Donald Trump has been speaking out about the Paris climate agreement again, at a conservative conference. His remarks seem to be off-the-cuff comments rather than a scripted speech. In other words, what he says is a bit garbled. But his main point is that the Paris agreement made a distinction between what is expected of developed and developing countries.
“We knocked out the Paris Climate Accord, would’ve been a disaster … would’ve been a disaster for our country” (applause and cheers, shouts of ‘USA, USA’).
“China, their agreement didn’t kick in until 2030.”
“They called India a developing nation, they called China a developing nation but the United States, we’re developed, we can pay.”
The attacks began immediately of course. Supposedly award-winning journalist Timothy Cama claimed that the Paris agreement didn’t distinguish between developed and developing countries. In fact it mentions developing countries 43 times, (“recognizing that peaking will take longer for developing country Parties” etc).
Climate Scepticism 
Even garbled off-the-cuff comments by Trump are so far ahead of the climate cognoscenti that it’s embarrassing. “Smartest person in the room” never delivered more irony.
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While most Western leaders are busily engaged in heaping fuel onto their nations’ funeral pyre, Trump is determined to burn his reserves of fuel for the betterment of the nation he leads – and he is despised for doing so. Our own government has all but incinerated Brexit, which stood proud, for a while, alongside Trump’s victory. Now all that remains is Trump, virtually alone in the world. I wonder what they are planning for him.
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Kyoto and now Son of Kyoto, the Paris Agreement, are based on a concept produced by musician Aubrey Meyer, known as CONTRACTION AND CONVERGENCE. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_Meyer
His website is here: http://www.gci.org.uk/
Contraction and Convergence – Climate Truth and Reconciliation
This is the process whereby developed countries sacrifice their home industries and populations by imposing ever higher taxes on energy.
Meyer describes it as “An International Conceptual Framework for Preventing Dangerous Climate Change”. It has been adopted and subscribed to by the UN and all member countries of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, (UNFCC), since Kyoto, until now, with the new US position breaking ranks.
The narrative says that there is a finite global budget for carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere, a total amount beyond which the world will heat uncontrollably and human kind will be visited by dreadful climate disasters, including, but not limited to, stronger hurricanes, rising sea levels, mega droughts, mega floods and plagues of boils.
“Climate justice” demands that everyone on the planet has an equal right to emit the same amount of CO2. Greedy western nations have, since the industrial revolution, used up their share of this allowable CO2 amount and must now pay reparation to the undeveloped nations who have not industrialised. We have used their CO2 allowance and must atone.
Developed nations therefore, must “Contract” their economies by cutting fossil fuel usage to levels reported in 1990 (the Kyoto Protocol) and then transfer knowledge, technology and finance to developing nations, to bring them up to the new lowered expectations of the developed nations, described as “Convergence.”
In 2009, Adair Turner was the first chairman of the UK Climate Change Committee, the seat now occupied by John Gummer, Lord Deben. Turner told the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee that: –
“The core (of the UK Climate Act} is Contract and Converge. We cannot imagine a global deal which is both doable and fair which doesn’t end up by mid-century with roughly equal rights per capita to emit and that is clearly said in the report. This is strong support for what Aubrey Meyer has been saying.”
This amazing political and totally unscientific concept from a musician and green activist, is the core driving force behind UN policy on climate and that of governments like our own, imposing and enforcing massive changes to energy supply and costing billions of pounds, dollars and euros. It is mind boggling how it took root and has grown exponentially.
Kyoto had no targets, caps or limits on the emissions of CO2 by developing nations, but the claims for the Paris Agreement are that such targets etc are now in place, with the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions INDC’s. They are of course not mandatory and Trump has seen through the farce and declared “No way, Jose”.
In the meantime, the climate is wilfully ignoring the still rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere.
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Am I the only climate sceptic that doesn’t like Trump?
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You are not Hans. (The rapid reply is by chance, if you believe in such a thing, as I’d not looked at Cliscep for about nine hours.)
I talked with James Delingpole, Josh the cartoonist et al about this in the pub after Christopher Booker at the GWPF on Tuesday. James had recently gone public with his admiration for DT on This Week, the BBC’s late-night political programme with Andrew Neil and Michael Portillo, so I asked him about it, saying “I’m more of a Trump sceptic than you are.” I felt attacked from all sides for a few minutes after that, much though I in turn admire the people concerned! But Paul Matthews is another such sceptic, who is perhaps less on the left than Geoff, who I can’t imagine with a Trump banner either.
HH Munro once wrote that “a little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation” and I think that’s fine in comparing the greenhouse effect, say, for the newcomer, with that of a blanket on a cold night, but the outright lies the US president regularly tells is a basic reason I’m not his greatest fan. Even so, well, it’s dark and dismal out there and on energy and climate he’s much closer to the mark than any other western politician since Tony Abbott. Thus we have to pick and choose.
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Although garbled, President Trump’s claim about proven reserves in the US being just about top of the world is about right. Last year I did a very rough calculation of the potential emissions from proven reserves of coal, oil and gas by major country, combining data from McGlade and Ekins 2015 (doi:10.1038/nature14016) and the BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2016. Overall, these proven reserves will generate about three times the emissions commensurate with what the UNIPCC claims will prevent 2°C of global warming.
https://manicbeancounter.com/2017/11/22/the-supply-side-of-climate-mitigation-is-toothless/
Taking into consideration other emissions, it implies 75% of proven reserves of fossil fuels must be left in the ground. Are there any real efforts to engage with all the countries listed above to bring this about?
However, proven reserves massively overstates the influence of US coal reserves, and massively understates the influence of proven oil and gas reserves. In both, the US are well down the world rankings, but they are already the largest producer of gas and about to become the largest producer of oil. In both, it is developing new production techniques, cost control and the ability to quickly turn new finds into actual production that enables them to lead. This will carry on into the foreseeable future. On February 20th BP published their Energy Outlook 2018. I have made the following graph from their forecasts for tight oil.
Total global oil production is just over 90 Mb/d, US conventional production 4-5 Mb/d, and total production in Russia and Saudi Arabia are both around 10.5 Mb/d. Given the successes in the past few years, it is most likely that the third option that will be the most likely.
So maybe Donald Trump garbles his words, but he is able to accurately access the data.
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What I like about this site is you can learn something new every day, from quality comments on threads generally uncluttered by trolling and superfulous commenting. I’m particularly astounded by Dennis’s post on Aubrey Meyer above. I’ve interacted with him a few times on Twitter, having no idea that he was the architect of the West’s doom.
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Hans Erren – “Am I the only climate sceptic that doesn’t like Trump?”
As Richard Drake said, no you’re not. I don’t think much of Trump either, and was going to explain at length, but then (apart from his paragraph on his discussion with Delingpole et al, because I wan’t there) I find it easier to say “what Richard Drake said.”
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