Climate Conversation Group

An evicted woman showed proof of her family’s land ownership.

Ugandans left homeless, child dies

The UN’s ingenious global warming money-making scheme, called the clean development mechanism (CDM), was predicted to lead to abuse and fraud. The essence of the CDM is built around trust, so you just know it’s headed for disaster. Another scandal has come to light, in Uganda.

A reader posted a link to a dramatic headline at Prison Planet, Armed Troops Burn Down Homes, Kill Children To Evict Ugandans In Name Of Global Warming. Which quickly took my attention away from the All Blacks’ fine win against France.

The Prison Planet story was taken from a NY Times story with a milder headline: In Scramble for Land, Group Says, Company Pushed Ugandans Out. In that story, it turns out that a single child was murdered when his house was burned down.

The NY Times article, in turn, was taken from an Oxfam report about land grabs. So some of the lurid flavour of the story has been watered down, though there’s plenty left of concern. Read more… »

So, it’s official: the possibility of a replacement being hammered out for the Kyoto Treaty now appears remote.

It will be “physically impossible” to have a detailed deal to tackle climate change by this December’s summit in Copenhagen, UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer said on Wednesday in Bonn.

The “four tough nuts”, as he termed them, were proving extremely difficult to crack because, he said, the “delivery on four political essentials”, on which success in Copenhagen would depend, was turning out to be “impossible”. Read more… »

I just emailed Barry Coates, Executive Director of Oxfam New Zealand, thus:

Dear Barry,

Your article in the Herald today attracted my attention, since I am interested in the general topic of global warming, but I also experienced a certain (perhaps naive) surprise at Oxfam’s connection with global warming. Clearly you believe in the hypothesis of dangerous man-made global warming; I hope you don’t mind if I ask some questions about it.

First, some facts seem to have come unstuck from reality. Read more… »