Globe: Kyoto Being Used to Divide Canada (Ambrose)

[AlvinofDiaspar]

From the Globe:

Kyoto being used to divide Canada: Ambrose

Canadian Press

Nairobi — Environment Minister Rona Ambrose says the Kyoto Protocol is being used to divide Canada, blaming the previous Liberal government for failing to implement a domestic climate plan.

Taking her five-minute turn to address delegates from some 180 countries at the UN Climate Conference, Ms. Ambrose made no reference to the fact that her government has rejected Canada's emissions-cutting targets under the climate treaty.

Ms. Ambrose says the government recognizes the need for urgent action to cut emissions and will do so using its Clean Air Act.

That bill has been opposed by all three opposition parties in part because it contains no reference to the Kyoto emissions-cutting targets, and has been sent to a committee for rewriting.

Ms. Ambrose says when the Conservatives assumed office, Canada still had not implemented a domestic plan to address climate change, although the previous government had released a $10-billion plan several months before its defeat.
_________________________________________________

Ambrose is getting increasingly ludicrous. Divide Canada? Opinions were always divided (though I can understand the said government's need for groupthink) - and I suppose urgent action is something that happens after 4 years of additional consultation, in spite of complaints that the former government wasted its' time?

AoD

 

[Darkstar416]

Every day I'm more convinced that Harper & Co. needs to go...and soon.

 

[ganjavih]

It's so hard to stay mad at Rona though...

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

ganja:

Thank gawd I am gay.

AoD

 

[fiendishlibrarian]

Then I won't mention that Rona Ambrose-Karen Stintz threesome fantasy I have rolling around in my head.


Oh, wait...

 

[prometheus the supremo]

i wonder if their is any relation between the reduction of sulfur emmisions and global warming. i read somewhere that sulfur emmisions reduce the greenhouse effect but at the expense of acid rain.

it's my opinion that global warming will happen anyway. all we can do is slow it down. global warming doesn't just come from industry and cars, farming & deforestation have alot to do with it too.

this is something to worry about in relation to global warming ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane_clathrate

the worse it gets, the worse it gets!


if you wanna slowdown global warming, you gotta slowdown human population growth and if you don't slowdown human population growth, global warming will. it's sad.


we should be looking at terraforming the worlds deserts, turning them into forests. turn carbon dioxide into wood. this could possibly reverse global warming. during the last ice age, the sahara was a lush greenspace but overfarming put an end to that. i'm not saying that it will create another ice age but the added oxygen could cool the climate and stop the dust storms that are destroying the atlantic ocean.

if all fails, we could live in the venus cloud tops.

 

[building babel]

Rona's hairline is proof positive that we do, indeed, share 99.95% of our DNA with Neanderthals.

 

[RJR123]

Didn't Jennifer Aniston have that cut in 1996?

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

Predictably...

Canada named top "fossil" at Kenya climate talks
16 Nov 2006 13:09:49 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Daniel Wallis

NAIROBI, Nov 16 (Reuters) - Most countries would be happy to win an award at a major international climate change conference. But they don't want one of these.

With just a day left at talks to fight global warming in Nairobi, Canada had racked up the most "fossil of the day" prizes handed out by environmentalists to nations they say have delayed, obstructed or stalled the negotiations.

As delegates boo-ed loudly, activist Maia Green said Canada had won joint first and second place on Thursday for, among others things, "misleading" the world, "repudiating" the Kyoto Protocol and "flagrantly ... washing its political laundry on the international stage".

Then she placed an oil lamp and Canadian flag on a podium in front of a poster of a fire-breathing Tyrannosaurus rex. Burning fossil fuels like coal is a big source of the greenhouse gases blamed for global warming -- hence the name.

First launched in 1999 at the annual climate convention of 190 nations, the "fossil of the day" award has named-and-shamed countries deemed to have failed by the Climate Action Network (CAN) of green non-governmental organisations.

While provides a daily dose of light relief, organisers say winners find it harder than you might think to laugh off.

A Canadian delegate stormed away and refused to talk to reporters after his country won a "fossil" prize this week.

Canada has been slammed at the Kenya talks, which are trying to agree a successor to Kyoto, mostly for saying it would be "very, very difficult" for it to meet its promised cuts in the emission of greenhouse gases.

