Allan M.R. MacRae of Calgary, Canada points out something rather interesting that seems to have gone largely unreported in the mainstream media.
Here are verbatim quotes by Tony Blair from the September 15, 2005 Plenary Session of the Clinton Global Initiative Conference.
Tony Blair seems to have let the cat out of the bag on his new energy policy at the Clinton Global Initiative Conference last week. Blair said:
“I would say probably I’m changing my thinking about this [Kyoto treaty] in the past two or three years…
…The truth is no country is going to cut its growth or consumption substantially in the light of a long-term environmental problem…
…There is no way we are going to tackle this problem unless we develop the science and technology…
…Some people have signed Kyoto, some people haven’t signed Kyoto, right. That is a disagreement. It’s there. It’s not going to be resolved…
…I don’t think people are going, at least in the short term, going to start negotiating another major treaty like Kyoto.”
This must be a major disappointment to Kyoto enthusiasts, who say ten more Kyotos are needed for effective reduction of atmospheric CO2.
On July 12, 2005, on the subject of the Gleneagles Summit, I wrote the following to a number of colleagues:
“…we may now be at a point where many Euro politicians are realizing the science of Kyoto is bogus, but they are reluctant to admit they have been duped about global warming and have misled their public with scary stories for which there was no evidence – their new approach suggests a politically-correct “quiet exit” from Kyoto. We’ll see…”
Allan M.R. MacRae
Whether the science is bogus or not is not even relevant. According to the IPCC’s own projections, all Kyoto does is delay the unavoidable temperature increase by 6-7 years over the next century. Which is within the statistical noise.
This nonsense is simply unjustifiable on any ground. That it gathered so much attention and support for so long is a testament to the political abilities of its promoters. And the ignorance of public opinion.
This story was picked up at the time by several commentators over at biased BBC – not least because the implication seems to be that the corporation refused to run it.
Curiously, it also doesn’t seem to have surfaced in the print media I waste my money buying, though the wonderful Professor Philip Stott has covered it on his iconoclastic Envirospin Watch.
The silence on this one is positively deafening.
The big difference between the United States and the Kyoto Signatories with respect to the Kyoto Treaty was that the United States was being honest.
Interesting, given that the UK was one of the leading proponents.
In this speech Blair seems to be edging towards the US and Australian positions.
The announcement of melting ice-caps on Mars is the killer blow. Any bloke-down-the-pub can now knock the stuffing out of a greenie’s argument.
Thank you.
The announcement of melting ice-caps on Mars is the killer blow. Any bloke-down-the-pub can now knock the stuffing out of a greenie’s argument.
Those robot probes the US has been sending there must be spewing a hell of a lot of co2….. 😉
I tend to agree that there is some human caused warming due to CO2… and I am disgusted with the assinine supporters of that cause who are also anti-Nuclear. Hey guys, here come the Chinese! They are going to put a couple billion people on decent living standards and if you don’t want to fry the planet, you’d better learn to love the Atom.
China’s CO2 output is simply going to dwarf that of the West.
Hey, let’s be honest : none of this would be a problem if Bush had accepted to receive Cindy Sheehan.
In fact, notice how Katrina happened just at the right time to deflect the attention from Sheehan’s righteous grievances ? Isn’t that a bit odd ? Don’t you think ?
Michael Moore, where are you ? The people demand the Truth !
And do not forget at that time that world nomenklature was thinking about Kyoto, islamic terrorists were bombing all over the world…priorities and reality denial
We humans understand very little about the long term climatic systems of the planet. There does seem to be general agreement that increased levels of CO2 correlate with increased temperatures and there also cannot really be any doubt that human activity produces CO2. What is unknown is just how significant is the human caused CO2 when compared with other factors affecting climate. We probably won’t know for sure either way until it is too late to know what, if anything, can be done about it. For all we know human produced CO2 may be all that is stopping the planet from slipping into a new ice age.
