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5464 |
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Date: November 13, 2014 at 00:08:48
From: BJ, [DNS_Address]
Subject: 0bama PR Stunt With China Wows Western Media |
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The 0bama morons actually believe this crap
"President Obama and the President of China jointly have announced a deal on carbon emissions . . . for 2030, when both of them will be in retirement. The details of the deal have yet to be hammered out — or hammered and sickled out, as the case may be.
The Western media are cheering this as an historic agreement. It is in fact a bilateral PR stunt.
Obama calls this “a major milestone.” It is in fact a major headstone. It marks an interred corpse. This deal is dead on arrival.
Because China never reports its carbon emissions in detail, the deal is operationally irrelevant. Because Obama doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in Hawaii of getting any carbon emissions deal past Congress, the deal is operationally irrelevant. The Western media are cheering about this, as if it represents a major breakthrough. It is in fact evidence that Obama is the lamest lame-duck President since Herbert Hoover.
This guy is grabbing at straws. He is trying to turn “No, you can’t,” into “Yes, I can.”
It is a deal that has been in planning stages secretly for five months. He announced it to the voters exactly a week after his party had its head handed to it in the mid-term elections.
All of this is preparation for a new treaty through the United Nations in 2015. But no President ever bothered to submit the 1997 Kyoto Protocol Agreement to the Senate for ratification. It was supposed to go into effect in February 2005. It is a dead letter. It is unenforceable. No one tries to enforce it.
The White House bulletin speaks only of “intention,” as in “I intend to divorce my wife, and marry you, because I am committed to you [every Thursday].”
3. Today, the Presidents of the United States and China announced their respective post-2020 actions on climate change, recognizing that these actions are part of the longer range effort to transition to low-carbon economies, mindful of the global temperature goal of 2℃. The United States intends to achieve an economy-wide target of reducing its emissions by 26%-28% below its 2005 level in 2025 and to make best efforts to reduce its emissions by 28%. China intends to achieve the peaking of CO2 emissions around 2030 and to make best efforts to peak early and intends to increase the share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption to around 20% by 2030. Both sides intend to continue to work to increase ambition over time.
What about sanctions for violating specific standards? No mention of this. Just intentions.
Who might impose such sanctions? The United Nations? How would the U.N. enforce its authority, assuming that it can get the world’s politicians to surrender sovereignty to the U.N.?
2. To this end, President Barack Obama and President Xi Jinping reaffirmed the importance of strengthening bilateral cooperation on climate change and will work together, and with other countries, to adopt a protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force under the Convention applicable to all Parties at the United Nations Climate Conference in Paris in 2015. They are committed to reaching an ambitious 2015 agreement that reflects the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, in light of different national circumstances.
Translation: “The UN’s PR stunt of 2005 failed, so we will try again in 2015.”
4. The United States and China hope that by announcing these targets now, they can inject momentum into the global climate negotiations and inspire other countries to join in coming forward with ambitious actions as soon as possible, preferably by the first quarter of 2015. The two Presidents resolved to work closely together over the next year to address major impediments to reaching a successful global climate agreement in Paris.
Translation: “A lame duck President and a Communist career hack — ‘United States’ and ‘China’ — are now going to ‘work together.’ ” I mean, what could go wrong?
An historic agreement? “Yes, I see! Yes, I believe! Yes, we can!”
It is the next stage of a U.N. PR stunt that is going nowhere, announced 22 years after the 1992 Kyoto resolves, which went went nowhere.
This will be forgotten in a couple of weeks. The UN will not get its treaty ratified in 2015. There will be no enforcement of any of this.
It is, in short, ObamaGas.
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Responses:
[5468] [5469] [5467] |
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5468 |
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Date: November 13, 2014 at 04:51:18
From: Akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: non-binding & vague |
URL: http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/11/12/obama-climate-analysis.html |
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"The US-China climate deal is a big deal, but read the fine print
"Environmentalists, nonetheless, point out the agreement is non-binding
and its language is vague. The announcement proclaims that both
countries want to reduce emissions, but it leaves out exactly how that will
happen. The glaring absences may ultimately render the document more
of a symbolic commitment than a road map for the future of sustainable
energy.
“A lot of us see it as a step in the right direction, but we’re planning to
send the message that this isn’t enough,” said Karthik Ganapathy, the U.S.
communications director of 350.org, a network of grassroots climate
action groups. “It’s a nonbinding agreement so now we have to set policy
to put this plan into action.”
