Global Warming Science: www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming
Africa Wants Money for Global Warming
[last update: 2009/08/28]
Africa wants more money from rich countries. Global warming is the new means of achieving it.
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Aug 24, 2009 – The African Union met to strategize a common approach for getting more money from the upcoming U.N. summit on climate change in Copenhagen in December. [http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSLO569667]
The above Reuters article states: “Earlier this year, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi called on rich countries to compensate Africa for warming, arguing that pollution in the northern hemisphere may have caused his country's ruinous famines in the 1980s”.
It also states: “A study commissioned by the Geneva-based Global Humanitarian Forum that was released in May said poor nations bear more than nine-tenths of the human and economic burden of climate change.” The Global Humanitarian Forum (GHF) report was examined in some detail here: http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/HumanImpact.htm
The GHF is composed mainly of ex-UN officials for the purpose of increasing money flow to Africa.
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The Global Humanitarian Forum Blame Game For Desired Money Flow
The following figure combines two figures from the GHF report. The top figure shows the producers of CO2 while the lower figure shows the expected negative impacts of CO2. In other words the US should pay Africa a lot of money.
The opinion of the GHF is as quoted in the Reuters article above: “The 50 poorest countries, however, contribute less than 1 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions that scientists say are threatening the planet, the report said.”
The GHF’s blame game completely ignores Africa’s CO2 emissions from deforestation and biomass burning. The map above also downplays the fact that China is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases. It’s all the US’s fault for being rich.
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Deforestation Is Ignored
AFRICA: Tackling deforestation is critical [http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75868]
"People often do not take into account the main driver of deforestation, which is very different in Africa, where it is the need for fuel wood," said Kevin Conrad, director of the Coalition for Rainforest Nations at the Earth Institute of Columbia University. … Deforestation is responsible for 1.6 billion tonnes of carbon emissions every year, amounting to one-fifth of the global total, and to more than the combined total contributed by the world's energy-intensive transport sectors, according to the Indonesia-based Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR). "Deforestation contributes almost as much to climate change as does US fossil fuel use," said Conrad. "Yet deforestation was specifically excluded from the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, which failed to address this significant source of carbon emissions."
Al Gore – “An Inconvenient Truth”:
Greenpeace:
“In the next 24 hours, deforestation will release as much CO2 into the atmosphere as 8 million people flying from London to New York. Stopping the loggers is the fastest and cheapest solution to climate change. So why are global leaders turning a blind eye to this crisis?” … “The accelerating destruction of the rainforests that form a precious cooling band around the Earth's equator, is now being recognised as one of the main causes of climate change. Carbon emissions from deforestation far outstrip damage caused by planes and automobiles and factories ...deforestation accounts for up to 25 per cent of global emissions of heat-trapping gases, while transport and industry account for 14 per cent each; and aviation makes up only 3 per cent of the total” [http://environment.independent.co.uk/climate_change/article2539349.ece]
See: www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/Deforestation.htm for details
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Science Is Ignored
The sob story is that African countries and other poor nations need more money because they will be impacted the most due to CO2. But this doesn’t match reality. The following figure shows the global temperature change from 1978 to 2006 from satellite data [http://climate.uah.edu/25yearbig.jpg].
The following figure is from the UN IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) Figure 9.6 (2007) [http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr_spm.pdf]. It shows the change in temperature (C per decade) by latitude. The black line shows the observed temperature, the blue band shows the output of the computer models including only natural factors, whereas the pink band shows the output of computer models including anthropogenic CO2. Notice that the models without CO2 (blue shaded area) can explain all of the warming for most of the world up to 30 degrees north latitude, including Africa. In addition, the warming in the tropics is minimal.
There has been no warming in Africa for more than 10 years. The following figure shows the average temperature anomalies for three regions of Africa from the Hadley CRUTEM3 database (used by the IPCC) and plotted at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute [http://climexp.knmi.nl/selectfield_obs.cgi?someone@somewhere] for 1998 to 2008.
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The Global Humanitarian Forum (GHF) was founded in 2007 by Kofi Annan (former Secretary General of the United Nations). Annan, the president of the GHF, wrote the report introduction – “Message from the President” in which he makes the following statement: “Ninety-nine percent of all casualties occur in developing countries. A stark contrast to the one percent of global emissions attributable to some 50 of the least developed nations. If all countries were to pollute so little, there would be no climate change.”
This is in contradiction to the United Nations Food and Agriculture statement in a 2006 release: “Most people assume that global warming is caused by burning oil and gas. But in fact between 25 and 30 percent of the greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere each year – 1.6 billion tonnes – is caused by deforestation. … ” [http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2006/1000385/index.html]. The same U.N. FAO release states: “Delegates of the 46 developing countries present at the Rome workshop signalled their readiness to act on deforestation, 80 percent of which is due to increased farmland to feed growing populations. … But they also stressed that they needed financial help from the developed world to do the job.”
