Euros Balk On Climate Agreement

The Euros are balking when it comes to paying to prevent climate change. As if restricting the output of plant food could actually accomplish that goal.

Environmental campaigners slammed Europe’s governments tonight after latest talks to settle funding levels for climate change broke down without agreement.

The European Commission has put a price of up to £14 billion a year on the EU’s contribution towards the cost poor countries will face meet a global climate change deal.

But talks between EU finance ministers failed to agree figures today.

Swedish finance minister Anders Borg, chairing the talks, said afterwards: “There was a disappointing failure to reach agreement on climate financing today. The lack of conclusion was disappointing - but it doesn’t mean we won’t find a solution.”

EU environment ministers will try next — but all eyes are on an EU leaders’ summit in Brussels at the end of the month to deliver an accord on funding with little over a month before the EU goes to Copenhagen hoping to present a united environmental front to the rest of the world..

Greenpeace EU climate policy director Joris den Blanken said: “Today’s EU fiasco has made the chance of failure in Copenhagen very real.

Good news for the people who would actually have to pay for this stuff. You know the former darlings of the socialists. The Workers. Who seem to have become a liability.

Evidently the workers are putting up a fight.

Nine of Europe's poorer countries, led by Poland, demanded their own economic circumstances be taken into account before the EU agrees up to 15 billion euros ($22.5 billion) in financial aid for developing nations.

Developing countries say they cannot cut emissions and adapt to changing temperatures without help from industrialized nations, which grew rich by powering their industries with hydrocarbons and polluting the atmosphere.

Earlier, India's Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh rejected an Indian newspaper report that he was willing to drop a long-standing demand for foreign aid and technology as the price for accepting international curbs on India's rising emissions.

Dropping such a link would have been a big concession for the December 7-18 U.N. climate conference in Copenhagen. India is the fourth biggest emitter behind China, the United States and Russia.

Ramesh said in a statement India would agree to international monitoring of emissions "only when such actions are enabled and supported by international finance and technology."

The 190-nation U.N. talks are bogged down over how to share out greenhouse gas curbs between rich and poor nations as part of an assault meant to avert ever more heat waves, rising sea levels, floods and more powerful storms.

Ah yes. Well things are looking bad indeed. Except for one small point. Temperatures are not rising. They are falling.

Global satellite data is analyzed for temperature trends for the period January 1979 through June 2009. Beginning and ending segments show a cooling trend, while the middle segment evinces a warming trend. The past 12 to 13 years show cooling using both satellite data sets, with lower confidence limits that do not exclude a negative trend until 16 to 22 years. It is shown that several published studies have predicted cooling in this time frame. One of these models is extrapolated from its 2000 calibration end date and shows a good match to the satellite data, with a projection of continued cooling for several more decades.

Evidently there is no rush to curb emissions of plant food. We have time to study the matter further and come up with economical fixes if a fix is even needed.

Cross Posted at Classical Values