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Scenarios are not predictions, just ways of describing possible futures; useful in order to be prepared for unexpected events. The only rule in scenario building is that the assumptions should not be too improbable; such as involving time machines. And, yet, it seems that in some cases involving climate projections, time machines are a built-in assumption.

The COP21 conference in Paris has brought again climate to the attention of the public and, from now on, there starts the real challenge: what can we really expect for the future of the earth’s climate? As always, predictions are difficult, especially when there are many variables involved. Nevertheless, climate change is the result of physical factors that we can understand and we know that the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere – if it continues – is going to lead us to a very unpleasant future.

If we look at the long-term future, the whole question rotates on whether we manage to stay below an increase in temperature that is believed to be “safe” (it might be 2 degrees C, but we don’t know for sure), or we pass the limit and we find ourselves above the “climate tipping point” after which the system starts moving by itself toward more and more warming with all the associated disasters.

So, I thought I might engage in a little exercise of qualitative “scenario building” with a special focus on climate. Here are some scenarios; listed in no particular order. Some you could see as horrible, some as unlikely, others as overoptimistic. But they are just that: scenarios. The COP21 was a step in the right direction. Avoiding the worst outcomes will not be easy, but it is up to us.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Godfather Of Climate Change Calls Obama’s Deal “A Fraud, It’s Bullshit”

December 13, 2015

The Godfather Of Climate Change Calls Obama’s Deal “A Fraud, It’s Bullshit”

Amid all the self-congratulatory mutual masturbation that has effused since the “historic” signing of a climate ‘deal’ with no enforcement mechanism, few are better qualified (or more outspoken) to describe the utter farce that COP21 is than former NASA scientist James Hansen, who as The Guardian notes, is considered the father of global awareness of climate change…

“It’s a fraud really, a fake,” he says, rubbing his head. “It’s just bullshit for them to say: ‘We’ll have a 2C warming target and then try to do a little better every five years.’ It’s just worthless words. There is no action, just promises. As long as fossil fuels appear to be the cheapest fuels out there, they will be continued to be burned.”

The talks, intended to reach a new global deal on cutting carbon emissions beyond 2020, have spent much time and energy on two major issues: whether the world should aim to contain the temperature rise to 1.5C or 2C above preindustrial levels, and how much funding should be doled out by wealthy countries to developing nations that risk being swamped by rising seas and bashed by escalating extreme weather events.

But, according to Hansen, the international jamboree is pointless unless greenhouse gas emissions aren’t taxed across the board. He argues that only this will force down emissions quickly enough to avoid the worst ravages of climate change.

Hansen has been a nagging yet respected voice on climate change since he shot to prominence in the summer of 1988.

The Nasa scientists, who had been analyzing changes in the Earth’s climate since the 1970s, told a congressional committee that something called the “greenhouse effect” where heat-trapped gases are released into the atmosphere was causing global warming with a 99% certainty.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

COP 21: There Is a Way to Beat Climate Change

December 13, 2015

COP 21: There Is a Way to Beat Climate Change

PowerPlant, cc Mario Goebbels, Flickr, modified, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

The Paris Climate Change Conference might be the turning point in addressing climate change at the international level. The 21st Conference of Parties (COP21) is the annual meeting of the 195 nations that make up the United Nations Framework on Climate Change. The goal is to reach an agreement and set a target cap for carbon emissions at 450 ppm, limiting global warming within 2 degrees Celsius, which scientists designate as a critical threshold.

