6 December 2015, Climate News Network, Scientists post extreme weather warning. COP21: Climate change means that temperate Europe faces the twin threat of life-threatening heatwaves and periods of bitter cold over the next 20 years. New research warns that longer, hotter and more frequent heatwaves than those that killed 55,000 Russians in 2010, or 72,000 in France, Portugal, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany and the UK in 2003, will hit Europe in the next two decades. But, over the same period, Europe could also begin to get colder as a consequence of a drop in solar activity, and a century-long chill could be on the way, according to a study of long-period climate cycles. And if global warming accelerates, and average global ocean temperatures rise by 6°C or more, most of the living, breathing world could in any case begin to suffocate, according to ominous calculations by a mathematician. At some point, the providers of oxygen could begin to perish. All three uncomfortable projections were published as 30,000 delegates, politicians, observers, pressure groups, and journalists gathered in Paris for COP21, the UN summit on climate change, which is meeting to try to forge an agreement that could, ultimately, limit global warming to a planetary average of 2°C or less. Magnitude index Simone Russo, a geophysicist, and colleagues from the European Union Joint Research Centre at Ispra in Italy report in Environmental Research Letters that they developed a heatwave magnitude index to cope with a problem once considered improbable for temperate Europe − extremes of heat. The index is a tool for statistical analysis, and provides a way of matching bygone events with possible future extremes. Deaths in Europe accounted for 90% ofglobal mortality from heat extremes in the last 20 years. And there could be more on the way. Read More here
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5 December 2015, Climate News Network, Saudis still hooked on oil habit. COP21: Despite making pledges to cut back on its large-scale fossil fuel emissions, Saudi Arabia’s oil production is continuing to run at record levels. PARIS, 5 December, 2015 − Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter and one of the world’s top per capita emitters of greenhouse gases, has traditionally voiced little concern about climate. So there was some surprise when, in advance of the current UN climate change summit in Paris, the country announced that it was aiming to cut back on its C02emissions. The problem is that the pledge comes with some important caveats that seem to render the whole exercise meaningless. More than 180 countries have so far submitted pledges – referred to in UN jargon as Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) − to the summit to cut back on emissions of greenhouse gases. Export revenues Under the Saudi plan, there will be an annual cutback of up to 130 million tonnes of emissions by 2030. But they say that such cutbacks will only be made as long as there is “a robust contribution from oil export revenues to the national economy”. They also warn that should any agreement made at the Paris talks create what is termed an “abnormal burden” on the country’s economy, then the climate-related commitments would be weakened. Read More here
5 December 2015, The Spectator, An age of climate realism is upon us. At last, cooler heads are prevailing….The Paris meeting is not even attempting to achieve what the 2009 Copenhagen summit failed to do: reach a legally binding treaty on cutting CO2 emissions. Instead, the aim is to replace the legally binding targets of the Kyoto Protocol (which runs out in 2020) with voluntary pledges tailored to the national considerations of individual countries. In short, the Paris climate deal will mean abandoning the notion of making decarbonisation legally binding — at least for the time being. Even so, governments from around the world are keen to sign an agreement that will allow political leaders to declare a victory, and to move on. At the same time, officials readily accept that painful decisions will be kicked into the long grass. Thus, the Paris accord is likely to be a ‘wait and see’ arrangement which, for the next decade at least, suspends any attempt of reaching a binding decarbonisation treaty. Such an outcome will almost certainly trigger a fundamental reassessment of Europe’s go-it-alone-no-matter-what-the-costs decarbonisation policies. Why has it proven impossible for such summits to make the kind of progress that was, until recently, billed as a matter of saving the world? Firstly, policies that commit western governments to unilateral decarbonisation have turned out to be more costly and politically toxic than conventional wisdom proclaimed. Rather than running out of fossil fuels — and thereby making renewable energy more competitive — the US shale revolution and the prospect of its global proliferation has triggered a glut of cheap oil and gas. Fuel prices have fallen and look set to remain low for the foreseeable future. As a result, the bridge to a world powered by renewable energy has become longer rather than shorter. Read More here Note that “the pause” noted in the article is a red herring – read more here
4 December 2015, The Guardian, The ‘red line’ issue that exposes deep divisions in the Paris climate talks. Buried in the detail of the Paris Accord could be some innocuous-looking words that will have a powerful impact on whether it ever delivers the greenhouse gas reductions it promises. The words could “paper over” deep divisions about whether countries ever have to properly report and account for the promised emission reductions that collectively limit global warming to the already-dangerous 2.7 degrees. Key to the negotiations will be a trade off between developing countries’ demands for financing to reduce their own emissions and adapt to locked-in climate change and the insistence by both rich nations like the United States and climate-vulnerable countries like the small island states that every country should be required to at least work towards the same rules for reporting and checking their emission reductions. Since the pledges in the Paris Accord will not be legally binding and the more stringent rules applied to developed countries under the Kyoto Protocol are almost certain to lapse in five years, the direction set for this new set of reporting and checking rules is important to ensure the agreement delivers what it promises for the climate. Countries like India claim the existing rules under the overarching UN framework convention on climate change are fine. Read More here