Wow. Reuters is playing this last session of the U.N.’s Conference of the Parties (COP27) Climate Change Summit in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt for all it’s worth, drama-wise. I can’t tell if the reporters originally started out writing bodice rippers for Harlequin…or wants to be hired by them. Negotiations, wheeling and dealing to save the Earth went on non-stop, and it took everything these warriors had, leaving even a German – a GERMAN(!) – “visibly shaken.” It’s too much.
Delegates – worn out after intense, overnight negotiations – made no objections as Egypt’s COP27 President Sameh Shoukry rattled through the final agenda items and gavelled the deal through.
Despite having no agreement for a stronger commitment to the 1.5 C goal set in the 2015 Paris Agreement, “we went with what the agreement was here because we want to stand with the most vulnerable,” Germany’s climate secretary Jennifer Morgan, visibly shaken, told Reuters.
I had no idea extorting money from the United States while sidestepping your own obligations and screwing over developing countries was so fraught with emotional peril. Bless them for doing this for us, right?
…When asked by Reuters whether the goal of stronger climate-fighting ambition had been compromised for the deal, Mexico’s chief climate negotiator Camila Zepeda summed up the mood among exhausted negotiators.
“Probably. You take a win when you can.”
The “win” was an agreement to set up a slush fund to compensate poor island nations and other (basically) 3d World countries who’ve been “battered” by climate disasters ostensibly caused by your Ford F-150, your plastic straws, and your air conditioning.
…The climate envoy from the Marshall Islands said she was “worn out” but happy with the fund’s approval. “So many people all this week told us we wouldn’t get it,” Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner said. “So glad they were wrong.”
Well, they’re not getting it just yet, but a framework has been laid out for the preliminary who, what, and where. Speaking of “where,” where was our climate envoy John Kerry? He never misses one of these parties. They were spared his ostentatious intonements thanks to a positive Rona test. I’m sure his wisdom was sorely missed in those intense hours right to the end.
…[Kerry] on Sunday welcomed the deal to “establish arrangements to respond to the devastating impact of climate change on vulnerable communities around the world.”
In a statement, he said he would continue to press major emitters like China to “significantly enhance their ambition” in keeping the 1.5 C goal alive.
You know we – and ONLY we – are going to be on the hook for cash if this fund truly gets rolling.
The U.S. has agreed to pay $1 billion USD in climate reparations to foreign nations.
Guess how much China, by far the world’s largest emitter, will pay? 0$.
That’s a true litmus test. These policies have absolutely nothing to do with the environment; it’s wealth redistribution. pic.twitter.com/K9PnhbOZ6n
— Chris Martz (@ChrisMartzWX) November 21, 2022
Hopefully, it’s something a McCarthy house will crush like a bug.
I find it rather disturbing how the US wants to volunteer & pay “reparations” to underdeveloped countries because of emissions that were produced during the Industrial Revolution, But does anyone realize the world benefited from advancements & innovations that were developed? 🤔
— Chuck Sharp (@Chuck69i) November 21, 2022
We’ll see. The upside of the exercise is the fact that nothing was done about either emissions or fossil fuels. Pledges were passed around to hold fast to the +1.5°C warming threshold from the previous conference in Glasgow, but few of the 200+ nations signed off.
…”We had to fight relentlessly to hold the line of Glasgow,” a visibly frustrated Alok Sharma, architect of the Glasgow deal, told the summit.
But…WHEW. Looks like we dodged a bullet Biden could claim as a global mandate.
…Critics pointed to a section which they said undermined the Glasgow commitment to regularly renew emissions targets – with language saying the work programme would “not impose new targets or goals”. Another section of the COP27 deal dropped the idea of annual target renewal in favour of returning to a longer five-year cycle set out in the Paris pact.
“It is more than frustrating to see overdue steps on mitigation and the phase-out of fossil energies being stonewalled by a number of large emitters and oil producers,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said.
The deal also included a reference to “low-emissions energy,” raising concern among some that it opened the door to the growing use of natural gas – a fossil fuel that leads to both carbon dioxide and methane emissions.
It also fits hand and glove with an interesting article that appeared in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal. You know it is gospel that everything that happens weather-wise in the States is because of Climate Change and is always getting worse or more destructive or…ad nauseum. Kind of sick of it, right? Like California is burning exponentially worse every year not because it’s in a semi-arid zone and has been horribly mismanaged for fire prevention thanks to insane environmental strictures, but because of man-made “climate change.” That’s a given in every single news broadcast and overwrought piece written on the “historic drought” and your gas-powered chainsaw and charcoal grill ruined it for everybody.
Realizing that, I thought, like, hey – they’re right. I heard hardly any of that Dante’s Inferno rhetoric this past summer. Why was that?
The fire season in the American West came and…just kinda went.
One of the slowest wildfire seasons in years has come to an end in the West thanks to well-timed rain and cooler temperatures, bringing a reprieve to a region hit by numerous destructive blazes over the past several years.
…November rains effectively doused the season in California, where 362,403 acres have burned this year through Monday, compared with 2.6 million over the same period in 2021 and a five-year annual average of 2.2 million, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire.
A strong monsoon season also kept fire activity below normal in states such as Arizona, where 160,770 acres have burned compared with 524,428 last year, according to the Southwest Coordination Center, an interagency fire group.
In an area that covers Nevada, Utah and parts of Idaho and Wyoming, 423,345 acres have burned this year, compared with a five-year annual average of 1.2 million, according to the Great Basin Coordination Center, another interagency fire group.
…According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, 69% of the West is currently experiencing drought conditions, down from 91% a year ago.
Don’t you think a good year after such terrible times would be worth a mention somewhere?
Guess not. They’re not out of the woods by any stretch, but the easier season has given them a break that firefighters desperately needed, loads of equipment has been updated, they have a chance to train, and they are starting on forest fire management much earlier than they usually can – clearing brush, cutting trees, etc.
…Federal officials have set a goal of thinning work up to 50 million acres of land over the next decade. Respite from fires this year will make it easier for that work to continue.
Attitudes are rapidly shifting to the time-honored way of forest management – clearing and thinning are coming back in vogue in federal forests. It remains to be seen what California will allow.
Still, you think you would have heard something about a welcomed cessation in the onslaught. But good news doesn’t keep people scared, continually depressed, frightening their children, and sending money to your foundations. You have to keep the boogeyman alive.
…Essentially the editorial and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) article on which it is based make a critical point, as the Colorado Springs Gazette states:
“Enough with climate-change scare tactics. They hurt people, possibly more than they will suffer from climate change.”
…In the meantime, these claims are doing untold damage. Children’s psyches are being horribly scarred as climate catastrophism has created whole new category of psychological disorder, “climate grief,” generated by fearmongering politicians, activists, and the mainstream media. This condition has spawned a new area of psychological practice: “ecopsychology.” Meanwhile, slavery, child labor, and environmental destruction are the foundations of the green energy technologies being pushed to replace fossil fuels to prevent climate disaster.
It’s not Science™
Al gore quoting a scientist saying that “during the summer months there’s a 75% chance all of the ice covering the Arctic will be gone!”
FYI…
There’s 30% more ice in 2022 than there was in 2009! #Science https://t.co/NA0STx1WFC— Rob Schneider (@RobSchneider) November 20, 2022
*Science Fact™: There was also 30% less Al Gore in 2009*
It’s a racket wrapped in a crusade with these fanatics. Helped along by a compliant press who turns them into romance action heroes for arguing about money in a luxury resort halfway across the world that they flew to in fleets of multi-million dollar private jets.
