The United States rejects the Bali proposals.
Washington rejected stiff 2020 targets for greenhouse gas cuts by rich nations at U.N. talks in Bali on Monday as part of a “roadmap” to work out a new global pact to fight climate change by 2009. […]
A draft final text by Indonesia, South Africa and Australia says evidence by the U.N. climate panel demands cuts of 25-40 percent by rich nations to avoid the worst impacts of climate change such as more droughts, floods and rising seas.
“We don’t want to start out with numbers,” Watson told a news conference, adding that the 25-40 percent range was based on “many uncertainties” and a small number of scientific studies by the U.N. Climate Panel, a Nobel Peace Prize winner.
Maybe he wanted to start off with prayers. I don’t know. To be fair, Japan is also opposed to the proposals. Perhaps “fair” is the wrong word. “Equally ignorant” maybe?
Tim
When the consequences of climate change are only a few years away and all the corporations start to panic, then the U.S.politicians will try to do something. Not before.
Wilfred
Japan can be explained by this: effort
A car that will probably have the same emissions control as a ’49 Mercury. The emergence of a new middle class in India and China is too good an opportunity for capitalism to pass up.
myiq2xu
Everybody knows that global warming is a myth started by
drowning polar bearshairy-legged lesbian tree-huggers.They want us to cut emissions and stuff because, uh, they hate fast cars with big, manly engines. Yeah, that’s it.
So what if the world gets a couple of degrees warmer? That just means more bikini weather!
Can I have some more kool-aid now?
Incertus (Brian)
Can’t say I’m surprised. Disappointed? Sure. But the last seven years have been a massive shitpile of disappointment on pretty much every front, so that’s not much of a change.
jake
Given this nature of this administration, you’re probably right. I’m surprised they didn’t stick Dobson up there to tell everyone there is no mention of GCC in the Bible, therefore it is a secularist myth.
alphie
Texas puts out 25% of America’s CO2 emissions.
Yet another thing Texans can be proud of.
Yeehaw!
Cindrella Ferret
Lovely. Brought to you by the people who were absolutely convinced by their cherry-picked intelligence that Saddam was an immediate threat to our way of life.
A slight alteration of an old joke: What’s the difference between the the Former Cheerleader’s Administration and the Boy Scouts?
Answer: The Boy Scouts have responsible Adult leadership.
4tehlulz
Fighting climate change requires religion — Mitt Romney
Cindrella Ferret
Shorter Mitt: The seagulls will save us again.
Richard Bottoms
I assume you are including yourself, because maybe if you hadn’t voted for these shitheads we wouldn’t have this problem?
rachel
Canadians can vote in US elections?
Krista
You’re assuming that there will be a clearly delineated point where we’ll be able to see that grave consequences are looming. I think the consequences have already started, and will continue to be incremental (and thus easily ignored or laughed off), right up until the point where we’re royally screwed.
yet another jeff
Actually, a properly tuned 49 Merc runs pretty clean. Most of our emissions control devices on current cars are for the purpose of compensating for improperly tuning and to make automatic adjustments on air/fuel mixture.
The more I’m learning about Mormonism, the more I start to confuse it with Scientology…which reminds me…nobody stood up in Bali to complain about the emissions from volcanoes?
TheFountainHead
I’m all for us buckling down, finding alternative energy sources, and generally shitting on the world less, but lets be perfectly honest here; those numbers ARE based on pretty shoddy science. Anyone who sits there and tells you that climatologists know what the hell is going to happen even 5 years down the road is yankin’ yer chain.
Dennis - SGMM
Two more years of talk, that’ll get those glaciers back. Not to mention the profound effect it’ll have on the earth’s changing albedo.
Krista is correct, I’m afraid; there will be be slight incremental changes right up to where we tip over into catastrophic and irreversible change. This administration loves to invoke the ticking time-bomb scenario in all sorts of hypothetical situations yet it ignores the planet-sized one that will affect us all.
Punchy
Ignore Japan. They’re just bitter that their homeytown “Kyoto” will be replaced with “Bali” as the new moniker for global warming agreements.
If this were being held in Hiroshima, they’d be on that like white on rice.
