International action was always going to be very difficult.. if anyone can think of any way to get China seriously involved, for example, then let's hear it.. otherwise the only plausible policy response is adaptation, if and when anything does actually happen that requires an economic response..

"Doha climate talks end with a wimper."
http://www.theage.com.au/environment/climate-change/doha-climate-talks-end-with-a-whimper-20121209-2b34i.html

It’s the economics, stupid!

For 20 years the UN process has been trying to get international agreement to targets, timetables, carbon pricing, UN taxation powers, and UN control.

It’s failed!

20 years of delay so far – and counting (slow death preferred to removal of life support, sudden death and admission of failure)

The wise heads have been saying all along “It’s all about economics”

But the ‘Progressives’ would not listen. The ‘Progressives’ ridiculed these people and anyone who didn’t accept the ‘Progressives’ beliefs and proposed solutions.

The ‘Progressives’ want to talk about their projections of impacts in 100, 200 years and more from now. They wanted irrational policies like carbon pricing and renewable energy. And they did all they could to thwart rollout and development of the least cost way to reduce emissions, nuclear power.

The Kyoto Protocol is next to useless. It was clear to most rational people all along that such policies could not work. Despite that, the unelected bureaucrats of the EU and the Australian Leftist government have managed to get their way and force through an extension of the Kyoto Protocol and agreement to pay $10 billion per year, down form $100 billion per year, to corrupt, incompetent governments to spend mostly on bribery.

The EU carbon price has been a failure.

Lord Monkton says about Australia and the Australian carbon tax:
>"The fools: In this category, Australia stands alone. Its absurd carbon dioxide tax is almost 50 times more expensive than letting global warming happen and adapting in a focused way to its consequences."<
http://www.cfact.org/2012/12/05/the-climate-camel-going-nowhere-uncomfortably/

But really, the ‘Progressives’ need to take a really good, hard, impartial look at what they’ve been advocating: i.e. economically irrational policies. They are not acceptable.

My advice to the ‘Progressives’. Start listening and stop telling!

>“Whatever the new agreement is, it needs to do three things: raise ambition, foster widespread participation and ensure compliance.”<

This is a wrong approach, IMO. There is a much better way

The solution is easy. But the ‘Progressives’ are going to have to eat humble pie. That will be very hard for them. They need to admit their responsibility for global emissions being 10% to 20% higher than they would have been if not for them blocking progress for the past 50 years. They need to confess their sins, their repugnant moral values and do their penance. :)

The self claimed but wrongly named ‘Progressives’ must acknowledge they made a really bad mistake blocking development of nuclear power for the past 50 years. Now they must become enthusiastic advocates of cheap nuclear power. They need to spread the word and convince their ilk – the eco-warriors and other ‘Progressives’. They need to convert their comrades.

They also need to stop advocating economically irrational policies like carbon pricing and renewable energy. It must be clear by now to all but the zealots, that these irrational policies will never get wide support. They cannot be sustained. Kyoto is an excellent example of how economically irrational policies will not last. In ‘Progressives’ language, they are not sustainable.

We are on target to achieve 4-6C increase by the end of this century. The last time we had a temperature rise in this order of magnitude, all life on planet earth, was very nearly eliminated.
Imagine cyclone Yasi, as an everyday normal event, for our tropical climes?
Tornadoes, with destructive forces far exceeding Hiroshima or Nagasaki, that are a weekly event in down-town Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth.
This is not new territory, we've been there before, some ninety million years ago, and what I'm describing, the normal daily event.
The irony is, we can and should use the opportunities that change usually produces, to improve our own living standards/financial returns and living conditions.
Change can be for the better for almost everybody.
And we don't have to kill the fossil fuel industry, just slow it down, so as an assisted nature can compensate for it and start to draw-down the greenhouse gas build up, which now seriously threatens all life!
What can we do?
Well we can set aside our objections, to nuclear power.
It's Co2 emission that actually threaten us with annihilation, not an improbable mutual destruction nuclear war, or another Chernobyl, as disastrous as that was for far too many!
We need to led by an example, that even the poorest nations on the planet can afford to adopt!
We could also mass produce thorium or pebble reactors and lease them to those who can't yet afford to buy them?
We can set aside our objection to hydro power, even where that may threaten one or two species, in the knowledge and expectation that the alternative or do nothing different approach has far more serious Implications for all species.
The very best solutions, like biogas powered micro power stations, will be the ones that walk out the door.
We have to stop being stupid and or listening to stupid people, with their own destructive hidden agenda!?
Rhrosty.

The biosphere can accommodate rapid global warming (especially from the cold temperatures Earth is at in its current 'Coldhouse phase'.

