I am just back from Durban and COP17. So is Peter Kent. Only he came back and announced that Canada will strike a blow at the fragile agreement that was just produced. As I am sure you have heard, Canada has filed the legal paperwork to withdraw from Kyoto.
Never before in Canadian history has this country withdrawn from a treaty we have ratified -- not on any issue. Ever.
I don't see how other delegations that dealt with Canada's obstructionist position in Durban, in which we negotiated as a Kyoto party, will possibly regard this as anything but negotiating in bad faith.
Ever since CTV broke the story that the Harper cabinet had decided to legally withdraw from Kyoto -- with no debate and no vote in the House -- I have been, at one and the same time, certain the leak was correct while hoping they would not go through with it.
And now they have. It is devastating. It is even worse than all the other regressive steps of the Harper government in blocking climate action.
Kent announced legal withdrawal with a flurry of bizarre and untrue scare tactics. As if the Kyoto Protocol had effective sanctions for law breakers like Canada. As if Kyoto had the kind of draconian mandatory minimums of the omnibus crime bill. Kyoto has no effective enforcement mechanisms. The only penalty would be for a country that decided to enter into second commitment period negotiations (NOT Canada). And even then it would only mean that the target Canada would negotiate (if we were negotiating) would have a top up of 0.3 of a tonne for every tonne we agreed to. So in negotiations we could take into account the amount of the penalty and set out a target low enough to absorb the penalty. Each country negotiates what it will accept. That's why in 1997, Australia's Kyoto target was eight per cent above 1990 levels, when all other industrialized countries were to go below 1990 levels. (Canada by six per cent, U.S. by seven per cent, and the EU by eight per cent.) True, most European nations did not hit eight per cent. They cut 20 per cent and more. Europe as a block has more than met its Kyoto targets.
Kent claimed staying in Kyoto would cost $14 billion. Rubbish.
What are they spinning? The cost of trying, with no plan and a year from the target, to reduce our emissions enough to meet the six per cent target -- and then deciding to buy enough credits to meet the target -- could be $14 billion. I haven't checked their math because the whole idea is screamingly bogus. Nothing in Kyoto obliges us to spend one dime. Nothing in Kyoto could induce or require a country to buy credits.
And now, despite Harper's death wish for Kyoto and Kent's "Kyoto is in the past" mentality, look what was approved in Durban: a second commitment period under Kyoto. Not enough countries have signed up to accept targets, but the intention is to do so. Hardly "in the past."
What's in the past? Canada's reputation as a country with any integrity. Canada's reputation as a country showing environmental leadership.
What must not be "in the past" is our chance to avoid cataclysmic climate change.
We are running out of time (see the latest International Energy Agency report). Durban's agreements are weak and Canada just gave them a swift kick in a place that hurts.
So although, like me, you may feel like throwing yourself down and weeping for the betrayal of our future, for the loss of Canada's ratification of Kyoto, do not waste the energy. Get back up. And fight.
Get back up and resolve: Stephen Harper must not be allowed to get away with this. There must be a political cost.
Write letters to every newspaper denouncing the will of the majority of Canadians who support Kyoto was ignored. Spend some time on media websites. Write comments. Vote thumbs up or down. If you have a Conservative MP, leave them messages on the constituency phone lines. Demand an appointment. Organize protests. Go online to sign petitions. Send a donation to the Sierra Club, the Suzuki Foundation, or the WWF and ask them to mount campaigns to demand we stay in Kyoto. Our legal withdrawal does not take effect until next year, so we have time to push back.
Ask why Parliament was allowed to vote on Kyoto ratification (Dec. 17, 2002) but given no chance to debate or vote on withdrawal in 2011. Ask why they are lying to Canadians and claiming staying in Kyoto would cost $14 billion.
I know it is almost Christmas, but how can we rejoice with our children and grandchildren when a lifeline to their future was just sawed off by a reckless government?
This is not a partisan issue. Mulroney showed global leadership on climate. Chretien ratified, but never gave us a plan. Paul Martin (with Dion as environment minister) produced a decent plan. Stephen Harper killed the plan within weeks of becoming prime minister. It is clear that the prime minister does not have one single solitary clue of why reducing GHG matters. But he does understand political cost. This betrayal must cost.
Even though it is almost Christmas, almost Hanukkah and the holidays, skip some last-minute shopping. Whatever you were going to buy, your children need a liveable world much much more.
Asher Minns: Durban Climate Change Conference: Why COPs Are So Much More Than Politics
BBC News - Canada to withdraw from Kyoto Protocol
Canada pulls out of Kyoto Protocol - Business - CBC News
Canada Leaving Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change - NYTimes.com
Canada to pull out of Kyoto protocol | Reuters
'There indeed has been some slight warming in the area of the Antarctica Peninsula but the huge mass of ice sheets actually reside in East and West Antarctica, which measurements show to be cooling'
http://www.c3headlines.com/2011/12/ipccs-claim-that-antarcticas-ice-sheets-are-melting-due-to-global-warming-is-found-to-be-fraudulent.html
/sarcasm
Workers in Germany's once booming solar energy industry face a shakeout of major proportions following declines in the price of solar panels over the past year. A decision by the German government earlier this year to phase out nuclear energy has done little to reignite the sector. The resulting power gap is likely to be filled by coal and gas rather than solar and wind energy. -- Sarah Marsh and Christoph Steitz, Reuters, 15 December 2011
It would take too long so we build a second system to run parallel and then transform the DC to AC at specific sites to minimize the losses. There is almost no loss in transmissiÂon for DC grids, the loss comes when we convert
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We ran out of reply space.
