Climate activists fighting Trump by the poolside at UN Climate Summit in Morocco
by Tony Ryan Pro-vice Chancellor for Science and Director of the Grantham Centre for Sustainable Futures, University of Sheffield and Duncan Cameron Professor of Plant and Soil Biology, University of Sheffield
Tony Ryan receives funding from the Grantham Foundation and Tony Ryan receives funding from the Grantham Foundation.
We’re here in Morocco for COP22, the latest round of UN climate change talks. Climate experts from across the world have gathered here to decide on the actual detail of the Paris Agreement which was signed last year at the previous conference, COP21.…
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.…
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.”…
Morano headed to Marrakech to challenge UN climate pact as part of CFACT’s delegation
CFACT is sending an expert delegation to COP 22, the UN conference on climate change, which runs from November 7 – 18 in Marrakech, Morocco.
The U.S. election occurs during COP 22. No matter what the outcome, the ramifications of the election for the UN climate pact will be a fascinating topic.
CFACT executive director Craig Rucker asserted, “So much of what people have been told about global warming is flat-out wrong. Climate computer models have greatly exaggerated the current warming trend as well as the severity of extreme weather events worldwide, and ice and sea levels are all normal. These are scientifically recorded facts. The UN climate agreement will enrich a privileged few while placing crushing burdens on free economies, and will accomplish nothing meaningful for the climate. The hard-working people being asked to pay for the UN’s Paris Agreement need to know. CFACT is working to ensure they do.”
The UN made an extraordinary effort to reach agreement while President Obama is still in office. Many of the agreement’s key provisions such as emissions targets, however, were made non-binding to aid President Obama in avoiding Senate ratification. But extreme elements of the climate movement are now seeking to expand the Paris Agreement to include such radical ideas as an international court of “climate justice” and liability for developed nations for “loss and damage” suffered by less-developed nations due to severe weather. They seek to use the ongoing UN process to make such provisions policy whether gradually or overtly.
…
CFACT’s delegation will include Marc Morano, publisher of CFACT’s ClimateDepot, one of the most visited and influential climate news and information services in the world. He served as communications director for the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and has worked in television, radio and print journalism. Marc Morano is the host of Climate Hustle, CFACT’s groundbreaking documentary that premiered during the Paris climate talks last year, and was the #1 movie in America per screen during its national one-night theater event in May.…
Cheers! Warmists in panic: ‘The world’s hard-fought climate action could be stopped in its tracks’ if Trump wins
There are big things happening in the news, especially if you care about climate change.
On Friday, the historic Paris Agreement officially went into effect, months earlier than anyone expected. And on Monday, countries from around the world convened in Marrakesh, Morocco for the beginning of the annual U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), where leaders are hoping to begin the process of turning the agreement from a historic moment into reality.
In a normal year, these two events would be huge, headline making news. But, if you live in the United States, you probably didn’t notice this was going on. You probably didn’t care — too caught up in the final sprint of what has been one of the most divisive presidential elections in recent history.
And, for once — for now, for the next 48 hours — that’s okay. Climate change is a huge story, arguably the biggest story in the world, due to the sheer magnitude of the problem and its consequences. But it’s hard to talk about these two events — the Paris Agreement and the conference to discuss its implementation — unless you know whether Democrat Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump is going to be the next president of the United States. Because depending on who wins the election, the world is facing two very different paths.
…
Donald Trump has a plan, too — but it’s not about helping the United States maintain its position as a leader on climate action. He wants to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement, a process he could begin during his first term and witness the completion of if he is re-elected.
Even if he doesn’t officially pull the United States out of the agreement, the domestic energy policies Trump has made public — opening up offshore drilling and federal coal leases, dismantling the Clean Power Plan — would make it really difficult for the U.S. to meet its commitment of reducing emissions 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. He has also promised to completely cut federal spending on clean energy research and development, which would effectively slow down the transition to a carbon-free economy just as the consequences of unfettered carbon pollution are becoming increasingly clear.
…NBC News: Prospect of ‘President Trump’ Casts Cloud Over UN Climate Conference in Africa
Experts who spend their days plotting contingency plans to avert the effects of climate change are now confronted with another weighty scenario: what happens if Donald Trump wins the election.
A dark cloud is hanging over Marrakesh, Morocco, this week as climate experts and world leaders gather for their first major summit since signing a landmark deal in Paris last year to tackle climate change.
Trump Responds to Obama’s ‘Rattled’ Comment 0:51
The COP 22 climate confab kicks off on Monday — just one day before the U.S. presidential election. And should Americans elect Republican Trump, an avowed climate change skeptic who has pledged to rip up the Paris agreement, experts worry that a slew of global accords could crumble.
“U.S. leadership was critical in getting the Paris agreement across the finish line,” said Elliot Diringer, executive vice president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, a think tank focused on the environment. “Many in Marrakesh will be watching very closely for the election outcome.”
Related: Climate Deal Analysis: The Good, the Bad, the Still Unknown
There is a near-unanimous agreement within the scientific community in accepting that global warming must be addressed immediately or risk catastrophic effects by 2050. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Changefinds that warming temperatures melt polar ice caps, raising sea levels that in turn wash out fresh water supplies, causing droughts and food shortages.
But the Republican presidential nominee has a long history of challenging the science on global warming. Trump has described climate change as a concept concocted by the Chinese government. He has repeatedly referred to it as “bulls***” and “an expensive hoax.”…
10,000 Fly In For Doomed UN Climate Talks – Morano will be there in Africa!
10,000 FLY IN FOR DOOMED UN CLIMATE TALKS
Date: 05/11/16
Ben Webster, The Times
More than 10,000 people are flying to Marrakesh for a UN climate change conference despite officials admitting that they will make little or no progress on key issues.
The two-week meeting, which begins in the Moroccan city on Monday, was declared as the “conference of action”, where 195 countries were supposed to reveal how they will fulfil pledges made a year ago to cut their emissions. Instead, they are likely to agree to suspend talks until 2018.
Previous conferences have produced communiqués with grand titles named after their location, including last year’s Paris Agreement. A UK government source said: “Will there be a Marrakesh Something? There will have to be a decision that basically says we agree to reconvene with a date.”
However, delegates will be able to stay busy thanks to a Michelin guide to the conference supplied by the UN. It lists top hotels, “beauty and wellness spas”, as well as the best beaches.
Full story
…U.S. to Unveil Path to Decarbonize by 2050 in Morocco
By Dean Scott
Oct. 25 — The U.S. will unveil a sweeping plan to decarbonize its economy by 2050 at the Nov. 7–18 climate summit in Morocco, giving other nations a template to draw up their own plans for quickly shifting away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy sources, the top U.S. climate negotiator said Oct. 25.
Under the 2015 Paris climate pact, countries are to develop what negotiator Jonathan Pershing termed “midcentury strategies” to show how they’ll halt rising greenhouse gas emissions and meet the accord’s goal to keep global temperatures from rising no more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) this century compared to the pre-industrial era.
“We’re in the process of developing technical projections for the longer term, not stopping in 2025 but looking out beyond that” to demonstrate how “we squeeze the vast, vast bulk of carbon emissions by 2050,” Pershing said at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center in Washington, D.C.
“The pathways we lay out which we plan to release in a couple of weeks in Morocco will detail scenarios in which the U.S. can build a very low-emission economy that lets us play our part in helping achieve our long-term global target of avoiding dangerous climate change,” Pershing said.…