Links tagged “un”

TIME titled it’s Thursday cover story, “Our Sinking Planet.” There’s just one problem: Scientific studies show Tavalu’s islands, indeed most Pacific islands, have actually grown in the face of sea level rise...A 2018 study found that Tuvalu’s total land area grew nearly 3 percent from 1971 to 2014, despite rising sea levels. Satellite and aerial photos showed eight of Tuvalu’s nine atolls and three-quarters of its reef islands increased in size over the last four decades.

Study lead author Paul Kench told AFP, “the dominant mode of change over that time on Tuvalu has been expansion, not erosion.” Kench made similar findings in a 2010 study. “On the basis of this research we project a markedly different trajectory for Tuvalu’s islands over the next century than is commonly envisaged,” Kench said. “While we recognise that habitability rests on a number of factors, loss of land is unlikely to be a factor in forcing depopulation of Tuvalu.”

New Hampshire Democrat Sen. Jeanne Shaheen has announced she is leading the effort in the U.S. Senate to pass legislation forcing the Trump administration to comply with the Paris Climate accords...

Steve Milloy, a senior policy fellow at the Energy & Environment Legal Institute, maintains an opinion that aligns with the administration.“Predictably, we are already hearing the Paris agreement is not enough to stop climate change,” he argues starkly. “For [those] on the left, like Senator Shaheen, it will never be enough because they see human progress as a blight on the planet, and they won’t be happy until they see it stopped.”

Lomborg: According to the UN climate science panel’s last major report, if we do absolutely nothing, the impact of rising temperatures will be the equivalent to a reduction in incomes of between 0.2 and 2% in the 2070s. That is equivalent to the impact of a single economic recession over the next half-century. To put this in context, humanity has managed to get through three global recessions in the last 40 years. The panel notes that for most sectors, “the impact of climate change will be small relative to the impacts of other drivers,” such as changes in population, age, income, technology, relative prices, lifestyle, regulation and governance. Just pause and reflect on that. The UN’s own climate change panel tells us that looming demographic changes (like more people getting older) and other challenges are going to have a much bigger impact on us than climate change.

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Climate activists embellish because they know their proposed fixes are incredibly expensive. Just the annual cost of the climate promises in the New Green Deal could cost more than $6,400 per person. Consider that a new survey shows nearly seven in 10 Americans would vote against spending just $120 each per year to combat climate change.

Speculation that a million species are threatened with extinction does not fully account for the conservation efforts that are improving species once they have been identified as Endangered. For example, our current hunting regulations have allowed many whale species to return from the brink of extinction. Humpback and Bowhead whales were listed as Endangered in the 1980s. They have now recovered and are listed as species of Least Concern. Quantitative studies allowed for wise hunting quotas that quickly reduced the threat to many species. Again, there is no need for a “transformative changes across economic, social, political and technological factors.”

Loss of habitat is a key factor that can result in species becoming endangered — and sometimes it is political decisions that can lead to these species threats.

For example, government attempts to promote biofuels based on speculations about climate change have disrupted ecosystems and threatened more species. The European Union-subsidized Palm Oil for years, resulting in the loss of tropical forest and threatening species like the Orangutans. Realizing their mistake, those subsidies will be withdrawn.

Another example is that subsidies for sugar cane as a biofuel has prevented the restoration of tropical forests in Brazil, and corn subsidies in the USA have encouraged corn plantation in the northern Great Plains disrupting prairie ecosystems and reducing aquifers.

Marc Morano, editor of ClimateDepot.com and a prominent climate change denier, according to the DeSmog blog, criticized Watson, whom he sat next to at the witness table. “[Watson] says it’s our last chance to save the planet. These are the words of a salesman, a science bureaucrat, not a disinterested…” Morano never finished that sentence because subcommittee chair Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) interrupted and told Morano to direct testimony to him.

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UN scientist Robert Watson trashes Morano: “I would have hoped that the Republicans would have chosen two very good scientists who could have debated the merits of the IPBES report rather than clearly someone who’s just a straight climate denier,” Watson said, referring to Morano.

Morano versus Democratic Chair Huffman of House Natural Resources Committee at Congressional Hearing

Marc Morano, argued that Democrats were wrong to pursue climate change solutions. “What it means is people are going to be paying higher energy costs for absolutely no benefit,” Morano told the committee. “Even if you believe — and you shouldn’t — every claim made by the United Nations or Al Gore, the Green New Deal [and] the UN Paris Agreement will have the temperature difference in 100 years that’s imperceptible.”

May 23, 2019 threat to Morano: 

Tim Remple < [email protected]>: Excerpt: "Whereas you appeared on public at the recent House Natural Resources Committee, and

Whereas you said things that indicate your guilty of Crimes Against Humanity and Ecocide,You are hereby official and irrevocably CURSED: 

May you live long enough that your children and grandchildren likewise see the end of ALL LIFE on Planet Earth,

May they, when they understand what they YOU have done,

Ask you, "How the FUCK could you have done this to us??!!??

And may they then kill you!

May you die by their hand!

Looking them in the eye as THEY end your miserable life!!!!!"

Greenpeace co-founder Dr. Patrick Moore on UN species scare: “You cannot call yourself a scientist if you pretend that there are 6.2 million species that have no names and have never been identified. That is not science. That is fiction. Fairy tale stories. And that’s what we’re being told here.”

Climate Depot’s Marc Morano described the report as a politically driven document, “the latest U.N. appeal to give it more power, more scientific authority, more money and more regulatory control.” “At best, the U.N. science panels represent nothing more than ‘authoritative bureaucracy,’ claiming they hype the problem and then come up with the solution that puts them in charge of ‘solving’ the issue in perpetuity,” Mr. Morano said in his prepared remarks. “A more accurate term for the U.N. than ‘authoritative science’ may be ‘authoritative propaganda.’”

Mr. Huffman fired back, referring to Mr. Morano as a troll. “I don’t know what inspires someone to make a career out of trolling scientists or monetizing contrarian ideology on the YouTube and Ted Talk circuit, but it’s just a very different kind of conversation than the science-based conversation I think many of us would try to have,” Mr. Huffman said.

No House committee hearing this year would be complete without a climate change row. Republicans took aim at the Green New Deal, the Paris climate agreement and the 97% scientific “consensus,” while Democrats’ witnesses stressed the impact of global warming on species.