Copenhagen

[wyly]

It's a funny comment. But it couldn't miss the nail by more more. It's common sense, not bullshit.

The cost of bringing everyone who is of little consequence to the conference could have fed a lot of people in Kenya.

the consquence of not going and doing nothing will kill and displace many millions more...

[noahbody]

why would you invite an admitted denier(it's a socialist plot to steal our money) to a meeting on CC and it's solutions, it's counter productive and an embarassment...

Again, he said that about kyoto. Kyoto might of well have been a socialist plot to steal our money, because with the major emitters it would have accomplished the same thing.

[blueblood]

Again, he said that about kyoto. Kyoto might of well have been a socialist plot to steal our money, because with the major emitters it would have accomplished the same thing.

I have one question about that. I have been on the CNN website today, and Copenhagen is nowhere to be found on the main page. On the CTV website, it's front and centre. I wonder why that is???

[capricorn]

Well isn't the PM doing a great job to make Canada look really good in the world? NOT!! Now the president of the US is snubbing Harper and not including him on meetings and well he should.

You know how you've been going on about how Harper always kowtow's and bends to the US's wishes, and wants to bring about a North American Union? Well it should please you that for once it is Obama and the US doing Canada's bidding in those meetings. Now there's a switch for ya hey Topaz? Obama and the US speaking up in a manner that is beneficial to our economy. Hallelujah!

the whole world and Canadians want change that really does something.

Yes, all 6 billion of us want change that matters.

[bush_cheney2004]

Harper and Obama have already agreed on a "linked" continental agreement. Because our economies are so intertwined, we have no choice but to have complimentary approaches and targets.....

Canada may have no choice, but the USA has plenty of choices at the main poker table with the main poker players. Canada is neither a major emitter nor a major player.

[blueblood]

Canada may have no choice, but the USA has plenty of choices at the main poker table with the main poker players. Canada is neither a major emitter nor a major player.

Apparently your president is a crafty individual. He just pulled a Chretien. We have a non-binding agreement in Copenhagen. Obama gets a photo-op, and congress/senate will more than likely vote down sending money to tin-pot dictators.

Oh well at least in 4 yrs. Pelosi won't have a leg to stand on when criticizing Canada's oil sales to the US.

[Sir Bandelot]

Well from what I've been reading, practically nothing was accomplished. No agreements beyond some handshakes and nice words. A nice smiling picture. But nothing legal, no binding commitment. Sounds like another failure to me, Mr. Obama.

They wasted a lot of time and money, and created tons of pollution in the process, and accomplished jack squat.

[Topaz]

I think its safe to say that Harper and the Tories will be celebrating all the way home because nothing was really accomplished and he got what he wanted! Perhaps this will make those Canadians that are for the environment to get off their ***** and vote next time!! http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/091218/national/climate_cda

[noahbody]

the consquence of not going and doing nothing will kill and displace many millions more...

Aside from that being a ridiculous statement, why couldn't the handful of countries that could make an impact just have had a teleconference?

[Wild Bill]

I think its safe to say that Harper and the Tories will be celebrating all the way home because nothing was really accomplished and he got what he wanted! Perhaps this will make those Canadians that are for the environment to get off their ***** and vote next time!!

Maybe. I have my differences with Harper but I know that what he's done in Copenhagen is a reason for me to vote FOR him next time! If he had have supported that agreement I would have been very angry with him.

So my vote cancels out your vote! The question know is how many Canadians agree with me or agree with you.

[capricorn]

I think its safe to say that Harper and the Tories will be celebrating all the way home because nothing was really accomplished and he got what he wanted!

Reading the comments section of our MSM, I think a lot of Canadians will be celebrating along with Harper and the Tories.

Perhaps this will make those Canadians that are for the environment to get off their ***** and vote next time!!

The environment usually ranks as a priority in good economic times. Nowadays, the economy trumps all issues.

A new poll done for the Star and

La Presse by Nanos Research

has found that 55 per cent of

respondents rank jobs and the

dire state of the economy as the

most important national issue of

concern.

---

The job losses, credit squeeze and market plunges have so encompassed the country that health

care, a perennial top priority, was the ranking concern of just 10 per cent of the 1,000 people

surveyed.

