Experts Blast “Voluntary” Paris Treaty: “Extraordinarily Costly…Will Do Nothing”…”Meaningless Gesture”…

As expected, we are now finding out the Paris climate climate agreement has been spectacularly oversold to the public as a success for climate protection.

Now that the text has been examined, it is clear that the agreement, which cannot even be called a treaty, and which has yet to be “ratified”, is turning out to be an empty package of pompous proclamations, opt-outs and intents.

Global warming godfather James Hansen has even called the conference and its result a fraud. Economic expert Prof. Bjorn Lomborg wrote at Twitter that the agreement will be “extraordinarily costly“, and that it “will do little – if anything to rein in global warming.

At his blog renowned climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer ridiculed the watered-down agreement, implying that it is a meaningless feel-good gesture.

Michael Limburg European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE) wrote that the agreement is not even a treaty, reminding us that it was even forbidden by President Obama to call it a “treaty”. EIKE calls the agreement “a failure” and that it is not possible to control the climate with “declarations of intent” EIKE adds that “participation in all climate protection measures remain for the most part voluntary and that no sanctions were agreed on and that even the climate faithful have had to concede that this it is useless“.

Limburg writes that the only success of the agreement is: “The UN has taken an important step closer to reaching the target of transforming the current world order into one of a central planning system“.

Climate experts Dr. Sebastian Lüning and Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt write at Die kalte Sonne:

After years of fruitless climate conferences, the breakthrough supposedly has now been suddenly reached. But is it true? A closer look at the agreement document brings a surprise: Much remains optional, and financial commitments are kept limited. And that is good because the scientific basis of climate change is on very shaky ground on every front. It almost appears as if the media agree beforehand to report on this positively this time around in order to lend momentum to climate policymaking. A failure this time would have led the public to wonder.”

At the Handelsblatt here meteorologist Karsten Schwanke says “the climate agreement is a catastrophe!“

Indeed the targets come up much too short, weather expert Karsten Schwanke belives. At the current pace we are headed for 3.2 to 5.4°C of warming until the year 2100 – and with our emissions we are moving along close to the top of the upper range.”

Wanting to pile onto the voluntary requirement of 1.5°C – to say it mildly – is foreign to reality.”

Die Welt/Prof Mojib Latif

At the online flagship daily Die Welt, climatologist Mojib Latif is reported to be dissatisfied with agreement, and is quoted as saying the countries agreed on the “lowest common denominator” for climate protection.

With these targets the agreed global warming cannot be achieved.”

Die Welt notes that despite all the lofty rhetoric the world is not really taking the problem seriously, noting that “since the early 1990s global CO2 emissions have risen 60 percent“.

47 responses to “Experts Blast “Voluntary” Paris Treaty: “Extraordinarily Costly…Will Do Nothing”…”Meaningless Gesture”…”

  1. Mike Spilligan

    But the 25,000 “experts”(plus 15,000 camp-followers) won’t care, providing they get a luxury fortnight somewhere for COP22.

    1. AndyG55

      I reckon they should hold the next one in say Nyngan or Bourke in NSW, Australia… in December or preferably January… and only use tents for accommodation… no air conditioners.

      They would never worry about a 1 or 2ºC warming ever again !!

  2. Kurt in Switzerland

    Kaisers Neue Kleider!

    What other explanation if the agreement is being panned by Climate Realists (Climate Model Skeptics) and Climate Justice Activists alike?

  3. Doug Proctor

    I’m in Alberta, Canada – home of the oilsands, you’ll recall. So I’m sensitive to the climate change agenda.

    I am not so happy about the Agreement’s lack of teeth, substance or authority. It doesn’t matter. Already I’m reading about the politicians and the liberal greens using it as a bludgeon to get their way. It is being treated as a full treaty, a set of full, legal obligations from a multinational, external group. We are being told we have agreed to do what the “community” has decided is best. So it is no longer a matter of individual national discussion. The “agreement” has been made above our pay grade and we just have to live with it.

    The brilliance of the non-agreement agreement is that all those “leaders” gave each other the moral, social licence to do whatever they wish and tell their electorates that it is not them that wants it done, but the planet that needs it done, and they have to, because they are obliged to.

    The Eco-greens are and will continue to frame decarbonization and carbon taxes as a function of a binding planetary resolution beyond the control of any person, nation or bloc. Brilliant. Don’t complain to us – talk to City Hall if you want (as if that would do any good).

    1. DirkH

      “The Eco-greens are and will continue to frame decarbonization and carbon taxes as a function of a binding planetary resolution beyond the control of any person, nation or bloc. Brilliant.”

      That’s only brilliant as long as no one simply tells them to bugger off.
      Ordinary Realpolitik competition will do that. Russia and China sure won’t care.

