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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 14-Dec-2009
Climate Change conference in Copenhagen is all about getting green -- money

Web Log - December, 2009

Climate Change conference in Copenhagen is all about getting green -- money

The banks are not the only pigs at the trough.

The big scandal at the Copenhagen climate change conference last week was that the "Danish text" was leaked to The Guardian newspaper on Wednesday.

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The Danish text is a 200-page document created by a small group of negotiators from the U.K, the U.S., and Denmark, hoping to create a compromise agreement, lest the entire conference end in chaos.

According to The Guardian, it will:

Force developing countries to agree to specific emission cuts and measures that were not part of the original UN agreement;
Divide poor countries further by creating a new category of developing countries called "the most vulnerable";
Weaken the UN's role in handling climate finance;
Not allow poor countries to emit more than 1.44 tonnes of carbon per person by 2050, while allowing rich countries to emit 2.67 tonnes.

Well, there was chaos anyway. The "developing nations," including China and nations in Africa and South America, were outraged by the Danish text because it didn't satisfy the following demands:

The developing nations should not have any restrictions whatsoever on carbon emissions.
The "rich" nations should have to pay $100 billion or more to developing nations.
The "rich" nations should have much larger restrictions on carbon emissions.

Lumumba Di-Aping, the Sudanese chairman of the developing nations, was especially outraged. "The text robs developing countries of their just and equitable and fair share of the atmospheric space. It tries to treat rich and poor countries as equal," he said. "We will not walk out of the talks at this late hour, because we will not allow the failure of Copenhagen. But we will not sign an inequitable deal; we will not accept a deal that condemns 80 percent of the world population to further suffering and injustice."

The "rich" nations responded by offering a $10 billion "fast start" fund, with more to be offered later. What happened next is summarized in this analysis by AlterNet:

"Todd Stern, the Obama administration's chief climate negotiator, said Thursday that he "categorically reject[s]" the suggestion that rich industrial countries owe compensation to the victims of climate change. Stern acknowledged that the emissions of rich nations over the past two hundred years of industrialization had caused global warming, telling a press conference, "We absolutely recognize our historic role in putting emissions in the atmosphere." But, Stern added, "the sense of guilt or culpability or reparations--I just categorically reject that."

Stern's statement put him at odds not only with international law but with America's European allies. European Union leaders announced in Brussels today that their governments would provide 7.2 billion Euros over the next three years to help poor nations adapt to sea level rise, drought and other intensifying impacts of climate change. The EU's offer was in keeping with the provisions of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change--the climate treaty President George H.W. Bush signed at the Earth Summit in 1992 and which the Copenhagen negotiations are seeking to extend. Nevertheless, it was quickly rejected by developing nations and aid agencies as grossly inadequate.

"We have talked about $100 billion a year," ambassador Lima told The Nation, citing an estimate the World Bank has made for climate change adaptation by poor nations. "Now we are hearing about $10 billion for three years."

"Worst of all, this money is not even new," Tim Gore, the climate adviser to Oxfam EU, told the BBC. "It's made up of a recycling of past promises and payments that have already been made.""

China is playing its own role as one of the so-called "developing nations," making its own demands. Here's what Chinese Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei said on Friday:

"Developed countries should, in line with the principles of common but different responsibility, undertake substantial mid-term reduction commitments or targets.

They have to fulfill their obligation -- to provide funds to the developing countries, to provide technologies to the developing countries, to help developing countries in capacity building.

The priority for developing countries is still the reduction of poverty. It's still economic development. Whatever the outcome, we do wish Copenhagen will have a very good outcome, whatever it is, it should not be done at the expense of the rights to development by developing countries.

History is a mirror. History is the basis on which we can move ahead, looking in the future. What is the history of climate change? I think this is why we're here in Copenhagen.

For developed countries, they have to face the history squarely. The obligations for developed countries to live up to their commitments in emission reduction and the provision of funds and technology transfer, is an obligation they have undertaken under international instruments. This is the departure point for any international cooperation in climate change."

So it's all about money for these guys.

Carbon credits and financial derivatives

In 2007, I wrote "UN Climate Change conference appears to be ending in farce," referring to a conference in Bali that attracted hundreds of climate change advocates who generated vast amounts of carbon emissions taking jet planes and sitting in air conditioned meeting rooms, when they weren't out on the beach.

In that report, I highlighted one Generation-X banker, Louis Redshaw, Head of Environment Markets, Barclays Capital, who was hoping to make millions of dollars. The scheme was to set up financial derivatives / structured securities based on carbon credits in the same way that other bankers had set up structured securities based on residential mortgages.

According to one banker that I quoted, "I think this is likely to get bigger than the interest-rate-swaps market within 10 to 15 years, particularly once America joins in."

Well, this is still the hope and dream of every investment banker today.

Well, here's a recent story about what JP Morgan is doing:

"The banks are preparing to do with carbon what they’ve done before: design and market derivatives contracts that will help client companies hedge their price risk over the long term. They’re also ready to sell carbon-related financial products to outside investors.

Masters says banks must be allowed to lead the way if a mandatory carbon-trading system is going to help save the planet at the lowest possible cost. And derivatives related to carbon must be part of the mix, she says. Derivatives are securities whose value is derived from the value of an underlying commodity -- in this case, CO2 and other greenhouse gases.

