China loves Kyoto -- new climate plan sunk

I wonder why?

CHINA has dashed John Howard's hopes for an APEC deal on climate change, saying any new pact should be based on the Kyoto Protocol. Australia refuses to sign the Kyoto Protocol. [Because Kyoto gives China free rein].

Chinese President Hu Jintao yesterday rejected John Howard's call for developing nations to shoulder tougher greenhouse emissions targets. "Climate change is an environmental issue. But, ultimately, it is a development issue," Mr Hu said. "We should, within the context of sustainable development, uphold the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and its Kyoto Protocol as the core mechanism and main avenue of co-operation." The Kyoto Protocol allowed developing countries greater leeway on emissions targets, placing a higher burden on developed nations.

Australia and the United States - the only major polluters not to ratify Kyoto - want developing nations to shoulder tougher emissions reduction targets. Climate change was the key subject in talks between Mr Howard and Mr Hu. The Prime Minister had hoped to make concrete progress on climate change at the Sydney summit, ahead of a federal election campaign. However Mr Hu said that he supported the differing responsibilities allowed under the Kyoto pact.

Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer admitted it would be hard to bring China - one of the biggest polluters in the world - into a new emissions reduction system. "It's one of the great challenges of diplomacy; I'm not too pessimistic about it, I think we can at least make some progress here," he said.

The impasse means any APEC statement on climate change is likely to be a general statement of intent, rather than a detailed action plan. Mr Hu said he hoped the Sydney declaration would "send a clear signal to the international community to show their strong will and common resolve in tackling climate change".

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Is The Times New Global Warming Atlas Legit?

Post below lifted from Riehl World. See the original for links

The Daily Mail informs us:

The effects of global climate change are clear to see on the latest world maps.

In the four years since the last edition of the Times Comprehensive Atlas Of The World went on sale, cartographers have been forced to redraw coastlines and reclassify types of land.

Naturally, the most dramatic changes to the atlas would be heading the article, so let's see how they do as regards Global Warming.

They highlight the Aral Sea in central Asia, reduced by three-quarters in the past 40 years, and Lake Chad, which has shrunk by 95 per cent since 1963.

The Aral Sea: Since the 1960s the Aral Sea has been shrinking, as the rivers that feed it (the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya) were diverted by the then Soviet Union for irrigation.

Lake Chad: a remnant of a former inland sea which has grown and shrunk with changes in climate over the past 13,000 years. At its largest, around 4000 BC, this lake is estimated to have covered an area of 400,000 kmý ... An increased demand on the lake's water from the local population has likely accelerated its shrinkage over the past 40 years.

The Dead Sea is some 25 metres lower than it was 50 years ago.

The Dead Sea: Sometime around 10,000 years ago the lake level dropped dramatically, probably to levels even lower than today.

And sections of rivers including the Rio Grande and Colorado in America, the Tigris in the Middle East, and the Yellow River in China are now drying out each summer.

The Rio Grande is over-appropriated, that is, there are more users for the water than there is water in the river.

The Colorado River:  the heavy use of the river as an irrigation source for the Imperial Valley has desiccated the lower course of the river in Mexico such that it no longer consistently reaches the sea.

Global Warming doesn't appear to be changing the globe, at least not to the extent some might like us to believe. Good thing we have the Times Comprehensive Atlas Of The World to take care of that little problem, I suppose.

BIO-FOOLS: GREEN POLICIES MAY LEAD TO GLOBAL FOOD CRISIS

A huge increase in demand for oilseeds and vegetable oils for biofuel production could lead to a global food crisis as raw materials are switched to bioenergy output, Hamburg-based oilseeds analysts Oil World said. "It is high time to realise that the world community is approaching a food crisis in 2008 unless usage of agricultural products for biofuels is curbed or ideal weather conditions and sharply higher crop yields are achieved in 2008," it said.

