Via the Global Justice Ecology Project, Dec. 9:
We, the undersigned representatives of indigenous peoples, local communities and non-governmental organizations monitoring the progress of negotiations in Poznan are outraged that the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand opposed the inclusion of recognition of the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities in a decision on REDD (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) drafted today by government delegates at the UN Climate Conference.
These four countries (often known as the ‘CANZUS Group’) want to include REDD in the future climate agreement, but they oppose protecting the rights of the indigenous and forest peoples who will be directly affected by REDD measures. In discussions today, these countries insisted that the word “rights” and references to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples be struck from the text.
This is totally unacceptable for indigenous peoples, local communities and supporting NGOs, as the forests which are being targeted for REDD are those which indigenous peoples have sustained and protected for thousands of years. The rights of forests peoples to continue playing this role and being rewarded for doing so has to be recognized by the UNFCCC Parties. Any REDD mechanism that does not respect and protect the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities will fail.
We therefore demand that an unequivocal reference to rights and to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples be reinserted into the Draft COP14 Decision text on REDD.
Poznan, December 9, 2008
Signed by
The Accra Caucus on Forests and Climate Change, comprised of more than 30 civil society organizations from three tropical continents
Accion Ecologica
Friends of the Earth International
Indigenous Peoples’ Forum on Climate Change
Rainforest Foundation Norway
Rainforest Foundation UK
Tebtebba Foundation
Global Forest Coalition
Global Justice Ecology Project
Pacific Indigenous Peoples Environment Coalition
Photo online.
See our last posts on REDD, the climate crisis and the world indigenous struggle.
Climate change poses new threat to global rights
Mary Robinson writes for Australia’s The Age, Dec. 10:
Why should New Zealand agree?
New Zealand hasn’t even decided that Al Gore is speaking the truth. Why should they agree to something about indigenous rights if they don’t even agree with climate change.
“In October 2007 a High Court judge in the UK ruled that Al Gore’s fanciful film, An Inconvenient Truth, depicted “an Armageddon scenario that ⌠is not based on any scientific view”. Yet Gore deliberately persists in repeating the errors listed by the judge in that case. There are now serious discussions afoot to lodge complaints against Gore to the federal financial and legal authorities, in that he fraudulently talks up the imagined “climate crisis” in the hope that he and his “green” investment corporation can profit by the baseless alarm that his falsehoods generate. If that was his hope, it was vain. In the current financial crisis (which, unlike the climate “crisis”, is real), so-called “green” investments have fallen in value nearly twice as far as all other investments. Certainly, it is a serious matter that Gore continues to attempt to profit at the expense of the gullible by peddling falsehoods specifically identified as erroneous by a High Court Judge, who, unlike most of Goreâs audience, had been compelled to hear both sides of the case and had decided that Goreâs side was in at least nine material respects erroneous”. To read the pdf, click below >>>
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/scarewatch/fateful_decision.pdf
The eleven inaccuracies the High Court identified in the movie are:
1. The film claims that melting snows on Mount Kilimanjaro evidence global warming. The Governmentâs expert was forced to concede that this is not correct.
2. The film suggests that evidence from ice cores proves that rising CO2 causes temperature increases over 650,000 years. The Court found that the film was misleading: over that period the rises in CO2 lagged behind the temperature rises by 800-2000 years.
3. The film uses emotive images of Hurricane Katrina and suggests that this has been caused by global warming. The Governmentâs expert had to accept that it was ânot possibleâ to attribute one-off events to global warming.
4. The film shows the drying up of Lake Chad and claims that this was caused by global warming. The Governmentâs expert had to accept that this was not the case.
5. The film claims that a study showed that polar bears had drowned due to disappearing arctic ice. It turned out that Mr Gore had misread the study: in fact four polar bears drowned and this was because of a particularly violent storm.
6. The film threatens that global warming could stop the Gulf Stream throwing Europe into an ice age: the Claimantâs evidence was that this was a scientific impossibility.
7. The film blames global warming for species losses including coral reef bleaching. The Government could not find any evidence to support this claim.
8. The film suggests that the Greenland ice covering could melt causing sea levels to rise dangerously. The evidence is that Greenland will not melt for millennia.
9. The film suggests that the Antarctic ice covering is melting, the evidence was that it is in fact increasing.
10. The film suggests that sea levels could rise by 7m causing the displacement of millions of people. In fact the evidence is that sea levels are expected to rise by about 40cm over the next hundred years and that there is no such threat of massive migration.
