Friday, October 09, 2015

There Was a Young Treaty From Rio. . . .


A recent microtwittering that Eli became involved in made it clear that there is considerable uncertainty amongst the bunnies and lambs about the relation of various letters in the alphabet soup to each other.  Everybunny sorta knows, but how does it hang together

Eli being a patient soul, really though this would be a good thing to nail down with the upcoming festivities in Paris scheduled to start.  He learned a bit too.  Good visuals can be found on the Norwegian GRID Arendal web site


The IPCC was set up in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the UN Environment Programme to report on the current scientific basis of climate change, associated environmental and economic changes and the possible responses. 

The UNEP is an organization within the United Nations, lead by an Under Secretary General and functioning under the General Assembly, that was established in 

The WMO is an independent UN agency established in 1950 which grew out of the International Meteorological Organization that had been founded much earlier, 1873.  The purpose of the latter was to exchange weather and climate information and standardize measurement instrumentation and methods.  WMO policy is set by the World Meteorological Congress with each of the 191 member states having a representative and its Executive Committee.  

The UNFCCC (UN Framework Convention on Climate Change) is a treaty drafted at the UN Conference on  Environment and Development aka Rio Earth Summit in 1992.  Planning for the conference had started in 1989, and the first IPCC assessment report was an important input. 

It also helps to explain some of the spit one finds on the inside of our computer screens to know that the Conference Secretary-General (e.g. organizer for the UN) was Maurice Strong and one of the major products of the meeting was Agenda 21, a plan for sustainable development.

The UNFCC now has 196 signatory nations who form the Conference of the Parties which implements the treaty


The IPCC through its reports provides technical advice to the COP SBSTA.  The COP SBI evaluated progress under the UNFCCC.  

The COP meets every year, but meetings following IPCC reports are more important.  The most recent meeting, COP15, the Copenhagen Climate Conference in 2009 was at best a damp squib, no matter the best face one could put on it, in part due to the sabotaging effect of hacking correspondence from the Climate Research Unit.

The Kyoto Accords were negotiated at COP 3, in, of course, Kyoto following the 1995 release of the IPCC Second Assessment Report

The upcoming COP 21 at the end of November in Paris is gathering some steam based on significant (not perfect) pledges by the EU, China and the US and many other countries.  Others (Canada, Australia, India) not so much.

Eli is pleased to offer a prize for the best limerick whose first line is 

There Was a Young Treaty From Rio






41 comments:

Tom said...

.... brio

change... mange...

.... Cleo

THE CLIMATE WARS said...

There was a young treaty from Rio
Who just had to get to Paree , so,
To charter a plane,
From the Sheikh of Bahrain
It cancelled its carbon proviso

Anonymous said...

There Was a Young Treaty From Rio
(AKA UNFCCC-o)
But as Tom Harris said,
"Paris is Dead!
What's the worst that could possibly happen to me here in Taiwan with a climate sensitivity that I have arbitrarily decided may approach (but NEVER exceed, so I have decreed) THREE-o?"

(And Russell concurred.)

THE CLIMATE WARS said...

A clever young treaty from Rio
Had never quite been to Paree, so
To charter a jet
Let the cap and trade set go
Exempt from its carbon proviso

Is wheelism a limbot ?

Kevin O'Neill said...

There was a young treaty from Rio
Who lost the 2 for her CO
Pseudoskeptics did cheer
when this they did hear
Until the COPs corrected the typo

THE CLIMATE WARS said...

By the shore of rabbit hutches
Where the dactyls limp on crutches
Rose a meter never spoken
From the Yukon to Hoboken
Nor was it heard in the tepee
Of the mighty
IPCC

THE CLIMATE WARS said...


( Skipping 296 pages to cut to the chase : )

To the shore of lapin hutches
Where the clerihews hop in clutches
Came the mighty IPCC
Like a cloud of smoke or ozone
From a peace pipe none dare toke on
Like white birchbark lay the treaty,
Unsigned by all but Warren Beatty.

Fernando Leanme said...

I think they need to add a few more UN committees, scientific panels, and meetings to make it more efective. For example, the SBSTA needs a parallel organization, the SBPPEA (subsidiary body for project planning and economic advice). This will help improve the proposed top down solutions being recommended, most of which are ineffective and yield more harm than positive results. What we want is to avoid steps such as subsidies for luxury toys for the rich, such as Tesla Model S, or dumb moves like programs to install solar panels in Iceland.

Anonymous said...

"Is wheelism a limbot?"

A sore subject, as wheelism has lost a majority of his older male relatives to voluntary prefrontal limbotomies. DumbFox, every one.

