Towards COP21

[biffvernon]

EU ministers seek ambitious, binding deal at Paris climate talks -draft

BRUSSELS, June 25 (Reuters) - European Union ministers are seeking an ambitious, durable and legally binding deal to curb global warming, enforced through five-yearly reviews, a draft of their position statement for U.N. climate talks shows.

EU environment ministers meet on Sept. 18 in Brussels to iron out their joint position ahead of the U.N. talks in Paris in December. Diplomats have already drawn up a draft text.

The Paris climate agreement must be "legally binding in order to enshrine the strongest expression of political will and provide predictability and durability", says the EU ministers' draft seen by Reuters.

It calls for five-yearly reviews to ensure temperature rises are capped at 2 degrees Celsius, the necessary limit according to scientists to prevent the most devastating climate change.

The EU (rather interesting) background paper to this is here: http://ec.europa.eu/priorities/energy-u ... swd_en.pdf

[biffvernon]

First keynote speaker at CFCC Paris today was Fatih Birol

Watch here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qh1qTWv-NsY

[biffvernon]

ADP2

South Africa, speaking for 134 developing countries under the G77+China group, stunned the UN climate change negotiations on the first day of the talks at Bonn Germany by saying that the two co-chairs and some developed countries’ attitude to developing countries was akin to apartheid.

The blunt attack, rare in international diplomacy and UN multilateral negotiations, was pointed particularly towards the co-chair from US, Daniel Reifsnyder. It came after all developing country groups criticised the co-chairs for producing a draft Paris agreement which favoured select developed countries and then refusing to bring balance to the text.

http://www.business-standard.com/articl ... 902_1.html

[biffvernon]

The Graph that Matters

http://biffvernon.blogspot.co.uk/2015/1 ... rs-ii.html

[emordnilap]

The Graph that Matters

http://biffvernon.blogspot.co.uk/2015/1 ... rs-ii.html

You're an optimist. Oh and btw:

As the second diagram suggests a 15 years Emergency Transition is needed, yet nobody is taking about such a thing.

Let's repeat that in case you missed it. We need a 15 years Emergency Transition, starting now and getting to as near as dammit zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 if our children and grandchildren are going to inherit a planet worth it's name.

Trying to help here.

[johnhemming2]

Let's repeat that in case you missed it. We need a 15 years Emergency Transition, starting now and getting to as near as dammit zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 if our children and grandchildren are going to inherit a planet worth it's name.

Even if the Greenland ice is melted Earth will still be a lot of Earth.

One of the difficulties of political debates is that when people exaggerate their argument in order to persuade people of the merits it often dissuades people because of the exaggeration.

There is a good argument to avoid the melting of the glaciers, but earth will not be "uninhabitable" if on average it is 2 degrees C warmer. Some areas would be flooded.

[clv101]

Hyperbole does make things tricky. Under almost any scenario the Earth will still be human habitable for many thousands of years. But that's not a very useful question.

More sensible is to consider whether 'civilisation' with 7 going on 10 billion people can be maintained. Here I'm pretty sure that +2C warmer with ten+ m of sea level rise (we're sure to lose Greenland, and a good chunk of West Antartica) is incompatible with a 10 Bn strong civilisation.

[johnhemming2]

Hyperbole does make things tricky. Under almost any scenario the Earth will still be human habitable for many thousands of years. But that's not a very useful question.

More sensible is to consider whether 'civilisation' with 7 going on 10 billion people can be maintained. Here I'm pretty sure that +2C warmer with ten+ m of sea level rise (we're sure to lose Greenland, and a good chunk of West Antartica) is incompatible with a 10 Bn strong civilisation.

Population is clearly an issue. There is also the issue about the use of fossil fuels to provide food through fertiliser.

[biffvernon]

Trying to help here.

Thanks. Typos corrected
http://biffvernon.blogspot.co.uk/2015/1 ... rs-ii.html

[biffvernon]

Bonn ADP2 results:

So we now have a new text [with 1490 pairs of square brackets].
http://unfccc.int/files/meetings/bonn_o ... _and_2.pdf
[Somebody else counted them]

So let's just take a [not quite] random example from the text:

Article 3 (MITIGATION)
1. Collective long-term goal
Option 1:
[Parties aim [to achieve the global temperature goal], in accordance with the best available science [and

the principles of the Convention], through [long-term global [low-[carbon][emission] transformation]

[[climate][carbon] neutrality]], [and peaking their [net] emissions] [by 2030][20XX][as soon as

possible], [with a [x]40-[y]70% net emission reduction below 2010 levels by 2050][according to the global

carbon budget distribution based on climate justice], and [overall reductions][[net] zero emissions]

[over the course of the century][by 2050][by 2100].

Look at that last pair of pairs of square brackets. There's an existential difference between reduction

to zero emissions by 2050 and 2100. That's what Paris will be about.

The Twittersphere's conclusion is "Basically the take from everyone seems to be, you go to COP with the

text you have not the text you want."

[kenneal - lagger]

Hyperbole does make things tricky. Under almost any scenario the Earth will still be human habitable for many thousands of years. But that's not a very useful question.

More sensible is to consider whether 'civilisation' with 7 going on 10 billion people can be maintained. Here I'm pretty sure that +2C warmer with ten+ m of sea level rise (we're sure to lose Greenland, and a good chunk of West Antartica) is incompatible with a 10 Bn strong civilisation.

Population is clearly an issue. There is also the issue about the use of fossil fuels to provide food through fertiliser.

There is also the issue that much of the world's best farm land lies below the 10 metre mark and also much of the world's urban population lives below the 10 metre mark. Much of the world's most expensive real estate lies below the 10 metre mark so the loss of this or the attempt to build bunds around it would probably destroy the world's economy anyway.

According to the UN we could with a large reduction in meat eating, a return to local gardening rather than oil based farming and the reuse of "night waste" produce much more food than we do today and employ many more people. Food would be much more expensive though because of the replacement of oil power by people power. but then again if food was more expensive we wouldn't waste so much of what we produce.

[biffvernon]

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, writing in The Telegraph, is putting the boot into the fossil fuel industry.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/news ... hange.html

[kenneal - lagger]

Please all write to your MP, especially your Tory ones and quote the above article especially this

Lord Bourne, Britain’s under-secretary for energy, said at Chatham House this week that Tuvalu’s plight is an international scandal. “We can’t sit back and let it happen,” he said.

and ask them why they are actually making things worse for Tuvalu by wasting time and effort in promoting fracking for even more fossil fuels.

[emordnilap]

Some class images for the COP-out:











More here.

[fuzzy]

Hyperbole does make things tricky. Under almost any scenario the Earth will still be human habitable for many thousands of years. But that's not a very useful question.

More sensible is to consider whether 'civilisation' with 7 going on 10 billion people can be maintained. Here I'm pretty sure that +2C warmer with ten+ m of sea level rise (we're sure to lose Greenland, and a good chunk of West Antartica) is incompatible with a 10 Bn strong civilisation.

I have no say in the earth containing 10bn people. The people payed to represent me refuse to accept the pop problem. If 90% of the pop perished then tough - they should have kept their dicks in their pants. I realize that people with kids could be worried for their future.