[Reprint from E&E – November 19, 2013 – subscription required]
Excerpt: Conservatives pan Philippines negotiator at warming conference
Jean Chemnick, E&E reporter
Published: Tuesday, November 19, 2013
WARSAW, Poland — The Philippines and its lead negotiator have become folk heroes of the United Nations climate change summit, now in its second week at Poland’s national soccer stadium. Having weathered a devastating typhoon that has left thousands dead, the island nation has become the poster child for an ominous new reality that the talks aim to avoid. But climate skeptic and blogger Marc Morano sees things differently. He had sharp words today for Philippines lead negotiator Yeb Sano, who has pledged not to eat until the conference yields a “meaningful agreement” that might shield other countries from natural disasters like Typhoon Haiyan.”There’s a level of deep exploitation going on, and the U.N. is allowing this and media is feeding this, as if a U.N. treaty is going to prevent future supertyphoons from hitting,” Morano said to an unappreciative audience in one of the stadium’s makeshift conference rooms.
Sano said his action was inspired by concern for his family, which was still coping with Haiyan as he left for the conference. Many other delegates here have stopped eating in solidarity. But Morano, a former aide to Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), compared the belief that policy can change the weather to “medieval witchcraft.” “This is supposed to be the modern age,” he said. He also panned the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — the U.N. climate science body that warned there’s growing certainty that man-made climate change is occurring — as a front for international bureaucrats.
“They don’t want you to know that these are political statements issued by a small group of scientists and designed to create the illusion of consensus,” he said.
Morano also praised Australia — treated by most conference attendees as a villain for not sending a minister to the talks and starting work to repeal its carbon tax. The United States, he said, would follow Australia’s lead after the next presidential election.
Morano has attended the last several conferences of the parties (COPs) to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, and this year was modest in comparison. He and Lord Christopher Monckton jumped out of an airplane two years ago in Durbin, South Africa.
Monckton was escorted out of last year’s meeting in Doha, Qatar, after posing as a delegate for Myanmar to gain access to a microphone to explain to the plenary why climate change isn’t happening. With Monckton now banned from all COPs, Morano was joined on the dais here by retired astronaut Walter Cunningham, 81, who was the lunar module pilot in the Apollo 7 mission in 1968.”I’m a realist,” Cunningham said. “I believe in science and the scientific process.”
Climate change advocates, he said, had arrived at their views through emotion, not reason, and the media have been duped. The only way to fight “alarmists” is to convince the media that they have been taken in, he said.
E&ENEWS PM HEADLINES — Tuesday, November 19, 2013
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