It is easy to be cynical about achieving such an international agreement. The Copenhagen 2009 conference will probably haunt the COP21 meeting, due to the failure of delivering a climate deal. Domestic politics and the unwillingness of states to be bound by a top-down decision, hammered in at the last minute between the United States, Brazil, China, South Africa and India, derailed the conference. That is why at this year’s conference the states adopted a bottom-up approach, with every country declaring their intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs). The problem is that, according to a UN synthesis report on the aggregate effect of INDCs, the commitments made so far by 147 countries will not reach the goal of limiting global warming to 2℃ above pre-industrial levels. These INDCs cover only about 85% of the existing emission levels and will not be sufficient to reverse the upward trend. The projections point to a 2.7℃ rise in temperatures. There is also no guarantee that countries will adhere to their commitments. International agreements often set aspirational goals and many countries derogate from their obligations when faced with adverse domestic conditions. The U.S. signed, but never ratified the Kyoto Protocol; Canada dropped out of it in 2011; while Russia and Japan decided not to assume further emissions limitations for the second phase of the protocol.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Con 21

December 13, 2015

Con 21

Nickolay Lamm Jefferson Memorial under 25 feet of water French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius just announced, in Paris, a “legally binding agreement” that no-one has agreed the financing for. We can hear a couple thousand lawyers across the globe snicker. But it’s all the COP21 ‘oh-so-important’ climate conference managed to come up with. No surprises there. They couldn’t make the 2ºC former goal stick, so they go for 1.5ºC this time. All on red, double or nothing. Because who really cares among the leadership, just as long as the ‘targets’ are far enough away that they can’t be held accountable.

I’ve been writing the following through the past days, and wondering if I should post it, because I know so many readers of the Automatic Earth have so much emotion invested in these things, and they’re good and fine emotions. But some things must still be said regardless of consequences. Precisely because of that kind of reaction. No contract is legally binding if there’s no agreement on payment. Nobody has a legal claim on your home without it being specified that, if, when and how they’re going to pay for it.

I understand some people may get offended by some of the things I have to say about this – though not all for the same reasons either-, but please try and understand that and why the entire CON21 conference has offended me. After watching the horse and pony show just now, I thought I’d let ‘er rip:

I don’t know what makes me lose faith in mankind faster, the way we destroy our habitat through wanton random killing of everything alive, plants, animals and people, through pollution and climate change and blood-thirsty sheer stupidity, or if it is the way these things are being ‘protested’.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Agreement in Paris Paves Road For The End of Fossil Fuels

December 12, 2015

Agreement in Paris Paves Road For The End of Fossil Fuels

paris climate conference cop21

After two weeks of negotiations here in the airport hangars of Le Bourget, 195 parties are expected to sign a global pact that will curb global warming pollution and rapidly escalate the growth of the clean energy solutions the world needs.

The consensus here is that the Paris deal on the table is a good one. Could it be better? Of course. But this deal is about as good as it is going to get from a consensus process involving 195 countries.

The reduction targets in the plan are in line with what scientists say needs to happen, and most importantly this deal strikes a balance between what has to happen to avoid the most calamitous impacts of climate change, with the realties faced by developing nations that do not have the resources to go it alone in reducing fossil fuel consumption.

On a personal note, having now been involved in this UN negotiating process in various capacities for close to a decade, I have to say that this is truly an historic day for humanity.

It has been a very long road that started long before these talks here in Paris.

The Long History of Climate Negotiations

While this official UN process began 21 years ago, it was in 1988 when a panel of scientists was struck called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), bringing together everything we knew about climate change in a series of papers that would serve as the justification for a global treaty on greenhouse gas emissions. Over the coming years, the IPCC would issue reports on the state of climate science that grew more certain in its conclusions and more dire in it predictions.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The False Promise of Nuclear Fusion

December 11, 2015

The False Promise of Nuclear Fusion

CP11j-047-02

There have been some pretty radioactive climate change ideas making the rounds at the COP21 talks in Paris. Team Hansen’s wildly unrealistic notion of switching on 61 new nuclear reactors a year was taking the cake until an even fruitier one reared its familiar head: the nuclear chimera known as ITER.

ITER was originally called the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, with ‘experimental’ being the operative word in that lofty title. Which is perhaps why today they refer to it only by acronym (apparently the word ‘thermonuclear’ also had some rather explosive connotations.) The official website equates ITER with its coincidental Latin meaning, ‘The Way’.