Other "fossil" winners have included Australia, Saudi Arabia, the E.U. and United States.

U.S. President George W. Bush, whose country has rejected Kyoto, was being honoured as "Fossil of the Century".

AoD

 

[prometheus the supremo]

Scientists say pollution may be helpful

By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent
2 hours, 54 minutes ago



NAIROBI, Kenya - If the sun warms the Earth too dangerously, the time may come to draw the shade. The "shade" would be a layer of pollution deliberately spewed into the atmosphere to help cool the planet. This over-the-top idea comes from prominent scientists, among them a Nobel laureate. The reaction here at the U.N. conference on climate change is a mix of caution, curiosity and some resignation to such "massive and drastic" operations, as the chief U.N. climatologist describes them.



The Nobel Prize-winning scientist who first made the proposal is himself "not enthusiastic about it."

"It was meant to startle the policy makers," said Paul J. Crutzen, of Germany's Max Planck Institute for Chemistry. "If they don't take action much more strongly than they have in the past, then in the end we have to do experiments like this."

Serious people are taking Crutzen's idea seriously. This weekend, NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., hosts a closed-door, high-level workshop on the global haze proposal and other "geoengineering" ideas for fending off climate change.

In Nairobi, meanwhile, hundreds of delegates were wrapping up a two-week conference expected to only slowly advance efforts to rein in greenhouse gases blamed for much of the 1-degree rise in global temperatures in the past century.

The 1997 Kyoto Protocol requires modest emission cutbacks by industrial countries — but not the United States, the biggest emitter of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases, because it rejected the deal. Talks on what to do after Kyoto expires in 2012 are all but bogged down.

When he published his proposal in the journal Climatic Change in August, Crutzen cited a "grossly disappointing international political response" to warming.

The Dutch climatologist, awarded a 1995 Nobel in chemistry for his work uncovering the threat to Earth's atmospheric ozone layer, suggested that balloons bearing heavy guns be used to carry sulfates high aloft and fire them into the stratosphere.

While carbon dioxide keeps heat from escaping Earth, substances such as sulfur dioxide, a common air pollutant, reflect solar radiation, helping cool the planet.

Tom Wigley, a senior U.S. government climatologist, followed Crutzen's article with a paper of his own on Oct. 20 in the leading U.S. journal Science. Like Crutzen, Wigley cited the precedent of the huge volcanic eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991.

Pinatubo shot so much sulfurous debris into the stratosphere that it is believed it cooled the Earth by .9 degrees for about a year.

Wigley ran scenarios of stratospheric sulfate injection — on the scale of Pinatubo's estimated 10 million tons of sulfur — through supercomputer models of the climate, and reported that Crutzen's idea would, indeed, seem to work. Even half that amount per year would help, he wrote.

A massive dissemination of pollutants would be needed every year or two, as the sulfates precipitate from the atmosphere in acid rain.

Wigley said a temporary shield would give political leaders more time to reduce human dependence on fossil fuels — the main source of greenhouse gases. He said experts must more closely study the feasibility of the idea and its possible effects on stratospheric chemistry.

Nairobi conference participants agreed.

"Yes, by all means, do all the research," Indian climatologist Rajendra K. Pachauri, chairman of the 2,000-scientist U.N. network on climate change, told The Associated Press.

But "if human beings take it upon themselves to carry out something as massive and drastic as this, we need to be absolutely sure there are no side effects," Pachauri said.

Philip Clapp, a veteran campaigner for emissions controls to curb warming, also sounded a nervous note, saying, "We are already engaged in an uncontrolled experiment by injecting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere."

But Clapp, president of the U.S. group National Environmental Trust, said, "I certainly don't disagree with the urgency."

In past years scientists have scoffed at the idea of air pollution as a solution for global warming, saying that the kind of sulfate haze that would be needed is deadly to people. Last month, the World Heath Organization said air pollution kills about 2 million people worldwide each year and that reducing large soot-like particles from sulfates in cities could save 300,000 lives annually.