It was the same for the environment, which just one year ago was the top-of-mind issue for the

country, but now ranks as the No. 1 priority for only 10 per cent of those surveyed.

http://nanosresearch.com/news/in_the_news/Toronto%20Star%20March%2028%202009.pdf

Although it would be a good thing for non-voting environmentalists to do their civic duty, their numbers would not be high enough to make a difference. And who knows, Harper's performance at Copenhagen might win him a few votes.

[Riverwind]

Although it would be a good thing for non-voting environmentalists to do their civic duty, their numbers would not be high enough to make a difference. And who knows, Harper's performance at Copenhagen might win him a few votes.

Call in show on CBC local radio this week had nothing but callers opposing the Copenhagen objectives.

[wyly]

Call in show on CBC local radio this week had nothing but callers opposing the Copenhagen objectives.

who has time to call radio talk shows but unemployed undereducated pensioners...they're hardly representative of the electorate...

my experience with the average person who listens to CBC radio has one foot in the grave 60-75Yrs...

Edited December 19, 2009 by wyly

[capricorn]

my experience with the average person who listens to CBC radio has one foot in the grave 60-75Yrs...

People who think like you have one foot in the cradle.

[blueblood]

who has time to call radio talk shows but unemployed undereducated pensioners...they're hardly representative of the electorate...

my experience with the average person who listens to CBC radio has one foot in the grave 60-75Yrs...

How does the saying go? The only thing worse than a stupid person is a stupid person with an education...

[waldo]

who has time to call radio talk shows but unemployed undereducated pensioners...they're hardly representative of the electorate.....

pretty much the rabid audience that follows any of the heavily biased CORUS network offerings (Adler, Rutherford and bunch)... talk about playing to a captive audience. Even if a counter/dissenting caller manages to make it past the front-end screening, they invariably get pushed off the air very quickly.

[waldo]

Although it would be a good thing for non-voting environmentalists to do their civic duty, their numbers would not be high enough to make a difference. And who knows, Harper's performance at Copenhagen might win him a few votes.

Harper's performance? What performance... oh ya, he did lunch! When he had the single opportunity to speak, he sent out Prentice. Harper couldn't buy an invite to the real table as no one wanted him there, given the disruptive Canadian delegation antics. And anyway, Harper was too busy basking with all his fossil fool awards - a heavy burden!

[capricorn]

Harper's performance? What performance... oh ya, he did lunch!

Good for him. I hope the eats were tasty.

When he had the single opportunity to speak, he sent out Prentice.

The horror! An Environment minister speaking at an environment conference. Truthfully, it's good that the PM decided not to share a stage with the likes of Chavez and Mugabe.

Harper couldn't buy an invite to the real table as no one wanted him there,

I'm sure you're delighted to characterize that particular meeting as a snub. In fact, it turns out that what Obama accomplished at that meeting works in our favour. Anyway, Harper used the free time to hobnob with other leaders. Gotta build those contacts. Oh btw, you must have missed the part where Obama was not invited to a meeting between China, India and Brazil.

Late in the afternoon on Friday, with the clock ticking down to zero, a rather dramatic scene unfolded that surprised even several top leaders at the climate negotiations in Copenhagen. In a secret meeting between Chinese, Indian, and Brazilian heads of state, the door swung open revealing President Obama, who hadn’t been invited but had arrived to crash the meeting.

http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/thegaggle/archive/2009/12/18/obama-dramatically-interrupts-meeting-negotiators-reach-final-agreement.aspx

What do you think of that?

given the disruptive Canadian delegation antics.

Antics? What antics?

And anyway, Harper was too busy basking with all his fossil fool awards - a heavy burden!

Ha! You think it's the first time Canada is recognized in this manner? David Anderson and Stephane Dion, ex-environment Liberals ministers, know all about it.

[Bugs]

What you have "exposed" is another in a long string of tactical disinformative conspiracy theories devised by monied interests to confuse an issue that is has already been decided. So... it isn't "news."

As for us regular folk, no worries. It is only a treaty. And from all the historical evidence on how "the West" honours treaties, we know that as soon as the tables turn against them, they will void the treaty anyways.

So no New Godless Communist Evil World Order regime is in the future. We'll just have to live with the present Fascist Old World Order for now.

Would this be an example"

Wikipedia’s climate doctor

Posted: December 19, 2009, 2:53 AM by NP Editor

By Lawrence Solomon

The Climategate Emails describe how a small band of climatologists cooked the books to make the last century seem dangerously warm.