ITER was initiated in 1985 by then presidents Reagan and Gorbachev. The multi-nation project included not only the United States and the already crumbling Soviet Union, but the European Union and Japan. Today there are 35 countries in the partnership.

If it ever gets completed and actually works, ITER will be a fusion reactor known as a Tokomak. Fusion is the physicists’ wet dream, and they’ve been hallucinating about ITER for precisely three decades and Tokomaks and fusion itself for even longer.

ITER itself isn’t even the final step to electricity-producing fusion power plants. Its purpose is in “preparing the way for the fusion power plants of tomorrow.” A tomorrow that is heralded as ten years away, decade after decade.

Wrestling with plasma

Indeed, ITER has been such a perpetually longstanding aspiration that I can delve for information into my father Mike Pentz’s 1994 memoirs without risk of being much out of date. A physicist and founder of Scientists Against Nuclear Arms, here’s how he assessed the challenge of fusion, something he began wrestling with back in 1948.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Climate Activists Announce Global Campaign of Civil Disobedience to “Break Free From Fossil Fuels”

December 11, 2015

Climate Activists Announce Global Campaign of Civil Disobedience to “Break Free From Fossil Fuels”

Climate justice and environmental campaigners announced plans today at COP21 in Paris to escalate the number of non-violent civil disobedience actions against fossil fuel projects over the next year.

The groups are planning a concentrated week of global actions in May of 2016. So far, events are being planned in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Indonesia, Nigeria, Philippines, South Africa, Spain, Turkey, and the United States. Additional countries under consideration include Ecuador, India, and the UK.

Activists also plan several peaceful actions in Paris this Saturday, despite the French government’s ban on protest in the wake of the November 13 terrorist attacks here.

“The science is clear: we need to keep at least 80%, if not more, of fossil fuels in the ground,” said Payal Parekh, the global managing director of 350.org. “It’s up to us to break free from fossil fuels and accelerate the shift towards a just transition to 100% renewable energy. It’s in our hands to close the ambition gap.”

“Governments aren’t getting the job done. It’s up to civil society to do it,” she concluded.

Nnimmo Bassey, a Nigerian activist from the Health of Mother Earth Foundation, also spoke today in Paris about the need for negotiators to talking about global warming but without stopping the dependence on ff – this is hypocrisy at best.

“A 1.5 degree ceiling does not mean anything if a complete fossil fuel freeze is not on the table. How can you achieve this while investments are still going on in the fossil fuel sector?”

He chastised the negotiations for talking about global warming action without discussing the need to end global dependence on fossil fuels . “This is hypocrisy at best,” Bassey said.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Paris Climate Accords Will Cause the Planet to Burn

December 10, 2015

The Paris Climate Accords Will Cause the Planet to Burn

paris-climate

Paris.

The Paris agreement, according to Pablo Solón, a veteran of climate negotiations, “will be an agreement that will burn up the planet.”

The result of the COP21 (Twenty-first United Nations Climate Change Conference), which began on Monday, Nov. 30 and will end on Dec. 11, “can already be announced, because we already know what it will be,” he said in an interview with the Americas Program.

“Here in Paris, the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is not being negiotiated under criteria of climate justice or climate science. All that’s being done is taking note of the promises of each country and adding them up,” said the former Bolivian ambassador.

Nearly all of the world’s countries– about 186 to date– have promised to reduce emissions. The official report of these promises, when seen as a global plan, constitutes an announcement of disaster.

The challenge set in 2009 in Copenhagen was to avoid exceeding 2 degrees Celsius of global warming. The official report would mean an increase in global temperature of between 2.7 and 3.9 degrees Celsius. In other words, actual warming could reach double of what was established as the maximum limit.

