The Indian Government has produced a climate report entitled: ‘National Action Plan on Climate Change.’ Section 1.4 deals with ‘Observed Changes in Climate and Weather Events in India’ and states that, “No firm link between the documented changes described below and warming due to anthropogenic climate change has yet been established:”
The report also made clear that India has no plans to cut back energy usage. “It is obvious that India needs to substantially increase its per capita energy consumption to provide a minimally acceptable level of wellbeing to its people. […] India is determined that its per capita greenhouse gas emissions will at no point exceed that of developed countries.”
US Senate EPW Committee: India Issues Report Challenging Global Warming Fears
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Well, it’s the end of the world as we know it. And I feel fine.
Well I am very happy because India’s largest car maker, TATA, has purchased Landrover from Ford US and the Defender will continue to live on.
I wonder if China is preparing a similar report making similar conclusions?
Paul at least I typed out my quote from the report rather than using the picture capture tool, so I will just copy and paste from a post on another thread
“… India is determined that its per capita greenhouse gas emissions will at no point exceed that of developed countries even as we pursue our development objectives.”
According to the World Resource Institute in its Navigating the Numbers in Chapter 4 per capita emission in 2000 were for the Developed World average 14.1 tons and India only 1.9 tons.
India emissions are currently at 1,884 Mt CO2 equivalents (WRI 2000 figure).
The point is that if global CO2 emissions need to be drastically reduced in order to avoid a climate catastrophe – then they have to be drastically reduced from current levels in China and India. China is the top emitter, India is number 4 iirc. The future of atmospheric CO2 levels is therefore very dependent on emissions from China and India, regardless of per capita considerations.
It would be reasonable to assume that the emerging economies could increase GHGs by 500% before feeling inclined to limit emissions.
A 50% reduction by the developed world’s 20% of emissions by 2050 [which would cause excruciating agony and ain’t gonna happen without nuclear] starts to look like that biblical 3/5 of 5/8 of SFA!
Or spangled D. much like a Shakespeare’s pound of flesh:
This kindness will I show.
Go with me to a notary, seal me there
Your single bond; and, in a merry sport,
If you repay me not on such a day,
In such a place, such sum or sums as are
Express’d in the condition, let the forfeit
Be nominated for an equal pound
Of your fair flesh, to be cut off and taken
In what part of your body pleaseth me.
Link for Luke to verify the veracity o’ verity:
http://shakespeare.mit.edu/merchant/full.html
Do you think India has told the carping middle class climate alchemists to “curry off”?????
From Prometheus:
The Indian government has put out a climate change action plan (PDF) that places economic development and adaptation ahead of mitigation (sound familiar?). The report was endorsed by IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri:
[Pachauri] said that India has realised the climate change threat. India’s climate change action plan recently released by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is a “good policy document” and needs to be implemented.
Interesting, the report’s views of climate science are at odds with that presented by the IPCC.
It states of observed climate changes in India (p. 15):
No firm link between the documented [climate] changes described below and warming due to anthropogenic climate change has yet been established.
For example, the Indian report states of the melting of Himalayan glaciers (p. 15):
The available monitoring data on Himalayan glaciers indicates while some recession of glaciers has occurred in some Himalayan regions in recent years, the trend is not consistent across the entire mountain chain. It is accordingly, too early to establish long-term trends or their causation, in respect of which there are several hypotheses.
The IPCC (WG II Ch. 10 p. 493)says of Himalayan glacier melt:
The receding and thinning of Himalayan glaciers can be attributed primarily to the global warming due to increase in anthropogenic emission of greenhouse gases.
Imagine the reaction if the U.S. government put out a report placing economic growth ahead of mitigation while contradicting the science of the IPCC. Dr. Pachauri’s endorsement of a report that contradicts the IPCC indicates that issues of science and national interests are apparently universal.
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/science_politics/001476climate_science_and_.html
The Indians just saved civilization.
