GWPF | 19 Oct 2015
UN Climate Talk Under Threat
A storm of anger rising from developed countries negotiators gathered strength at the Climate Change talks at Bonn on the weekend, ahead of the formal launch of the negotiations on Monday. The Africa Group joined hands with the Like-Minded Developing Countries, of which India and China are member, to oppose the draft for the Paris agreement in its current shape. The two groups conveyed that further negotiations would not be possible without countries being first allowed to re-insert their proposals unopposed back in to the imbalanced draft agreement. –Nitin Sethi, Business Standard, 18 November 2015
1) Developing Nations Reject Paris Draft Agreement – Business Standard, 18 November 2015
2) Chinese Academy of Sciences: Global Warming May Be Very Good For China – South China Morning Post, 16 October 2015
3) Matt Ridley: Now Here’s The Good News On Global Warming – The Times, 19 October 2015
4 ) Patrick Moore: Should We Celebrate CO2? (Lecture Video) – Global Warming Policy Foundation, 14 October 2015
5) Indur Goklany: The Great Carbon Dioxide Boom – Financial Post, 13 October 2015
6) Petition For Philippe Verdier To Be Reinstated In His Job At France Télévisions – Collectif des climato-réalistes
Global warming will benefit China by increasing rainfall in its dry northern regions while reducing flooding in the hotter southern areas, according to a new study by scientists in the country. The research team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences said that if the phenomenon continues, the planet’s thermal equator will move northward and push the rain belt associated with the monsoons in East Asia from the southern to northern part of the country. The new finding challenges the traditional view that global warming will exacerbate water shortages in this part of the world. –Stephen Chen, South China Morning Post, 16 October 2015
While large international authorities such as the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have vowed to tackle climate change head-on, some scientists and organisations believe it may help boost the production of crops and forests, among other benefits. In a report published Monday the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a London-based think tank, said that all the carbon dioxide being dumped in the atmosphere has helped boost crop production to the tune of US$140 billion a year in recent times. The foundation has called for a reassessment of the impact brought on by greenhouse gas emissions. –Stephen Chen, South China Morning Post, 16 October 2015
France’s leading television weather forecaster, Philippe Verdier, was taken off air last week for writing that there are “positive consequences” of climate change. Freeman Dyson, professor emeritus of mathematical physics and astrophysics at the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton, declared last week that the non-climatic effects of carbon dioxide are “enormously beneficial”. Patrick Moore, a founder of Greenpeace, said in a lecture last week that we should “celebrate carbon dioxide”. With tens of thousands of activists and bureaucrats heading for a UN conference in Paris next month, there is such vast vested interest now in demonising carbon dioxide that it will be hard to change the world’s mind. Freeman Dyson laments that “scientific colleagues who believe the prevailing dogma about carbon dioxide will not find Goklany’s evidence convincing”, but hopes that a few will try. Amen. — Matt Ridley, The Times, 19 October 2015
It is very likely that the impact of rising CO2 concentrations is currently net beneficial for both humanity and the biosphere generally. No compelling case has been made that the net impacts of climate change will be negative by the end of this century, particularly given the gradual rate of warming observed recently. Halting the increase in CO2 concentrations abruptly, or reducing them, would immediately halt or reverse improvements in plant growth rates, increasing hunger and habitat destruction. On the other hand, any consequential change in warming would happen much more slowly. Thus, any reductions in CO2 emissions would deprive people and the planet of the benefits from CO2 much sooner and more surely than they would reduce any costs of warming. –Indur Goklany, Financial Post, 13 October 2015
Philippe Verdier, a journalist in charge of the weather service of the French public TV channels France Télévisions, is threatened in his job and his career for having published a non-conformist book about climate. In January, citizens from all countries in the world stood up for freedom of speech, with « Je suis Charlie » as a motto. Time has come to stand up again. The Collectif des climato-réalistes call on you to sign this petition regardless of your opinion about climate change. —Collectif des climato-réalistes
1) Developing Nations Reject Paris Draft Agreement
Business Standard, 18 November 2015
Nitin Sethi
Developing countries come together to oppose controversial draft of Paris deal as Africa joins hands with India, China and others of LMDC group.
A storm of anger rising from developed countries negotiators gathered strength at the Climate Change talks at Bonn on the weekend, ahead of the formal launch of the negotiations on Monday. The Africa Group joined hands with the Like-Minded Developing Countries, of which India and China are member, to oppose the draft for the Paris agreement in its current shape. The larger umbrella G77+China group of more than 100 developing countries too met on Sunday to coordinate positions on the controversial first draft of the Paris agreement.
The two blocks of countries, Africa Group and the Like Minded Developing Countries (LMDC) demanded that the two co-chairs leading the negotiations should first bring balance to the draft text of the agreement by letting developing countries re-insert their views. The two groups conveyed that further negotiations would not be possible without countries being first allowed to re-insert their proposals unopposed back in to the imbalanced draft agreement.
