Yep... COP21's a Fraud.

UPDATED 12-19-2015

This week’s Global Research News Hour invites three analysts with three different perspectives related to fossil fuel dependence and climate change.  In my opinion, only Richard Heinberg knows what he's talking about: how transitioning to renewables pose to be much more difficult than is commonly believed in Climate Change activist circles and feared in fossil fuel corporation boardrooms -- the other two, Dave Wigington and GuyMcPherson, are cranks. Still, all these two are worth listening to because there are nuggets of truth behind Wigington's HAARP conspiracy theories and McPherson's Near Term Human Extinction by the Year of Our Lord 2050 nonsense.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/inconvenient-truths-facing-the-cop21-climate-conference/5495442 

Now, no sooner did the ink run dry on the COP21 agreement with no mandatory targets, no compulsory financing (despite $100 bn annual commitment for climate financing in developing countries), and commitments to reduce emissions that were panned as missing the 2 degrees C (3.6 F) by 0.7 C (1.3 F) on the warm side, which is not good if we want to avoid a stormy climate that will completely demolish civilization, utterly, we have countries giving the green light for MORE fossil fuel emitting projects! Plus the TPP, TPiP and other free trade agreements in the wings that will deprive governments of the power to mandate emissions, and make them pay damages to boot, if some corporation sues them in secret trade commission court set up under these bad bad treaties.

First, we hear from the UK Guardian -- Members of Parliament have voted to allow fracking under Britain’s national parks, amid accusations that the government has sneaked the measure through parliament without a proper debate.

Ministers used a statutory instrument – a form of secondary legislation – to push through the new rules, which means legislation can pass into law without a debate in the House of Commons. MPs voted in favour by 298 to 261. 

The new rules allow fracking 1,200 metres below national parks and sites of special scientific interest, as long as drilling takes place from outside protected areas. This comes despite the government previously pledging an outright ban on the controversial technique for extracting shale gas in such areas.

In January Amber Rudd, the then parliamentary undersecretary of state for climate change, told MPs: “We have agreed an outright ban on fracking in national parks [and] sites of special scientific interest.”

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/16/fracking-under-national-parks-approved-by-mps-amid-acrimony

Second, North Korea and Japan are going ahead with building more coal-fired power plants. I wonder how many are set to go up in People's Republic of China?

Less than a week since signing the global climate deal in Paris, Japan and South Korea are pressing ahead with plans to open scores of new coal-fired power plants, casting doubt on the strength of their commitment to cutting CO2 emissions.

Even as many of the world’s rich nations seek to phase out the use of coal, Asia’s two most developed economies are burning more than ever and plan to add at least 60 new coal-fired power plants over the next 10 years

http://www.dailysabah.com/asia/2015/12/15/japan-s-korea-plan-61-new-coal-plants-in-next-10-years-despite-global-climate-deal

India to double its coal output. That means doubling its CO2 emissions, too. Because "most efficient" energy source means it's also the least expensive.

India still plans to double coal output by 2020 and rely on the resource for decades afterwards, a senior official said on Monday, days after rich and poor countries agreed in Paris to curb carbon emissions blamed for global warming.

India, the world's third-largest carbon emitter, is dependant on coal for about two-thirds of its energy needs and has pledged to mine more of the fuel to power its resource-hungry economy while also promising to increase clean energy generation.

"The environment is non-negotiable and we are extremely careful about it," Anil Swarup, the top bureaucrat in the coal ministry, told Reuters. "(But) our dependence on coal will continue. There are no other alternatives available."

ADVERTISING

While India has plans to add 30 times more solar-powered generation capacity by 2022, there were limitations to clean energy and coal would remain the most efficient energy source for decades, he said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-climatechange-summit-india-coal-idUSKBN0TX15F20151214

Decline of the Empire asks, "What climate deal?"

This is a short follow-up to yesterday's post. Reuters reports today that Japan and South Korea stick to coal despite global climate deal....

Here's my favorite quote from the report.

"Japan, in particular, has been criticized for its lack of ambition — its 18-percent target for emissions cuts from 1990 to 2030 is less than half of Europe's — and questions have been raised about its ability to deliver, since the target relies on atomic energy.... Mutsuyoshi Nishimura, a former climate negotiator for Japan, said Japanese industry and the government had been caught napping by the Paris agreement.... "They were too caught up in the belief that industrialization and economic growth would entail such huge CO2 emissions in developing countries that China, India etc. would oppose any notion of decarbonization," he said. To be sure, China uses vastly more coal and has nearly a thousand more such plants in various stages of planning and construction.