11. The film claims that rising sea levels has caused the evacuation of certain Pacific islands to New Zealand. The Government was unable to substantiate this and the Court observed that this appears to be a false claim. (For more information see>>> http://newparty.co.uk/articles/inaccuracies-gore.html)
Seriously and honestly, the Pacific Islands are not going under water.
More bogus propaganda from the “climate skeptics”
You guys never get tired of moving the goal post, do you? There was nothing in the post you are commenting on about Al Gore’s movie. The question of whether Gore did a sloppy job in his movie is entirely unrelated to that of whether global climate change is realâand there is broad scientific consensus on that.
That said, of course it is impossible to prove that any one given phenomenon such as Hurricane Katrina or the disappearing snows of Kilimanjaro or the drying up of Lake Chad is “caused” by global warming. But when all these phenomena are taken together, they surely add up to a big warning sign.
Use of the passive voice in phrases like “are expected to rise by about 40cm” allows you to weasel out of telling us by whom and according to what methods. I can point to studies predicting a six-meter rise by the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Legitimate enough for you?
It has been demonstrated again and again and again that the Antarctic ice covering is melting.
I somehow doubt that you’d be so sanguine about the Pacific Islands not going under water if you lived on one. Go tell it to Tuvalu.
Are you finished, or would like to dig your hole a little deeper?
Antarctica in the news
Maybe our poor friend should try reading the newspaper. From the New York Times, Jan. 22:
Antaritc in the news – who would have predicted that?
Please Bill. You can do better then this. Give me some hard fact scientific study. I won’t be insulting you with newspaper articles.
Sure Bill – I will dig deeper
Suicidal conspiracy
A conspiracy stratagem was openly presented by Maurice Strong, a godfather of the global environmental movement, and a former senior advisor to Kofi Annan, the U.N. Secretary-General. In 1972 Strong was a Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, which launched the world environment movement, and he has played a critical role in its globalization. In 1992 Strong was the Secretary-General of the “World Summit” conference in Rio de Janeiro, where on his instigation the foundations for the Kyoto Protocol were laid.
In an interview Strong disclosed his mindset: “What if a small group of world leaders were to conclude that the principal risk to the Earth comes from the actions of rich countries? And if the world is to survive, those rich countries would have to sign an agreement reducing their impact on the environment. Will they do it? The group’s conclusion is “no.” The rich countries won’t do it. They won’t change. So, in order to save the planet, the group decides: Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about? This group of world leaders form a secret society to bring about an economic collapse.” (Wood,1990) .
The climatic issue became now perhaps the most important agenda of the United Nations and politicians, at least they say so. It became also a moral issue. In 2007 addressing the UN General Assembly Gro Harlem Brundtland, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on Climate Change, pointing at climatic skeptics stated: “It is irresponsible, reckless and deeply immoral to question the seriousness of the real danger of climate change”. But earlier “scare them to deaths!” morality of “climatists” was explained by Stephen Schneider, one of their top gurus: “On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but… On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well…we need to get some broadbased support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have …Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest” (Schneider, 1989) .
The same moral standard is offered by Al Gore: “I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous (global warming) is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are” (Gore, 2006) . In similar vein Rajendra K. Pauchari, the chairman of IPCC, commented in the last Fourth PCCC Report: “I hope this will shock people and governments into taking more serious action” (Crook, 2007) . Thus IPCC does not have ambition to present an objective climatic situation, but rather “to shock” the people to take actions which would bring no climatic effects (NIPCC, 2008) , but rather disastrous global economic and societal consequences. Implementation of these actions would dismantle the global energy system, the primary driving force of our civilization. This is what Maurice Strong and other leaders of Green Movement apparently have in mind.
The political and business scale of the problem is reflected by sums planned or already spent to counter the blessed natural Modern Warm Period, one of several similar periods enjoyed by the biosphere over the current interglacial. According to the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, during the past 10 years funds for the promoters of the man-made global warming hypothesis received in the United States alone more than $50 billion.
The International Energy Agency announced in June that cutting by half the CO2 emission will cost the world $45 trillion up to 2050, i.e. 1.1% of the global GNP each year (Kanter, 2008) . For this expenditure one may expect a trifle climatic effect. Even if a substantial part of global warming were due to CO2 â and it is not â any control efforts currently contemplated, including the punctiliously observed Kyoto protocol, would decrease future temperatures by only 0.02oC, an undetectable amount (NIPCC, 2008) .
