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Sadly, there is no reason to believe these bureaucrats will ever voluntarily give up their luxury vacations at our expense

Time to end the UN climate fiasco



For years now, the United Nations has been using the climate change crusade as a vehicle to increase its power across the world. Starting in 1995, they began holding massive annual conferences focused on stopping the ‘planet’s temperature’ from rising. That such a temperature was merely a statistical computation that had little or no significance in the real world made no difference – ‘we must stop global warming’ became the clarion call of the yearly Conferences of the Parties (COP) to 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) treaty.
The 1995 Berlin COP was the first and so was designated COP1. COP3 was held in Kyoto where the Kyoto Protocol was created. And so it continued year after year until COP21 met in Paris in 2015 when the Paris Agreement was adopted. Last December COP25 was held in Madrid and, this November, COP26 will be held in Glasgow, Scotland. The Climate Intelligence Foundation (CLINTEL) is planning a major debate on climate change to coincide with the Glasgow UN event. It’s about time. All this is based on the hypothesis that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from burning fossil fuels was increasing the so-called greenhouse effect and this would warm the Earth to dangerous levels. When the data showed that the Earth was no longer warming, they simply changed the topic from global warming to climate change, allowing them to attribute any natural variation in climate – warming, cooling, drought, floods, whatever they wanted – to man’s influence. The UN then passed non-binding agreements for each nation to reduce their CO2 emissions. Taking a page out of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, they referred to the gas as ‘carbon,’ at times even ‘carbon pollution,’ to increase the intended fear. While this made sense as a propaganda tool, it made no sense scientifically. Carbon is soot and coal black which is real pollution while CO2 is an odorless, colorless gas, of course, that supports all life on our planet. Year after year, the UN ratcheted up the fear level to where we hear daily of the absurd ‘existential threat of climate change,’ warning that if we do not eliminate the use of natural gas, coal and oil, the end of life on Earth is just around the corner.

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There is a huge impetus by most countries’ bureaucrats to continue holding these useless conferences. More than 190 nations send delegations which in total number more than 20,000 folks living in luxury hotels and dining at fine restaurants in attractive locations at tax-payer expense, ironically producing vast amounts of CO2 in the process. Holding the meetings by teleconference would eliminate most of these emissions, of course, but who would not enjoy a two-week paid vacation at in exotic locals such as Marrakech, Morocco (COP7), Bali, Indonesia (COP13) or Cancun, Mexico (COP16). COP24, held in Katowice, Poland, got a lot of attention as it is the coal production center for Poland which depends on coal for both energy and jobs. Here were tens of thousands of foreigners calling for the end of this important resource for Poland. COP21 in Paris is the most famous as it was here that President Obama pledged to give $3 Billion of US taxpayer money to the $100 billion Green Climate Fund (GCF). The GCF is a transfer of wealth from developed nations coffers to less developed nations who claim that the ‘carbon’ (carbon dioxide) we emit has damaged them, deserving recompense. Obama immediately proceeded to write a check for the first $500 million of it, followed by another $500 million shortly before he left office. In 2017 President Trump announced the intention for the US to leave the Paris Agreement after the required waiting period was over, which occurred in 2019. Given a one-year’s notice for withdrawal, the US will be out of the treaty on November 4, 2020, the day after the US presidential election. The Paris conference itself admitted that the reduction in ‘carbon’ emissions called for would have insignificant impact on the ‘planet’s temperature’ but felt that eliminating the use of fossil fuels was warranted anyway. They certainly got support from all candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination at their February 18 debate in Las Vegas. They all supported the end of fossil fuels and the reinstating of the US into the Paris Agreement.

Every year the leaders of the COP meetings have called all nations to make mandatory “carbon prices” high enough to make fossil fuels artificially too expensive so as to promote wind and solar power despite their huge costs and unreliability. A backlash began around the world after COP24. For example, riots in France after President Macron installed a tax on ‘carbon emissions’ forced him to backed down. In Germany, electrical cost overruns from their solar panels and wind turbines are threatening to drive long-time chancellor Angela Merkel out of office. The memory of $4.00 gasoline will surely stop any US President from recommending a heavy tax on our major fuel source. Twenty-five years of COP events have indeed been, to quote Shakespeare, “sound and fury signifying nothing.” Sadly, there is no reason to believe these bureaucrats will ever voluntarily give up their luxury vacations at our expense. President Trump was right to get us out of the Paris Agreement. In his second term, he needs to dump the whole UNFCCC process entirely.
Dr. Jay Lehr is Senior Policy Advisor with of the Ottawa, Canada-based International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC). Tom Harris is Executive Director of ICSC. Note: the authors wish to thank Jim Hollingsworth whose outstanding book Climate Change: A Convenient Truth dedicates a chapter to the COP meetings which inspired this article. We highly recommend Dr. Hollingsworth’s book for insight on every facet of the climate change delusion.


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Dr. Jay Lehr & Tom Harris -- Bio and Archives

Dr. Jay Lehr is Senior Policy Analyst with of the Ottawa-based International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC) and former Science Director of The Heartland Institute which is based in Arlington Heights, Illinois.


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