That belief those Japanese and Koreans were "caught up in" is correct! China and India will indeed oppose de-carbonizing their economies if such measures threaten further expansion of those economies.

But, in 2015 it is politically expedient ("correct") to go along with a toothless non-binding climate deal. 

http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2015/12/climate-deal-what-climate-deal.html

And the US Congress is on record of enabling other countries to burn more petroleum than otherwise by lifting the US oil export ban. They are adding to the insanity -- and as far as I am concerned, mandatory hypocrisy -- of continued carbon combustion. Obama will probably sign it into law; it's embedded in a big spending bill.

The U.S. could soon end restrictions on oil exports put in place in the mid-1970s. The lifting of the embargo is part of a spending deal expected to be pushed through the House and Senate by the end of the week.

http://www.bigstory.ap.org/ba5445dbae1a449984bf691556bd64e9

And the so-called "liberal media" are responsible for so much of this mandatory hypocrisy. They more than anyone else catapult the propaganda -- whether it's We-Can-Save-the-Planet-by-Driving-Hybris-SUVs, or Saddam's-Got-WMDs-and-Is-Prepared-to-Use-Them or what have you -- by giving it a sheen of legitimacy. They are the ones, after all, who crucified Jimmy Carter with his "Malaise" speech after the public initially responded positively to it. The rest was inevitable and is now history.

The times we live in are so dangerous and so distorted in public perception that propaganda is no longer, as Edward Bernays called it, an “invisible government”. It is the government. It rules directly without fear of contradiction and its principal aim is the conquest of us: our sense of the world, our ability to separate truth from lies.” .....

The most effective propaganda is found not in the Sun or on Fox News – but beneath a liberal halo. When the New York Times published claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, its fake evidence was believed, because it wasn’t Fox News; it was the New York Times.” ....

“What we need is a Fifth Estate: a journalism that monitors, deconstructs and counters propaganda and teaches the young to be agents of people, not power.”

http://johnpilger.com/articles/war-by-media-and-the-triumph-of-propaganda

But it looks like China realises that continued fossil fuel burning will do quite a disasterous number on their river systems, which are already stressed. Even though they're building coal power stations like mad.

Even if the global warming scare were a hoax, we would still need it

China is the low-carbon superpower and will be the ultimate enforcer of the COP21 climate deal in Paris

Chinese scientists have published two alarming reports in a matter of weeks. Both conclude that the Himalayan glaciers and the Tibetan permafrost are succumbing to catastrophic climate change, threatening the water systems of the Yellow River, the Yangtze and the Mekong.

The Tibetan plateau is the world’s “third pole”, the biggest reservoir of fresh water outside the Arctic and Antarctica. The area is warming at twice the global pace, making it the epicentre of global climate risk.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/12052582/Even-if-the-global-warming-scare-were-a-hoax-we-would-still-need-it.html

The UK government cuts subsidies to homeowners even though its own review indicates the cuts will cost almost 19,000 jobs. THis is just days after their representative agreed to move swiftly to a low-carbon energy future at the climate change conference in Paris. Like India says, what is the most cost-efficient is the form that will be used. Government policy changes revise the equation. Revisions in favor of fossil fuels is madness!

The government has decided to cut subsidies to householders installing rooftop solar panels by 65% just days after agreeing to move swiftly to a low-carbon energy future at the climate change conference in Paris.

An impact assessment study by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) admits the move could wipe out up to 18,700 of the industry’s 32,000 jobs.

A second subsidy scheme known as the renewables obligation has also been cut for small-scale and large projects angering both the solar industry and environmentalists, who dismissed the moves as “huge and misguided”.

The government argues it needs to protect wider energy bills from the rising impact of renewable energy subsidies and that this justifies paying rooftop solar installers 4.39p per kilowatt hour from February instead of the existing 12.47p.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/dec/17/uk-solar-panel-subsidies-slashed-paris-climate-change

More madness from the UK. Diesel backup generators when they could keep their nuclear power stations instead.  Not that nukes are a good thing, but still...

The government is facing calls for an urgent investigation into how companies were awarded more than £175m in subsidies to build heavily polluting “diesel farms” to provide the UK with backup energy generating capacity.

