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A Typo Almost Derailed Paris Climate Deal (nytimes.com)
An anonymous reader writes: On Saturday, world leaders completed an ambitious international agreement to address climate change. But when the officials received the first copy of what was supposed to be the final draft, a one-word mistake threatened to derail their progress. Part of the agreement involved language that encouraged wealthy nations to provide monetary aid to poorer nations in order to help transition to more sustainable systems. But the draft used the word "shall," which would have made it a legally-binding requirement. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry pushed back on the change, noting that previous versions of the document had used the word "should" instead. Officials tried to quickly figure out whether the swap had been made intentionally. Ultimately, they classified it as a typo, and hurriedly prepared a corrected version of the document, which was adopted without incident.
They tried to pull a fast one...
Dear Microlimp: I give you 2 valid product keys for win7 and you reject both of them. Piss off you wankers!!!
Diplomacy at work.
This story perfectly illustrates why the climate agreement is completely useless.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
This "accord" or "agreement" will never work, anyway. Nothing is binding and all nations will do what is best for them ... which is manufacturing, industry, and pumping CO2 into the atmosphere. Sending all these people for a vacation in Paris was a complete and utter waste of time.
Because allowing warming to continue until rain belts are seriously altered isn't going to lead to mass starvation, wars, migrations, and yes, lots of fucking death.
CO2 traps energy in the lower atmosphere, and it interacts with seawater to alter the ocean's pH levels. The more we puke out, the worse both these things get. This isn't even controversial, no matter how many Koch talking points you spew. Using fossil fuels is just plain bad for everyone.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The whole climate change debate worries me. First I'm not a climate change denier nor am I asserting man cant change the climate. What worries me is when the right things get done for the wrong reasons it distorts the policy objectives. Climate change is not a threat to life on the planet. There have been previous brief (1000 year) warming periods with temperatures 3 to7 degrees warmer than today. such as the period 300 to 1100 AD. That period was a time of relative food abundance and population growth and even if it overlaps the dark ages it was a period cultural expansion. The key difference between now and then is how close we are to the resource limits of the planet. Back then we were not using every drop of water, and if crops didn't grow one place one could move. National boundaries were more fluid. So basically the difference with today is fragility.
I utterly discard the idea of some shallow island nations going under water as any sort of logical reason to curtail the economic development of a gazillion more people. Sand bar or reefs have always been an ephemeral place to stake a claim. They are impermenant by nature. If they flood in this modern time it won't have to result in death, just the ending of a nation state. Perhaps a shame culturally yes, but not something that hadn't happened many many many times. The difference today is we know it is happening. But those cultures will integrate into others like has always happened. All that is lost is a microcosm of soverignty. Yes it's emotionally and economincally painful for the families who live there. Would be nice to prevent it if that was possible. But it should not be a driver of the discussion.
WHile any one microcosm may not be important, at a larger scale there a very related issue is the driver. If crop growing regions and water supplies shift they may shift across national borders and that will create all sorts of strife. Crops may not evolve quickly enough. FLooding coatal cities doesn't mean we lose the shoreline it just means the shoreline moves inland. The problem is the time scale. Many large cities have evolved in place for centuries (millenia). uprroting these is going to be terrifically economically and resource intensive. Depending on terrain and fresh water and harbors they may have to go elsewhere not just shift. There will be tremendous upheaval world wide. Not all of it will be equally distributed pain. Some nations will benefit others will utterly fail. If all this happens in the space of a century it's going to be catastrophic in terns of world civilization.
Carbon fuels are the easy way to raise standards of living for all pre-industrila nations. The problem with using less carbon fuel unilaterally is that if everyone is not on board then as the price falls it becomes even easier for developing nations to import it. SO in the end it all gets burnt. We can quibble about if this makes it get burnt more slowly but I'd be surprised if were talking orders of magnitude in rates.
At the present time we see so many alternative energy projects labeled failures in the US. The DOE is ridiculed for funding Solyndra and the Spanish company that built the Mojva solar thermal. We see the Solar-PV industry gutted by cheap imported PV. Wind isn't working well with our current Grid, and with fracking there's little incentive to build grids in the boonies. The price point of Alagal or Cellulosic biofuels can't compere with $36/barrel. So we can expect every gov't investment in alternative energy to look terrible if you just look at it as a return on investment. Sadly that's how some politicians do. That's why the DOE gets beat up.
