Trump’s victory turns UN delegates into climate ‘zombies’ at summit
http://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Is-Trump-s-victory-game-over-for-climate-10605356.php
“A third of the people here are walking around like zombies, like the walking dead, not sure what to do,” said UC Berkeley Professor Daniel Kammen, speaking from Morocco.
President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to back out of last year’s landmark Paris climate accord — the same agreement the negotiators in Marrakech are trying to implement. He has pledged to scuttle President Obama’s Clean Power Plan to cut carbon emissions from power plants, and he has promised to revive America’s flagging coal industry.
“Trump has said he’s against everything we’ve been making progress on, from the transition off of coal to being an international leader on climate,” Kammen said.…
Study: Greenhouse effect slowing down – Plants have ‘paused’ the growing CO2 levels in the atmosphere
- Plants have helped soak up greenhouse gases from human activity
- The extra CO2 pumped into the atmosphere has been used by plants
- By acting as a ‘carbon sink’ plant life has dramatically reduced the impact
- But scientists warn that forests and vegetation should not be viewed as the solution to global warming and rising CO2 levels
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Carbon-hungry plants may have ‘paused’ the growing build-up of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, scientists claim.
A new study suggests that while human activity continues to pour out increasing amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2), raising the risk of catastrophic global warming, mother nature has come to the planet’s rescue.
Rising CO2 is said to have stimulated the growth of more photosynthesising plants, which in turn have captured more of the greenhouse gas from the atmosphere and kept its levels in check.
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Changes in the growth rate of atmospheric CO2. The black line is the growth rate and the beige line is the modelled rate. The red line indicates a significant increase in the growth rate from 1959 to 2002, and the blue line indicates no increasing trend between 2002 and 2014
Between 2002 and 2014, rising levels of atmospheric CO2 have held steady at about 1.9 parts per million (ppm) per year.
Even though the gas was still accumulating, there was no acceleration in the build-up.
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Photosynthesising plants absorb carbon, which they use to produce sugar and starch using energy from sunlight.
The more carbon there is in the atmosphere, the more plant growth is stimulated.
For this reason, large forested areas of the Earth, such as the Amazon basin, are important ‘carbon sinks’.
Between 2002 and 2014, rising levels of atmospheric CO2 have held steady at about 1.9 parts per million (ppm) per year. Atmosphereic carbon dioxide has increased dramatically compared with pre-industrialisation levels
CARBON SINKS AND HUNGRY PLANTS
As plants photosynthesise they absorb carbon, which they use to …
Great news! No need for UN or EPA– It’s too late! Climate change may be escalating so fast it could be ‘game over’, scientists warn
New research suggests the Earth’s climate could be more sensitive to greenhouse gases than thought, raising the spectre of an ‘apocalyptic side of bad’ temperature rise of more than 7C within a lifetime
Ian Johnston Environment Correspondent
If the Earth’s temperature rises seven degrees Celsius, it could trigger the kind of runaway global warming that may have turned Venus from a habitable planet into a 460C version of hell
It is a vision of a future so apocalyptic that it is hard to even imagine.
But, if leading scientists writing in one of the most respected academic journals are right, planet Earth could be on course for global warming of more than seven degrees Celsius within a lifetime.
And that, according to one of the world’s most renowned climatologists, could be “game over” – particularly given the imminent presence of climate change denier Donald Trump in the White House.
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Scientists have long tried to work out how the climate will react over the coming decades to the greenhouse gases humans are pumping into the atmosphere.
According to the current best estimate, by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), if humans carry on with a “business as usual” approach using large amounts of fossil fuels, the Earth’s average temperature will rise by between 2.6 and 4.8 degrees above pre-industrial levels by 2100.
However new research by an international team of experts who looked into how the Earth’s climate has reacted over nearly 800,000 years warns this could be a major under-estimate.