“This requires a massive redirection of capital,” Masters says. “You can’t have a successful climate policy without the heavy, heavy involvement of financial institutions.”"

This is so sickening that I can barely type because of how much it infuriates and disgusts me.

Climate research and sleaze

The whole "climate change" movement has reeked with sleaze for years, and it's very similar to the sleaze that's permeated the financial industry. So even if some (or all) of the climate change claims are true, they're so buried in sleaze that they're almost irrelevant.

You have people like Al Gore living in expensive mansions and driving expensive cars. You have climate researchers jetting around to places like Bali and Copenhagen, when they could be meeting via videoconferencing, saving huge amounts of carbon. These people obviously don't believe a word they're saying about climate change, but feel that they can get away with anything they want.

In November, thousands of e-mail messages were hacked from the web server at East Anglia University. The messages are begin in 1996 and continue until October of this year. This place has been at the heart of the climate "science" that supposedly proves the climate change claims.

The hacked e-mail messages showed a pattern of deception and fraud by these "scientists." The scientists urge one another to smooth over data and hide unfavorable data; to enforce a unified view; and to blackball scientists with opposing views.

If you'd like to read the hacked e-mail messages yourself, go to http://www.eastangliaemails.com .

Nothing in the hacked e-mail messages surprises me. These are the same kinds of people that you find at financial institutions selling worthless mortgage-backed securities to investors.

Phil Jones, who is director of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, was forced to step down after some of his e-mail messages revealed egregious violations of scientific honesty. He was the recipient or co-recipient of some $19 million in grants between 2000 and 2006. So of course he's going to sell a bill of goods to anyone who'll listen, just as the investment bankers did.

They're all of the same mold. They're all pigs at the trough, anxious to scoop up their fat grants, not caring who else gets screwed.

Climate change and the Singularity

In addition to all the general sleaze surrounding climate change, there's another reason why I know in my gut that the climate change scientists are lying, having to do with the Singularity. I mentioned this reason recently, but now I would like to discuss it some more.

The Singularity is the point in time, around 2030, when computers will become more intelligent than humans, and will be able to improve themselves, so that they'll soon far surpass humans in intelligence.

The approach of the Singularity is far more certain than the climate change claims. Computers have been doubling in power every 18 months for decades, and that trend is certain to continue. Several years ago, I designed a software architecture that would use this computer power to create a computer capable of doing everything that a human can, and much more, and much faster.

(See "I, Robot is science fiction, but intelligent computers will soon be science fact." and Chapter 7 - The Singularity in the book Generational Dynamics for Historians for more information on all of this.)

So I personally know with certainty that the Singularity is coming, because I've laid out how it will occur.

And I'm certainly not alone in that. There are thousands of scientists and engineers who have gone through the process of understanding how the Singularity will come about. Ray Kurzweil has popularized this understanding through his book, The Singularity is Near, and has a forthcoming movie that can be previewed at http://singularity.com/

So the approach of the Singularity is not in any reasonable doubt at all. There is only a debate about the date. My estimate is 2030, but other estimates range from 2020 to 2040.

So when climate scientists start talking about rising sea levels in 2050 and 2075, it's total nonsense. There is absolutely no way to know anything about what will happen after the Singularity occurs.

But it's much worse than that.

Here you have hundreds of brilliant climate change scientists, and apparently not a single one has considered the possibility that everything they're doing is meaningless with the Singularity coming.

I did a search of the hacked East Anglian e-mail messages for the word "Singularity," and it doesn't appear once. You would think that these brilliant scientists would have at least asked the question of one another: "Hey, what about the Singularity?" But apparently it was never asked once. It must have been forbidden subject, since it conflicts with their own claims.

But let's suppose that you consider the claims of the Singularity to be "too gloomy," or you think that a computer can never think like a human because it doesn't have a human soul, or something like that.

Even so, the world is on the verge of a cornucopia of new computer technology that will change the world. In the next ten years, computers will increasingly be able to make human-like decisions in limited areas, and perform tasks that require judgment far beyond what computers can do today.

I discussed this in my July article on the health care proposal. For example, within a few years we'll have computerized robots that can take care of a sick person in the home or hospital. They can monitor the patient 24 hours per day, take your temperature, dispense pills, give shots and provide meals. They will have computer vision and hearing, and will be able to respond to simple patient requests like, "Please bring me a glass of water." If something happens that they can't handle, they will wirelessly call for a real live human nurse or doctor.

This is the kind of health care technology that can barely be imagined today, yet it's really only a decade or so away.

The same computer technology will provide solutions to global warming that can barely be imagined today. For example, perhaps there will be intelligent battery driven vehicles that can navigate traffic with no driver, and so will replace the need for most cars.

What all of this means is that nothing that the climate change advocates are saying has any meaning whatsoever. And the fact that these scientists aren't even discussing it means to me that they're purposely avoiding the subject because it conflicts with their agenda.

So we'll all be watching what happens at the climate change conference in Copenhagen next week. With so much sleaze and with so many people grasping for their handouts, all we can do is hope that nothing happens.

Danny Kaye and Wonderful Copenhagen

Let's close this article with some music from an earlier, simpler time. Here's a video of the song "Wonderful wonderful Copenhagen" from Danny Kaye's 1953 movie, "Hans Christian Andersen":

(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the Climate Change thread of the Generational Dynamics forum.) (14-Dec-2009) Permanent Link
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