Go figure!
PARIS, April 18 (Xinhua) — The third Major Economies Meeting on Energy Security and Climate Change (MEM) closed here on Friday with no substantial progress and no agreement reached on specific greenhouse gas reduction goals.
Representatives from 16 major economies and international organizations agreed to lay out mid- and long-term goals for greenhouse gas reductions, but differences remain over specific goals for limiting the greehouse gases.
As a result, representatives agreed to hold two more rounds of meetings in May and June respectively, French State Secretary for European Affairs Jean-Pierre Jouyet told a press conference.
Oh, goody! The representatives get to travel to vacation spots twice more. Think they did it on purpose, so they can fly in on their private jets, get ferried around in limo’s, dine on expensive and rare dishes, live the high life, then possibly hand down edicts from the Mount?
Meanwhile (The Guardian)
Climate change is a highly complex global problem, and one plagued by major uncertainties. Despite much progress in recent years, our knowledge about the physical processes underlying global warming is still far from complete. And its possible economic impact depends on a huge number of unpredictable variables, such as how well society might adapt to change, and at what cost.
So it is important to keep testing the consensus view that has emerged in the past few years, which is, to quote from an IMF report this month, that “climate change is a potentially catastrophic global externality and one of the world’s greatest collective action problems.”
To this extent, Nigel Lawson’s short book is to be welcomed. Along with the polemics, he makes some sensible points. For example, he is right to raise the alarm about the impact of biofuels on food prices, and about the huge costs and inefficiencies of imposing arbitrary targets for the production of renewable energy. He is right to warn about the dangers of trade protectionism that could result from imposing trade barriers against countries that do not cut their greenhouse gas emissions. And he is right to scoff at those who claim that unusual weather conditions in recent years represent clear evidence that disaster is on the way.
Of course, from that point, The Guardian goes on to attack unmercifully Mr. Lawson’s book, An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming .
Most people don’t expect their house to burn down. But they take out fire insurance, provided it is available at a sensible price, to protect themselves against the possibility. In the light of our current knowledge about global warming, that amounts to a compelling case for action.
In the book Climate Confusion by Roy Spencer, he writes
Some will ask, “But shouldn’t we greatly reduce our production of greenhouse gases-just in case? After all, we buy insurance to protect the investment we have in our homes.” Sure, if it was that easy, that cheap and if we had any assurances that the insurance policy would actually pay up if we ever had to make a claim. Unfortunately, most of the currently proposed “solutions” to the global warming problem are both expensive and ineffective, and so the analogy to insurance for those solutions is a poor one.
Of course, if all the climahysterics, particularly the leaders, actually believed in what they say and propose, they would actually follow their own Climahysteria religious edicts.
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