Yet we need these alternative fuels and energy sources if were going to stop using coal and gas.
Thus to avoid one has to use these even if they are not the cheapest. That's probably an easy sell in rich nations. But it's a sell based more on clean air, or not fighting wars for oil, and access to fresh water: e.g. your nuclear plan and your electric c
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
When they literally have to fix an "agreement" so that it isn't enforceable, is it really an agreement?
Maybe it would be better termed a "wishlist".
Seeing angry trolls (swearing, assuming debating points are from shills) like this get modded to +5 insightful tells me all I need to know about groupthink when it comes to climate change.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
in other words, the agreement has no legs to stand on, and never would, so it was as i said, nothing but an excuse for rich people to go on vacation on the taxpayers dime
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
CO2 traps solar energy. Period. That isn't even the least bit controversial.
That is true.
That you're too stupid and infantile, and frankly just plain cowardly, to admit that vomiting hundreds of millions of years worth of sequestered carbon into the atmosphere in the space of three centuries is irrelevant to the effects of such actions.
You're angry, but this is where you lose people and defeat the point of your argument.
You can be 100% correct and it still doesn't matter unless you can get the majority of the world to agree with you.
Example:
"Statement: The world needs to leave the bulk of the remaining oil, coal, and natural gas in the ground."
I imagine you would agree with the above statement. Fair enough. Now how do you go about making that happen? Without starting WWIII?
It isn't about theory and science, it is about the reality of people's daily lives. You simply cannot ask people to turn their lives upside down because of this. They won't do it. You'll have a revolt on your hands.
So the trick is to figure out what you CAN do and what you CAN'T do, when it comes to real people and real lives.
In truth? I think we passed the point of no-return decades ago. This problem had to be addressed back in the 70s, we're probably far too late to stop it now, sad to say.
Note: That doesn't mean we should do nothing. Of course we should. I'm all for moving towards a carbon reduced future with more wind and solar and less oil/coal/natural gas. It will help, it just won't be enough.
What is a "green" environmentalist on the outside but a "red" communist on the inside?
This climate change summit is just an excuse for poor nations to demand more and more money from wealthier nations. They will claim this is to build "green" energy sources and provide accommodations for those displaced by the effects of climate change but in reality it will just line the pockets of the dictators that run these backward hell holes.
This summit is a bunch of watermelons getting together to make themselves look like they are going to save the world from the knuckle dragging troglodytes that actually built the buildings, farmed the food, and drilled the oil that made this summit possible. The solution to this problem isn't taking from the rich and giving to the poor, as if the wealthy nations don't already send billions of dollars to poorer nations every year. The solution is more freedom.
I believe a large part of the poverty in these poor nations is dictators stealing from the populace. People that don't have the freedom to benefit from their labors tend not to work very hard. People that are not free to defend their own property and lives from thugs and the government (but I repeat myself) cannot build up the wealth needed to create a functioning economy.
(In case anyone is confused about what I mean by defending life and property I mean that people are permitted to arm themselves with effective tools of self defense, and carry them freely no matter where they go. Given the technology we have today that means firearms, but just being able to carry a sword or club may be sufficient.)
Most of all people need to be free to take advantage of the most abundant energy resource we have on this earth. That means nuclear power. As it is right now any nation that wishes to develop nuclear energy must be granted permission to do so by those that have already developed it. This "non-proliferation treaty" is supposedly about preventing the development of nuclear weapons but it has effectively only prevented the development of peaceful nuclear power. Those nations that have the desire to obliterate their neighbors under a radioactive mushroom cloud will not be deterred by such a treaty. Those that wish to provide their children with food, warmth, shelter, and education are being held back. These nations must choose between a certain death by not burning oil and coal, or the possibility of living by doing so.
The only way to avoid this dilemma is nuclear power.
Wind and solar power is nice for wealthy nations to experiment with since they already have benefited from centuries of burning coal and decades of nuclear power. Current wind and solar technologies are too expensive for these poor nations to have that luxury. They will either have to develop nuclear power, burn coal, or continue living a second class existence.
I get so frustrated with these watermelons. They claim to be so righteous and helpful but in reality all they are doing is spending other people's money on things that do nothing to address the real issues that brought them to the summit. I have little doubt that this is by design. If they actually solved the problem then that means these "elites" will no longer remain in power. That is because the people they claim to be helping will be free enough to not have to go to these "elites" to ask for more of their "help" in the future.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.