poverty, the Prince of Wales has warned. Speaking at the opening ceremony of the ministerial segment of the Copenhagen climate conference, the Prince said the "survival of the species" was in peril.

Economic suicide. When Air Force One jets off to Copenhagen next week, clouds of greenhouse gases billowing in its wake, the president would be wise to recall why the US Senate voted 95-0 against the Kyoto Protocol in 1997: It required huge economic sacrifice from America — and virtually none from other countries. A Copenhagen pact may wind up with similar requirements — as India's environmental minister, Jairam Ramesh, made clear yesterday [12/3/2009].

The Surprise at Copenhagen. Obama believes in AGW (anthropogenic or man-made global warming) theory. He believes in "economic and social justice," and that logically leads to "climate justice." He may believe that the U.S. owes a "climate debt" to the rest of the world. What better way to lead the charge than to carry the ultimate banner of the radical left — wealth redistribution — under the auspices of the "crises of climate change."

More about President Obama and rabid environmentalism.

Inconvenient truth for Al Gore as his North Pole sums don't add up. In his speech [at Copenhagen], Mr Gore told the conference: "These figures are fresh. Some of the models suggest to Dr [Wieslav] Maslowski that there is a 75 percent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years."

Obama's Push for Copenhagen Deal Could Violate Constitution, Critics Say. President Obama's mission to save the planet from global warming could end up trampling on the U.S. Constitution, critics say. When Obama arrives in Copenhagen Friday, he is hoping to cut a deal on a new global-warming agreement. Even though the conference is not likely to produce a legally binding deal, critics say if the president signs an international climate treaty pledging reductions in carbon emissions, he will violate the Constitution. ... The Constitution states that the president cannot sign treaties without the approval of two-thirds of the Senate.

US Deal In Copenhagen Wrong For Our Country. All across this nation, families and businesses are struggling to make ends meet. Millions of Americans have lost their jobs and many more worry that they will be next. But Americans are meeting these times with courage and by putting first things first, at least everywhere but the White House.

Canadian Company Will 'Offset' Emissions From Obama's Air Force One Flight. A private Canadian company says it will plant 1,176 trees to offset the carbon emitted by Air Force One when it carries President Barack Obama to Copenhagen for the international climate conference. President Obama will travel 3,979 miles to Denmark on Friday, Dec. 18, and Air Force One will emit an estimated 196 tons of carbon on that trip, said LimeGreen Earth, Inc., in a news release.

Al Gore's melting Arctic claim unites scientist and sceptic alike. Al Gore stood by his claim yesterday [12/15/2009] that the North Pole could be ice-free within five years, attracting a storm of criticism from scientists and sceptics alike. In an address to the Copenhagen summit, the former Vice-President of the United States quoted an international report published this year, which suggested that the North Pole could have lost virtually all of its ice by 2015.

Defiant Mugabe attends talks despite travel bans. President Robert Mugabe arrived in Denmark yesterday [12/15/2009] to attend UN climate talks, despite western sanctions on his travel and public disapproval from Danish hosts. Denmark's prime minister, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, said Mr Mugabe was allowed to attend the Copenhagen climate conference because of rules that permitted him to attend UN meetings, overriding European Union and United States travel bans.

The Copenhagen Shakedown. The U.N. climate-change conference in Copenhagen was supposed to be the moment when the world came together to save us from an excess of carbon dioxide. Like all such confabs, it's coming down instead to cold, hard cash.

Al Gore tries to cool 'climate spin' by correcting claims of North pole thaw. Al Gore's office issued a formal correction yesterday [12/16/2009] to a speech the former US Vice-President had given earlier in the week that started the latest in a series of "climate spin" rows. Mr Gore told the Copenhagen summit meeting that the latest research suggested that the North Pole would be ice-free within five to seven years.

Copenhagen climate summit: 1,200 limos, 140 private planes and caviar wedges. On a normal day, Majken Friss Jorgensen, managing director of Copenhagen's biggest limousine company, says her firm has twelve vehicles on the road. During the "summit to save the world", which opens here tomorrow, she will have 200. "We thought they were not going to have many cars, due to it being a climate convention," she says. "But it seems that somebody last week looked at the weather report."

