Bally High
Here's how the UN climate conference delegates kept their cool. The Sydney Morning Herald reports:
The air-conditioning system installed to keep more than 10,000 delegates cool used highly damaging refrigerant gases - as lethal to the atmosphere as 48,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide, and nearly the equivalent of the emissions of all aircraft used to fly delegates to Indonesia. ...
Staff from Australia's Natural Refrigerants Transition Board and the London- and Washington-based Environmental Investigation Agency noticed the stockpiled cylinders of hydrochlorofluorocarbons - a refrigerant likely to be phased out over the next few years because it devours ozone in the upper atmosphere. In addition, the refrigerant is a potent greenhouse gas, with each kilogram at least as damaging as 1.7 tonnes of carbon dioxide.
Uh-huh.
After a fortnight of discussions with its Indonesian hosts and the contractors who installed the air-conditioning, the investigation agency proposed sending experts to safely recover the HCFC emissions by storing the refrigerant gas in sealed containers.
Australian officials were contacted and offered to help. The information was also sent to the staff of the former US vice-president Al Gore, and Yvo de Boer, the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
By Friday the Indonesian Department of Environment decided to commit its own staff to a careful clean-up.
The people from Australia's Natural Refrigerants Transition Board and the London- and Washington-based Environmental Investigation Agency probably recognized the cylinders because they saw them before. I wonder how many of the other 10,000 worlds greatest environmental experts did? Some things tend not to be recognized. Remember this object with a copper driving band still on it that looks a lot like, oh, a 155 mm artillery shell?
NYT caption: Pakistani men with the remains of a missile fired at a house in the Bajur tribal zone near the Afghan border. Courtesy of Sweetness and Light.
Makes you wonder though if you could hold a convention of 10,000 doctors and have only a handful of them recognize the drinking faucets were hooked up to a sewer, then have it take two weeks of discussion with the hosts to patch it up?
posted by wretchardthecat at 12/17/2007 06:14:00 PM
11 Comments:
Live Earth was a series of worldwide concerts held on 7/7/07 to fight global warming
The event's total carbon footprint was at least 74,500 tons, more than 3,000times the average Briton's annual footprint.
Performers flew at least 222,623 miles to take part in the event, and this figure does not include transport of technicians, dancers and support staff.
Interesting factoids from The American Thinker:
CO2 data for various countries is tabulated by the US Government. If we look at that data and compare 2004 (latest year for which data is available) to 1997 (last year before the Kyoto treaty was signed), we find the following.
Emissions worldwide increased 18.0%.
Emissions from countries that signed the treaty increased 21.1%.
Emissions from non-signers increased 10.0%.
Emissions from the U.S. increased 6.6%.
In fact, emissions from the U.S. grew slower than those of over 75% of the countries that signed Kyoto.
I personally don't believe Global Warming is caused by CO2 emmisions, and I don't believe Global Warming is a bad thing, but isn't it funny how the US is always held out to be the "bad guy" on global warming for not signing the useless Kyoto protocol, even though in actuality we've done a better job then the hypocritical signatories?
...ah but the rent-seekers want legal recourse, you see.
Kyoto picked a base year to stack the treaty against the US. After 1990 the US grew rapidly while Japan and Europe were stagnant--therefore their emissions were stagnant while ours had increased.
Also, West Germany inherited East Germany and planned to replace their inefficient generating plants with modern ones. Britain was building nuclear plants. So their "compliance" was baked in at the start.
That treaty was designed to hamstring the US economy. That's why not even John Kerry or Ted Kennedy voted for the thing.
Actually, not a single senator was willing to let the judges of HISTORY find his name affixed to the Kyoto Accord.
... unless you count former Senator Albert Gore, Junior, who signed as Vice-President AFTER the senate had rejected the thing.
President William Jefferson I-have-no-control-over-my-own-genitals didn't even bother to send the dead treaty back to the senate for another try.