Because there is no way that China will neuter itself to please Hollywood liberal’s religious beliefs, when India officially pronouces AGW a humbug. And since China won’t assimilate America won’t either…
The Euros are in varying stages of withdrawl after their hasty buy into kyoto.
Aussie’s might be fighting Al Gore’s hobgoblin alone fairly soon.
We have used Gavin Schmidt’s own ENSO corrected data to show that the current decade long flat temperature trend is not related to ENSO.
http://reallyrealclimate.blogspot.com/2008/07/gavin-schmidt-enso-adjustment-for.html
Gavin has now been asked four times on Real Climate, in his own ENSO thread, about the ENSO corrected flat trend. Namely, if the trend is not a result of ENSO, which it clearly isn’t, then what elements of natural variation have overriden the +.2 C of man made warming that we should be seeing. It speaks volumes that Gavin is running away from the question.
If we know so little about natural variability that we cannot give an attribution to a period that has already occured, then how can we assume that we know enough about natural variability to create models for the future or to isolate a climate sensitivity signal.
Nice article in the Telegraph.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/07/10/do1004.xml
Sorry to be a little OT chaps, but I am seeking some expert opinion on Kevin Rudd’s repeated claim that Australia is the hottest and driest continent in the world. I am not an expert, but it is self evident to me that he is wrong as explained at my blog…
http://www.margosmaid.blogspot.com/
What say you?
Hmmn, add 1.1 billion Indians, 1.3 billion Chinese, 0.2 billion Pakistanis, 0.2 billion Indonesians, 0.2 billion Russians, sundry African, Middle Eastern and Latin American nations, and large minorities in the US and Europe and it looks like, on a one-vote-one-value basis, the climate bunyip (Manbearpig) is a much bigger loser than Al Gore.
Tilo – publish or perish.
And your basis for calculating your ENSO indices have changed thanks to AGW. Scott & Power, GRL, 2007. Off you go now. Careful does it.
Luke, what are you babbling about this time?
Tilo,
Luke is shifting computers on the sinking AGW titanic – still hoping that ctrl-alt-del will kill the argument and we can start afresh with a new scam.
Yes Esq, India is very close to Australia. You excel at looking like an ignorant racist who likes to bore people.
The Indian report reveals the fundamental flaw of AGW theory. The science is not settled, it’s wide open to interpretation through whatever political lens one wishes to view the world with.
To the Indians, who are eager to alleviate crushing poverty as well as enjoy some of the pleasures of life we take for granted, AGW doesn’t look so bad. Not in comparison to the consequences of halting economic development.
The Indian government is curiously unperturbed by reports from celebrity scientists that a great holocaust is about to begin. They see the inconclusive science through the lens of the national interest of their people. Fair enough.
In stark contrast our own government does not see the AGW issue through the lens of Australian national interest but through what appears to be political expedient for their historically well-understood ALP agenda.
Ironically, those politically left of centre, famous for their rational cynicism, would ask us to believe that the Rudd government is altruistically basing its AGW position on what is good for the future of the planet. The fact that Australians will have to suffer great harm to our liberties and our economic development is but a small price to pay. Rudd is a morally superior leader who is asking us to make sacrifices to Save The Earth.
But Walter Stark concisely shows this moral superiority is really Machiavellian politics:
“Australia’s portion of global CO2 emissions is about 1.4 per cent or just six months’ growth in China’s emissions. Natural uptakes of CO2 over Australia’s land and Exclusive Economic Zone area of surrounding ocean absorb much more than this. Our net contribution to global CO2 emissions is already negative. Whatever we do or don’t do will be trivial to the global situation, either in quantity or even as an example.”
If the Rudd Government was acting, like the Indian Government, in the best interests of the nation as a whole, then Walter Stark’s quote above would be Labour Party policy! Rudd would be telling world leaders: “Our net contribution to global CO2 emissions is already negative. What about yours?”