The U.S. part of the plan calls for a 26 to 28 percent reduction of
greenhouse gas emissions by 2025 based on 2005 levels. That’s a big
increase from Obama’s earlier goal of reducing emissions 17 percent by
2020.
The Chinese side of the agreement skirts commitments to cutting
emissions in favor of capping them, saying that China will commit to
ensuring its emissions begin falling by 2030.
“It’s a big deal,” said Erika Rosenthal, the international climate attorney
for EarthJustice, a group of environmental lawyers. “The world’s two
biggest carbon emitters have really set an enormously encouraging tone.”
Less reassuring to environmentalists are the agreement’s descriptions of
how the U.S. and China will meet their ambitious goals. Controversial
technologies like coal carbon sequestration are mentioned, but renewable
technologies are barely touched upon. To some, the fine print of the
document doesn’t match its goals.
The agreement runs about 1,000 words, and only two of them are given
to renewable energy technologies. (The two are “solar energy,” in the
context of supporting pilot programs for new forms of energy.) By
contrast, nearly 200 words are given to technologies supported by the
U.S.-China Clean Energy Research Center, a joint diplomatic venture that
was established to study how to manufacture buildings, cars and power
plants more efficiently. A large part of that research effort is dedicated to
“clean coal” technology, which involves scrubbing coal of its most
polluting elements and then capturing carbon produced by burning coal
and burying it underground.
One of the U.S.’s biggest experiments with clean coal is a $5 billion coal
power plant in Mississippi that has yet to open and is already over budget.
The energy it will produce will cost several times more than other forms
of energy, according to the Sierra Club.
If that is one of the main methods China and the U.S. plan to use to cut
emissions, some say the countries are in for a reality check.
“The goals set here, those are incompatible with investments in fossil fuel
infrastructure,” said Ganapathy. “[Clean coal] is just biting around the
edges of the problem.”
Another section of the agreement mentions natural gas production as a
way to reduce emissions. But not mentioned in the agreement is methane,
the powerful gas that can make natural gas drilling a bigger greenhouse
gas emitter than coal if not properly controlled.
“We continue to be concerned about methane,” said Wenonah Hauter, the
director of environmental group Food and Water Watch. “That’s being
ignored in this agreement, which means this action is just more
promotion of fracking under the guise of climate action.”
Others questioned the ability of the Obama administration to move
toward using more green energy, given the gridlock over climate action in
Congress. The president’s most ambitious climate policies, namely
directing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to limit the amount of
carbon power plants are allowed to produce, have all been accomplished
through executive action.
Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., on Wednesday called Obama’s plan
“unrealistic” and said it would “ensure higher utility rates and far fewer
jobs.” Rhetoric like that, as well as the switch in the Senate from
Democratic to Republican control, will make any ambitious action on
climate difficult to achieve.
That may mean all of the reductions outlined in the agreement come in
the form of more executive actions. Whether the Obama administration
has the political will to take those steps ahead of the 2016 presidential
election remains to be seen.
“Meeting these goals will mean an economywide effort to find places to
reduce emissions,” said John Coequyt, the international climate programs
director at the Sierra Club. “It means further reductions from vehicles, it
means tackling methane emissions from natural gas production. To reach
these targets, it can’t just be business as usual.”""
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Responses:
[5469] |
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5469 |
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Date: November 13, 2014 at 09:01:10
From: JTRIV, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: non-binding & vague |
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Hi Akira,
> "The announcement proclaims that both countries want to reduce emissions, but it leaves out exactly how that will happen."
To me this is the biggest issue. How will the US cut emissions in the next 11 years to be 26%-28% below 2005 figures? Increased efficiency and renewables won't get us there. As the article mentions clean coal is still in development and very expensive if workable. There is not technology currently to replace power plants with clean energy.
This deal makes China look very good and they don't really have to do anything. They will continue to grow their emissions and peak emissions "around" 2030 at whatever output they happen to be at.
China passed the US as the number 1 emitter in 2007 and their emissions have grown so rapidly they currently emit more than 1.5 times the US and will likely double US emissions in the 2015-2017 range.... and with this agreement they will continue to grow.
Cheers
Jim
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Responses:
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5467 |
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Date: November 13, 2014 at 03:45:42
From: Sciguy, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: 0bama PR Stunt With China Wows Western Media |
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Any reason why you didn't give a source for that screed?
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Responses:
None |
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