Come Fry with Me. [Scroll down] As Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, explains: Hotel guests should have their electricity monitored; hefty aviation taxes should be introduced to deter people from flying; and iced water in restaurants should be curtailed, the world's leading climate scientist has told the Observer. Rajendra Pachauri? Hey, if you're manning the VIP lounge at Heathrow, that name may ring a bell: Dr Rajendra Pachauri flew at least 443,243 miles on IPCC business in this 19 month period.

Taking the private jet to Copenhagen. Any celebrity flying the green flag needs glittering eco-credentials. But how do they justify the fleet of customised planes, the luxury homes and the posse of servants?

Limousine liberals enjoy the weather in Copenhagen. As the world's leaders come together to try to hammer out measures to fight global warming, they are not forgetting to take time out to live it up. Junketeers at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen — many of them from developing nations — are enjoying luxuries like limos, private jets, and fancy gourmet food while claiming that the world is going to hell in a handbasket because of our consumption.

More about the hypocrisy of eco-celebrities.

The supremacy of Tuvalu. Among the heroes of the [Copenhagen climate change] conference are Hugo Chavez and Robert Mugabe. Andrew Bolt gets to the heart of the conference with a look at one of the lesser known figures. Bolt writes: "Nothing is real in Copenhagen — not the temperature record, not the predictions, not the agenda, not the 'solution.'" Quoting a report from the Australian, Bolt provides a good example of "how fake it all is."

It's settled; climate circus was a fairy tale. Reuters, for example, carried a moving account of the speech by Ian Fry, lead negotiator for Tuvalu, the beleaguered Pacific island nation soon to be under water because of a planet-devastating combination of your SUV and unsustainable bovine flatulence from Vermont farms. ... Alas, nowhere in this emotionally harrowing dispatch was there room to mention that Ian Fry's country is not Tuvalu but Australia, where he lives relatively safe from rising sea levels given that he's a hundred miles inland.

The counter-Copenhagen conference...
Republicans Plan to Form Counter-Delegation at Climate Conference. A GOP counter-delegation is forming to undermine the Obama administration's work on an international climate change agreement in Copenhagen, warning that the president is poised to make commitments he can't keep and drawing heightened attention to controversial leaked e-mails.

Did someone mention ClimateGate?

Copenhagen climate summit: global warming 'caused by sun's radiation'. Global warming is caused by radiation from the sun, according to a leading scientist speaking out at an alternative "sceptics' conference" in Copenhagen.

Climate Hubris. While the Copenhagen talks didn't shed much light on the climate issue per se, they certainly revealed much about the motivations of those involved in the debate. It was clear, both in the meetings and among protestors outside, that the most vociferous advocates for imposing limits on greenhouse emissions are motivated only tangentially by concern for the planet. The real target of radical environmentalism is capitalism.

Enviro-Marxists discover the real scourge of the planet: human beings. "Climate change," the scam formerly known as "global warming," has been exposed as the crypto-Marxist hoax many of us suspected for years that it was. In Copenhagen, at the ridiculous charade of a "summit" on the dangers of carbon emissions producing record carbon emissions, the lofty rhetoric about saving the planet and the long-suffering polar bears has been ripped down like a sheet covering an unfinished masterpiece.

Obama offers $33 billion per year in climate reparations. As the UN Climate Control Conference comes to an end today, many issues remain to be negotiated, including the size of the emissions cuts and the future of the Kyoto treaty. But one issue has already been settled: the size of the reparations that the developed countries (United States, Europe, Japan, etc.) would pay to the developing countries (China, India, Africa, etc.) if the agreement is negotiated.

Pelosi Bars Republicans from Copenhagen Press Conference. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) today barred Republican members of the congressional delegation to Copenhagen for the U.N. "climate change" conference from participation in the official congressional press conference at Bella Center. Sources at the event told HUMAN EVENTS that Republicans were not initially informed of the event then were subsequently barred from participation.

Thatcher adviser: Copenhagen goal is 1-world government. A former science adviser to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher says the real purpose of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen on Dec. 7-18 is to use global warming hype as a pretext to lay the foundation for a one-world government.