Rethinking species’ ability to cope with rapid climate change CHRISTIAN HOF, IRINA LEVINSKY, MIGUEL B. ARAU ´ J O and CARSTEN RAHBEK, Global Change Biology (2011) 17, 2987–2990, doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2486.2011.02418.x
http://192.38.112.111/pdf-reprints/Hof_GCB_2011.pdf

Recent geophysical studies challenge the view that the speed of current and projected climate change in core data, Steffensen et al. (2008) showed that local temperature changed up to 4 deg C/yr near the end of the last glacial period (14 700 BP).Their results revealed that ‘polar atmospheric circulation can shift in 1–3 years, resulting in decadal- to centennial-scale changes from cold stadials to warm interstadials’ associated with Greenland temperature changes of 10 deg C(Steffensen et al., 2008).

i.e. 40 deg C/decade.
Contrast:

Earth’s mean temperature has increased by 0.74 deg C from 1906 to 2005, and projections of global mean temperature increase for the end of the century (2090–2099) range from 1.8 to 4 deg C (IPCC, 2007).

i.e. IPCC warns of ~ 0.2 – 0.4 deg/decade
Thus, the biosphere has accommodated global climate warming that was 100 times higher than the IPCC’s warnings of “rapid” global warming over the next century.

See also:
Rapid Younger Dryas – Holocene transition recorded in marine sediments offshore Newfoundland

The transition from the Younger Dryas into the warmer Holocene is clearly reflected in the record as a sudden increase in productivity of both foraminifera and diatoms, with a relative increase in warmer water diatom species, and is further characterized by a steep rise in both calcium and organic carbon content. Based on the calcium record from the XRF core scan, the entire transition took place in only 55 years.

Rhrosty says:

"We are on target to achieve 4-6C increase by the end of this century. The last time we had a temperature rise in this order of magnitude, all life on planet earth, was very nearly eliminated."

This is unmitigated scare-mongering.

We are on track for no such thing. Temperature trends now are negative; at a time when CO2 levels are the highest for a century; there is no scientific or statistical basis for saying that temperatures will increase by 4-6C.

Currently temperatures on Earth are hsitorically low:

http://img527.imageshack.us/img527/8615/allpaleotemp.png

The last warm period was the PETM:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/65_Myr_Climate_Change.png

The PETM was NOT caused by CO2 increase which followed the warming event which caused the PETM.

Following the PETM was a period known as the Holocene Optimum where temperatures globally were nearly 10C warmer than today; during the HO life on Earth was the most abundant it has ever been.

Warming is good for life.

I wish AGW were real, but it isn't and this article is just another recipe for wasting vast amounts of money which could be spent on real pollution issues and to prepare for the coming cold periods.

Correction; the warm period after the PETM was the Eocene Optimum not the Holocene Optimum.

I prefer the irrefutable palaeoecological record, to the wisdom/opinion, of learned scholars seemingly presenting a contrary view; or quite blatant obfuscation, for the benefit of the fossil fuel companies, trying to manifestly mindlessly, protect a bottom line, well in excess of four trillions annually?
Simply put, the last extinction event was preceded, and probably caused by volcanic activity, and the quite massive release of Co2!
The palaeoecological records same, as typical metamorphosis, volcanic ash deposits, which is followed by a Mother Hubbard cupboard, bare of bones.
Yes sure, some life forms can tolerate and even benefit from heat, like those that populate the boiling water exiting underwater volcanic vents.
This is not what I was referring to, but rather the almost complete annihilation of all oxygen breathing vertebrates, [herbivore, omnivore and carnivore,] some ninety million years ago, following a 2C rise in ambient temps, which in turn precipitated a tundra melt, which released formerly trapped methane, which then initiated a further temperature rise of 3C; making a total rise of around 5C!?
And enough to alter weather patterns so massively, that Britain, i.e, became a salt laden windswept desert, where nothing grew; and, regularly swept by winds exceeding 300klms.
It may have escaped your notice, cohenite, but we humans are oxygen breathing vertebrates, not diatoms, and who would automatically perish in temps above 60C and or asphyxiate, if the Co2 levels ever increase beyond 20%!
When we humans emerged on this planet, from whatever primate forbear, we came from, the O2 levels were virtually double that we have today, along with a whole host of formerly unknown diseases and pathogens, that would have been automatically eliminated in an atmosphere, with a far higher/previous O2 content.
There may be some light at the end of the tunnel?
Let's hope it is not the headlight of yet another extinction event, roaring towards us, with the speed of a thundering express train?
Or that our rational response is not presided over/limited by fundamental fools, or asinine obfuscation, recalcitrant tribalism, or misleading commentary, cohenite?
Rhrosty.