Recent and Future Cooling
Both surface and troposphere observations suggest that we are entering a cool phase of climate. These observations are in a total disagreement with IPCC climatic model projections, based on an assumption that the current Modern Warm Period is due to anthropogenic emissions of CO2 (IPCC-AR4, 2007) . The annual increment of global industrial CO2 emission increased from 1.1% in 1990-1999 to more than 3% in 2000- 2004 (Raupach et al., 2007) , and is still increasing. Thus, according to IPCC projections the global temperature should be increasing now more rapidly than before, but instead we see a cold spell. It is clear that cooling is not related to the rapidly increasing CO2 emission. Its cause is rather the Sunâs activity, which recently dropped precipitously from its 60 year long record in the second half of the 20th century, the highest in the past 11 centuries (Usoskin et al., 2003) , to an extremely low current level.
Sun activity is reflected in the number of sunspots, which normally shows an 11-year periodicity (or 131 month plus or minus 14 month). The current sunspot cycle no. 23 had a maximum in 2001 (150 sunspots in September). NASA officially declared it over in March 2006, with a forecast that the next cycle no. 24 will be 20 to 50 % stronger than the old. But until now the Sun remained quiet, with only few sunspots sighted both from the old cycle, and from the new one declared again by NASA to start on December 11, 2007. However, the Sunâs activity was still low in the first part of 2008 (NOAA, 2008) , and August 2008 was (probably) the first month without sunspots since 1913 (some observations noticed not a “spot” but a tiny short-lived “pore” on 21-22 August). It seems that we still remain in the cycle 23.
The unusually long low activity of Sun suggests that we may be entering a next Maunder Minimum, a period from 1645 to 1715, when almost no sunspots were visible. This was the coldest part of the Little Ice Age (1250â1900), when rivers in Europe and America were often frozen, and the Baltic Sea was crossed on ice by armies and travelers. Other authors suggest that the Earth will be facing a slow decrease in temperatures in 2012-2015, reaching a deep freeze around 2050-2060, similar to cooling that took place in 1645-1715, when temperature decreased by 1 to 2oC (Abdussamatov, 2004; Abdussamatov, 2005; Abdussamatov, 2006) . Another analysis of sunspot cycles for the period 1882-2000, projected that the cooling will start in the solar cycle 25, resulting in minimum temperature around 2021-2026 (Bashkirtsev and Mashnich, 2003) . A long-term cooling, related to Sun’s activity, was also projected for the period around 2100 and 2200 (Landscheidt, 1995; Landscheidt, 2003).
The current Modern Warm Period is one of innumerous former natural warm climatic phases. Its temperature is lower than in the 4 former warm periods over the past 1500 years (Grudd, 2008) . Unfortunately it seems that it comes to an end, and the recent climatic fluctuations suggest that perhaps a new, full scale ice age is imminent. It may come in the next 50 to 400 years (Broecker, 1995; Bryson, 1993) , with ice caps covering northern parts of America and Eurasia.
http://www.nzcpr.com/guest116.htm#_ftnref3
You’ve hit bottom
You dismiss the findings of NASA scientists because they were reported by the New York Times, which is (gasp!) a newspaper. Then as an alternative you present a screed from professional climate-skeptic Zbigniew Jaworowski that appeared on the New Zealand Centre for Political Research, a right-wing think-tank whose website is filled with rants denying climate change, railing against Maori rights, gun control, “political correctness” and other standard pet peeves. (My fave is the ultra-wacky “oil is not a fossil fuel” theory.) SourceWatch informs us that it is run by Muriel Newman, a former MP with the right-wing ACT NZ political party. You do not bother to identify Jaworowski as the author of the screed, or to provide the specs on any of the works he cites. Finally, the screed again takes irrelevant shots at Al Gore and Maurice Strong, who we never defended. (And, oh yeah, your pal Jaworowski can’t even be bothered to use quotation marks correctlyâand neither can you, or to spell coherently.)
The NZCPR already exists as a forum for this amateurish propaganda. You are not invited to clutter up my website with any more such posts.
There’s only one way when you reach the bottom and that is up.
Bill, your argument is a very sad one. Is attacking someone for their choice of vote or choice of political party involvement a tactic you use often?
Is not scientific evidence even considered by you?
Why don’t you show me what else you have. The New York times is a bad reference.
The 5 leading world banks are owned and directed by some of the most wealthiest and powerful people in the world including David Rockerfeller who thanked the world media for keeping their silence for the fruition of the New World Order.
“We are grateful to the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years.”
He went on to explain:
“It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national autodetermination practiced in past centuries.”
â David Rockefeller, Speaking at the June, 1991 Bilderberg meeting in Baden, Germany (a meeting also attended by then-Governor Bill Clinton and by Dan Quayle.
Bilderberg bugaboo
I should have known that was coming.