So you are an electrical expert who understands all the intricacies of the system? I don't think so. Let me tell you what is happening here in Ontario. We have a whack of people putting up solar panels on their property. Problem is the system is not set up to take them, so crews are working round the clock upgrading the grid so the panels can be connected. The wait time is TWO YEARS. And this is just a minor change to a complicated grid system.
For me to convert my home to run DC would cost thousands. The vast majority of people could not afford such changeover. It would take decades, trillions of dollars, to rebuild the system for DC. For what? So a few useless solar panels can be connected????? Please.
I think you also need to look at this http:/ontariowindperformance.wordpress.com. Now don't even try to claim my analysis is wrong. I've been doing statistical analysis for business for more than 20 years. I can add.
It's a website chock full of wind information; http://www.palmsprings.com/services/wind1.html
You may have been doing statistical analysis for business for more than 20 years, but these people have been running a profitable, reliable and clean wind power plant for more than 20 years.
My question is; Why can Palm Springs Wind Power produce reliable wind power at low rates - and we can't do the same here? The answer is; We can, if we just do it right.
Why not copy their model? It works.
I certainly hope you are willing to spend some time at some other sites than those of Watts Up with That and Judith Curry. I seriously doubt that you have a degree...you just don't sound like a person who is serious about researching a subject to actually become educated. Sounds like you've read what you need to shore up your own beliefs about AGW and have ignored (or denied) any evidence that would threaten those beliefs. Take the time required and be a little more wide ranging in your reading..and always consider the source or your information.
It is a common tactic of the true believers in AGW to attempt to belittle those of us who are skeptical of the AGW claims. It comes as a huge shock to them when us skeptics turn out to be VERY informed, often more informed than the person trying to put us down, like you are trying to do.
Now, you reject WUWT (an award winning blog) and JudithCurry.com because they both seriously challenge your core belief system. It is you who is unwilling to look at contradictory evidence that shakes your dogma.
I have posted PEER REVIEWED papers here that seriously challenges the theory that CO2 emissions are changing the climate. Now, deal with that instead of attempting to claim I'm illiterate. You will definitely lose that fight.
Now, turning this back around, show me ONE science paper that empirically links CO2 to changes in the climate. If you are so informed, more than me, you should have one ready to go.
While I can't at the moment cite a particular paper which links C02 to the climate I know I can find several if necessary. But with or without a paper in hand, the basic physics involved are pretty much unassailable are they not? Or do you not agree that C02 is in fact a heat trapping gas? If this is the case then I suppose we don't have much to talk about.
While I search for the requisite peer review literature to support my contention perhaps you could point me to the papers you refer to that purportedly challenge the theory that C02 is changing the climate.
As an aside, WUWT being an 'award winning' blog means little or nothing in terms of legititimacy as a source of dependable information with regard to global warming.
I haven't read any of it, I do however have a friend who is residing in a small ont. town who tells me, thanks to the gov't forcing green sources, solar and wind, into a grid, not designed to accomodate it, his town suffers black outs several times a month. Local hydro admits they are not prepared for it and can't stop it because of gov't. commitments. I believe my friend and his living the experience over all the rhetoric.
http://judithcurry.com/2011/12/14/another-ipcc-error-cloud-albedo-forcing/
Was that below the belt?
The left in Canada is deeply divided. The CPC government is here for a long time. I suspect they will out live the last Liberal government. Finally we are on the right track.
Within the next election AGW will be shown to be a fraud.
Canada did nothing illegal.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2011/12/13/pol-may-kyoto.html
"Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his government are breaking the law by withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol, Green Party Leader Elizabeth May said Tuesday.
"Not only has Canada just ended our commitments under an international treaty, I believe we are in violation of domestic law," May told a news conference on Parliament Hill."
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Unless the CBC is lying again....
Concise and accurate.
I know, I know, suggesting reading the treaty you support is madness, but humour me this one time....
The treaty, and Canada's dropping out of it, is not the crux of the problem for me. I wish the US would drop out as well, and give the rest of the world a chance to do the best they can. Even if it got us quarter of the loaf, it sure beats nothing.
I know, I know that suggesting to you that Canada's tar sands policy will take us past all points of return for climate damage (apart from what it does to the earth, people and forests on site--just LOOK AT IT!!!!!) you will be convinced that we have overactive imaginations. But we are 100% sincere. Neither are we all novices who don't understand real issues of ordinary people. But, hey, why bother?
It is Canada's tar sands policy, not its dropping out of Kyoto, that has tarnished its reputation and that will continue to do so until the policy is changed.
Or do we still reward politicians for lying to us?
Beginning in the spring, we need to begin organizing boycotts against the polluters and their supporters across the American continent. Unless Canadian and American Greens unite together in this struggle, we cannot prevail against the corporate titans. We need people power and we need them in the streets. Pollution is not the only problem, it is the corporate take-over of our governments that we must fight, rejecting Durban is just the symptom of this cancer.
After 15 years of pumping this mess someone must have an answer.