D-Chance.
Then it’s NOT “Everyone Else in the World…”, is it?
Wow, two empty attacks in one short paragraph. And you wonder why no one takes you as anything more than an unworthy hack…
4tehlulz
True; they’ve generally underestimated future ice loss and temperature increase and overestimated things like the oceans’ ability to absorb carbon.
Zifnab
It’s still a state, I don’t see why they can’t.
NO TIMETABLES DAMNIT!
Yeah, if the Rethuglican Congress in ’98 shot down the Kyoto Accords because it was so very, very, very unfair to US Businesses (and, as you can see, all the Kyoto Signers were brutally impacted by Kyoto with their economies so ruthlessly gutted that they want another accord by 2020), why do you think Mr. Corporate President would in any way defend a new, more aggressive proposal?
If I were the Dems, I’d send my own private delegation over to Bali and politely tell Bush’s people to go sit on a pole. None of the clowns in power today will have a say in US Policy come 2009, so all of Bush’s blathering about “uncertainties” and “small numbers of studies” are generally just that much more carbon emissions.
Wilfred
Like frogs in slowly heating water. Ribit.
jcricket
This administration simply does not want to acknowledge that the world belongs to the people who live here. They cling to the view that its resources are for the enrichment of the very few (themselves included). As long as the very rich are able to secure for themselves clean air, water, and relative safety from environmental upheaval, people like Bush will not bother themselves with climate issues. Foolish, selfish f*cks — all of them.
Johnny Pez
Mormonism = Scientology + 120 years.
Christianity = Scientology + 1900 years.
yet another jeff
Damn right, timetables only embolden the climate.
rachel
(Looks at the previous comment.) Or else they embolden Scientology.
The Other Steve
I highlighted the problem I have with the wording. If this doesn’t apply to everyone, then it’s meaningless.
This was stupid politically, socially, economically, morally. Just dump these guys in the river, they killed any chance there was of doing something.
yet another jeff
Both…I think Scientology is an overlooked factor in Global Warming…just look at global temperatures since 1952. All the CO2 emissions…and the volcanoes…lava and gas spewing volcanoes, not the beer volcanoes of Spaghetti-monsterism….
But I meant no timetables for reducing greenhouse gases…if we announce that, the climate will just follow us home and fight us here.
Face
Where does this expression come from? Has someone done this? Is there “frog soup” on the menu somewhere in Lima, Peru, and those damn Limainians coined the phrase?
Damn this shit is funny.
Zifnab
That’s the bullshit word game your average US Businessman will play. “If it is me and not ye, it’s so totally unfair!”
Nevermind that countries like Ethiopia and Bangladesh barely have running water and electricity to begin with, if they don’t cut their consumption as much as we cut ours, it’s totally outrageously unfair.
TOS, be reasonable. Think of the progressive income tax. If a guy makes $20k / year and his neighbor makes $200k / year, taxing them both at 33% of their income is not in any way reasonable or “fair”. If a country emits a million pounds of carbon into the atmosphere and its neighbor emits a billion, what do you hope to accomplish by trying to fit the same solution to a pre- and post-industrialized nation?
The idea is to rope in smaller, undeveloped countries with promises of advanced technology and aid so that a nation like Bolivia never wants to build dozens of coal-fired power plants to begin with. Telling them they can’t build five new plants when your percentage cap lets you build a new fifty doesn’t do anybody any favors.
Peter Johnson
What does it tell you that Japan wants no part of this boondoggle either? Is there any evidence at all that this would effect over all carbon levels in the atmosphere?
Punchy
Yes. And it’s affect.
Cyrus
This expression comes from a metaphor or proverb or something. If you put a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will hop out right away, or at least panic frantically as it boils. However, if you put a frog in a pot of water at room temperature and then heat the water to boiling, the frog will supposedly stay there, never noticing the gradual temperature change as it dies. (Supposedly. I don’t know if there’s any truth to this.)
I’ve usually seen the metaphor used to describe creeping totalitarianism, the slow erosion of civil liberties. Everyone would notice if the government suddenly morphed into a state like Oceania, for example, but if first we get brief imprisonment of some people without a trial, then permanent imprisonment, then a little torture of genuinely dangerous terrorists in the name of security, then a lot of torture, then… the frog boils. However, I suppose there’s no reason the metaphor couldn’t just as easily apply to actual temperature change.