Excuse me, you impugned my source by implying it was not objective. When I point out that your source is less objective, I’m accused of “attacking someone for their choice of vote” (sic). This is utterly transparent to anyone who knows how to think.
“Scientific evidence”? I think the NASA scientists quoted by the Times have greater credibility than Prof. Jaworowski’s arcane spewings about sunspots on a website that promotes oil-is-not-a-fossil-fuel wackjobbery.
You are cordially invited to go away.
Last say
The New York times did quote NASA but so did Prof. Jaworowski. Yet both were contradicting. I myself would put far greater credibility with an expert than a journalist.
*sigh* I have used some of the articles on this site and was quite impressed to have a representative for Oceania. But alas, I am not ideological suitable so I guess all I can do is hope more High Court Judges get to listen to both sides before making judgement.
Good day to you sir and thank-you for your time.
I hope so
Not only are you not “ideological suitable,” but you don’t even know the difference between an adjective and an adverb. You also don’t understand either journalism or logic. Do you think the Times misrepresented the views of NASA’s Drew T. Shindell? That is exceedingly unlikely. So you don’t have to “trust a journalist.” You can trust the experts the journalist quoted. Shindell and the others cited in the story have far better bona fides than your absurd Jaworowskiâwho only “quoted NASA” on sunspot activity, not climate change. Adios.
I’d be careful representing the Maori
I’d be very careful Bill when speaking about the Maori. They are not keen on the United Nations nor “political correctness”.
And I think if you were actually in New Zealand you would know that the Maori do not like the ideology of the left nor the ideology of the right.
But at present (2009) they are working with the right wing political party in power.
Also how did gun control come into this. Not even NZ police are armed.
I’d be careful representing right-wing nuttery
The Maori and gun control came into it because your NZCPR website is full of rants against both.
I’ll try again: Please go away.
A bit of honest work wouldn’t go astray
Bill, your chosen placement for my comments is incorrect.
I am happy to leave your site alone but would appreciate you putting the comments in order. You can tell where the comments belong in line by the time they were posted.
My last say post was the last thing I wrote. A bit of honesty wouldn’t go astray. There is enough deceptive behaviour going on in the system.
Also for future, since you are fighting for rights of people … how about you stop with the discrimination. So I am not an articulate writer. Does that mean my voice should be drowned out by your insults to me?
You come across to me as the communists under Stalin. If one does not agree with you, they should be outcast or imprisoned. Not a good sign to show just yet.
And BTW, it is not my site I quoted. If I had of known you had a preference to where the information was posted I would have found somewhere else and maybe even a dozen other experts.
Nah, you would have just found another way of attacking personally.
A little paranoid, are we?
The comments appear automatically in the order in which they are posted. I have no ability to rearrange the order. Sorry to disillusion you, but the Bilderbergers have nothing to do with it.
I only point out your poor command of the English language because you purport to be smarter than nearly the entire world scientific establishment.
Have I called for you to be imprisoned? No. I will unconditionally defend your right to spew malarky. But not on my blog. I have no responsibility to provide a forum for this noise. You’ve already got plenty of your own. Go play there. Thank you.
Not paraniod as such – just dissappointed
Bill, I it is your site and you can do with it as you please. You also have the right to be UNpolitical correct in the way you treat others.
The net is too big to let one site get me down. (your site is just an embarrassing lesson I will learn from)Cheers.
UNpolitical reality
The Bilderberg Maori connection is only one facet of the New World Order. If you are interested in the UNpolitical evidence you are invited to read every thirteenth letter of the UN Charter. Global warming is obviously false as it was snowing earlier right outside my house.
Had to comment back to the good Doc
Bill, could you write something on the economy so that others can comment to show you how the Bilderberg group works above the United Nations and other groups such as the World Economy forum. 28th Jan – 1st Feb 2009.
Insidious tangled web
The machinations of the Biderburgers are well known, what is less known in the West is their connection to war in Groznia.
Snows of Kilimanjaro: almost gone
The peaks of Mount Kilimanjaro may soon be ice free, scientists warn. Between 1912 and 2011, the mass of ice on the summit decreased by more than 85%, say researchers with NASA's Earth Observatory. Kimberly Casey, a glaciologist based at the Goddard Space Flight Center, who visited the mountain earlier this year, also noticed Kilimanjaro's north ice field had separated. The glacier had been developing a hole since the '70s, but this is the first year in which it had been seen to divide in two. "We were able to walk on land—or we could have even ridden a bicycle—directly through the rift," Dr. Casey said. Scientists now warn it's no longer a question of whether Kilimanjaro's ice will disappear, but when. Several scientists predict it will be gone by 2060. (Daily Mail, Nov. 13, 2012)