So in whose interest is the Rudd Government acting? Why is he peddling unrealistic fears? It’s certainly not in the best interest of Australia nor is it in the altruistic interest of slowing AGW.
A month ago Peter Garrett cut the subsidy for homeowners to install solar energy in their homes. In a single stroke of a pen, 90% of all new home solar energy installations were stopped overnight. A burgeoning renewable industry was smothered in its crib by the Rudd Government. Was this the Rudd government acting to Save the Planet? Or was it an example of the Labor Party’s historic ideological agenda cynically trumping fears of a coming climate Apocalypse?
Does the Rudd government really believe its own fear campaign on AGW? We can assume that the Rudd Government is not formed of ignoramuses. They’re looking at the same datasets as the Indians.
But they believe that we, the people of Australia, are ignoramuses. The Rudd Government believes that it can use the AGW fright forecasts to impose its long favoured ideologically motivated socio-economic agenda upon us, while we are frightened out of our wits and before we can catch up on the science.
Wes,
I maintain close contact with various contributors a particular web site, and without being specific, there are rumours of a possible civil insurrection in Western China.
Metal prices have been going south (Zinc, lead and nickel though aluminium is goin gangbusters)and I hear retrenchments are starting in the soime IT companies in the Eastern states, as well as lawyers close to bankruptcy due to a lack of property sales and, of all things, probate.
I am a student of Austrian economic theory and the continual credit expansion of the last decade seems to have finally come home to roost.
And on top of this Rudd et al want to raise costs even more.
We aree definitely going to live in interesting times I think.
OT/ It has come to my attention via Anthony Watts website that Australia and New Zealand are sending firefighters to my neck of the woods.
http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21598,23998744-5008620,00.html
Thanks much. We really need the help.
Here in Sacramento the sky is obscured by the smoke which looks the same as an overcast sky. On the plus side because of the thick smoke instead of getting hit with the forecast high temp of 108 (42 C) degrees, the thermometer only reached 98 (36 C).
Aerosol really does cool the planet, at least today it did.
What happened at G-8?
Not the ABC’s or Ruddarian version….Ouch.
…for the first time, the G-8 also agreed that any meaningful climate program would have to involve industrializing nations like China and India. For the first time, too, the G-8 agreed that real progress will depend on technological advancements. And it agreed that the putative benefits had to justify any brakes on economic growth.
In other words, the G-8 signed on to what has been the White House approach since 2002. The U.S. has relied on the arc of domestic energy programs now in place, like fuel-economy standards and efficiency regulations, along with billions in subsidies for low-carbon technology. Europe threw in with the central planning of the Kyoto Protocol — and the contrast is instructive. Between 2000 and 2006, U.S. net greenhouse gas emissions fell 3%. Of the 17 largest world-wide emitters, only France reduced by more.
….Put another way, global warming is an economic, not a theological, question. It is not at all clear that huge expenditures today on slowing emissions will yield long-run benefits or even slow emissions. Research and development into sources of low-carbon energy is almost certainly more useful, and the G-8 pledged more funding for “clean tech” programs.
The G-8 also conceded that global-warming masochism is futile and painfully expensive. If every rich country drastically cut CO2, those cuts would be wiped out by emissions from China and India. “Carbon leakage” is a major problem too, where cutbacks in some countries lead to increases in others with less strict policies, as manufacturing and the like are outsourced. This whack-a-mole won’t stop without including all 17 major economies, which together produce roughly 80% of global emissions.
Much to the ire of Kyotophiles, Mr. Bush started this rethinking last year when he created a parallel track for talks on a post-2012 U.N. program, luring China and India to the table with more practical options. But developing countries, led by that duo, still refused to sign on to the G-8’s 2050 goal. They aren’t eager to endanger their growth — and lifting people out of poverty — by acquiring the West’s climate neuroses.
The irony is that Kyoto has handed them every reason not to participate. Europe knew all along that it couldn’t meet its quotas, so it created an out in “offsets.” A British factory, say, buys a credit to pay for basic efficiency improvements in a Chinese coal plant, like installing smokestack scrubbers. This is a tax on the Brits to make Chinese industries more competitive. Sweet deal if you can get it.
