Breaking news: India, China walk out of climate summit
So much for the “God moment.” Seeing as how this was our last chance and all, I think I’m going to take the afternoon off to go get my affairs in order.
Mind Boggling: How could world leaders not come to a consensus when Chin-Strap the Polar Bear and the Guardian Angels of the Climate were all in agreement? Unity in diversity! It was so spiritual! The mind reels.
CONSENSUS! No, seriously, the science is settled!
LAST MINUTE MIND-BLOWINGLY AMAZING UPDATE: This new “non-binding working agreement” negotiated at the very last minute by a bunch of panicked politicians trying to save face after a complete failure of a conference is almost exactly what we needed, I bet!
DESPAIR! It looks like we’re doomed after all:
U.N. climate talks fell into crisis on Saturday after some developing nations angrily rejected a plan worked out by U.S. President Barack Obama and leaders of other major economies for fighting global warming…
…Countries including Venezuela, Sudan and Tuvalu said they opposed a deal spearheaded on Friday in Copenhagen by the United States, China, India, South Africa and Brazil at the summit. The deal would need unanimous backing to be adopted.
Opponents said the document, which sets a target of limiting global warming to a maximum 2 degree Celsius rise over pre-industrial times and holds out the prospect of $100 billion (62 billion pounds) in annual aid from 2020 for developing nations, was too weak.
An acrimonious session long past midnight hit a low point when a Sudanese delegate said the plan in Africa would be like the Holocaust by causing more deadly floods, droughts, mudslides, sandstorms and rising seas.
The document “is a solution based on the same very values, in our opinion, that channelled six million people in Europe into furnaces,” said Sudan’s Lumumba Stanislaus Di-aping.
I suppose the silver lining here is that at least for once it’s not global warming skeptics being likened to genocidal killers. But that’s small comfort as we watch the agreement to save the world from imminent destruction fall to pieces. Such a shame.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Update: Naturally, right after I post this article, new information comes out that makes Climategate look even worse. It’s been noted in the comments that Russian scientists are now saying outright that climate data from Russian weather stations has been tampered with in order to make it appear to substantiate claims of catastrophic man-made global warming:
On Tuesday, the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) issued a report claiming that the Hadley Center for Climate Change based at the headquarters of the British Meteorological Office in Exeter (Devon, England) had probably tampered with Russian-climate data.
The IEA believes that Russian meteorological-station data did not substantiate the anthropogenic global-warming theory. Analysts say Russian meteorological stations cover most of the country’s territory, and that the Hadley Center had used data submitted by only 25% of such stations in its reports. Over 40% of Russian territory was not included in global-temperature calculations for some other reasons, rather than the lack of meteorological stations and observations.
The data of stations located in areas not listed in the Hadley Climate Research Unit Temperature UK (HadCRUT) survey often does not show any substantial warming in the late 20th century and the early 21st century.
The plot thickens! Original post follows…
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It’s been some time since we’ve had an update on the State of the Global Warming Consensus, and I’m happy to report that the Global Warming Consensus remains strong and unchallenged. Well, strong and unchallenged barring that little e-mail and data leak from a few weeks ago that is really not an issue at all. I mean, it’s not an issue at all except in the sense that it may have exposed some unethical scientific shenanigans by some of the biggest names in the pro-Anthropogenic Global Warming community, but that’s nothing to lose sleep over. You might lose your job, but you shouldn’t lose sleep. COPENHAGEN OR BUST!
Some background: the Global Warming Consensus Watch/Alert series dates back to April of 2007, and from the start has been all about reminding us that the much-vaunted Scientific Consensus on Anthropogenic Global Warming was not nearly as untouchable as folks like Al Gore would have us believe. The reality of the situation is slightly more nuanced than the Goracle would have us believe: indeed, the planet has been warming over the last century, and has been since the end of the Little Ice Age. The questions being confronted over the last few decades - and most intensely over the last couple of years - are whether the warming that has happened in the 20th century is primarily caused by human activity or is part of a larger natural process; and whether or not the warming poses significant problems for human society in the future. (Dr. Jay Richards had a presentation on this very topic as a part of the 2008 Acton Lecture Series; you can view it here.)
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Monday, November 30, 2009
Kishore Jayabalan, Director of Acton’s Rome office, was asked by Vatican Radio to comment on the debt crisis in Dubai that has been causing concern in world financial markets over the last week. To listen, use the audio player below.
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Vatican Radio in Rome turned to Kishore Jayabalan, Director of Instituto Acton, for comment on a recent Italian court ruling which held three Google executives criminally responsible for a YouTube video depicting a teenager with Downs Syndrome being bullied. Vatican Radio’s short article on the matter is 
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