This Pretty Much Spells The End

Reuters is reporting: each nation will set its own policies regarding global warming and greenhouse gas emissions.

A U.S.-led plan to let all countries set their own goals for fighting climate change is gaining grudging support at U.N. talks, even though the current level of pledges is far too low to limit rising temperatures substantially.

The approach, being discussed this week at 160-nation talks in Bonn, Germany, would mean abandoning the blueprint of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which set central goals for industrialized countries to cut emissions by 2012 and then let each work out national implementation.

Attempts to agree a successor to Kyoto have foundered above all on a failure to agree on the contribution that developing countries should make to curbing the industrial emissions responsible for global warming - greenhouse gases. The next ministerial conference to try to reach a deal is scheduled for Paris in 2015.

Look at the data points:

• European countries -- historically much more aggressive on global warming than the rest of the world -- once the global leaders on global warming, are now in the spectator seats, watching 
• Canada pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol; the US never signed
• the Kyoto Protocol died; no extension; no substitute; no nothing 
• 2013: a "nothing" plan; led by the US 
• 2015: next scheduled ministerial meeting on subject
• 2020: when the pact will "enter into force" (using the word "force" liberally)
• "commitments" changed to "contributions"
• carbon dioxide prices collapsed in Europe which weakened EU leadership; baton passed to a "lame duck" president and speech-giver
• US and China agreed, last month, to work more closely together. LOL
• 2012 was the ninth warmest year since records began in the 19th century (and we know how accurate those records were); ninth warmest year, which also means the warmest years are now behind us
• temperatures are already up by 0.8 degree C since pre-industrial times; neither statistically significant nor reproducible
• polar bears are thriving

The only question I have: who determines what the earth's thermostat should be set at?

As soon as China publishes its new "global warming" policy, I will post it.