It gets worse. The offsets are routed through a U.N. bureaucracy that makes them far more valuable in Europe than the cost of the actual efficiency improvements. So far, Kyoto-world has paid more than €4.7 billion to eliminate an obscure greenhouse gas called HFC-23; the necessary incinerators cost less than €100 million. Most of the difference in such schemes goes to the foreign government, such as China’s communist regime.
Given these perverse incentives, the magical realism of Kyoto has backfired in a big way. The global warming elite will never admit this, because that would mean giving up their political whip against George Bush. But Kyoto II is already collapsing under its own contradictions. By sticking to a more realistic alternative, this reviled President has handed his green opponents a way to save face.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121573566257544347.html?mod=opinion_main_review_and_outlooks
Bloody ignorant cowboy!
“The Indians just saved civilization.”
This mass hysteria counts as ‘civilization’??
Jeez — put the needle in!
This AGW scam will be infamous in the History of Western civilization….
A purported anthropogenic effect on climate, which cannot even be determined beyond the background noise of natural climate variation, even by observations using the most modern of our satellite technology. Has been responsible for driving economic and social policy for the last decade….
It’s true….. We are all friggin’ mad…. I think we have lost the skill base that once made us great.
Tilo; I presume you caught lucia’s demolition of Mr Schmidt’s scribblings?
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2008/gavin-schmidt-corrects-for-enso-ipcc-projections-still-falsify/
wes; since you’ve introduced the immortal bard:
To freeze or not to freeze: That is the question:
Weather ’tis fav’rable to gain entrophy
or with such jostlings of outrageous data
Or to bond, freeing ph seas of enthalpy
And thus subside PDO? ENSO thus SOI
No more; and by reducing TSI we end
Activations of thousands anomalous shocks
that bases do suffer.’Tis interpolation
Devoutly pursued. To freeze, no melt;
To melt: perchance to runaway; ay, there’s the rub
which warms poles that tie so rigidly;
by such warmth to be dislodged, even boil.
What you quote is a statement that there is as yet no firm link between REGIONALLY observed changes and global increases in greenhouse gases. The report does accept that there are global changes.
Well prof, there is not likely to be a FIRM link between regional variations and global increases in greenhouse gases (I thought some of these gases were declining? No matter.), if CGM’s are all there is to rely on;
http://www.itia.ntua.gr/en/docinfo/850
To what degree? Notice that it is only over the past 20 years that the link between human driven global increases in greenhouse gases and global changes have become overwhelmingly certain. Joining regional estimates and models to global ones still has much room for improvement. See WGII of the AR4 and TAR. BTW RP Jr. had a good catch on the Himalayan glaciers.
Just for the record, page 1, paragraph 1, in the report states:
“This thread [of climate change] emanates from accumulated greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere, anthropogenically generated through long-term and intensive industrial growth” …
They do not dispute ACC at all.
Page 15 of the report simply indicates that (a) some climate change have been observed; (2) they not yet established that ACC has caused these particular local changes, but that some changes are consistent with IPCC models (seal level rises for example).
Since Jennifer seems to have not attempted to make a point, as is her style these days, is there really one?
The anonymous Dr. Rabbit sez, “it is only over the past 20 years that the link between human driven global increases in greenhouse gases and global changes have become overwhelmingly certain.”
Overwhelmingly certain? Hmmm?
An article of faith? Rabbet must be a doctor of divinity. For the rest of us liberated by the Enlightenment values of natural curiosity and inquiry, doubt is an option yet.
Every one of the data items summarised here is consistent with AGW.
Overall temperature rise; shifting rainfall patterns; increases in droughts and extreme weather; rising sea level; and increase in glacial melt are all listed as occurring. The “no firm link” is simply a reflection of the difficulty of deducing what local changes will result from global changes.