Former UN Climate Chief issues new 2020 Climate ‘Turning Point’
By Paul Homewood
http://www.mission2020.global/M2020%20press%20release.pdf
Christiana Figueres has not been twiddling her fingers since stepping down from the UNFCCC. Instead, she is at the forefront of the campaign group, Mission 2020.
They have recently issued this press release:
http://www.mission2020.global/M2020%20press%20release.pdf
The report on which these recommendations are based was called “2020: The Climate Turning Point”.
So how realistic are its findings?
It starts by underlining just how meaningless the whole Paris shebang was in terms of reducing emissions.
http://www.mission2020.global/2020%20The%20Climate%20Turning%20Point.pdf
As we are all aware, the declared aim of Paris, to keep warming below 2C, was not met by actions. Even if we assume that CO2 emissions have any significant effect on temperatures, emissions would have to fall off the edge of a cliff after 2030 to meet that target.
Mission 2020 want drastic action to start before 2020, in order to make this plummet not quite as steep.…
Oh No! Not another ‘tipping point!’: World must hit zero carbon emissions ‘well before 2040’, scientists warn – ‘To prevent global warming getting out of hand’
Humans must reduce net greenhouse gases emissions to zero “well before 2040” in order to ensure global warming does not go above 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, scientists have warned after carrying out a study using a sophisticated new computer model.
The analysis suggests that efforts to prevent temperatures rising to potentially dangerous levels may have to rely heavily on “negative emissions” technology that is still in its infancy.
Commenting on the study, Professor Richard Betts, head of climate impacts at the UK’s Met Office Hadley Centre, said the “important” research spelled out the “enormous challenge” ahead.
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The new study, described in a paper in the journal Nature Communications, is one of the first to use the new FeliX computer model, which includes social and economic factors along with environmental ones.
One of the researchers, Dr Michael Obersteiner, of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis near Vienna, said: “The FeliX model … provides a unique systemic view of the whole carbon cycle, which is vital to our understanding of future climate change and energy.
“The study shows that the combined energy and land-use system should deliver zero net anthropogenic emissions well before 2040 in order to assure the attainability of a 1.5C target by 2100.”
This does not necessarily mean that humans would have to stop burning fossil fuels in little over 20 years, as the researchers included natural carbon sinks – such as forests – and the use of carbon-capture technology in their calculations.…
John Kerry at MIT warns of climate ‘catastrophe’: We are in an urgent ‘race against time’
At MIT, U.S. Secretary of State highlights peril of climate change, economic promise of clean energy.Watch Video
Peter Dizikes | MIT News Office
January 9, 2017
Amid record temperatures and rising sea levels that stem in large part from carbon emissions, Kerry stated, we must act quickly “to avoid the catastrophe we will inevitably see if we allow carbon emissions to go up, and up, and up.” Moreover, he added, “We need to speed it up dramatically because we are in a race against time.”
However, speaking before a capacity audience of about 250 people in MIT’s Samberg Conference Center, Kerry talked at greater length about the upsides of a prospective clean-energy revolution, referencing the falling prices of wind and solar power and observing that by making renewable energy a major growth industry, “we can put millions of people to work.”
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry speaks at MIT on Jan. 9, 2017.
Video: MIT Institute Events
The speech constituted one of the last major public statements Kerry is expected to make on climate change as Secretary of State before he leaves office with the change of administration later this month. Climate change efforts have been a key part of Kerry’s portfolio, and he highlighted the State Department’s recent work on the topic.
Kerry hailed the 2015 Paris Agreement, in which over 190 countries agreed to limit greenhouse gas emissions, and contended that the extensive bilateral U.S.-China climate negotiations, leading to a 2014 announcement of climate cooperation, “changed the whole playing field” by showing how committed the two countries were to an evolving approach on energy.
The Paris Agreement also signaled to entrepreneurs, innovators, and investors that the renewable energy sector would remain a growth industry, Kerry said, and he called on his audience to participate in the transformation of energy.
“Brilliant minds trained at MIT are behind some of the most transformative innovations in history,” Kerry said, suggesting the Institute’s students and entrepreneurs could help mitigate climate change while developing “the greatest economic opportunity the world has ever known.”
