Links tagged “tillerson”
- Cheers! Warmists lament that Trump is ‘Undoing American Climate Diplomacy’ – Upset that China is now the ‘torch-bearer in global endeavor for ecological civilization’
GOOD RIDDANCE REX! Rex Tillerson...allowed career employees at State to continue their work on climate issues. “I didn’t see any evidence of interference from the secretary’s office to the positions taken by the negotiators,” said Andrew Light, a former State Department climate adviser.
GOOD RIDDANCE DAVE & GARY! Trump has said he wants to withdraw from the Paris agreement and renegotiate its terms. But the administration has now lost almost everyone capable of that work: A top international environmental policy adviser, George David Banks, resigned in February. Gary Cohn, Trump’s chief economic adviser, who negotiated directly with climate ministers from other countries, resigned in March. “Those are big losses that will take you a while to come back from,” said Connaughton.
GREAT! LET CHINA SEEK 'GLOBAL ENDEAVOR FOR ECOLOGICAL CIVILIZATION' WITHOUT U.S. HELP! The erosion of American engagement in climate diplomacy has already allowed China to become the de facto world leader on global environmental policy. China has become more assertive about climate leadership, with President Xi Jinping pledging last year to make the country the “torch-bearer in the global endeavor for ecological civilization.”
- Sec. of State Rex Tillerson sows confusion over Trump’s climate policy
- TILLERSON SAYS US WON’T BE RUSHED ON CLIMATE CHANGE POLICIES
- A Trump climate betrayal?! US signs international declaration on climate change despite Trump’s past statements
- Sad: Exxon urges Trump to keep US in UN Paris climate accord
- Exxon Says Former CEO Did Not Use Alias Solely For Climate-Related Talks
- Clexit: Former oil boss may be only hope of stopping Donald Trump from ditching Paris climate change agreement
UK Independent: It is thought Mr Tillerson believes it is important the US retains influence on the rest of the world that would be lost if it withdraws from the agreement. Marc Morano, an ex-Republican Senate staffer who now runs the fossil-fuel funded website Climate Depot, told the Times: “The two greatest obstacles to a Clexit are probably Ivanka and Tillerson. “Tillerson with his ‘seat at the table’ views could be biggest proponent of not withdrawing the US from the agreement.”
- NYT features Climate Depot: Top Trump Advisers Are Split on Paris Agreement on Climate Change
“The two greatest obstacles to a Clexit (climate exit from U.N. Paris agreement) are probably Ivanka and Tillerson,” wrote Marc Morano, a former Republican Senate staff member who now runs Climate Depot, a fossil-fuel-industry-funded website that promotes the denial of climate science, in an email. “Tillerson with his ‘seat at the table’ views could be biggest proponent of not withdrawing the U.S. from the agreement.”
- Sec of State Tillerson won’t meet with U.N. climate chief — & ‘it’s driving environmentalists crazy’
- Anti-Exxon Crusade On The Ropes After Failing To Stop Rex Tillerson’s Confirmation
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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)."