“And 2 degrees Celsius was the roof of the roof, because many countries have warned that even with a 1.5 degree warming their countries could disappear, especially many island nations. With the Paris agreement, warming is going to reach more than double that figure.”

“But there is another report that says: careful, it could be even 5 degrees Celsius. Many think that we are negotiating contributions to emissions reductions, but that is not the case. That is not being negotiated. This is a farce, a scam. I can’t think of another way to say it.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Apocalyptic Capitalism

December 7, 2015

Apocalyptic Capitalism

A slogan referring to the COP21 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris on the Eiffel Tower. (Michel Euler / AP)

The charade of the 21st United Nations climate summit will end, as past climate summits have ended, with lofty rhetoric and ineffectual cosmetic reforms. Since the first summit more than 20 years ago, carbon dioxide emissions have soared. Placing faith in our political and economic elites, who have mastered the arts of duplicity and propaganda on behalf of corporate power, is the triumph of hope over experience. There are only a few ways left to deal honestly with climate change: sustained civil disobedience that disrupts the machinery of exploitation; preparing for the inevitable dislocations and catastrophes that will come from irreversible rising temperatures; and cutting our personal carbon footprints, which means drastically reducing our consumption, particularly of animal products.

“Our civilization,” Dr. Richard Oppenlander writes in “Food Choice and Sustainability, “displays a curious instinct when confronted with a problem related to overconsumption—we simply find a way to produce more of what it is we are consuming, instead of limiting or stopping that consumption.”

The global elites have no intention of interfering with the profits, or ending government subsidies, for the fossil fuel industry and the extraction industries. They will not curtail extraction or impose hefty carbon taxes to keep fossil fuels in the ground. They will not limit the overconsumption that is the engine of global capitalism. They act as if the greatest contributor of greenhouse gases—the animal agriculture industry—does not exist. They siphon off trillions of dollars and employ scientific and technical expertise—expertise that should be directed toward preparing for environmental catastrophe and investing in renewable energy—to wage endless wars in the Middle East.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

What Worries the World’s Most Famous Climate Scientist?

December 2, 2015

What Worries the World’s Most Famous Climate Scientist?

James Hansen is fretting about the Paris talks, and for good reason.

James Hansen detailed his fears in a recent communiqué posted on his website. Photo by chesapeakeclimate. Creative Commons licensed.

James Hansen is fretting about the Paris climate talks, and for good reason.

You might recall that Hansen was the NASA scientist that boldly warned the United States Congress about the perils of rising global temperatures as early as 1988.

And you might remember that officials with the U.S. administration of George W. Bush instructed the world’s most famous climate change scientist not to talk about how fossil fuel burning could have a dangerous effect on climate in 2004.

But Hansen kept on talking about melting ice, rising seas, flooded coastal cities and super storms. And now he’s worried that Paris will be another bureaucratic gabfest that avoids the true remedy: rapid fossil fuel emissions reductions driven by a carbon levy.

By rapid, Hansen doesn’t think the world’s industrial economies have time to be self-satisfied about stabilizing carbon dioxide emissions around 450 parts per million or even the alarming present amount of 400 ppm. No, to restore the Earth’s energy balance, now unsettled by centuries of greenhouse gas emissions, the world needs to aim for 350 ppm and possibly lower.

Everyone agrees that business as usual will take the world to 600 ppm by 2050, along with a rise of temperature by four degrees.

That grim future will give the world drowned coastal cities, parched crops, millions of refugees and failing ecosystems. Nobody really knows what would remain of civilization, as we know it.

Hansen worries politicians still don’t get the urgency. He also worries that U.S. President Barack Obama and others will sell our children and theirs “down the river” in Paris with more promises and no action.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Will Paris Conference Finally Achieve Real Action on Climate?

December 2, 2015

Will Paris Conference Finally Achieve Real Action on Climate?

The emission pledges from the world’s nations still fall short of the goal for limiting global warming. But as negotiators convene in Paris this week, there is cautious optimism that a significant international agreement on climate can be reached.

