THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume X, Issue # 288, November 2, 2008
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
CHINA SENDS GLOBAL WARMING RANSOM NOTE
By Dennis T. Avery
CHINA PLACES A VERY HIGH PRICE ON ITS GOING ALONG WITH U.S. & WESTERN ENVIRONMENTALISM & AGREEING TO A
NEW GLOBAL WARMING AGREEMENT AS A SUCCESSOR TO THE KYOTO PROTOCOL. CHINA'S MOVE EXPLODES
THE WHOLE IDEA OF SUCH AN ENVIRONMENTAL PACT. NOT TO WORRY! THE EARTH HAS ENTERED A
GLOBAL COOLING PERIOD!
FULL STORY:
China has now destroyed Western hopes for a new global warming agreement, just weeks before global talks in Poland
aimed at writing a successor for the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. China has attached a ransom note to its Polish
meeting RSVP: They might go along with a new warming pact if the rich countries agree to hand over 1 percent of their
GDP — about $300 billion per year — to finance the required non-fossil, higher-cost energy systems the West wants the
developing countries to use.
Bad timing: The U.S.A. and Europe are trying to bail their financial systems out of Barney Frank’s Fanny Mae/Freddy
Mac sub-prime mortgage adventure.
Gua Guangsheng, head of China’s Climate Change Office, said on October 28, 2008:
“Climate change policies need a lot of money to be invested.
However, developed countries have not made any substantive
promises about how much they are going to spend on this.
And they did not fulfill some of the promises they made in the
past very well either.”
China, India, Brazil, and Mexico had already demanded — in July, 2008 — that the developed countries cut their own
emissions by 80 to 95 percent by 2050. Very unlikely. The European Union has loudly boasted of trying to set an
80-percent cut in its emissions, but that now looks impossible. Italy, Poland, Hungary, and Greece are part of a
“blocking force” saying they cannot afford to give up coal and oil during a financial crisis, especially when the only
alternative is imported Russian natural gas.
Russia recently “invaded” Gruzia (Georgia), many think, to stop Gruzian efforts to build a natural gas pipeline that
would have competed with Russia’s.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who helped create the Kyoto Protocol, now says that drastic cuts in carbon
dioxide emissions are “ill-advised climate policy.” She’s building 26 brown-coal power plants instead, and
re-thinking the German promise to scuttle its nuclear power plants.
Don’t spend much of your “worry time” on a new climate treaty, however. Global temperatures are doing their best to
tell us that CO2 isn’t very important after all.
Global thermometers stubbornly refused to rise after 1998, and have plummeted in the past two years by more than 0.5
degrees Celsius. The world is now colder than in 1940, when the Post-World War II Industrial Revolution started
spewing lots of man-made CO2 in the first place.
On October 29, 2008, the U.S.A. beat or tied 115 low-temperature records for the date. Alaska, which was unusually
warm last year, recorded 25 degrees below zero Fahrenheit that night, beating the previous low by 4 degrees
Fahrenheit.
London had snow in October for the first time in more than 70 years.
The 2007-2008 temperature drop wasn’t predicted by the global climate models, but it had been predicted by the
sunspots since 2000. Both the absent sunspots and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation now predict a 25 to 30-year global
cooling. After that, the remaining enthusiasm for global warming agreements will presumably have vanished, without
any big payoff to the Chinese government.
Meanwhile, India is about to rescue our Appalachian coal industry. India is already importing 50 million tons of coal
per year, and sees our high-sulfur Eastern U.S.A. coal as an under-priced energy resource. While New York and
Philadelphia import low-sulfur coal from Wyoming’s Powder River Basin, India wants to buy not just Appalachia’s
coal, but the mines that produce it. They note, “It’s a buyer’s market.”
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
The Far East & U.S. Foreign Policy
The Earth's Natural History, Global Climate Changes,
& the Future of Human Life & Civilization on the Planet:
Science, Ideology, & Public Policy
Political Environmentalism Versus Human Progress & Prosperity:
Policy Issues Relating to Energy, Environment,
& Natural Resources
Political Economy -- Philosophies, Systems, & Public Policies:
Government, the Economy, & Economic Prosperity
Dennis T. Avery is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., and is the Director of the Institute's Center for
Global Food Issues (www.cgfi.org). Formerly he was a senior policy analyst for the United
States Department of State, where he won the National Intelligence Medal of Achievement. He is the co-author, with
atmospheric physicist Fred Singer, of the book, Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years (Blue Ridge Summit,
Pennsylvania: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006). Avery's book, Saving the Planet With Pesticides and Plastic: The Environmental
Triumph of High-Yield Farming (Washington, D.C.: Hudson Institute, 1995), continues to be popular as a readable overview
of realistic agriculture for the future and for today. Readers may write Avery at Post Office Box 202, Churchville, Virginia, 24421.
Email: cgfi@hughes.net
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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Conservative Government Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity