Links tagged “emissions”
- UN Climate Ambition Summit Falls Flat – ‘World is in danger of missing Paris climate target’
- UN urges ‘green economic recovery’ – Laments lockdowns (theoretically) only cut 2050 temps by 0.01% – ‘Drop in emissions has had a ‘negligible’ impact on global warming’
UN report: A brief dip in carbon dioxide emissions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic will make no significant difference to long-term climate change.
World is still heading for a catastrophic temperature rise in excess of 3°C this century
CO2 emissions could decrease by about 7 per cent in 2020
- Climate activist Eric Holthaus: COVID lockdowns are ‘teaching us we can do much more than we thought’ on climate – If ‘Covid recovery prioritizes climate policies, global emissions will have permanently peaked in 2019’
Holthaus: Lockdowns gave "a once-in-a-planet chance to reshape our economies and our societies in a way that works with the Earth."
"Globally, emissions in 2020 were roughly the same as they were in 2011. More specifically, 2020-level emissions were last seen in:
2018 in China
2015 in India
1988 in the US
1964 in Europe
Amid all of this year’s pain and suffering, we gave ourselves a once-in-a-planet chance to reshape our economies and our societies in a way that works with the Earth.
Let’s be clear about one thing: A virus is not a climate plan. The Covid pandemic turned back the clock on emissions worldwide. But it’s changed nothing – yet – about the problem that got us here: Extractive capitalism working in partnership with white supremacy, patriarchy, and imperialism. To change everything, we need everyone healthy, valued, and loved."
- EU Commits to 55% Cut in Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Boris to 68% in UK
- Lockdowns Should Make Climate Activists Happy: Global carbon dioxide emissions decline 7% in 2020 – ‘The biggest drop ever’ – USA CO2 drops 12%, Europe drops 11% & China only drops 1.7%
Scientists say this drop is chiefly because people are staying home, traveling less by car and plane, and that emissions are expected to jump back up after the pandemic ends. ... Seven percent is a significant drop no matter how you measure it. But America was well above the global average, registering a drop of 12%. Europe was close on our heels, cutting emissions by eleven percent. Would you care to take a guess as to who showed the smallest decrease? If you said China, give yourself a cookie. They only registered a drop of 1.7%.
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Climate activist Eric Holthaus: COVID lockdowns are ‘teaching us we can do much more than we thought’ on climate – If ‘Covid recovery prioritizes climate policies, global emissions will have permanently peaked in 2019’ - Holthaus: Lockdowns gave "a once-in-a-planet chance to reshape our economies and our societies in a way that works with the Earth."
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- Associated Press: Five years on, signs that Paris climate accord is working: CO2 emissions ‘barely rose globally from 2018 to 2019, then dropped 7% this year because of the pandemic, although it’ll likely rise again’
- ‘Net zero’ climate targets? Read the fine print
- UK Committee on Climate Change’s Net Zero advice to government is ‘a political suicide note’
- A ban on gas boilers would be yet another pointless eco catastrophe
- Watch: Climatologist explains why EPA Endangerment Finding on CO2 should be vacated
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Bill Gates & UN Launch New Climate Agenda – Seeks ‘to kick start a transformational decade’ of climate ‘action’
Boris Johnson, Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron, and Narendra Modi will apparently gather in the Netherlands. There, along with Bill Gates, UN head Antonio Guterres, and personnel associated with the European Union, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund, they’ll attend a climate summit hosted by the Global Center on Adaptation. ...
We’re told this summit "will launch a comprehensive Adaptation Action Agenda to kick start a transformational decade."
Donna Laframboise: "The chutzpah is astonishing. The global economy is in tatters. Billions face an uncertain future. Health care workers are exhausted. Yet this Clique of Self-Important People™ is full speed ahead, determined to impose its climate vision on the rest of us."
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The Return of the Dead: Countering Species Extinction Claims – The most aggressive claims rest on shaky foundations’
In the last 500 years only some 80 mammals are recorded as having gone extinct. In his book, More From Less, Andrew McAfee, a board member of HumanProgress.org, discusses how relatively rare recorded extinctions are – with some 530 across all species in the last five centuries. More importantly, he notes, the rate of extinction “appear[s] to have slowed down in recent decades; for example, no marine creatures have been recorded as extinct in the last fifty years.”
Matt Ridley, another board member and frequent contributor to this site, argues that despite the human population doubling in the last half-century, “the extinction rate of wild species, especially in the most industrialized countries,” seems to have fallen rather than increased. While absence of evidence isn’t the same as evidence of absence, and there might be millions of unrecorded species in the world’s oceans and tropical forests, the most aggressive claims rest on shaky foundations.
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CNN report buries this good news in paragraph 12 on polar bears: ‘They are doing quite well…Svalbard’s polar bear numbers do not appear to have decreased in the last 20 years’
CNN: Jon Aars, a senior researcher at the Norwegian Polar Institute: "Polar bears are optimistic animals," Aars says. "It seems that they are quite resistant, and they are doing quite well despite the fact that they've lost a lot of their habitat." Despite the odds, Svalbard's polar bear numbers do not appear to have decreased in the last 20 years, he says.
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Statistical politics: Prof. Mike Hulme on ‘politically charged’ climate baseline changes from 1961-1990 to 1991-2020: ‘In an instant; today, the world’s climate has ‘suddenly’ become nearly 0.5°C warmer’
Hulme: "January 12021, a new World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) climatological standard normal came into effect. The ‘present-day’ climate will now formally be
represented by the meteorological statistics of the period 1991-2020, replacing those from 1961-1990. National Meteorological Agencies in member states are instructed to issue new standard normals for observing stations and for associated climatological products. Climate will ‘change’, one might say, in an instant; today, the world’s climate has ‘suddenly’ become nearly 0.5°C warmer. It is somewhat equivalent to re-setting Universal Time or adjusting the exact definition of a metre." ..."So, what is the significance of the move to a new 1991-2020 WMO normal in January 2021? On the one hand, it is a pragmatic move to redefine ‘present-day’ climate for operational applications to that of the most recent 30-year period. On the other hand, it puts into play a third climatic baseline. Already existing is the ‘pre-industrial’ climate of the late nineteenth century and the ‘historic’ climate’ of 1961-1990, the latter about 0.3°C warmer than the former. And now there is the new ‘present-day’ climate of 1991-2020, in turn about 0.5°C warmer than the ‘historic climate’ of 1961-1990." ...
"Combining a climatic tolerance of 2°C—or indeed 1.5°C—with a pre-industrial baseline yields a very different climate target than, say, using a 1986-2005 baseline, the period widely adopted by IPCC AR5 Working Group I as their analytical baseline. The choices of both baseline and tolerance are politically charged. They carry significant implications for historic liability for emissions (La Rovere et al., 2002), for policy design (Millar et al., 2017) and for possible reparations (Roberts & Huq, 2015)."