      1. Doug Proctor

        That would require an historic break from your political boss. You would have to do a Khrushchev when he denounced Stalin. Our political elite of the left, right and centre are not very different from each other. They appoint each other as ambassadors and representatives when they retire. There is little incentive to truly villanize his predecessor in democratic governments – even as , on the surface, the US is these days (it is surface – each is playing his role while admitting the reasonableness of the other’s side).

        A “bugger-off” approach is UKIP, the National Front and, a long time ago, the Reform Party of Canada. We should also include the sovereignist French parties (Parti Quebecois) of Quebec, Canada. They are/were all outsiders saying that the status quo was both bad and foolish. They went up against a strong, status quo group who, despite their apparent great differences in political ideology, were and are merely variations on a theme, each playing to his story as the times require.

        It will take a calamity to get a popular revolt to support the “bugger off” campaign. Look what just happened in France: if there was an occassion for the far right to advance, the National Front had it. But still, it didn’t work. The combined weight of the status quo groups defeated it.

        It isn’t the group that you have with you, it is the number of groups within the larger group that counts.

        1. DirkH

          Doug Proctor 16. December 2015 at 1:51 AM | Permalink | Reply
          “It will take a calamity to get a popular revolt to support the “bugger off” campaign. Look what just happened in France: if there was an occassion for the far right to advance, the National Front had it. But still, it didn’t work. The combined weight of the status quo groups defeated it.”

          The status quo parties are falling into their swords to safe their system – FN did not gain any governing posts only because Hollande’s socialist retracted their candidates in the regions where FN is strong. Meaning the socialists committed Seppuku to let Sarkozy’s pseudo-conservatives win.

          And, the populous will only rally harder behind FN after this – as the status quo parties have shown that they spit on the will of the voter.

      2. David Appell

        China clearly cares. Their leaders are technically trained realists — they know the strong evidence for AGW, and they know its consequences will negatively impact their country and countries that grow food for the Chinese. In a decade or two China will be the world’s leader on this issue, and will get the economic benefits of designing and manufacturing the technology needed for solving it.

        1. William Baird

          David Appell has a problem. If we stand back a moment and ask ourselves how, if CO2 climate change is real, China and India will chearfully go along with a proposed 15 years of unrestrained CO2 growth.

          The answer is that that they are both aware that CO2 climate change is scientically rubbish and that they will profit from western powers being fleeced and destroyed by the UN.

          I wish you well with your heating when you have destroyed the means to stay alive in winter.

          1. David Appell

            15 more years of Chinese BAU emissions will come close to US cumulative emissions, but India will never catch up to us.

        2. Carbonicus

          You are dreaming. And what you wrote defies specifically what China agreed to in the Agreement.

        3. DirkH

          David Appell 16. December 2015 at 6:11 AM | Permalink | Reply
          “In a decade or two China will be the world’s leader on this issue, and will get the economic benefits of designing and manufacturing the technology needed for solving it.”

          Well they sell that technology even now – to deluded lunatic Western leftist governments (notice that Merkel’s CDU is officially a leftist party now, as polls asking people how far left or right a party is showed the CDU to be left of centre), who pay for it with money they steal from their working population.

          That technology can be produced in China for a fraction of the price in the West because it is produced using the cheapest coal powered electricity; not with the ultra expensive luxury energy from wind and solar in the West.

          This way the Western warmunist governments do their very best to cause the growth of coal power generation in China, showing the utter hipocrisy of Warmunists for whom only their shiny fetishes count – Wind turbines, solar panels, Tesla luxury cars.

          1. David Appell

            China is going to be the world’s economically dominent country in 10-20 years. They will likely rule an empire that hasn’t been seen since the Romans.

            This looks inevitable to me.

          2. DirkH

            Warmunists helped destroy the West.
            Their dead guru Maurice Strong died in China, where he escaped from corruption charges.

            Is Warmunism a Chinese-invented destruction meme against the West?
            It’s no secret that government scientists HATE the private sector. Because, in the private sector you can’t cheat with your data, and you have to perform – something they can’t. Maybe the warmunist scientists willingly took an offer from the ChiComs.

    2. GP Alexander

      You are better off than me here in Vancouver. The hipsters and renewables industries are practically ecstatic over this non-treaty. They see it as a justification for their Global Warming religion. The only thing we can hope for is that our Premiere maintains the policy of reducing provincial income tax by the same amount that is brought in by carbon taxes. At least that has some evening-out factor. Then again, you have the NDP running things for the next few years. Ouch.

      There is hope, however. Vancouverites are cheap-skates. As the cost of all this Paris nonsense starts adding up… there will be backlash over it.

      1. David Appell

        Fortunately British Columbia has a revenue neutral carbon tax, that is cutting emissions.

        http://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2015/01/a-major-canadian-province-provides-carbon-tax-leadership/

    3. David Appell

      “It is being treated as a full treaty, a set of full, legal obligations from a multinational, external group.”

