PowerSwitch

1. “In Peru, already, almost half the volume of many glaciers has melted away just in the last 30 years or so. Ecosystems are visibly being destroyed before our eyes. And fisheries are threatened. So this is not just a fight by Peru; it is a fight for Peru”

2. “If you’re a big, developed nation and you’re not helping to lead, then you are part of the climate change problem”

3. “The truth is we will have no excuse worth using. The science of climate change is science, and it is screaming at us, warning us, compelling us hopefully to act”

4. “Now you don’t need a Ph.D. to be able to see for yourself that the world is already changing. You just need to pay attention. Thirteen of the warmest years on record have occurred since 2000, with this year, again, on track to be the warmest of all”

5. “Mankind is creating the problem, and mankind can solve the problem. The solution to climate change is energy policy”

6. “We have to approach this global threat with the urgency that it warrants. Leaders need to lead. Countries need to step up. And that means we have to come together around an ambitious climate agreement between now and the end of next year”

7. “I call on all of you here in Lima to demand resolve from your leaders. Speak out. Make climate change an issue that no public official can ignore for even one more day, let alone for one more election. Make a transition towards clean energy the only policy that you’ll accept. And make it clear that an ambitious agreement in Paris is not an option, it’s an urgent necessity”

United Nations members have reached an agreement on how countries should tackle climate change.

Delegates have approved a framework for setting national pledges to be submitted to a summit next year.

Differences over the draft text caused the talks in Lima, Peru, to overrun by two days.

Sam Smith, chief of climate policy for the environmental group WWF, said: "The text went from weak to weaker to weakest and it's very weak indeed."

biffvernon wrote:The adopted text: Further advancing the Durban Platform
http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2014/cop20/eng/l14.pdf

21: Welcomes the Lima Climate Action High Level Meeting convened by the President of the Conference of the Parties on 11 December 2014 and encourages the Executive Secretary and the President of the Conference of the Parties to convene an annual high-level event on enhancing implementation of climate action;

Shortfall wrote: So they're already planning their next holiday then?

I can make this pronouncement even before the end of the year because each month, I collect daily global average temperatures. So far, December is running about 0.5°C above the average. The climate and weather models predict that the next week will be about 0.75°C above average. This means, December will come in around 0.6°C above average. Are these daily values accurate? Well the last two months they have been within 0.05°C of the final official results.

What does this all mean? Well, when I combine December with the year-to-date as officially reported, I predict the annual temperature anomaly will be 0.674°C. This beats the prior record by 0.024°C. That is a big margin in terms of global temperatures.