THE CLIMATE WARS said...

If I had a bottle in front of thee
I'd villify the frontal lobotomy
How ever did that cut ignoble
Win a big prize like the Nobel ?

Jeffrey Davis said...

The treaty from Rio Janeiro
about the bad stuff in our air-o
Was signed of the line
By folks with no spine
And a terrible love for dinero.


EliRabett said...

So far Jeffrey Davis is in the lead, but time remains.

The Judges

THE CLIMATE WARS said...

Ther was a young treaty from Rio
That had never quite got to Paree, so
To charter a jet
From the cap and trade set
Let them go with a tax-free proviso

caerbannog said...

There Was a Young Treaty from Rio,
That's Hated by Exxon's CEO.
He Deserves a Good Lick
With Mann's Hockey Stick
Swung by an Actor Named Leo.

Anonymous said...

The Treaty Birth'd South of Nantucket
Is Twenty Three Now, and With Luck it
Will Lead to Decisions
That Stop Our Emissions
Despite Buckets of Ducats Intended to F@ck it.

THE CLIMATE WARS said...

A treaty birthed south of Nantucket
Deserves a harpoon, and with luck it
Will soon wash ashore
And no more be a bore
Our Quakers will doubtless deduct it.

Anonymous said...

Fred, Eli said, was a true BSD,
But Russell loves to tussle and expose his Moby.

THE CLIMATE WARS said...

Wheelism should note the address on this Nature correspondence before proceeding :

Nature 423, 917 (26 June 2003) | doi:10.1038/423917b

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

(But the Nantucket thing IS a delightful coincidence.) :-)

Anonymous said...

There once was a treaty from Rio;
T'was the bane of one Senator Theo;
He said, "Quit yer whinin';
The temps are declining...';
if you only measure from LEO."


OK, obscure references, but space scientists ought to be busting a gut. Theodore is of course Ted Cruz given name, and LEO refers to Low Earth Orbit.

THE CLIMATE WARS said...

There was a young treaty from Rio
That wanted to wow gay Paree so
It cried: " All aboard!"
A palm oil fueled Concorde
That flew carbo,-free though a bit slow

Anonymous said...

(Perhaps a blend of fish and vegetable oils - Flight of the Codcorns?)

THE CLIMATE WARS said...

There was a young treaty from Rio
That steamed up the Seine with great brio
Having obtained by barter
A whale - oil offset charter
Both Idsos cried when it did so

Anonymous said...

This emissions derision's a denier tradition.
Cries of HYPOCRISY! to distract from their debauchery.

By boat or by plane -
sky-high or in Seine -

Paris must succeed.

Anonymous said...

(Would that I could pronounce "Pielke.")

THE CLIMATE WARS said...

Learning to pronounce Pielke could lead downslope to a Meineke Muffler jingle contest,

Anonymous said...

Given what we've done to this thread, I doubt that downslope would be statistically significant. No point in trying to hide the decline....

THE CLIMATE WARS said...

I'll try to be more diplomatic :

There was a young treaty from Rio
Who disliked the tone of Paris so
That it wrote a demarche
That the Pielkes found harsh
Sending both home by aviso

Anonymous said...

That's lovely.

Anonymous said...

(Somewhat less diplomatically:)

"This movable feast," spake the Treaty,
"May well prove more fatty than meaty,
But proposals unspoken
Are worse than those token.
The Pielkes and Idsos can eat me."

Anonymous said...

(With apologies to The Great One for dabbling in his art.)

THE CLIMATE WARS said...

One thing for sure, the ton

ain't been bon.

Anonymous said...

(A tour de quartz, Sir,
But just a distraction.
It's clear
To my ear
That you're preaching inaction.)

THE CLIMATE WARS said...

Get the wax out: I'm preaching Wittgenstein in the face of folks shouting Frankenstein

Anonymous said...

Well said, and well deserved.

Anonymous said...

(Though if I had a stein in front of me,
I'd prefer a German-speaking principality.)

Anonymous said...

(Biding time until the big reveal
Is like a Biden cand'acy: Unreal.
Do what you must
[In Eli I Trust],
But Unum that Plurbus before I frickin' squeal.)

Unknown said...

There once was a treaty of Rio
Which warned of the risks of two-C-O,
For to cut it's the way,
but the nations did say
"You first, and then me-oh"

Anonymous said...

(Did I call the Biden thing, or what? Shame that I can't spell 'pluribus.')

You never told us what David won.

Anonymous said...

Semiannual check-in.

(I miss playing with Russell.)