The emails also describe how the band plotted to rewrite history as well as science, particularly by eliminating the Medieval Warm Period, a 400 year period that began around 1000 AD.

The Climategate Emails reveal something else, too: the enlistment of the most widely read source of information in the world — Wikipedia — in the wholesale rewriting of this history.

The Medieval Warm Period, which followed the meanness and cold of the Dark Ages, was a great time in human history — it allowed humans around the world to bask in a glorious warmth that vastly improved agriculture, increased life spans and otherwise bettered the human condition.

But the Medieval Warm Period was not so great for some humans in our own time — the same small band that believes the planet has now entered an unprecedented and dangerous warm period. As we now know from the Climategate Emails, this band saw the Medieval Warm Period as an enormous obstacle in their mission of spreading the word about global warming. If temperatures were warmer 1,000 years ago than today, the Climategate Emails explain in detail, their message that we now live in the warmest of all possible times would be undermined. As put by one band member, a Briton named Folland at the Hadley Centre, a Medieval Warm Period “dilutes the message rather significantly.”

Even before the Climategate Emails came to light, the problem posed by the Medieval Warm Period to this band was known. “We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period” read a pre-Climategate email, circa 1995, as attested to at hearings of the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works. But the Climategate transcripts were more extensive and more illuminating — they provided an unvarnished look at the struggles that the climate practitioners underwent before settling on their scientific dogma.

The Climategate Emails showed, for example, that some members of the band were uncomfortable with aspects of their work, some even questioning the need to erase the existence of the Medieval Warm Period 1,000 years earlier.

Said Briffa, one of their chief practitioners: “I know there is pressure to present a nice tidy story as regards ‘apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more in the proxy data’ but in reality the situation is not quite so simple. … I believe that the recent warmth was probably matched about 1,000 years ago.”

In the end, Briffa and other members of the band overcame their doubts and settled on their dogma. With the help of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the highest climate change authority of all, they published what became the icon of their movement — the hockey stick graph. This icon showed temperatures in the last 1,000 years to have been stable — no Medieval Warm Period, not even the Little Ice Age of a few centuries ago.

But the UN’s official verdict that the Medieval Warm Period had not existed did not erase the countless schoolbooks, encyclopedias, and other scholarly sources that claimed it had. Rewriting those would take decades, time that the band members didn’t have if they were to save the globe from warming.

Instead, the band members turned to their friends in the media and to the blogosphere, creating a website called RealClimate.org. “The idea is that we working climate scientists should have a place where we can mount a rapid response to supposedly ‘bombshell’ papers that are doing the rounds” in aid of “combating dis-information,” one email explained, referring to criticisms of the hockey stick and anything else suggesting that temperatures today were not the hottest in recorded time. One person in the nine-member Realclimate.org team — U.K. scientist and Green Party activist William Connolley — would take on particularly crucial duties.

Connolley took control of all things climate in the most used information source the world has ever known – Wikipedia. Starting in February 2003, just when opposition to the claims of the band members were beginning to gel, Connolley set to work on the Wikipedia site. He rewrote Wikipedia’s articles on global warming, on the greenhouse effect, on the instrumental temperature record, on the urban heat island, on climate models, on global cooling. On Feb. 14, he began to erase the Little Ice Age; on Aug.11, the Medieval Warm Period. In October, he turned his attention to the hockey stick graph. He rewrote articles on the politics of global warming and on the scientists who were skeptical of the band. Richard Lindzen and Fred Singer, two of the world’s most distinguished climate scientists, were among his early targets, followed by others that the band especially hated, such as Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, authorities on the Medieval Warm Period.

All told, Connolley created or rewrote 5,428 unique Wikipedia articles. His control over Wikipedia was greater still, however, through the role he obtained at Wikipedia as a website administrator, which allowed him to act with virtual impunity. When Connolley didn’t like the subject of a certain article, he removed it — more than 500 articles of various descriptions disappeared at his hand. When he disapproved of the arguments that others were making, he often had them barred — over 2,000 Wikipedia contributors who ran afoul of him found themselves blocked from making further contributions. Acolytes whose writing conformed to Connolley’s global warming views, in contrast, were rewarded with Wikipedia’s blessings. In these ways, Connolley turned Wikipedia into the missionary wing of the global warming movement.