Only 50 days left to save the world?
I might listen to the doomsayers if they weren't such ludicrous hypocrites. Not many people understand climate change. But they can recognise hypocrisy when they see it, and are also likely to count their spoons whenever wild-eyed politicians invoke the impending end of the world. On Tuesday [12/15/2009], Prince Charles flew to Copenhagen to attend the climate change summit, where he delivered a keynote speech. He informed his audience that 'the world has only seven years before we lose the levers of control'. Not at all long, then.

Losers Of World Unite — In Denmark. The United Nations summit was promoted as a serious effort to mitigate climate change. But it's turned into an attack on capitalism. So what does the U.S. do? It pledges money.

Iran and the Wailing of the Copenhagen Choir. From the shores of what was once capitalist America, I've been trying to follow on webcast the highlights of of the United Nations climate con — I mean conference — in Copenhagen, featuring eco-messages from some of the world's top celebrity tyrants. As Roger Simon so neatly put it in a post and PJTV webcast from the scene, "So many despots, so little time!" Thursday alone, the UNFCCC "high-level" speaking lineup included officials of Sudan, Equatorial Guinea, Cuba, Laos, Myanmar, Saudi Arabia, Belarus and the man himself, fixture of any major UN shindig, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran.

Welcome Back to the Middle Ages. On the last day of COP 15, staring at a Jumbotron where Hugo Chavez was addressing the conference, something was nagging at me besides the obvious (that half the audience was enthusiastically applauding a maniac). I was trying to figure out what it was about the conference that so perplexed and disturbed.

Something's Rotten in Denmark ... and East Anglia, Asheville, and New York City. The smell in the air may be from the leftover caviar at the banquet tables, or perhaps from the exhaust of 140 private jets and 1200 limousines commissioned by the attendees when they discovered there was to be no global warming evident in Copenhagen. (In fact, the cold will deepen and give way to snow before they leave, an extension of the Gore Effect.) But the metaphorical stench comes from the well-financed bad science and bad policy, promulgated by the UN, and the complicity of the so-called world leaders, thinking of themselves as modern-day King Canutes.

Capitalism Under Fire From Highly Self-Interested Dictators And Diplomats. [Scroll down] As if the global warming movement didn't already appear sufficiently disingenuous and "hoaxy" before the U.N. gathering, the Dictator of Venezuela showed all the cards in Copenhagen. As blizzard conditions kept people indoors in Denmark Thursday afternoon [12/17/2009], [Hugo] Chavez made it very clear that the agenda is not to reverse the "warming" of the planet, but rather, it is to squash the free market economy wherever it exits, and to re-distribute the world's wealth.

Dreading our future. I am afraid for my country. I am afraid — actually, certain — we are losing the heart and soul that made America unique in human history. Yes, we have enemies, but the greatest danger comes from within. Watching the freak show in Copenhagen last week, I was alternately furious and filled with dread. The world has gone absolutely bonkers and lunatics are in charge.

Copenhagen sure was a gas. Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, we present the Copenhagen Flatulence Awards, honouring those who raised the art of generating hot air and gassy emissions to new intensity levels during the UN-sponsored festival of indignation.

Global Warming's Forlorn Hope. Copenhagen was the Green left's forlorn hope, their last chance at breaching the wall of public suspicion and stubbornness to impose environmentalism as a governing system through the threat of global warming. Within those walls lay the promise of lifetime sinecure positions, total social control, absolute power, and unlimited free money. One final push, one blind rush up the ladders, and it would be theirs.

Climategate: What's the "trick" and what did it "hide"? The man who knows most about this subject and who's willing to talk about it is Steve McIntyre. In a recent positing, McIntyre outlined the trick and its place in the history of official climate science as fashioned by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

I have seen the future and it stinks! Copenhagen was intended as an important advance toward world governance. ... It's very clear that under global government — because of its size and natural inefficiencies — accountability is nigh on to impossible, transparency nothing but a distant dream, very often not even desired. In short, it's 1984. And COP15 was just that — legions staring at world leaders on Jumbotrons as they blathered platitudes, while negotiations were conducted behind closed doors.