Maria Zuber, MIT’s vice president for research, introduced Kerry before
SHOCK: The ‘Father of global warming’, James Hansen, dials back alarm
James Hansen: We Have a Little More Time After All (Whew!)
By Robert Bradley Jr.
“Contrary to the impression favored by governments, the corner has not been turned toward declining emissions and GHG amounts…. Negative CO2 emissions, i. e., extraction of CO2 from the air, is now required.”
– James Hansen, “Young People’s Burden.” October 4, 2016.
“The ponderous response of the climate system also means that we don’t need to instantaneously reduce GHG amounts.”
– James Hansen, “We Hold Truths to be Self-Evident“ December 2, 2016.
What a difference a few months make!
Just in time for holiday season, and for the Trump Administration, the father of the climate alarm, formerly a climate scientist with NASA/GISS, and now a full-time scientist/activist, has ameliorated his grand climate alarm. The 10-year ultimatum announced in 2006, made more dire in 2009 and since, is now moderated.
…
The ponderous response of the climate system also means that we don’t need to instantaneously reduce GHG amounts. However, despite uncertainties about some climate processes, we know enough to say that the time scale on which we must begin to reduce atmospheric GHG amounts is measured in decades, not centuries. Given the fact that the fastest time scale to replace energy systems is decades, that means that we must get the political processes moving now. And that won’t happen until the public has understanding of what is actually needed and demands it.…
The Guardian’s “100 Months To Save The World”
The Guardian’s “100 Months To Save The World”
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2016/10/02/the-guardians-100-months-to-save-the-world/
By Paul Homewood https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/aug/01/climatechange.carbonemissions
Eight years ago, the Guardian launched its “100 months to save the world” campaign, a series of monthly posts by Andrew Simms.
The basic message of that first article was that we were all doomed unless we transformed our economy to look something like Cuba’s.
It is worth emphasising that this was not 100 months to get some sort of climate agreement. In Simms’ own words:
Because in just 100 months’ time, if we are lucky, and based on a quite conservative estimate, we could reach a tipping point for the beginnings of runaway climate change. That said, among people working on global warming, there are countless models, scenarios, and different iterations of all those models and scenarios. So, let us be clear from the outset about exactly what we mean.
The concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere today, the most prevalent greenhouse gas, is the highest it has been for the past 650,000 years. In the space of just 250 years, as a result of the coal-fired Industrial Revolution, and changes to land use such as the growth of cities and the felling of forests, we have released, cumulatively, more than 1,800bn tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere. Currently, approximately 1,000 tonnes of CO2 are released into the Earth’s atmosphere every second, due to human activity. Greenhouse gases trap incoming solar radiation, warming the atmosphere. When these gases accumulate beyond a certain level – often termed a “tipping point” – global warming will accelerate, potentially beyond control.
In other words, if we did not take action to immediately start cutting emissions, within eight years it could be too late to do anything about it.
The “100 month” figure was, apparently, not just plucked out of the air, as Simms goes on:
So, how exactly do we arrive at the ticking clock of 100 months? It’s possible to estimate the length of time it will take to reach a tipping point. To do so you combine current greenhouse gas concentrations with the best estimates for the rates at which emissions are growing, the maximum concentration of greenhouse gases allowable to forestall potentially irreversible changes to the climate system, and the effect of those environmental feedbacks. We followed the latest data and trends for carbon dioxide, then made …
The Guardian’s ‘100 months to save the planet’ was always just a fantasy
The Guardian’s ‘100 months to save the planet’ was always just a fantasy
By Paul Homewood http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/10/08/the-guardians-100-months-to-save-the-planet-was-always-just-a-fa/
Homewood
Booker follows up on my post last week:
You may not have noticed, but 2016 was the hottest year for over 100,000 years. At least this was the claim reported last week by The Guardian, under the headline “Planet at its hottest for 115,000 years thanks to climate change, experts say”.
The “experts” in question are a bunch of US scientists led by James Hansen, the former Nasa employee who did so much to set the great global warming scare on its way in 1988. And of course such a claim could only be made by ignoring all the evidence that the earth was actually hotter than today during the Mediaeval Warm Period, less than 1,000 years ago, and even more so during the thousands of years of the Holocene Optimum, following its emergence from the last ice age 10,000 years ago.