BIRDZILLA
The whole global warming is a fruad and a lie we should not impose draconian regulations and taxes on the american people becuase of a bunch of fruadelent junk science and faked data
TheFountainHead
Which only serves to prove my point that they are just not capable of making truly accurate predictions about global climate for any useful date in the future. Like I said, I am not opposed to the idea of global warming, and I’m not opposed to spending billions of dollars on alternative energy research. I AM opposed to idiotic legislation passed by idiotic legislators, written by foreign idiots, that costs all of us an arm and a leg; with all of said idiots basing their inanity on a field of science that does not possess the tools to make accurate measurements.
Flappy McScrotum
My Fiance is from an East-Asian country. The point she made last time we talked about this stuff was that compared to back home, we are so backwards that they will ignore this until US gets to at least same level they are at- especially with regards to things like Public Transportation, Recycling, and overall level of Oil use. Until then, we should just STFU fix our country first.
Dreggas
This like anything else can all be fixed by accepting Jebus, or says the Huckster
Ellison, Ellensburg, Ellers, and Lambchop
Yeeeeeah, riiiiiight.
That would’ve been hard to do, since Clinton never submitted Kyoto to Congress for ratification.
Senator Byrd (that old senile Rethuglican!) and Hagel (neocon!) proposed the Resolution that preemptively killed Kyoto-as-written in the Congress, and it was voted on strictly along party lines, 95-0 (very few people realize that in 1998, the Senate was 100% Republican — Google it, people!).
Democrats didn’t pretend to be for Kyoto until they could use it as a political issue against Bush. It was not effective for them.
Seriously, are you twelve years old, and can’t remember before 2001?
As far as the signatories go, has any one of them even come close to their goals? I read that Japan and Canada’s efforts were almost totally ineffective. Not that you can blame them for not trying, since the #1 CO2 emitter (China) wasn’t asked to do anything, and the #2 (USA) didn’t go for it.
Jake
Yeah. Just like Iraq’s attempt to meet their goals. Are you supporting a withdrawal E^3^L?
Pb
EEEL,
I know the talking points are strong on this one, but is lying about this particular bit of revisionist nitpickery really that important to you? I mean, come on, spinning about a ten-year-old sense of the Senate resolution dating from five months before Kyoto was even finished, is that the best you can do?
Also, FYI, Chuck Hagel thinks you’re full of crap on this one too.
Judging from your posts, I doubt you know what happened five minutes ago, let alone in 2001.
Mike
In other words
Come back when you learn to write English.
Ellison, Ellensburg, Ellers, and Lambchop
You mean “history?”
It’s all that I needed to do to show that he was full of shit, yes. I could go on, if you would like to take up his insane revisionist flag. Go for it.
Punchy
Initially, I thought global warming was legit. But after reading Birdzilla, I have to say, I’m convinced. It’s all faked science and a Toyota conspiracy to increase Prius’ sales.
Pb
No.
Please don’t; there’s no need to further embarrass yourself, and no one else actually cares.
Ellison, Ellensburg, Ellers, and Lambchop
Translation: Pb likes his revisionist echo chamber. Hey, it beats thinking!
MNPundit
I wonder if eventually, we will be invaded when the climate collapses in an act of revenge for our role in destroying it and doing nothing to fix it.
Punchy
I say we throw the climate down to Gitmo and waterboard the shit out of it until it stops terrorizing our icebergs.
Psycheout
LOL!
bud
The predictive power of the models that are the basis of the AGW hysteria in full view here is laughable. Not one of those models has EVER predicted future events correctly. They have, of course, been made to correspond with the past by continuous tweaking, at which time this is proclaimed to make them now prepared to predict correctly… this time.
And you expect the sane portion of the world to go along with your prescriptions to prevent the doom “predicted” by these same models; prescriptions guarenteed to produce huge economic and social dislocations?
Hah!
Let me be the first to respond to my own post:
“Heretic! Heretic! Stone him!”