Concentrate on building defences where needed and increasing prosperity in those parts of the world most vulnerable to climate change so they can build their own defences. If Bangladesh was as properous as the Netherlands they would build adequate flood defences. Making Bangladesh as prosperous as the Netherlands in the next fifty years is infinitely more acheivable than reducing global CO2 production.
10s of thousands who rely on Kyoto w/o a paycheck, boy are they going to be mad.
So, what’s their next focus????
This has received little notice in the MSM?
Try none whatsoever! That’s my finding. I pay attention to thnis stuff as a University of London MSc student in environmental science.
But for the bloggosphere, I would never have heard of this statement by Blair. I even tried a search of http://www.number10.gov.uk. Nada.
Has anyone done a study yet on the environmental impact of all these environmental groups?
I mean they keep pushing out studies, using paper and resources and consuming energy without producing anything that is of use to the greater public.
Surely we have an obligation to decide if we can really sustain these groups or if it would be for the greater good of the environment if we banned them!!
Why do you say MSM ignored Blair’s remarks ? Instapundit had a link to them.
I don’t know if Instapundit can be considered MSM, but for me he is more important and influencial. Who cares about those “has been” MSMs ?
Politicians have trained the MSM only to take notice of big, televisual policy-launching events such as Make Poverty History and Kyoto. The failure of these initiatives isn’t a problem. The journalists won’t notice, or care, and they’ll obediently turn up for the next big idea launch. The politicians have dumbed down the press.
Jacob asks:
” Who cares about those “has been” MSMs ?”
Sadly, the overwhelming majority of the people who vote these politicians into power. That’s the problem.
I was post-Kyoto before post-Kyoto was cool, man.
Don’t think you saw the irony in this post coming just below the Hurrican Rita one. The unprecedented frequency of +4 hurricanes this year over a Carribean that is experiencing an average 0.2 degrees rise in temperature per annum doesn’t bother you at all? It’s “easy to knock a hole in a Greenie’s argument”?
Those Greenies will be looking on while you libertarians play free-market fiddle as the Titanic slips below the waves.
Sylvain: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9246111/
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pastdec.shtml
US hurricane strikes by decade
The historical cycle of hurricanes over the last 150 years puts a dent into the whole global warming=more killer hurricanes argument
On a similar note, did any one see (Link) at the BBC. Planting trees may not now be as good for us as we were led to believe.
Later
Gengee
“all Kyoto does is delay the unavoidable temperature increase by 6-7 years over the next century”
Its function wasn’t to stop CO2, but rather to cut a path through the laws and politics in various countries, for later treaties to travel down.
In other words, it had a chance of “working” on its own terms, but it failed when the political will collapsed.
BTW I hope it goes away soon, becuase Kyoto is a nifty and beautiful city, and does not deserve the cruel fate of sharing a name with this kind of junk politics.
Its function wasn’t to stop CO2, but rather to cut a path through the laws and politics in various countries, for later treaties to travel down.
Kyoto as diplomatic KY for national legal systems? Yeesh, there’s a mental image I didn’t need…
Tony Blair’s anti-Kyoto statement finally made the UK papers. The story appeared in the Times, Independent, Observor and Telegraph, all nine days after the event!
Question: Why do you think there was such a long delay in reporting this news, and why did it finally appear in all these papers on the same day?
One Canadian colleague hypothesized that “if it had been pro-Kyoto, it would have been in all the major papers in hours.”
Do you really think it possible that your news is this stage-managed in the UK? What have your papers been doing with this story for the past nine days?
RE THE 9-10 DAY REPORTING DELAY:
Tony Blair’s comments were made in New York on the afternoon of Sept 15, 2005.
One possibility is that the newspaper stories, which appeared in at least four UK newspapers on Sunday Sept 25, were held until after the Environment Ministers’ meeting in Ottawa on Sept 23-24.
Coincidence? Preposterous? Who knows? 🙂
Background: The Ottawa Conference was Sept 23-24 and was attended by international Environment Ministers. Here is the clip from Environment Canada:
A non-governmental greenhouse policy (written by and for Americans) can be found here:
http://libertariangreenhouse.blogspot.com/