Six years after the last negotiations crashed so spectacularly in Copenhagen, climate delegates assemble in Paris this week to fix the world’s atmosphere. This time, despite the high security following the recent terrorist attacks in the French capital, they will meet in a better mood.

That’s because, in the preceding months, more than 150 nations have put pledges for future emissions on the table for the decade between 2020 and

Thomas Samson/AFP/Getty Images

French foreign minister Laurent Fabius (right) and environment minister Segolene Royal at a preliminary event at the COP 21 climate summit in Paris.

2030. And the world’s biggest two emitters of heat-trapping greenhouse gases — the U.S. and China — are in harmony after a bilateral agreement in Washington last year.

But if the diplomats enter the home stretch more optimistic than in Copenhagen, climate analysts warn that the national “contributions” on offer still don’t meet the negotiators’ self-declared task of capping global warming at two degrees Celsius. About 2.7 degrees is the most optimistic guess of the long-term outcome of the pledges. A victory for diplomacy should not be confused with a victory for the climate.

So, is the glass half full or half empty?

On the downside, time is running out to halt the continuing accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. This year, the world is a record one degree warmer than pre-industrial levels — exactly halfway to the two-degree ceiling. The much discussed warming hiatus of the past decade is over.

A strong agreement on climate in Paris would drive change forward.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Paris Climate Talks Don’t Matter

December 2, 2015

The Paris Climate Talks Don’t Matter

The COP21 climate talks began on Monday in Paris. Leaders around the world are seeking a legally binding restriction on emissions, hoping to save future generations from near-certain environmental collapse and catastrophe. But these talks won’t change a thing.

“Can the earth be saved by bureaucrats in long meetings, reciting jargon and acronyms while surrounded by leaning towers of documents?” Rebecca Solnit asks in a compelling piece for Harper’s. She’s right. Long talks and testimonies bear little fruit in making steps to achieve climate justice and combat climate change. What’s important is what happens in the crowded and sweaty streets. Solnit was writing before the November 13 terrorist attacks claimed 130 lives in Paris, before the government declared a state of emergency, before this state of emergency led to a ban on all public organizing.

The revolutionary fervor so pined for, the radical democratic politics of climate activism and mobilization, can no longer be realized under French law. The government has banned public protests, marches, and rallies. What started as a means of achieving peace and security has culminated in the total destruction of dissent. As of 27 November, at least 24 major climate activists had been placed under house arrest.

The conference is located outside the city of Paris itself, and is secured by over 2,800 police. An additional 8,000 police guard the border. In this way, climate change really is the great security issue of the new millennium. The dialogue is so securitized, that nearly all oppositional voices have been quashed.

Already, Parisians are finding ways to sidestep the rules. Protestors left out 10,000 empty pairs of shoes to signify the space of the march that would have been. Shoes were donated by the likes of actress Marion Cotillard, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, even Pope Francis.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

From Good Intentions to Deep Decarbonization

December 2, 2015

From Good Intentions to Deep Decarbonization

NEW YORK – In the run-up to the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP21) in Paris, more than 150 governments submitted plans to reduce carbon emissions by 2030. Many observers are asking whether these reductions are deep enough. But there is an even more important question: Will the chosen path to 2030 provide the basis for ending greenhouse-gas emissions later in the century?

According to the scientific consensus, climate stabilization requires full decarbonization of our energy systems and zero net greenhouse-gas emissions by around 2070. The G-7 has recognized that decarbonization – the only safe haven from disastrous climate change – is the ultimate goal this century. And many heads of state from the G-20 and other countries have publicly declared their intention to pursue this path.

Yet the countries at COP21 are not yet negotiating decarbonization. They are negotiating much more modest steps, to 2025 or 2030, called Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs). The United States’ INDC, for example, commits the US to reduce CO2 emissions by 26-28%, relative to a 2005 baseline, by 2025.