      I don’t know about Canada, but it certainly is NOT being treated that way in the US.

  4. Robin Pittwood

    As we all know, it is not really about climate. As Lomborg points out, one more step toward world central planning system …

    1. David Appell

      Does Lomborg provide support for your conspiracy outlook?

  5. mwhite
    1. DirkH

      So it’s about fixing underdeveloped countries in underdevelopment. Cunning.

      1. David Appell

        Developing countries deserve payment from those who have gotten rich off fossil fuels while leaving the rest of the world to pay for the consequences of their pollution.

  6. sod

    This is a weird combination of arguments against the treaty from the “sceptic” side (useless waste of money) and from those who think it is too little too late.

    We now have a treaty. It could have been stronger. I assume you do not like the first part and now grasp for the second?

    1. David Johnson

      It cannot be called a treaty be any stretch of the imagination. In international relations a treaty, is a binding formal agreement. This thing is not

    2. DirkH

      sod 15. December 2015 at 7:44 PM | Permalink | Reply
      “We now have a treaty. It could have been stronger. I assume you do not like the first part and now grasp for the second?”

      We have an agreement about something. Of course the C-rated diplomat underlings at Paris had to go home with SOMETHING. Of course their governments run heavy propaganda telling everyone how GREAT this something is.

      Are you stupid? The planet will be destroyed by Global Warming i.e. by manufactured temperatures from Gavin Schmidt and you are happy? Go with the program! This is TERRIBLE!

  7. John F. Hultquist

    ACCORD! It is called the Paris Climate Accord (PCA).

    Countdown to next expensive high-carbon-footprint boondoggle is here:
    http://www.climateaction.umd.edu/

    CLIMATE ACTION 2016
    CATALYZING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE
    MAY 5–6, 2016 / COLLEGE PARK, MD / WASHINGTON, DC

    141 days minutes seconds and ticking — as of Dec 15

    1. Dave in the states

      Obama wants to avoid calling it a treaty, but rather an accord, to avoid the need for the US Senate to ratify it. Which is not going to happen. If it’s not a treaty, but rather an accord, then the United States has no obligation whatsoever to comply with any of its terms. I will be very surprised if the US does ever comply. Several states are already giving the finger to the EPA on the Clean Power Plan.

  8. Walter H. Schneider

    Re: “Global warming godfather James Hansen” — it does not seem correct to call him that.

    Given that no one has so far measured how much of what little global warming there is has been of anthropogenic origin, it would not be correct to call James Hansen its godfather. That is primarily because no father has been fingered, and what little warming there is has most likely been a product of just Mother Nature.

    I would be more comfortable if James Hansen were to be given credit for what he deserves credit, being one of the creators of concerns about global warming who at times waxed somewhat hysteric about it.

  9. Walter H. Schneider

    Re: “Die Welt notes that despite all the lofty rhetoric the world is not really taking the problem seriously, noting that “since the early 1990s global CO2 emissions have risen 60 percent.“

    So, is that a problem? For the last 18 years and 9 months, the average global temperature has not risen at all!

    1. David Appell

      This claim is a massive cherry pick, dependent on the large 1997-98 El Nino. The presence of that ENSO, and of the dominance of La Ninas since, shows that a longer term trend is needed to assess climate trend, like at least 30 years, or (why not) the entirety of the satellite dataset.

      1. David Appell

        Carl Mears, leader of the RSS satellite group, Sept 2014:

        “Does this slow-down in the warming mean that the idea of anthropogenic global warming is no longer valid? The short answer is ‘no’. The denialists like to assume that the cause for the model/observation discrepancy is some kind of problem with the fundamental model physics, and they pooh-pooh any other sort of explanation. This leads them to conclude, very likely erroneously, that the long-term sensitivity of the climate is much less than is currently thought.

        “The truth is that there are lots of causes besides errors in the fundamental model physics that could lead to the model/observation discrepancy. I summarize a number of these possible causes below. Without convincing evidence of model physics flaws (and I haven’t seen any), I would say that the possible causes described below need to be investigated and ruled out before we can pin the blame on fundamental modelling errors.”

        http://www.remss.com/blog/recent-slowing-rise-global-temperatures

        1. Bernd Felsche

          Well; I showed you a flaw in the physics of “greenhouse gases” warming the atmosphere not so long ago. Absent any of those gases, the atmosphere would be intolerably hot.

          In computer modeling, those who use them to produce professional results test them for end-conditions.

          Zero GHG is such an end condition. The atmosphere then accumulates heat, unable to lose it via any path except contact with the surface at night. But being an “insulator” and stratified by gravity; only a thin layer near the surface will ever lose heat; remaining close to the surface due to less buoyancy as it cools, working against natural convection.