Global grain and vegetable oil stocks are already at historically low levels and farmers around the world are switching plantings from oilseeds to grains because of record high cereals prices, it said, adding "The global supply and demand balance of the seven major oilseeds will become tighter than expected." "The global production deficit of 17 to 18 million tonnes relative to prospective consumption will enforce an unprecedented decline in oilseed stocks in 2007-08."

It estimated global 2007-08 production of the seven main oilseeds at 384.2 million tonnes, far below consumption of 401.8 million tonnes. This compares to 2006-07 production of 396.2 million tonnes and consumption of 387.3 million tonnes. The surge in consumption largely caused by biofuel production will cut 2007-08 season ending world stocks of the seven main oilseeds to 64.3 million tonnes from 81.9 million tonnes at the end of 2006-07. "This decline is unprecedented and will cut world stocks of the seven oilseeds at the end of the new season to only 16% of annual use," it said, adding this compared with stocks covering 21.1% of annual global use at the end of 2006-07.

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BBC BIAS AND THE POWER OF BLOGGERS

The BBC has abandoned plans for Planet Relief, a 'telethon' to raise awareness about climate change, which was being touted as a cross between Comic Relief (an annual BBC cringe-fest in which people give money to various good causes because comedians tell them to) and Al Gore's mega-flop Live Earth.

The report says: "The decision comes after executives said it was not the BBC's job to lead opinion on climate change." Which is exactly what they've been doing for the past several years - so what's changed? The report admits that: "...against the backdrop of intense internal debates about impartiality, senior news editors expressed misgivings that Planet Relief was too "campaigning" in nature and would have left the Corporation open to the charge of bias."

There has indeed been intense internal debate, with various senior BBC figures criticising the corporation for 'editorialising' on climate change - and this in the wake of a report by the BBC itself which essentially acknowledged that it was infected with a left-liberal culture. The BBC claims it scrapped Planet Relief because audiences 'prefer factual output on climate change'. This is a non-sequitor of course, because the BBC's factual programmes on climate change are every bit as biased as Planet Relief promised to be.

The real reason for the decision appears to be that the BBC realises the public is becoming sick of hysterical media coverage of the subject, as the failure of Live Earth demonstrated, so the BBC has decided it can have more influence on public opinion by dressing its editorialising up as 'factual' programming. Not surprisingly, environmentalists have slammed the BBC's decision as "cowardice", (damn, foiled by those pesky well-funded deniers again!). The report adds: "A number of right-wing commentators such as the Daily Mail's Keith Waterhouse also criticised the idea." The writer, environment correspondent and global warming doomsayer Richard Black, is clearly allowing his frustration to get to him here.

You'll notice that you'll rarely, if ever, see a commentator referred to as 'left-wing' by the BBC. Interestingly, however, Black adds that 'Many blogs run by climate skeptics groups regularly accuse the BBC of bias', and I think this is the really interesting point in all of this. Bloggers, have, of course been at the forefront of the resistance to claims that the debate is over, and have enabled research by skeptical scientists, which previously would have been confined to science magazines and easily suppressed by a hostile media, to be seen by millions.

Another area where bloggers have led the way is in exposing media bias. A few years ago it was almost impossible for the public to complain about biased reporting by the BBC. You could write to them, or phone them, and your complaint would be duly noted before disappearing into the system. Only a few 'right-wing' journalists and Tory MPs were able to draw attention to dishonest or misleading reports with any effect.

Blogs have changed all that, and brought together thousands of people who have been quietly seething at the BBC for years, but felt they were powerless to do anything about it; complaints about bias now appear daily, both on dedicated 'Beeb-watch' sites and mainstream blogs, and every omission, half-truth and lie is quickly thrown back in the faces of those responsible. There are clearly decent people in the BBC who are truly committed to impartiality, but I think we can chalk this one up to the bloggers.

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Greenies send bread prices skyrocketing in Britain: "Premier Foods will force shoppers to pay up to 8p more for a loaf of Hovis after raising the price of bread for the second time this year because of an "unprecedented" surge in wheat costs. The company, which makes Hovis, Mothers Pride and Homepride bread, said that it had no choice but to push through an increase given that wheat prices had doubled in the past 12 months after poor harvests around the world and the UK's dismal summer.... ..Mr Schofield warned that other food products were also facing inflationary pressure, in part because of the desire by governments to give over more farmland to biofuel products. He said: "Everyone is focusing on wheat and bread prices at the moment but there is a general inflation that hasn't been with us since the 1990s. "As long as governments are going to grow fuel there will be in effect an environmental tax on food."


British Yachtsman Who Counted On Global Warming to Cross Arctic Now Trapped by Ice: "In one of the most hilarious cases of being tripped up by dubious scientific hype, British yachtsman Adrian Flanagan attempted to be the first to sail across the arctic north of Russia. He based his hope on the fact that he believed in the Global Warming propaganda that the arctic is rapidly losing its ice thus making his trip possible. One little problem. Cold cruel reality has crushed the Global Warming hype and now Flanagan's boat is trapped by ice in the arctic. Besides the arctic ice, Wrong Way Flanagan now appears to have another problem. Remember those polar bears that Global Warming activists were warning us were endangered? Well, it now seems that the tables have been turned and those endangered polar bears are now endangering Flanagan"


LEONARDO DICAPRIO'S SNORE-FEST : "It's a good thing Leonardo DiCaprio made so much money from "Titanic" a decade ago. His environmental documentary, "The 11th Hour," has been a total bust at the box office. After 18 days in release, the film has grossed only $417,913 from ticket sales. The 90-minute snore-fest is playing on 111 screens this week, but that number is likely to be reduced this Friday. The film will be sent to DVD heaven after that. By comparison, Al Gore and Davis Guggenheim's similar but far more engaging "An Inconvenient Truth" had already made $3.5 million by its 18th day of release. I hesitated to say before "11th Hour" actually opened how mind-numbingly dull it was for fear that I would ruin it for those interested in the subject of global warming. But at Cannes, when the film by Nadia Conners and Leila Conners Petersen was shown to journalists, nearly the entire room fell asleep.


Endangered Species Act out of control : ""Is a salmon born in a hatchery a different species from the same salmon born in the wild? It is hard to believe, but recent Federal court rulings are claiming that otherwise genetically identical fish are separate species, forcing an appeal being announced recently to the 9th Circuit Court. Two court decisions in the last two months show how much is at stake in these questions. In mid-June, Judge John C. Coughenour, of the Western District of Washington, ruled that 'human interference' and the 'unnatural' way that hatcheries maintain salmon populations was unlawful. The judge then ordered that the Upper Columbia River steelhead remain on the endangered species list. Just this month, Judge Michael Hogan in Eugene reached a similar conclusion. ... These decisions will dramatically affect a lot of people living in the Pacific Northwest."

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The Lockwood paper was designed to rebut Durkin's "Great Global Warming Swindle" film. It is a rather confused paper -- acknowledging yet failing to account fully for the damping effect of the oceans, for instance -- but it is nonetheless valuable to climate atheists. The concession from a Greenie source that fluctuations in the output of the sun have driven climate change for all but the last 20 years (See the first sentence of the paper) really is invaluable. And the basic fact presented in the paper -- that solar output has in general been on the downturn in recent years -- is also amusing to see. Surely even a crazed Greenie mind must see that the sun's influence has not stopped and that reduced solar output will soon start COOLING the earth! Unprecedented July 2007 cold weather throughout the Southern hemisphere might even be the first sign that the cooling is happening. And the fact that warming plateaued in 1998 is also a good sign that we are moving into a cooling phase. As is so often the case, the Greenies have got the danger exactly backwards. See my post of 7.14.07 and a very detailed critique here for more on the Lockwood paper

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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