Critics said an energy generation auction overseen by the National Grid had descended into a farce by rewarding intensive carbon dioxide (CO2) emitters, just as ministers committed Britain to lower carbon emissions at UN climate change talks in Paris

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/dec/11/diesel-farms-built-subsidies-national-grid-auction

But the far side Peak Oil will soon distort Business As Usual, as global warming bankrupts the fossil fuel industry: both by change and reduction in energy demand, and by less heating degree-days each winter.

Global Warming is bankrupting the Energy industry

But we'll just pretend it's not actually happening...

The MAX PAIN trade is not in oil it's in Natural Gas which just hit a new 17 year low this week, mostly due to the unseasonably warm "weather", that happens to take place every day now.

Energy companies exposed to natural gas are getting decimated, along with their junk debt...

My advice for those reality skeptics who don't "believe" in Global Warming - keep holding onto those soon-to-be-bankrupt stocks, they'll make good 4-ply...

http://ponziworld.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/global-warming-is-obliterating-energy.html

And US consumers apparently think cheap gasoline is never going to end.

Surging demand for trucks and SUVs fueled by cheap gasoline is holding back improvements in U.S. fuel economy and greenhouse gas emissions, a government report due out on Wednesday is expected to show.

In November, fuel efficiency of vehicles purchased fell sharply to 25 mpg – down 0.8 mpg from a peak in August 2014, said University of Michigan researcher Michael Sivak, who tracks fuel efficiency.

Nearly 59 percent of U.S. vehicle sales this year have been of sport-utility vehicles, pickup trucks or other larger vehicles, up from 54 percent last year, according to industry consultant Autodata Corp.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-autos-emissions-idUSKBN0TZ0HY20151216

COP21 Is a Big, Fat Fraud.

Yes, they said they'd educe carbon emissions and opted to get the target for maximum global warming to "well under 2 degrees Celsius." Except the pledges brought to the table beforehand would bring us about 2.7 C. Plus the phrase "Fossil Fuels" is nowhere to be found in the Paris agreement

Good grief... 21 years of treaties and negotiations have all been stepping around the main problem: the production of fossil fuels. And as I said in the last post, we can't afford to wait for peak oil, peak coal and peak natural gas to work their charms on Business As Usual and reduce its emissions.

Look at this graph provided by the BP Statistical Energy Review of 2015:

Notice how fossil fuels and nuclear outrank hydro and renewables by 9-to-1 in the amount of energy produced? And this is worldwide!


From The Real News: 'Fossil Fuels' Nowhere to be Found in the Paris Agreement:

The Guardian reported that James Hansen, former lead scientist at NASA, said that the Paris climate agreement is all BS. He says as long as fossil fuels appear to be the cheapest fuels out there, they will be burned. If we follow this agreement, we'll have 2 degrees Celsius warming target, and then try to do a little better every five years. It's just worthless words. There is no action, just promises, he says. Further, our next guest, scientist at Pace University Chris Williams, the author of Ecology and Socialism: Solutions to Capitalist Ecological Crisis just wrote about the Paris outcomes. And he says despite the self-congratulatory statements from world leaders praising themselves for single-handedly saving the world from climate catastrophe, the reality is that they have set the planet on course to burn....

 

[Professor Williams says,] "[D]espite the fact that they've reduced, you know, how much we can go up by and stay safe down to 1.5 degrees, all the pledges that have come in, all of which are now voluntary, so there's no enforcement mechanism, actually put us on track for 3 degrees or more of warming. So--and there's no real mechanism for financing. They're expanding the role with the market, cap and trade, including offsets, all of which we know don't work. And there's no mention of the phrase 'fossil fuels' anywhere in the agreement. And we know that 80 percent of the fossil fuels that we already know exist in reserves have to stay under the ground....

 

"So what we need to be talking about is how come we're not closing down, first of all, exploration for more fossil fuels, which is not happening? Secondly, the most polluting fossil fuels in use at the moment, which is coal. Why we're not ending those, and transferring the trillions of dollars that are subsidized to produce more of these things, more of this energy source, why are we not transferring that to developing nations so that they can skip the whole generation of dirty energy and move on to clean alternatives? The alternatives are out there.

 

"Well, there is a mechanism for saying, well, we need to review this every five years, because maybe we're not on track for where we need to go. And we already know that we're not on track. They know that they're not on track. But basically we also know that the sooner we take action the easier and the cheaper and the more effective all of our solutions will be. So by delaying things for another five years, and not saying we're even starting things until 2020, and whatever we do there is no enforcement mechanism. It's all completely voluntary.