As described at rainforest site Mongabay [http://rainforests.mongabay.com/20afrotropical.htm]: “Sub-Saharan Africa has long been considered one of the poorest regions on earth despite its rich biological diversity and mineral wealth. The rapid population growth of the region—among the highest in the world—combined with high rates of urbanization have promoted these unsustainable activities”
GHF board members include Michel Camdessus (former member of the Commission for Africa), Mary Chinery-Hesse (joined UN in 1981 - now chief advisor to president of Ghana), Jan Egeland (currently special advisor to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon), Ricardo Lagos (UN Special Envoy to Ban Ki Moon for global response to climate change) and Rajendra Pachauri (Chairman of UN International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)). (See [http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/HumanImpact.htm#forum] for a more detailed examination of the GHF.)
The GHF report also included Jeffrey Sachs (Special Adviser to the UN Secretary-General on the Millennium Development Goals) on the advisory panel. Sachs wrote regarding the need to transfer more wealth from the rich to the poor countries: “A global tax on carbon-emitting fossil fuels might be the way to begin.” [http://www.cid.harvard.edu/cidinthenews/articles/sf9108.html]
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The United Nations Millennium Development Goals: “Climate change threatens sustainable development, especially the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Unless adaptation to climate change is funded through additional channels, the growing impact of climate change is expected to consume an increasing share of development aid. Official development assistance alone amounted to $120 billion in 2008. This amount is already insufficient to reach international development goals“. (from the GHF report)
This is what it’s all about. “Copenhagen is likely to generate some sort of global pricing system on emissions. It must go for mechanisms and sanctions, including a globally accepted solution on taxing CO2. …Any climate policy must also compensate for these effects through financial redistribution” (from the GHF report)
The World Economic Forum Global Governance Initiative monitors the efforts to achieve the MDGs. The 2006 report states: “the world is still investing less than half the effort needed” [http://www.weforum.org/en/initiatives/glocalgovernance/index.htm]
The United Nations University has studied methods of increasing funding. “A global tax on carbon use of just one cent/yen per liter, levied only on high-income countries, would by itself raise the necessary additional $50 billion of annual revenue [required for the MDGs]. … A progressive carbon tax rate … would more accurately reflect the unequal distribution of world income.” [http://update.unu.edu/archive/issue34_9.htm]
The goal of the UN: “reversing the widening and ‘shameful’ gap between rich and poor countries ‘is the pre-eminent moral and humanitarian challenge of our age.’" And sub-Saharan Africa, they noted, should be a priority.” [http://www.un.org/ecosocdev/geninfo/afrec/vol15no4/154finan.htm])
“The revenue potential appears large – a fuel-consumption tax on CO2 emissions could by itself finance the MDGs. … It would require that the United States opt for it, however; 20 per cent of the tax yield would originate there alone.” From “Financing Development, Aid and Beyond”, OECD Development Centre [http://books.google.com/books?id=_XvLvuRd4-8C]
While the MDGs may be laudable – reducing poverty around the world is a great idea – they should be funded on an honest basis, not under the artificial guise of “climate change”.
Obama sponsored the “Global Poverty Relief Act” in 2007 when he was a senator. The act would have increased US foreign aid to address poverty by 0.7 percent of GNP ($845 billion over 13 years). [http://www.aim.org/aim-column/obamas-global-tax-proposal-up-for-senate-vote/]
An interesting coincidence – now that Obama is president, the African Union came up with a need of $67 billion per year – very close to the $65 billion per year that Obama’s Global Poverty Relief Act would have provided if it had passed.
“Over the past 60 years at least $1 trillion of development-related aid has been transferred from rich countries to Africa. Yet real per-capita income today is lower than it was in the 1970s, and more than 50% of the population -- over 350 million people -- live on less than a dollar a day, a figure that has nearly doubled in two decades. … roughly $50 billion of international assistance already goes to Africa each year … Aid flows destined to help the average African end up supporting bloated bureaucracies in the form of the poor-country governments and donor-funded non-governmental organizations.” (from “Why Foreign Aid is Hurting Africa” [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123758895999200083.html]).
The convergence of African aid and the environmental movement is growing. The current president of the alarmist World Wildlife Fund (WWF) is Emeka Anyaoku – former head of special advisory UN panel New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) appointed by Kofi Annan: “NEPAD cannot succeed without a significant increase in support from the international community … The money saved by the recommended cancellation of debt should be channelled to the development objectives in the Millennium Development Goals.” [http://www.un.org/apps/news/storyAr.asp?NewsID=14491&Cr=nepad&Cr1=]
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More Information on Africa:
Global Humanitarian Forum: http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/HumanImpact.htm
Deforestation in Africa: http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/Deforestation.htm http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/BiomassBurning.htm
Global Warming in Africa (and Reuters’ constant misrepresentation): http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/ReutersAfrica.htm
Regional Climate and Impact Studies: Sahel: http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/RS_Sahel.htm Kenya: http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/RS_Kenya.htm East Africa: http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/RS_EastAfrica.htm Malawi: http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/RS_Malawi.htm Southern Africa: http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/RS_SouthernAfrica.htm
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