Because, they believe, the climate is more sensitive to greenhouse gases when it is warmer.
globaltemperature.jpg
A reconstruction of the Earth’s global mean temperature over the last 784,000 years, on the left of the graph, followed by a projection to 2100 based on new calculations of the climate’s sensitivity to greenhouse gases (Friedrich, et al. (2016))
In a paper in the journal Science Advances, they said the actual range could be between 4.78C to 7.36C by 2100, based on one set of calculations.
Some have dismissed the idea that the world would continue to burn fossil fuels despite obvious global warming, but emissions are still increasing …
Trump Victory in ‘Stuns Climate World’
Trump Victory in Presidential Race Stuns Climate World
he global climate community gathering now in Marrakech, Morocco is reeling from the news that the U.S. has elected Donald Trump, a climate denier, to be the next U.S. president.
The outcome was an unwelcome surprise and bitter disappointment to many climate negotiators, experts and activists at the 22nd session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 22). The latest round of United Nations climate talks aimed to quickly turn the goals of last year’s Paris agreement into action and was counting on America, the second-largest greenhouse gas emitter, to not only meet its climate goals but also take greater action in the coming years.
“People are upset,” said Timmons Roberts, an environmental studies professor at Brown University. “But I think there is the feeling that we’ve been through this before with the election in 2000,” when Democrat Al Gore, a climate advocate, lost to Republican George W. Bush, who went on to withdraw the U.S. from the 1997 climate accord, the Kyoto Protocol.
On the campaign trail, Trump, a Republican, backed more fossil fuel production in the U.S. and vowed to “cancel” the Paris agreement. He has repeatedly suggested that climate change is a hoax. His Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton, in contrast, has called for urgent action on climate change. Despite Trump’s record on the issue, some in Marrakech are expressing cautious optimism that he could change his tune when he’s in office.
“President-elect Donald Trump has been the source of a lot of bluster on climate change over the last year,” Hilda Heine, president of the Marshall Islands, told Climate Nexus. “But now that the election campaign has passed and the realities of leadership settle in, I expect he will realize that climate change is a threat to his people and to whole countries which share seas with the U.S. including my own.”…
Trump victory: ‘The Left Just Lost The War On Climate Change’
By James Delingpole
With a climate skeptic running the most powerful nation in the world, the $1.5 trillion per annum climate change industry is going to start to unravel big time. A Trump presidency is likely to be good news for fossil fuels (and heavy industry that needs cheap energy to survive); and very bad news for renewables.
To get an idea of the horrors to come for the greenies, look at how they reacted to the prospect of his new Environmental Protection Agency Dismantler-in-Chief Myron Ebell.
Ebell is an old friend of mine who works on climate and energy issues at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. The fact that he’s an old friend of mine probably tells you all you need to know about where he stands on global warming.
Here’s how Newsweek views him:
…Ebell is sometimes described as climate denier-in-chief, and he revels in it, crowing in his biography that he’s been called one of the leading “misleaders” on climate change and “villain of the month” by one environmental group. David Goldston, a policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund, says Ebell “doesn’t believe in climate change and wants to reverse the advances we’ve had in environmental protection and decimate—if not utterly destroy—the Environmental Protection Agency.” The Competitive Enterprise Institute, Ebell’s employer, “has done everything it can politically and through litigation to block any forward movement on climate and to try to harass anybody who is trying to get forward movement,” Goldston says.
Ebell is also the chairman of the Cooler Heads Coalition, more than two dozen nonprofit groups “that question global warming alarmism and oppose energy rationing policies,” according to the coalition’s website. Those positions line up nicely with Trump’s goals, which include “saving” the coal industry, reviving the Keystone XL oil pipeline and expanding offshore oil drilling.
Ebell has attacked nearly every aspect of Obama’s environmental policies and accomplishments. He has said that the president’s decision in September to sign the Paris climate accord—which commits nations to sharp reductions in the greenhouse gas emissions responsible for climate change—was “clearly an unconstitutional usurpation of the Senate’s authority” because treaties need approval by two-thirds of the Senate. (The White House argued that it was an agreement, not a treaty.) In a speech in August at the Detroit Economic Club, Trump said he would cancel the agreement and stop all payments of U.S. tax dollars to
Trump Victory Deals Blow to Global Fight Against Climate Change
…‘Stunned participants at UN climate talks in Marrakesh’ insist Trump ‘cannot prevent implementation’ of Paris deal
Marrakesh (Morocco) (AFP) – Stunned participants at UN climate talks in Marrakesh insisted Wednesday that climate change denier Donald Trump cannot derail the global shift to clean energy, although some called his victory in US presidential elections a “disaster”.