American geophysicist Jonathan Pershing, of Washington's World Resources Institute, is among those wary of unforeseen consequences, but said the idea might be worth considering "if down the road 25 years, it becomes more and more severe because we didn't deal with the problem."

By telephone from Germany, Crutzen said that's what he envisioned: global haze as a component for long-range planning. "The reception on the whole is more positive than I thought," he said.

Pershing added, however, that reaction may hinge on who pushes the idea. "If it's the U.S., it might be perceived as an effort to avoid the problem," he said.

NASA said this weekend's conference will examine "methods to ameliorate the likelihood of progressively rising temperatures over the next decades." Other such U.S. government-sponsored events are scheduled to follow.


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using sulfur to cool the earth will rain down as acid rain which will kill forests which will intern cause more global warming which will have to be combated with more sulfur...




:\

 

[cdl42]

"using sulfur to cool the earth will rain down as acid rain which will kill forests which will intern cause more global warming which will have to be combated with more sulfur..."

Sounds kinda like the solution to global warming as explained in Futurama: Youtube link

 

[Antiloop33rpm]

French minister slams Canada's Kyoto retreat

Last Updated: Thursday, November 16, 2006 | 5:08 PM ET
CBC News

Environment Minister Rona Ambrose spent another day on the defensive at the UN Climate Conference as her French counterpart slammed Canada for abandoning emissions-cutting targets under the Kyoto protocol.

"I am very disappointed at Canada's retreat. I hope it is temporary," French Environment Minister Nelly Olin said Thursday.

"It's a shock for us, a shock for all who support Kyoto. And above all, it's a shock, I think, for the Canadians who I think are generally supportive of Kyoto."

Olin cited the many years she worked with Ambrose's predecessor and current Liberal leadership candidate Stéphane Dion to develop a coherent climate plan for Canada.

First public criticism of Canada
It was the first public rebuke at the conference of Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Conservative government's position on Kyoto, although there have been private grumblings by other participants.

Under Kyoto, which was signed by a previous Liberal government and came into effect in February 2005, Canada committed to cutting its greenhouse gas emissions six per cent from 1990 levels by 2012.

But the Conservatives backed away from Kyoto after winning power in January, saying the commitments couldn't be achieved and pointing out that Canada's emissions have actually risen some 35 per cent since 1990.

They instead proposed a clean air act in October that aims to cut the emissions by between 45 and 65 per cent from 2003 levels by 2050.

Ambrose accuses Olin of meddling
On Thursday, Ambrose accused Olin of meddling in Canada's domestic politics and reiterated her position that the Conservatives were left with an impossible challenge on the climate change problem because of the previous Liberal government's failure to take action.

"I won't get involved in French domestic politics: it's not my way to get involved as she did in ours," Ambrose said.

Canada is the only country that has backpedaled on its targets under the climate treaty. However, the world's biggest producer of greenhouse gas emissions, the United States, never signed the international treaty.

French President Jacques Chirac has made scathing comments about countries that forgo their commitments.

Ambrose said the Liberals failed to put in place an adequate framework for cutting emissions, and repeated the Conservative position that Canada's targets are unachievable.

----------------------------------------------------

In addition (and I would post the stories if I could find them in any english media online) the French government also discussed a proposal involving trade sanctions against countries, like Canada, who fail to act on their environmental responsibility.

Also, Quebec sent its own delegation to the conference to make it known that it holds a position that is independent of that of the current Federal government. I have not seen this reported (at least online) in any english media in Canada unfortunately (probably because it would be yet another embarassment for Canada and one of with potential unity implications which newspapers will do anything to avoid discussing).

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

On Thursday, Ambrose accused Olin of meddling in Canada's domestic politics and reiterated her position that the Conservatives were left with an impossible challenge on the climate change problem because of the previous Liberal government's failure to take action.

Rightly or wrongly, Steven Harper certainly had no qualms about getting involved with Chinese human rights issues. Heck, we even sent troops to another country and intervened in its' politics. I suppose those who live in glass greenhouses shouldn't throw stones?

AoD

 

[prometheus the supremo]

LOL cdl42

 

[Abeja de Almirante]

Then I won't mention that Rona Ambrose-Karen Stintz threesome fantasy I have rolling around in my head.

Don't forget to add some Ruby Dhalia :b