Troubled Earth Summit

This week a conference will take place in Rio de Janeiro where the alarmists, once again, attempt to spin the climate-debate in their favor. The conference takes place 20 years after the original ‘Earth Summit’ in Rio, but this time the conference is troubled. Not only is the recent empirical evidence proving to be shaky for the alarmists, they also have problems attracting the same attention and star power as they did 20 years ago. Here’s James Delingpole:

The 1992 Rio Earth Summit  was the greatest political gathering the world had ever seen – attended by politicians from 172 countries, including no fewer than 108 presidents and prime ministers.

At the end of it, 154 nations signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) committing themselves to reducing their greenhouse gas emissions in order to prevent ‘dangerous anthropogenic interference with Earth’s climate system’.

In fact, symbolically, it was rather humbling – an example of how humanity coalesced in the face of a common enemy.

Alas, two decades on, about the best Rio +20 can manage is Nick Clegg. President Obama is not going, nor is Angela Merkel, nor David Cameron.

Global warming no longer seems to be quite the urgent threat it was after  a succession of bitingly cold winters and miserable summers.

Like the disastrous Copenhagen, Cancun and Durban  summits before it, the Rio event looks set to be another damp squib, beset by bickering, achieving nothing other than a few vague, non-binding commitments to do something serious some time in the future.

But don’t just simply take Delingpole’s word for it. Professor James Lovelock, once heralded as the guru of evnironmentalists, appears to have come to his senses :

He was once a guru to  environmentalists, claiming climate change would kill billions of humans by the end of this century.

But it seems James Lovelock has had a change of heart.

On the eve of a major environmental summit, he has attacked the modern green movement – declaring its theories ‘meaningless drivel’.

Almost half a century after he revealed his Gaia theory, which inspired a generation of activists, the former Nasa scientists said he believed that rising sea levels were not a problem and that wind turbines were ‘useless’.

The 92-year-old described the modern green movement as a ‘religion’, which used guilt to gain support.

Speaking about climate change, he said: ‘I’m not worried about sea-level rises.’

Good luck with your conference.