For the last five days, Secretary of State John Kerry has been coddling diplomats at the Paris Climate Talks, hoping to reach a global warming accord amid growing disputes between nations. The AP is also reporting today that Kerry has “zipped in and out of meetings” and is “trying to iron out differences with developing countries such as India,” even as the COP-21 summit drags on an additional day. Kerry also said he’s “hopeful” for an accord and has been frantically working behind the scenes to reach compromises even as divisions grown and threaten to derail a final agreement.
Climate commando Kerry, who spoke to reporters Friday outside of the summit’s elegant location, said “There was a lot of progress made last night, a long night, but still a couple of very difficult issues that we’re working on.” He refused to say what those issues are, but insiders note that both India and China are two enormous stumbling blocks Kerry has to overcome. Scheduled to end today, the summit has dragged on another day, with the goal of a final global warming ‘accord’ Saturday morning and signed by all delegates Saturday afternoon.
Only a few days ago, Kerry made the staggering disclosure that if Americans stopped emitting carbon dioxide (CO2), it wouldn’t make a lick of difference to the global climate. Speaking to reporters, Kerry said: “The fact is that even if every American citizen biked to work, carpooled to school, used only solar panels to power their homes, if we each planted a dozen trees, if we somehow eliminated all of our domestic greenhouse gas emissions, guess what ‚Äì that still wouldn’t be enough to offset the carbon pollution coming from the rest of the world.”
Not content to leave that Freudian revelation alone, Kerry went on to say what climate experts have known for years. “If all the industrial nations went down to zero emissions ‚Äì- remember what I just said, ALL the industrial emissions went down to zero emissions -‚Äì it wouldn’t be enough,” Kerry said. “Not when more than 65% of the world’s carbon pollution comes from the developing world.” That’s right. If developed countries stopped emitting all CO2 the poorest of nations would make up the difference. Bad news for countries without electricity, clean water, fuel, or even sanitation.
The goal of the climate summit is to get 190 nations to agree to reduce man-made CO2 emissions, and adapting to rising sea levels and extreme weather. But CO2 levels, currently hovering between 395 and 400 parts per million, are at historic lows when compared to Earth’s history. By “mapping the distribution of ancient coals, desert deposits, tropical soils, salt deposits, glacial material” and examining fossilized plants, scientists can determine what Earth’s climate was like millions of years ago.
During the Cambrian Period, CO2 levels were 18 times higher (550 million years ago), and most geologists agree that Earth is currently in a CO2-deprived period. “This mountain of very compelling geological paleo-climatic data has not been properly considered by present day climate scientists who advocate the theory of global warming,” notes geologist James Kamis, who spoke to this reporter. “Geological forces are clearly responsible for many of the modern / on-going “natural” variations in climate and climate related events.”
As for the rising sea levels, since the last glaciation of Earth ended 10,000 years ago, sea level rise has not increased and satellite and tidal gauges show as much. Sea level was expected to rise as massive ice sheets around the world began to melt, except polar ice is more extensive now than in 1979. And NASA admitted that Antarctic ice has increased during the past six years.
There have been glaciers that have retreated, then grown, retreated, with the majority of Earth’s glaciers located in Antarctica. Even NASA finally admitted the continent has grown nearly 33 percent in size since satellite monitoring began in 1979. Remember, when the last glaciation ended over 10,000 years ago, most of the Northern Hemisphere was covered in ice. According to scientists, Earth is still in an Ice Age as at least one continent is still covered completely in ice: Antarctica.
Extreme weather? This is another talking point not supported by facts but supported by anecdotal evidence, smart phones, and the internet (thanks, Mr. Gore!). With the advent of a handheld movie camera in just about anybody’s pocket, more weather events have been documented, uploaded, and shown on the 24/7 cable news channels. But the actual data shows that the planet is in a hurricane drought, with fewer storms forming and reaching landfall.
Even typhoons and cyclones have not increased since active monitoring of them began with the advent of satellite technology, which can track storms that never reach landfall and therefore never get recorded. Even with this new data, there hasn’t been an uptick in these cyclical storms. The United Nations predicted in its last report that in a warming world, these monstrous storms would be more frequent and more intense. They haven’t. What we do have are more smart phones where anybody can record a freaky weather-related event and upload it to the internet.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who is spearheading the climate summit, said he was “convinced and confident” that an “ambitious, strong accord” would occur, even though global warming wasn’t “visible.” Ki-moon knows that this may be his last chance to have a global warming gladiator in the White House, since most Republicans (and a few recalcitrant Democrats) believe that global warming has become a form of wealth redistribution simply disguised as “saving the planet.”
While most Americans, and even Europeans, see the global warming campaign as a disproportionate response to the naturally occurring rise and fall in temperatures shown to occur every thirty years, the upcoming U.S. elections could very well be the death knell for what one senator called the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.” Over 31,000 scientists have signed the global warming petition that calls for an end to the canard that CO2 and other trace gas emissions are causing catastrophic global heating now or in the future.
Sam Barratt, a member of the militant environmental group that calls itself Avaaz, also told reporters that they would rather the delegates “take their time” and “be patient with the right deal than rush it and get a breakdown.” He noted that “getting 200 countries to agree on anything is tough. Getting them to agree on the future of the planet and a deal on climate change is probably one of the toughest pieces of negotiation they’ll ever get involved in.”
Gurdial Singh Nijar of Malaysia, also the head of a bloc of countries that includes India, China and Saudi Arabia, said it was “unreasonable to expect countries like Malaysia to rapidly shift from fossil fuels” to other sources like wind and solar. “We cannot just switch overnight … and go to renewables.” The latest draft of the climate accord is 27 pages and has even weaker language than previous iterations, showing just how contentious the debate has become.
In it, the draft calls for governments to have peak CO2 emissions “as soon as possible” and attempt to reach “emissions neutrality” by 2050. Challenges remain on what responsibilities wealthy nations, like the Unites States, would have compared to the obstacles being faced by developing nations like China and India, the first and third highest emitters, respectively. As for “loss and damage” from so-called rising seas and extreme weather? That would be addressed “in a way that doesn’t involve liability and compensation – something Kerry insisted upon.
Interestingly, the amount of time, money, and energy that Kerry and the Obama administration have invested so far in the global warming narrative when compared to the war on terror is stark. All told, Obama has taken almost every opportunity since being re-elected for a second term to promote his global warming legacy. It was only after the San Bernardino, Calif., terrorist attack did Obama address the citizenry (causing him to arrive late to the Kennedy Center Honors tribute) about their top concern: terrorism.
In the widely panned Oval Office address, Obama touched upon bigotry, ISIS, homeland threats, gun control, but “spent over half his speech warning us that we are liable [to commit] hate crimes against Muslim-Americans.” Again, actual FBI data shows that Jewish people are the “greatest target of hate crimes.” If Obama can twist and distort something as simple as hate-crime statistics, collected by an agency under his purview and provided to him every day, does anyone believe that global warming facts are somehow sacrosanct?
