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Time to end UN climate fiasco
Year after year, the UN ratcheted up the fear level to where we hear daily of the absurd “existential threat of climate change”, warning that if we do not eliminate the use of natural gas, coal and oil, the end of life on Earth is just around the corner.
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Swedish climate change teen activist Greta Thunberg speaks during a climate strike at the Alberta Legislature in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, on October 18, 2019. (REUTERS/Amber Bracken)
F
or years now, the United Nations has been using the climate change crusade as a vehicle to increase its power across the world. Starting in 1995, they began holding massive annual conferences focused on stopping the “planet’s temperature” from rising.
That such a temperature was merely a statistical computation that had little or no significance in the real world made no difference — “we must stop global warming” became the clarion call of the yearly Conferences of the Parties (COP) to 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change treaty.
The 1995 Berlin COP was the first and so was designated COP1. COP3 was held in Kyoto where the Kyoto Protocol was created. And so it continued year after year until COP21 met in Paris in 2015 when the Paris Agreement was adopted.
Last December COP25 was held in Madrid and, this November, COP26 will be held in Glasgow, Scotland. The Climate Intelligence Foundation is planning a major debate on climate change to coincide with the Glasgow UN event. It’s about time.
All this is based on the hypothesis that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from burning fossil fuels were increasing the so-called greenhouse effect and this would warm the Earth to dangerous levels.
When the data showed that the Earth was no longer warming, they simply changed the topic from global warming to climate change, allowing them to attribute any natural variation in climate — warming, cooling, drought, floods, whatever they wanted — to man’s influence.
The UN then passed non-binding agreements for each nation to reduce their CO2 emissions. Taking a page out of George Orwell’s 1984, they referred to the gas as “carbon”, at times even “carbon pollution”, to increase fear. It made no sense scientifically. Carbon is soot and coal black which is real pollution while CO2 is an odorless, colorless gas, that supports all life on our planet.
Year after year, the UN ratcheted up the fear level to where we hear daily of the absurd “existential threat of climate change”, warning that if we do not eliminate the use of natural gas, coal and oil, the end of life on Earth is just around the corner.
There is a huge impetus by most countries’ bureaucrats to continue holding these useless conferences. Over 190 nations send delegations which number more than 20,000 folks living in luxury hotels and dining in attractive locations at tax-payer expense, ironically producing vast amounts of CO2 in the process. Holding the meetings by teleconference would eliminate most these emissions, of course, but who would not enjoy a two-week paid vacation at in exotic locals such as Marrakech, Morocco Bali (COP13) or Cancun, Mexico.
COP24, held in Katowice, Poland, got much attention as it is the coal production center for Poland which depends on coal for both energy and jobs. Here were tens of thousands of foreigners calling for the end of this important resource for Poland.
The Paris conference (COP21) itself admitted that the reduction in “carbon” emissions called for would have insignificant impact on the “planet’s temperature” but felt that eliminating the use of fossil fuels was warranted anyway. Every year the leaders of the COP meetings have called all nations to make mandatory “carbon prices” high enough to make fossil fuels artificially too expensive so as to promote wind and solar power despite their huge costs and unreliability.
A backlash began around the world after COP24. For example, riots in France after President Emmanuel Macron installed a tax on “carbon emissions” forced him to back down. In Germany, electrical cost overruns from their solar panels and wind turbines are threatening to drive long-time Chancellor Angela Merkel out of office.
Twenty-five years of COP events have indeed been, to quote Shakespeare, “sound and fury signifying nothing”. Indeed, the Climate Change Reconsidered series of reports of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change summarize thousands of studies from peer-reviewed scientific journals that either refute or cast serious doubt on the climate scare. For example, NIPCC’s Summary for Policymakers — Climate Change Reconsidered II: Fossil Fuels reports the contributions of 117 scientists, economists, and other experts. They conclude that we are not causing a climate crisis.
It’s time to dump the whole UN climate process entirely.
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Jay Lehr is senior policy advisor with of the Ottawa, Canada-based International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC). Tom Harris is executive director of ICSC and a policy adviser to The Heartland Institute.