But Hansen and his gang do not stop there. They argue that we can only hope to save the planet by finding ways to suck vast quantities of CO2 out of the atmosphere, at a cost, they estimate, of up to $570 trillion. That figure which may trip off the tongue, but it equates to seven times the world’s entire current annual GDP, or $77,000 for every human being now alive.
British explorer Lewis Gordon Pugh (right) kayaks past polar ice in the Arctic Credit: Jason Roberts/AFP Photo
If this only shows how dottily desperate some of our wilder climate alarmists have become, we may come back to earth a little by focusing on another version of the great climate scare which also got The Guardian very excited eight years ago, when it launched a campaign under the heading “The final countdown”. This proclaimed that we then had only “100 months” left to save the world from “irreversible climate change”: soaring temperatures, melting ice caps, dangerously rising sea levels, more hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, and all the other familiar harbingers of catastrophe.
Now those “100 months” are up, it has prompted the diligent Paul Homewood to publish on his website, Not A Lot of People Know That, a set of graphs meticulously compiled from official data. The show what has actually happened to the earth’s climate in these past …
Rush Limbaugh: Libs Come Up with Reason Algore’s Prediction Didn’t Come True
…Al Gore’s global warming doomsday passes uneventfully
Here we are on Jan. 26, 2016. Do you feel the heat? Do you see the clouds are gone and the sky is glowing red?
Ten years ago, on Jan. 25, 2006, Al Gore stood before his Sundance audience at the screening of his “An Inconvenient Truth.” Gore waved his quivering finger in the air and told his audience that unless the world takes drastic measures to reduce greenhouse gases within the next 10 years, we will reach a point of no return.
Gore said our CO2 emissions would cause Earth to go into a runaway heat death.
The Washington Post reported Al Gore “believes humans may have only 10 years left to save the planet from turning into a total frying pan.”
CBS News wrote Gore predicted the earth would be in “a true planetary emergency” within the next 10 years unless drastic action is taken to reduce greenhouse gases.
Gore’s people have been singing like the Donkey in “Shrek,” “I believe, I believe.”
Eco-freak groups have tried in vain to save the planet from our CO2. Don’t they know it’s too late? It’s over? We’re done for? Nothing they can do now can save Earth. Al Gore said so. They can relax now and enjoy the heat before we all perish.
Could it be that Al Gore is mistaken? That cannot be. If Gore is wrong then he has betrayed millions of global warmers. They have devoted their lives to Al Gore. Their devotion is their religion. Because global warming is their religion, they cannot hear, see, or touch any evidence that might prove their religion is wrong.
But. But. But.
Unless there are no more clouds in the sky and no more snow on the ground, then Al Gore is wrong. You know what Richard Feynman said about the scientific method:
If your prediction is wrong then your hypothesis is wrong.
And if you reject the scientific method then you reject true science. Unless you reject your hypothesis that our CO2 causes global warming (or climate change) then your belief is a religion, not science.
You see, Al Gore believed the climate models. But climate models are not reality. Models are but an attempt to simulate reality. We must test models against reality. If the models’ predictions are wrong then the climate models are wrong.
According to the average of climate
DiCaprio’s Panic: ‘Too Late’ to Save Earth From Climate Horror?
Reflecting on last year’s climate conference in Paris, the jet-setting actor pontificated, “The big question is are we too late? That’s been the pondering question for everyone. I know we should all remain optimistic and I want to remain optimistic.” DiCaprio insisted, “But we do know that the scientific community has been screaming out loud for decades. And other interests have stifled their voice and manipulated this conversation.” – See more at: http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/scott-whitlock/2016/01/08/dicaprios-panic-too-late-save-earth-climate-change-horror#sthash.mCshoBjr.dpuf
“But one thing I’m proud of, that for the first time, we’ve seen the world community take this issue seriously. And if they hadn’t, there would be absolutely no hope.” DiCaprio lectured, “I’m just very happy as an environmentalist to see something happen in the right direction.” – See more at: http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/scott-whitlock/2016/01/08/dicaprios-panic-too-late-save-earth-climate-change-horror#sthash.mCshoBjr.dpuf…