The Medieval Warm Period disappeared, as did criticism of the global warming orthodoxy. With the release of the Climategate Emails, the disappearing trick has been exposed. The glorious Medieval Warm Period will remain in the history books, perhaps with an asterisk to describe how a band of zealots once tried to make it disappear.

Financial Post

[email protected]

Normal 0 0 1 32 184 1 1 225 11.512 0 0 0

Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and Urban Renaissance Institute

Read more: http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/12/18/370719.aspx#ixzz0aCoUmtO6

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[Mr.Canada]

This is wealth redistribution, plain and simple. No one in the media is allowed to call it tha but that's exactly what it is. This extortion needs to be stamped out immediately.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_redistribution

[Argus]

the consquence of not going and doing nothing will kill and displace many millions more...

Maybe, but not in Canada.

[Jerry J. Fortin]

Climate change is a two edged sword. Many will benefit and many will lose.

[Riverwind]

Climate change is a two edged sword. Many will benefit and many will lose.

If the climate stayed the same many will benefit and many will lose. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this debate is how any hiccup in nature is immediately blamed on CO2 - even if there is not one shread of evidence linking the two. CO2 has become the modern day equivalent of witch burnings. Edited December 20, 2009 by Riverwind

[waldo]

If the climate stayed the same many will benefit and many will lose. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this debate is how any hiccup in nature is immediately blamed on CO2 - even if there is not one shread of evidence linking the two. CO2 has become the modern day equivalent of witch burnings.

easy to say... without providing anything else... like, oh... say... examples of "hiccups", as you say, "blamed" on CO2. Why bother to provide any substance, like the event(s) in question, who the "blamers" are, the basis for a lack of evidence (in your humble opinion). Absence any/all of that, it's just you - saying it!

[waldo]

Good for him. I hope the eats were tasty.

The horror! An Environment minister speaking at an environment conference. Truthfully, it's good that the PM decided not to share a stage with the likes of Chavez and Mugabe.

Good, you accept that Harper's single contribution was that he showed up for lunch. Many prominent world leaders chose to speak; unfortunately, Harper chose expediency over any chance to be caught like a 'deer in the headlights'... prior document leaks showing the real Harper/Conservative position certainly didn't align with his public statements. Your choosing to single out a couple of "the likes of" is nothing but deflection away from everything else that highlighted the glaring absence of Canadian leadership.

I'm sure you're delighted to characterize that particular meeting as a snub. In fact, it turns out that what Obama accomplished at that meeting works in our favour. Anyway, Harper used the free time to hobnob with other leaders. Gotta build those contacts. Oh btw, you must have missed the part where Obama was not invited to a meeting between China, India and Brazil.

http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/thegaggle/archive/2009/12/18/obama-dramatically-interrupts-meeting-negotiators-reach-final-agreement.aspx

What do you think of that?

Antics? What antics?

As a G8/G20 member, as an energy player, the total Harper absence was a snub that truly reflected the antagonistic antics of the Canadian delegation both in the lead-up to Copenhagen and directly at Copenhagen. If you're unaware of those antics, Google/Bing are your friends.

The after-the-fact sayers of nay... the one's that always come out of the woodwork (like a capricorn, an Argus...), ignore (or are selectively unaware) that no binding agreement was expected at Copenhagen. What was anticipated was a working framework that would forge the next years efforts to an eventual agreement in Mexico City. But that's what sayers of nay do!

What Obama accomplished works in our favour? In our favour? Really, how so? More astute analysis sees the structural decoupling of developed versus developing nations... in favour of emitters versus non-emitters, as "working in everyone's favour"... perhaps you could elaborate on your vagueness.

As for the meeting you speak/link to... you and the reporter you link to must have missed the real facts behind that evenings 2 separate planned meetings, meetings that were both brokered by the White House. One meeting was to have been between India, Brazil and South Africa... the other between China (Wen) and the US (Obama). Somewhere in there, the 'crafty' Chinese, by their own action, "crashed" the India/Brazil/South Africa meeting... that's the meeting that Obama "crashed" - there became one meeting... the eventual outcome from that meeting of the 5 leaders led to an agreement that Obama presented to the EU for signoff. That EU signoff constituted the Copenhagen accord. You must have missed that part.