"Simply put, the last extinction event was preceded, and probably caused by volcanic activity, and the quite massive release of Co2!"

No.

The warming came first:

http://igitur-archive.library.uu.nl/dissertations/2006-0906-200913/index.htm

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v450/n7173/full/nature06400.html

And the amount of CO2 released after the PETM warming was LESS than is being emitted today:

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010AGUFMPP23B1747C

Find a new hobby Rhrosty.

"Find a new hobby Rhosty."

Take it from cohenite - he's a lawyer (ie, not a climate scientist)

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-12-10/climate-change-conforming-to-un-predictions/4417644

Rhosty, do you agree that:

1. Based on the last sixteen years' figures, we are 'on track' for no global warming at all by the end of this century.

2. If you believe the AGW hypothesis, you must also believe that Something has prevented anthropogenic CO2 from increasing global temperatures since 1996.

3. None of the warmist modellers you have such faith in predicted the existence or effect of this Something, and none of them have the slightest idea what it might be.

4. Given this, there is no reason to believe that the Something will not continue to operate all the way to the end of this century and beyond.

In other words, if you think anthropogenic CO2 is powerful enough to overcome whatever is currently stopping it from having an effect, you need to explain how and why. And that necessarily requires explaining what the Something is. Good luck with that.

Ah, the inner-city elite makes an entrance in the form of Poirot to lecture all the little worker-ants.

How's the burqa hunting going Poirot?

There will be a response to England's egregious misrepresentations put up shortly; in the mean time why don't you get your closed mind to ignore this:

http://clivebest.com/blog/?p=3303

What, didn't understand it; well yes; not by a climate scientist; well no.

My dear cohenite,

This is starting to become a concerning behavioral issue. You jump into a new playpen and you can't stop talking about the toys in the old one. Now that you are back in the old one you start on about burquas.

When you get a little older you will be able to correctly discern the two until then try your best. Remember the politics of the Middle East are not about AGW nor reversed.

Now how about attacking the author’s arguments instead of just beating up on posters you don't agree with and I will endevour to do the same.

I am still fairly skeptical and will remain so until the IPCC uses
realistic values for the fossil fuel availabilty for burning.

AGW and CO2 has apparently affected clear thinking ability of many people. Even the author of the article here appears to be of a mind that AGW is categorically being caused by CO2.

I think a bottom up approach to warming should involve the following:

1. Make a distinction between AGW and CO2. AGW is one thing, CO2 is another. CO2 may not be causing AGW, there is no complete scientific evidence to prove it is.

2. Ocean has the dominating influence on world weather, including storm severity. Ocean controls atmosphere above it. I think there is more vegetable plant matter in the water ecosystem of this planet than there is plant matter on land. Surely all influences at the bottom of the atmosphere and at the bottom of life must be considered in AGW science, complete science where and when possible.

3. Ocean algae, including unprecedented algae proliferated by unprecedented sewage nutrient loads dumped daily into ocean, has warmth retaining capability.

4. Empirical evidence indicates photosynthesis linked warmth in natural and sewage proliferated ocean micro and macro algae, has not been measured and assessed in AGW - CO2 - science or Kyoto Protocol.

5. Algae is at the bottom of life on this Planet.

6. I think warming of ocean will continue until real cause/s and solutions are identified and implemented.

7. Solutions can also be traded, with commissions and taxes.

Excellent post JF Aus.

This -

"I think a bottom up approach to warming should involve the following:

"1. Make a distinction between AGW and CO2. AGW is one thing, CO2 is another. CO2 may not be causing AGW, there is no complete scientific evidence to prove it is."

I cannot concur more. That's exactly where my scepticism is based. That's what the AGW scientists have failed to do. Make an unequivocal connection to CO2 bypassing all the other dominant factors. Why?

Your (extremely valid) point about the oceans driving the atmosphere/climate is correct. End of story. Scientific fact. The atmosphere does NOT drive the oceans. I'd like to see any scientist try to argue that one.

However, there's one more point I'd like to add to your correct post and that is that it is the Earth that drives both the oceans and the atmosphere/climate. It is certainly not the other way around, where atmosphere/climate drives the temperature of all.

The Earth. in turn, is driven by the Sun (and other factors not yet fully understood). That's the stuff the AGWists never relate to. They never put anything they sprout into established scientific context.

Arguing that CO2 drives the planet's climate is bunkum. It does not. It does affect the Earth's rate of cooling, but it definitely doesn't create heat or drive the temperature of the oceans or the planet.

True science and scientists would and should explain temperature variations in that context. It is sensible to start from the known and work to the unknown.

If they don't, or can't, why not? Hence my scepticism