      2. David Johnson

        No, sceptics studiously avoid picking the 97-98 El Nino year precisely to avoid accusations of cherry picking as well you know. If only the likes of you were as honest

        1. David Appell

          David: Take the data, say from UAH for the lower troposphere, and calculate the X-year trend, where X = 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20….

          (Trends shorter than this clearly do not represent manmade climate change.)

          What you’ll find is that only around X=18 does the UAH LT trend turn negative. It is positive on both sides of this value of X. But none of you ever mention that.

          Download the data and do the calculation.

  10. David Johnson

    Silence from Sod!

  11. Sam Pyeatte

    I wonder how many liters of booze and hookers was consumed by the attendees the past two weeks?

  12. Dr Tim Ball-Climatologist

    I would like to tell you of my latest book and documentary.
    ‘The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science’.
    My latest documentary and video of my presentation.
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    My website is
    Thank you.
    Tim

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPzpPXuASY8
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sO08Hhjes_0
    http://www.drtimball.com

    Debate between Dr Tim Ball and Elizabeth May
    Scroll down to Ian Jessop part 1
    http://www.cfax1070.com/Podcasts

  13. David Appell

    Of course, Lomborg or Spencer would never have accepted a solution that FULLY addresses manmade climate change. Spencer has done everything in power to deny the problem. Critizing COP21 for not doing doing enough just shows them to be two-faced.

    1. Bernd Felsche

      FULLY addresses manmade climate change

      They seem to rank it in importance somewhat after FULLY addressing the decline of Tooth Fairies.

      What is this “manmade climate change” of which you speak? Where does it exist outside of computer models that exclude natural factors in the belief that the Universe is naturally constant? Seems to me that it’s a quasi-religious belief system based on penance for original sin; so that the whole world will become good again.

      Even Germany’s high priest of the Climatology Apocalyse and advisor to Angela Merkel (amongst others), Hans Schellnhuber refutes his own apocalyse.

      $100,000,000,000 as the floor of penance to stop the weather from being bad will only go to fuel malinvestment, bribery, corruption and the destruction of prosperity.

      That’s how the real world works. Lomborg is one of the few who looks past the computer screen at the real world; where there are real world problems to fix; more urgent and of deeper impact than trying to stop bad weather by means of pointless sacrifice.

  14. Richard

    Meanwhile in the real world , fossil fuels continue on their merry way,

    Governments acting like the postman having to pass the mad dogs throw the occasional bone Copenhagen, Paris…, to continue with business as usual-

    12,000 miles of oil pipeline built in the US in the last 5 years,

    oil tanker construction on the increase.

    “Pipelines in the oil and gas business
    To support this growth in energy demand, pipeline infrastructure has grown by a factor of 100 in approximately 50 years. It has been estimated that world pipeline expansion could be up to 7% per year over the next 15 years. This means over 8000km/annum of pipeline being built in the USA alone, at a cost of $US8 billion/annum.

    Figure 8. New, large diameter pipelines are expanding Internationally, 32,000km of new pipelines are constructed each year: this is a $US28billion business, and 50% of these new builds are expected in North and South America.

    Additionally, 8,000km of offshore pipelines are being built per year: this is a $5billion business with 60% in NW Europe, Asia Pacific, and the Gulf of Mexico.

    The total length of high pressure transmission pipelines around the world has been estimated at 3,500,000km. The ‘split’ is:
    ~64% carry natural gas;
    ~19% carry petroleum products;
    ~17% carry crude oil”

    “World Oil And Gas Pipe Demand To Reach 51.8 Million …
    http://www.pipelineandgasjournal.com/…...
    World demand for oil and gas pipe is expected to increase 5.3% per year, … Demand for line pipe will benefit from construction of new transmission lines needed” ..

    “As 2015 began, operators had announced plans to build more than 41,700 miles of crude oil, product, and natural gas pipelines extending into the next decade, a 21% increase from data reported last year (OGJ, Feb. 3, 2014, p. 90). Most of these plans (more than 66%) are for natural gas, consistent with the share for this segment seen in previous years”
    oh and building of coal powered stations on the increase.

    1. DirkH
  15. DirkH

    This is so mad even by Merkel and CDU and warmunist standards it needs to be mentioned:

    Merkel just called the Paris COP21 a sign against the fear of terror.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.de/2015/12/16/merkels-regierungserklaerung-absolute-sicherheit-kann-es-nicht-geben_n_8817080.html?utm_hp_ref=politik

    I mean normally even warmunists don’t talk as deluded as that, so maybe a medal is in order.

    1. Richard

      i don’t even know what she means by that.

  16. Mervyn

    Incredible!!!! We’ve seen divine intervention on climate change through the Pope and the intervention in climate change by Obama resulting in a joke.

    Listen to this old favourite and pretend Obama is singing it:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dq6YmSVAOG8

  17. Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #210 | Watts Up With That?

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