Trump “cannot prevent the implementation” of the landmark Paris pact, inked in the French capital last December, said Segolene Royal, France’s environment minister and outgoing head of the UN climate forum.
“As I speak, 103 countries representing 70 percent of (greenhouse gas) emissions have ratified it, and he cannot — contrary to his assertions — undo the Paris Agreement,” she told French radio station RTL.
Trump has described global warming as a “hoax” perpetrated by the Chinese government, and has said at different times that he would “renegotiate” or “cancel” the 196-nation deal.
Royal noted that under the terms of the agreement, the United States must wait at least three years before seeking to withdraw.
UN climate chief Patricia Espinosa congratulated Trump on his victory in a statement.
“We look forward to engaging with his administration to take the climate action agenda forward for the benefit of the peoples of the globe,” she said.…
ANALYSIS: PRESIDENT TRUMP WILL REVERSE OBAMA’S ENERGY AND CLIMATE PRIORITIES
Date: 09/11/16 Steven Mufson and Brady Dennis, The Washington Post
Donald J. Trump comes into office with a plan to toss out most of what President Obama achieved on energy and the environment.
While vowing to “cancel” the international Paris climate accord Obama championed, Trump would also rearrange domestic energy and environmental priorities. He wants to open up federal lands to oil and gas drilling and coal mining. He wants to eliminate regulations he calls needless. He would scrap proposed regulations for tighter methane controls on domestic drillers. And he wants to shrink the role of the Environmental Protection Agency to a mostly advisory one and pull back the Clean Power Plan, Obama’s proposed plan to push utilities toward lower carbon emissions.
Although Trump has portrayed himself as the ultimate outsider, in putting together a transition team the New York real estate mogul has chosen veteran Washington insiders, many of them lobbyists for fossil fuel companies and skeptics about climate science.
Oil industry executives were delighted.
“It sure looks a whole lot friendlier than it would have under President Podesta … I mean President Clinton,” Stephen Brown, vice president of government relations for the oil refiner Tesoro, said, referring to John Podesta, the Clinton campaign chairman who views steps to slow climate change a high priority and who led climate efforts under Obama.
Brown predicted that the Paris climate accord “will be scrapped quickly,” obstacles and “procedural hurdles” to infrastructure projects such as pipelines would be reexamined, and regulations about the social cost of carbon and other environmental impacts would be “gone.”
“The Clean Power Plan will die a slow death,” he said, adding that public lands permitting for oil and gas drilling would open up.
Only a day earlier, environmental groups had been planning to immediately press a President-elect Hillary Clinton to stick to a tough set of energy and environmental policies. Clinton had been adamant that she would follow through on the promises Obama made under the Paris climate accord, and vowed to defend and implement the Clean Power Plan and reduce the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions by up to 30 percent in 2025, relative to 2005 levels. Yet environmental groups still believed they had to make sure she did not backslide.
Now the environmental groups that have helped shape Obama’s policies are on the defensive.
Asked how the environmental movement would deal with a President Trump, Bill …
‘Dark Mood in Brussels’: ‘EU unity on climate action could splinter’ – Prez. Trump can kill UN climate deal
Via: http://www.thegwpf.com/president-trump-can-kill-un-climate-deal-warns-eu-carbon-market-chief/
DARK MOOD IN BRUSSELS: PRESIDENT TRUMP CAN KILL UN CLIMATE DEAL, WARNS EU CARBON MARKET CHIEF
Date: 09/11/16 – EurActiv
The election of Donald Trump as President of the United States is a “real and imminent threat” to the fight against climate change, and “completely upends every single element” of the Paris Agreement, making it almost impossible to deliver, the MEP leading EU carbon market reform has warned.
