CHINA, REALITY SINK NEW KYOTO

[HT:BV]
China has now destroyed Western hopes for a new global warming agreement, just weeks before global talks in Poland aimed at writing a successor for the Kyoto Protocol. China has attached a ransom note to its Polish meeting RSVP: They might go along with a new warming pact if the rich countries agree to hand over $300 billion - per year - to finance the required non-fossil, higher-cost energy systems the West wants.

Don't spend much of your "worry time" on a new climate treaty however, global temperatures tell us that CO2 isn't very important after all:

• Global thermometers stubbornly refused to rise after 1998, and have plummeted in the past two years by more than 0.5 degree C.
• The world is now colder than in 1940, when the Post-WWOII Industrial Revolution started in earnest.

The 2007-08 temperature drop wasn't predicted by the global climate models, but it had been predicted by the sunspots since 2000. Both the absent sunspots and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation now predict a 25-30-year global cooling. After that, the remaining enthusiasm for global warming agreements will presumably have vanished -- without any big payoff to the Chinese government...

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