The Energy Advocate A monthly newsletter promoting energy and technology December 2015 (Vol. 20, No. 5) P.O. Box 7609, Pueblo West, CO 81007 Copyright © The Energy Advocate
Non-Climate Non-Summit: COP-21 It may well be impossible to avoid hearing about the so-called United Nations “climate summit” set for November 23 through December 11, 2015 in Paris. Everybody has plans for saving the world. There are, however, a few problems. First and foremost, the title of the conference is a lie. The 300-some “highlevel speakers” are not high-level scientists talking about climate. They are primarily politicians, representatives appointed to promote their countries’ interests, and environmental activists. Go to http://cop21.org/, and you’ll search in vain for the name and credentials of any scientist. There will be no experts speaking about the geologic history of climate. No limnologists will be showing how the world’s climate history is told in lake deposits. No astronomers will talk about the Milankovitch cycles. No physicists or chemists will speak about collisional deactivation, Boltzmann statistics, or absorption cross-sections. No solar physicists will discuss magnetic storms, sunspots, or solar variability. No cosmic-ray experts will talk about creating nucleation sites for water vapor to condense into droplets. No oceanographers will present data on the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the El Niño Southern Oscillation or any other quasi-periodic oceanic phenomenon. Nobody will talk about the reliability of climate data. No statisticians will discuss statistical inference. No historians will discuss the written records of climate in Europe, the Americas, China, or the Middle East. Nobody will address the matter of measurement. Nobody with expertise on eustatic sea level will speak. The
The Political Push President Obama said that the UN’s Paris “climate summit” serves as a “powerful rebuke to terrorists” [http://thehill.com, 11/24/2015]. Not even the simultaneous murderous attacks by ISIS in Paris could succeed in keeping the world’s covetous dictators from attending a meeting in that very same city
world’s experts on worldwide temperature measurement by satellite are not invited. The “Leaders Event List of Speakers” includes nobody without a governmental title: Everybody is “His Excellency,” “His Serene Highness,” His Royal Highness,” or “His Majesty.” Curiously, there is a session on “Gender and Climate Change,” but no luminary is called “Her Excellency” or “Her Highness.” Of course, none of these luminaries has any scientific credentials. There are two groups meeting in the joint session: COP, meaning Conference of Parties, and CMP, meaning Climate Modeling Program. Both groups are part of the misnamed “Climate Conference.” Did I say modeling? Did you suspect that there would be talks about climate modeling? Even the title Climate Modeling Program is Orwellian. The “climate conference” in Paris will not even have talks by the computer geeks who try to model the climate. So, what, then, is the Paris conference all about? In short, it is about making up international agreements to limit CO2 emissions and to increase the flow of money from democracies to autocracies. The point bears emphasis. Let it be known to all and sundry that the Paris “climate conference” is not about climate. It is about money and power. When all is said and done, much more will be said than done. But if the result is an agreement to limit CO2 emissions, there are at least two reasons why it will not be a “climate treaty.” The first is that the hypothetical agreement will have absolutely nothing to do with climate. The second is that (at least for the US) it is not a treaty unless it is agreed to by twothirds of the Senate. where they could simultaneously inveigh against successful countries and demand reparations for the alleged damage to the climate caused by the use of energy. The news media are all too willing to promote the scam. Anything that alarms the populace sells