Trump, elected today (9 November), has called climate change a hoax, saying it was “fictional”, and “created by the Chinese”.
The president-elect has threatened to pull the US out of the UN deal to cap global warming at no more than two degrees above pre-industrial levels with an aspirational 1.5 degree target. Today, EU Climate Commissioner Miguel Arias Cañete wrote to Trump, stressing the need for continued EU-US cooperation.
Ian Duncan is the Conservative member of the European Parliament leading the reform of the EU’s Emissions Trading System (ETS), the world’s largest scheme for trading emissions allowances.
Reforming the ETS is a major part of the EU strategy to cut emissions in line with the bloc’s climate commitments.
World governments are this week meeting in Marrakech, Morocco for the COP22 climate conference, which aims to thrash out the practical implication of the landmark pact to cap global warming.
“It completely upends every single element of the Paris Accord and almost certainly makes it impossible to deliver,” Duncan said.
Who will listen to US Secretary of State John Kerry in Marrakech now?, he asked. US officials in Morocco are “speaking for nobody but themselves and for an outgoing administration.”
China and the US, the world’s two biggest emitters, ratified the Agreement at the same time, giving impetus to the push that brought the deal into force on 4 November, much earlier than expected.
“The extraordinary thing about Paris was that it came together in the way it did. The 1.5 degree ambition was an incredible thing to see,” Duncan said, One year on and the US participation is now in jeopardy.
“You can’t have the EU alone addressing climate change and nobody else doing it. Your industries will suffer immediately.”
Duncan, who represents Scotland, added, “The ramifications for climate change are a real and immediate threat.”
Dark mood in European Parliament
Duncan spent this morning at a meeting of MEPs from the other major European political parties. They discussed compromised …
Trump wins U.S. Presidency! Climate Skeptics Rejoice! Set to dismantle & Defund UN/EPA climate agenda!
Climate Depot publisher Marc Morano’s statement on President Elect Donald J. Trump:
Morano: “Climate sanity has been restored to the U.S. No longer do we have to hear otherwise intelligent people in charge in DC blather on about how UN treaties or EPA regulations will control the Earth’s temperature or storminess.
The election of Trump tonight was one of pure enjoyment for those concerned about silly, sovereignty threatening and purely symbolic climate policies that have been imposed on the U.S. without a single vote. Skeptics also enjoyed watching the grieving faces of the mainstream media on CNN, MSNBC, NBC, ABC, CBS, as the Trump election night shock sunk in.
“What they (the Democrats & warmists) are so afraid of is this: Trump is the first Republican Presidential nominee that has ever staked out a strongly science supported skeptical position not only on climate science claims, but also on the so-called ‘solutions’. (See: CLIMATE TRUTH FILE: 2016: Skeptical Talking Points from A-Z on Global Warming – Point-By-Point)
Trump is right on climate science and Trump rightly scares the hell out of the warmists.
Climate skeptics are ready to get down to the serious business of working with a Trump Administration to begin overhauling the U.S. climate and energy policy and battling the climate activists and their ill-gotten agenda achieved through bypassing democracy.
The time for a Clexit has arrived, a U.S. exit from the UN Paris climate agreement.
Trump can now move forward with his scientifically sound and coherent climate and energy policy that he laid out during the campaign.
Skeptics look forward to the following Trump climate agenda:
Donald Trump said on May 26, 2016:
1) Trump pledges to rip up Paris climate agreement in energy speech
2) Trump railed against “draconian climate rules”
3) Trump said he would “cancel” the Paris climate agreement –
4) and withdraw any funding for United Nations programs related to global warming.
End Morano statement
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Background Info on Trump’s plans:
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Breitbart’s James Delingpole analysis:
“To get an idea of the horrors to come for the greenies, look at how they reacted to the prospect of his new Environmental Protection Agency Dismantler-in-Chief Myron Ebell. Ebell is an old friend of mine who works on climate and energy issues at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. The fact that he’s an old friend of mine probably tells you all you need …