 

"So what should we be doing? Well, first of all, ending all the subsidies to fossil fuel production to incentivize that. According to the IMF that's several trillion dollars. Trillion dollars. And yet they're fighting over handing $100 billion a year to developing countries to help them. So the first and most obvious thing would be to end subsidies to produce fossil fuels. That would immediately alter the price of fossil fuels disadvantageously and improve the cost-effectiveness of solar and wind, and wind is already cost-competitive with most forms of fossil fuel production, even with the subsidies."

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=15300

And yes, James Hansen really calls the COP21 talks "bullshit".

From The Guardian: James Hansen, father of climate change awareness, calls Paris talks 'a fraud':

Mere mention of the Paris climate talks is enough to make James Hansen grumpy. The former Nasa scientist, considered the father of global awareness of climate change, is a soft-spoken, almost diffident Iowan. But when he talks about the gathering of nearly 200 nations, his demeanour changes.

“It’s a fraud really, a fake,” he says, rubbing his head. “It’s just bullshit for them to say: ‘We’ll have a 2C warming target and then try to do a little better every five years.’ It’s just worthless words. There is no action, just promises. As long as fossil fuels appear to be the cheapest fuels out there, they will be continued to be burned.”

 

The talks, intended to reach a new global deal on cutting carbon emissions beyond 2020, have spent much time and energy on two major issues: whether the world should aim to contain the temperature rise to 1.5C or 2C above preindustrial levels, and how much funding should be doled out by wealthy countries to developing nations that risk being swamped by rising seas and bashed by escalating extreme weather events.

 

But, according to Hansen, the international jamboree is pointless unless greenhouse gas emissions are taxed across the board. He argues that only this will force down emissions quickly enough to avoid the worst ravages of climate change.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/12/james-hansen-climate-change-paris-talks-fraud

And yet right now there is such an oversupply of oil that the prices there are swooning. I'm not sure how competitive renewables (solar, wind) are with the low, low prices the economic and oil market experts expect to see in the next several years.  And renewables competing with fossil fuels these days is rather like catching a falling knife.

From the UK Guardian: How Low Can Oil Prices Go?:

Not only did US prices fall under $40 this week but so did the global benchmark Brent crude oil prices, for the first time since February 2009. The global supply glut of about 1.5m barrels per day is the driving factor behind the lower oil prices, with much of that overproduction because of Opec’s opening the spigots. [Jay Hatfield atr Infrastructure Capital Advisors] said there’s another factor behind the new drop in oil prices: warm weather. “The fact that you can almost go swimming in New York City right now is horrible. Absolutely horrible [for heating oil demand]. To me, that’s the straw that is breaking the camel’s back. We’re ground zero for fuel oil demand,” he said.

 

The El Niño weather phenomenon can bring milder winter weather to the northern part of the US, and that’s been seen in places like New York and Chicago, where December temperatures are above normal, reducing heating demand. If Opec’s disorganization continues and temperatures stay mild, that could add further pressure to prices, he said. “I thought prices would have stabilized in the $40 to $50 area, but … now it could be $35 to $40,” he said. A few factors could influence oil, such as next week’s Federal Reserve’s monetary policy meeting, where the Fed may raise interest rates for the first time in seven years. That could give the dollar another boost, and Kessens said the greenback’s strength has hit oil since it is dollar denominated.

 

Next week is the last full trading week of 2015, so there could be some book squaring as investment managers close up accounts before the holidays when trade volume dwindles. Daniel Pavilonis, senior commodity broker with RJO Futures, said the next target for prices is likely the 2008 low. “I see prices going lower. I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw an uptick from here next week, maybe to the $40s, but then see a sharp decline, a sell-off below $35. There’s so much supply out there. I think [prices are] going to be lower than people will perceive,” he said.

 

Taking out a level that’s held for so long could be jarring and may have a snowball effect, he said. On the other hand, there is likely to be some opportunistic buying simply because prices are so low. Pavilonis didn’t rule out a dip under $30 a barrel, but just how far prices may go is hard to determine. “It’s hard to call a bottom. It’s like catching a falling knife. Just let the knife fall to the side and pick it up later so you don’t get hurt,” he said.

 

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/dec/13/oil-prices-opec-market-share-strategy-el-nino-us-interest-rates