NY Mag: ‘The Climate Summit of Money’ at the UN – ‘It will cost sixteen & a half trillion dollars for world to meet its collective Paris goals’

I attended the seventh Investor Summit on Climate Risk, co-sponsored by the U.N. Foundation and the nonprofit sustainability group Ceres, on the heels of the historic Paris Climate Summit. Five hundred investors representing twenty-two trillion dollars in assets convened at the U.N.’s iconic East Side headquarters, where they heard from some of the negotiations’ highest-profile players, including Christiana Figueres, the U.N. climate chief; Ségolène Royal, France’s minister of ecology, sustainable development, and energy; and Michael Bloomberg, who currently serves as the U.N. special envoy for climate change and cities. The event was, in essence, the Climate Summit of Money, and the question being posed was how to finance the clean-energy transition that Paris promised—a transition that scientists and economists agree must happen quickly if the world is to avert the worst economic impacts of climate change—within the strictures of fiduciary duty. “The tools that you design, the financial structures that you develop, the blends that you are able to put together,” Figueres said, setting the agenda for the day in her address. “All of that, in the next five years, will decide the quality of certainly the energy and certainly the quality of the global economy for the next thirty-five years, and hence the quality of life for everyone else for hundreds of years.”

The International Energy Agency has estimated that it will cost sixteen and a half trillion dollars for the world to meet its collective Paris goals, and the presenters at the conference sliced and diced this ambitious mandate from a variety of angles.…

Watch: Al Gore’s TED Talk: AGW causing more lightening, downpours, Zeka, Typhoons – ‘The case for optimism on climate change’ (Full Transcript)

Watch Video here:

Al Gore has three questions about climate change and our future. First: Do we have to change? Each day, global-warming pollution traps as much heat energy as would be released by 400,000 Hiroshima-class atomic bombs. This trapped heat is leading to stronger storms and more extreme floods, he says: “Every night on the TV news now is like a nature hike through the Book of Revelation.” Second question: Can we change? We’ve already started. So then, the big question: Will we change? In this challenging, inspiring talk, Gore says yes. “When any great moral challenge is ultimately resolved into a binary choice between what is right and what is wrong, the outcome is foreordained because of who we are as human beings,” he says. “That is why we’re going to win this.”

Transcript:

00:11 I was excited to be a part of the “Dream” theme, and then I found out I’m leading off the “Nightmare?” section of it.

00:19 (Laughter)

00:22 And certainly there are things about the climate crisis that qualify. And I have some bad news, but I have a lot more good news. I’m going to propose three questions and the answer to the first one necessarily involves a little bad news. But — hang on, because the answers to the second and third questions really are very positive.

00:48 So the first question is, “Do we really have to change?” And of course, the Apollo Mission, among other things changed the environmental movement, really launched the modern environmental movement 18 months after this Earthrise picture was first seen on earth, the first Earth Day was organized. And we learned a lot about ourselves looking back at our planet from space. And one of the things that we learned confirmed what the scientists have long told us. One of the most essential facts about the climate crisis has to do with the sky. As this picture illustrates, the sky is not the vast and limitless expanse that appears when we look up from the ground. It is a very thin shell of atmosphere surrounding the planet.That right now is the open sewer for our industrial civilization as it’s currently organized. We are spewing 110 million tons of heat-trapping global warming pollution into it every 24 hours, free of charge, go ahead.

01:57 And there are many sources of the greenhouse gases, I’m

EPA Air Chief refuses to affirm US can meet Paris ‘obligations without the Clean Power Plan’

 

Testifying before the Senate Environment Committee, EPA Air Chief Janet McCabe refuses to affirm if the United States can meet its Paris obligations without the Clean Power Plan. Assistant Administrator McCabe: “I’m saying that there are a number of programs already contemplated and 2025 is many years away… I’m saying that there are many opportunities…”

SENATOR JOHN BARRASSO: “So you’re saying today to this committee that you can meet or the United States can meet the obligations without the Clean Power Plan?”

ASSISTANT ADMINISTRATOR JANET MCCABE: “I’m saying that there are a number of programs already contemplated and 2025 is many years away. I think everybody expected that there would continue to be efforts made to reduce carbon emissions across the wide range of opportunities.”

SENATOR BARRASSO: “So, to meet the US obligations you do not need the clean climate plan, that’s what your saying? That’s your testimony?”

ASSISTANT ADMINISTRATOR MCCABE: “I’m – I’m – I’m saying that there are many opportunities, and I am also confident that the Clean Power Plan will ultimately be upheld and go into effect. But, these are important goals and the United States is committed to meeting them.”

[…]

SENATOR BARRASSO: “The EPA’s own lawyer, the US Solicitor General, called it extraordinary and unprecedented. So it’s not a routine sort of a thing.”

ASSISTANT ADMINISTRATOR MCCABE: “For the Supreme Court to step in, that was unprecedented, but it is not– there’s no expression of any consideration of the merits of the Clean Power Plan. It is a procedural step.”

Hearing: Oversight of the Renewable Fuel Standard
Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works
February 24, 2014…

New paper shows there was a global warming hiatus this century – Published in journal Nature Climate Change

Climate researchers have published a new paper this week in the journal Nature Climate Change that acknowledges there has been a global warming slowdown from 2000-2014. Their research shows a hiatus did indeed occur and continued into the 21st century, contradicting another study last June that said the hiatus was just an artifact that “vanishes when biases in temperature data are corrected.” This is not the first time activists have tried to hide the hiatus by using dodgy methods.

This new paper shows a global warming slowdown or hiatus, the authors write, which has been “characterized by a reduced rate of global surface warming, has been overstated, lacks sound scientific basis, or is unsupported by observations.” They add, “The evidence presented [in this paper] contradicts these claims.” Ouch.

In this new paper, the authors show there is a “mismatch between what the climate models are producing and what the observations are showing,” says lead author John Fyfe, a climate modeller at the Canadian Center for Climate Modelling and Analysis in Victoria, British Columbia. “We can’t ignore it.” Fyfe prefers the term slowdown over hiatus and adds the usual caveats lest he be taken away from the global warming cash cow: it in no way undermines “global warming theory.”…