The G-8, minus China after the premier left the meeting early, agreed to an actual empirical target number for global warming. For those of us who know the facts... we have a pure unadulterated victory. The number is 2 degrees C above the current global temperature.
There is no way that such a number could be reached in a century, even if global warming were a reality.
The average global temperature is now 21.5C and that is roughly .4C above the 20th Century average. In the past 150 years the temperature, starting before human generated CO2, rose only .8C. The chance that the global temperature could rise 2 degrees in the remaining 90 years of this century is close to nil.
Goodbye global warming hysteria. Killed by a target number and, to me, a very clear admission by global leaders that they don't believe in the hysteria.
Postscript: The Wall Street Journal reports that the 2 degrees C is based on pre-industry, not current, global temperatures. So that means a remaining increase of 1.2 degrees C will be allowed (as if these leaders who have never done anything together effectively could do something in the imaginary future). This is inside the possible global temperature range based on the rise in one period of increase in temperature from 1978 to 1998. Otherwise based on any other period it remains a probability close to nil.