Anyhow, several decades back I began to realize the U.N. and its piss-ant functionaries are nothing but a bunch of parasites.
I would really like someone to list a single significant accomplishment of the United Nations in the last three decades.
I mean something the United Nations actually did, not just took credit for after the U.S. stepped in and provided the technical support, financing, people, transportation, et cetera.
Of course, to most responses, all that is necessary is to point out that the United States has been underwriting the U.N. Budget to keep it solvent for most of its life, many years providing the greatest share.
The United Nations needs to have its building and tenants fumigated. Actually, the lice are probably smarter, practice better hygeine, and have more respect and compassion for their victims than any of the syphilitic bureaucratic bastards.
The U.N. translators are probably not all bad people.
The Bali Climate Conference should have served final notice to our world that the Vampire Elite™ are nothing more than effete wankers who cannot survive longer than three hours without a hot meal. These people are nothing more than eloi who will sooner see the morlocks gnaw our bones than ever raise a hand in anger against the real enemies of civilization. In a sane world they would swiftly keep company with the nearest lamp post.
Yeah yeah yeah,
I've always thought the people who push this global warming stuff are Joneses who do not want to be caught up to. We got ours, now let us keep everyone else from getting it.
The USA Executive (Clinton) did sign the Kyoto protocol in 1998 or so. As a treaty, however, it cannot become law unless and until the US Senate ratifies it. That appears unlikely even if the Dems stay in control.
NYT reporting notwithstanding, the USA is a signatory to Kyoto.
The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the - Web Reconnaissance for 12/18/2007 A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day...so check back often.
NRO has an interesting take on the Bali conference:
Winston Churchill’s famous description of disarmament negotiations — “a solemn and prolonged farce” — now applies equally well to the U.N.’s endless climate-change talks. The not-so-hidden agenda of the U.N. climate conference in Bali was clear for months — beat the United States into submission — and the long run-up to Bali was carefully choreographed, with no fewer than four major reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). All of them said the same thing: Doom awaits unless we take drastic action now. The climate campaigners’ goal is a 25 to 40 percent reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions by 2020. Having failed to come anywhere near the more modest Kyoto targets, they apparently feel that now is the time for an even less realistic goal.
It was always in the cards that the conference would be deadlocked until the eleventh hour, at which time the U.S. would capitulate and accept some kind of pro-forma agreement, allowing climate campaigners to proclaim that salvation was at hand. Bali followed this script faithfully, with the U.S. coming in for boos, catcalls, and threats — and then cheers and congratulations when it gave in to the “consensus” at the end.
The actual result is inconclusive and kicks the can down the road, where much mischief will need to be fought off again. While the U.S. agreed to participate in framing a successor treaty to Kyoto that will include “measurable, verifiable steps” toward reducing GHG emissions, the desired 25–40 percent reduction was conspicuously left out, to the anger of many greens. “This deal is very disappointing,” the head of Friends of the Earth told the London Times. “This conference has failed to give us a clear destination.” Opposition to the numerical target apparently came from Russia as well as key developing nations such as China and India. The Washington Post called the Bali agreement a “road map,” and it is likely to prove no more successful than that other, more famous “road map” for Middle East peace.
While it might have been better for the U.S. simply to walk out of Bali, the shifting political landscape arguably made it prudent to hang in. The next president is likely (certain if he is a Democrat) to participate in any future climate agreement, and a “stubborn” U.S. position today would give a Democratic president a free shot at ingratiating himself with Europe by ostentatiously repudiating the Bush administration. Meanwhile, the grim economic realities of greenhouse-gas emission reductions continue to loom in the background. If Congress enacts a modest emission-reductions plan in 2008 or 2009 (either an emission-trading scheme or a carbon tax), it is unlikely the U.S. will want to commit to a more ambitious U.N. emissions target subsequently, for the same reason the Senate voted 95–0 in 1997 to reject Kyoto.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NTk3YzAyMDNmMmE2MmE1MjAwMTcxNTFlZTE4NjBjYmM=
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