Though the fact that more than 150 INDCs have been submitted represents an important achievement of the international climate negotiations, most pundits are asking whether the sum of these commitments is enough to keep global warming below the agreed limit of 2º Celsius (3.6º Fahrenheit). They are debating, for example, whether the INDCs add up to a 25% or 30% reduction by 2030, and whether we need a 25%, 30%, or 40% reduction by then to be on track.

But the most important issue is whether countries will achieve their 2030 targets in a way that helps them to get to zero emissions by 2070 (full decarbonization). If they merely pursue measures aimed at reducing emissions in the short term, they risk locking their economies into high levels of emissions after 2030. The critical issue, in short, is not 2030, but what happens afterward.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Climate facepalm: the Italian Society of Physics declares that climate science is not science

December 2, 2015

Climate facepalm: the Italian Society of Physics declares that climate science is not science

So, Mr. Darwin, what is the equation of evolution?

With the climate negotiations in full swing in Paris, 14 Italian scientific societies got together to release a document in which they expressed their support for the COP21 negotiations and for the need of taking action against anthropogenic climate change. However, one scientific society was conspicuously missing: the Italian Society of Physics (SIF).

Later on, the president of SIF, Prof. Luisa Cifarelli, diffused a statement on this issue as a comment to the blog of the Italian Society of Chemistry. This comment has not been officially confirmed, but neither it has been denied, so it appears to be real. Let me report its initial statement here, translated from Italian.

The SIF is an association of physicists used to consider physical laws determined by equations of varying degrees of complexity and results expressed with appropriate confidence or likelihood levels. This is, after all, the scientific method.

Then, Professor Cifarelli goes on, stating that the Italian Society of Physics refuses to sign a document in which some statements are given as certainties and not as possibilities, and that science cannot be based on consensus and on “mixing science and politics”. She concludes that it is important that the earth is protected from pollution, but that the study of climate should be “based on physics.”

And so, here we stand. What Prof. Cifarelli is saying is that science is science only if it is based on equations. Therefore, since an “equation of climate” doesn’t seem to exist, climate science is not a science. In a single stroke, Prof. Cifarelli has removed from the category of legitimate sciences everything from earth sciences (what is the equation of dinosaurs?) to the study of complex systems (what’s the equation of Bak’s sandpile?).

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Global Leaders Fight for New 1.5 Degrees Warming Target at COP21 Climate Talks

December 1, 2015

Global Leaders Fight for New 1.5 Degrees Warming Target at COP21 Climate Talks

The group of countries, known as the Climate Vulnerability Forum, argues current efforts to limit global temperature rise to two degrees Celsius is insufficient to protect many nations from the dangers of climate change. The group came to this conclusion, which was announced on the first day of the climate talks, after two years of expert review and diplomatic consultations.

The groups said lives, rights and the prosperity of billions are at stake in the globally agreed temperature limit.

The two degree limit has been widely cited since the Stockholm Environment Institute released a major study on dangerous climate change in 1990. The limit did not become a formal target of global climate negotiations until 2010 with the signing of the Cancun Agreement.

For a more detailed backgrounder on the two degree target, read Carbon Brief’s “Two Degrees: The History of Climate Change’s Speed Limit.”

Thoriq Ibrahim, Maldives minister of environment and energy, said the danger of exceeding a 1.5 degrees target is “especially acute for the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), a group of 44 low-lying island and coastal states from around the world.”

“AOSIS is of the view that the Paris agreement must be an ambitious, legally binding protocol capable of limiting warming to below 1.5 degrees Celsius,” he said, adding “immediate action is required before the treaty goes into effect in 2020 if we are to keep the window to 1.5 degrees open.”

Recently Cyclone Pam and Typhoon Maysak destroyed homes and killed dozens of people in Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Kiribati and in Micronesia, Ibrahim said.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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