Hopenhagen Goes Bust. Despite President Obama's desperate last-minute attempts to transform the UN's climate change conference into "Hopenhagen," even this administration's talented pool of spin-doctors will find it difficult to convince global warming alarmists that the two-week event was anything other than what is now being called: an "abject failure." Happily, any result that distresses the alarmists comes as a huge relief to anyone who values liberty and free markets.

Obama the party crasher. Barack Obama is not used to being the guy not invited to a party. At the Copenhagen global warming conference, however, he found that not everyone wanted to hang with him. Our president can't take a hint.

Climategate: How To Follow the Money. There's big money in climate. That became strikingly obvious in Copenhagen. The conference itself cost in the neighborhood of $30 million, but that was only the visible tip of the melting iceberg. Add to that the celebrities, the demonstrators, the congressional delegations, and the corporate displays, and you can bet something closer to $60 million was really spent on the conference — along with, of course, a carbon footprint the size of Morocco's.

Obama Led The Total Failure of World Leadership in Copenhagen. World leaders participated in a scandalous conference in Copenhagen. Officially it was Conference of the Parties (COP) 15 to monitor progress on climate change begun in 1995 at COP 1 in Berlin. They�ve consistently and blindly accepted the false claim human CO2 is causing climate change. COP 3 produced the Kyoto Accord to punish developed nations and redistribute wealth. It�s due to expire in 2012 and COP 15 was to keep the process going. Few supported it more than Obama so he had to salvage the process.

Natural gas and capitalism to the rescue. Marxist grandees slipped in and out Copenhagen last week thanks to the plentiful jet fuel whose combustion they claim poses grave threats to the future of mankind.

Copenhagen summit carbon footprint biggest ever: report. Delegates, journalists, activists and observers from almost 200 countries have gathered at the Dec 7-18 summit and their travel and work will create 46,200 tonnes of carbon dioxide, most of it from their flights.

The climate blame game. The Copenhagen climate conference was useful for one reason. It gave us a glimpse into the future of international negotiations to address man-made global warming. What we learned from Copenhagen is that these negotiations will not have anything to do with "fixing" the climate, even assuming it needs fixing and that we could do it if we wanted to. Rather, they will be about laying blame on someone else for failing to act.

Real Greens Have Manure on Their Boots. Our self-evaluated B+ president declares victory at Copenhagen, but has no qualms about spewing tons of carbon to get himself and his retinue there. Fortunately, nothing binding came from the excursion (except for a pledge of $100 billion of our tax money).

Get the U.N. Out of the Climate Business. In the aftermath of the Copenhagen Climate conference, it is clear that the United Nations-driven process is a bust, and that any similar process requiring economic suicide and massive wealth transfers will go nowhere. It is long since time to drop this charade, take the question of climate change out of the hands of the U.N., and implement more reasonable policies.

United Nations climate chief quits. Yvo de Boer, head of the UN's climate change convention, will resign as of July 1, his office announced on Thursday [2/18/2010]. ... The announcement came nearly two months after the Copenhagen summit on climate change, seen even by its supporters as a disappointment and by its critics as a chaotic failure.

U.N Still Pushing for Global Environmental Control. Despite the debacle of the failed Copenhagen climate change conference last December, the United Nations is pressing full speed ahead with a plan for a greatly expanded system of global environmental governance and for a multitrillion-dollar economic transfer scheme to ignite the creation of a "global green economy." In other words: Copenhagen without the authority — yet — of Copenhagen.

Global Warming and Cold War Thinking. The Copenhagen Accord did not create a competitive world where people strive to improve their condition; it just confirmed it. And by adopting a "zero-sum" view of global climate economics, the U.N. has inflamed international rivalry. Beijing would like the U.S. to abandon "Cold War thinking" about the contentious world, but since China has not done so, neither can America.

The Earth's atmosphere is composed of 78% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen, 0.93% argon, 0.038% carbon dioxide, and trace amounts of other gases, including water vapor. We call this "air" and humans depend on the oxygen content for life. At the same time all six billion of us individually exhale about two pounds of carbon dioxide every day. By contrast, Nature emits about 30 times more CO2 than humans. The oceans of the world absorb and release CO2 all the time. This is Nature's balance that maintains all life, animal and vegetable, on earth.*

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