This is the last round of formal UN negotiations before 196 countries meet at Paris to hammer together a global climate change agreement. Responding to a problematic draft text for the agreement many developing countries have flown in days ahead to Bonn to coordinate.
The first draft of the Paris agreement prepared by the two co-chairs of the negotiations had found strong opposition from India and other developing countries in the LMDC group, including China. These developing countries had found that almost all the issues of interest to them at the climate talks had been dropped and others inimical to their interests given a greater priority. India had found several of its red-lines too breached by the draft agreement.
“The text contained in the informal note ADP.2015.8 (the draft Paris agreement) cannot be used as a basis for negotiation, as it is unbalanced, and does not reflect the African Group positions, and crosses the group’s redlines,” said Xolisa Ngwadla, lead negotiator for the Africa Group speaking to Business Standard from Bonn. “We intend to be constructive and help in the progress of the talks but this is not a text on the basis of which African Group can negotiate,” he added.
Sources in the LMDC group too confirmed that the two blocks of countries had met and found they were on the same page and extremely upset with the draft agreement being blind to positions of the developing countries. The two groups drew up common positions to take at the formal talks beginning Monday. On Sunday the two groups separately met with the co-chairs of the process (one is from the US and another from Algeria) and informed them that the talks could not move ahead until the draft text was first revised.
“We tasked the co-chairs to come up with a text which would be the basis for negotiations. That means presenting the views of all countries cohesively and in a balanced manner including areas of convergence and divergence. Instead what we find is a compromise text being presented to us which is not a compromise countries have agreed to,” said a key negotiator from LMDC countries.
The official said the LMDC too have conveyed that the imbalance in the draft agreement threatened the success of the Paris agreement. He said, “The G77 group of more than 100 countries had given text-based proposals on finance but these were not taken into account at all. Our views are completely taken off the table. We find the provisions (in the current Paris agreement draft) are vacuous. This has given rise to serious concerns in our mind about the success of Paris Agreement,”
Ngwadla explained further, “The open-ended drafting committee should only commence once agreement on its mandate has been clarified in the opening plenary, with a clear modality that there will be no negotiation of insertions by Parties to establish balance in the open ended drafting committee.”
In other words, African countries and the LMDC have both demanded that the first day of the Bonn talks should allow any country or group to bring back their proposals on the table that have been given a short shrift without objections from others. The process of negotiations to reduce differences and bring consensus can begin only then.
Both groups of countries have also said that there should be a stock-taking meeting at the end of each day. “Unlike the last time where the co-chairs continued to negotiate the way they wished, here we shall take stock. At the first-stock taking meeting we shall assess find that the representations of developing countries have been taken on board the draft text or not. Only then would negotiations begin,” said the negotiators, in what is being seen as a polite but serious warning to the co-chairs.
2) Chinese Academy of Sciences: Global Warming May Be Very Good For China
South China Morning Post, 16 October 2015
Stephen Chen
Global warming will benefit China by increasing rainfall in its dry northern regions while reducing flooding in the hotter southern areas, according to a new study by scientists in the country.
The research team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences said that if the phenomenon continues, the planet’s thermal equator will move northward and push the rain belt associated with the monsoons in East Asia from the southern to northern part of the country.
The thermal equator is made up of a set of locations encircling the planet that have the highest mean annual temperatures at each longitude.
If such climatic change were to occur in China, bamboo forests would reappear along the banks of the Yellow River, which runs from Qinghai province in the far west and empties into the Bohai Sea in Shandong province on the eastern coast, pundits predict.
Moreover, rice paddies would likely expand to the Great Wall, which runs along the dry northern part of China, and Beijing, which faces chronic water shortages, would no longer need to channel water from the south.
In their recent paper published in the influential research journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, a team of scientists led by Professor Yang Shiling reported that such a paradigm shift would “soon occur” in China.
Northern China would “eventually become wet as global warming advances,” the team concluded in the paper. The evidence supporting their claim is buried deeply under the Loess Plateau, the cradle of Chinese civilization in the upper and middle reaches of the Yellow River. The team analysed the carbon signatures of plant biomass after the last Ice Age, which ended about 20,000 years ago, and found the monsoon belt had moved northward as much as 300 kilometres as temperatures rose globally.
The scientists predicted that the same trend will be repeated in the future as the planet again heats up. However it should spell good news for China as the dry climate plaguing the northern parts of the country will be alleviated by more rainfall if global warming continues, they said.
The new finding challenges the traditional view that global warming will exacerbate water shortages in this part of the world. […]
Debate about the trade-off between the costs and benefits of climate change continues to rage to this day.
While large international authorities such as the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have vowed to tackle climate change head-on, some scientists and organisations believe it may help boost the production of crops and forests, among other benefits.
In a report published Monday the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a London-based think tank, said that all the carbon dioxide being dumped in the atmosphere has helped boost crop production to the tune of US$140 billion a year in recent times.
The foundation has called for a reassessment of the impact brought on by greenhouse gas emissions.
3) Matt Ridley: Now Here’s The Good News On Global Warming
The Times, 19 October 2015
Activists may want to shut down debate, but evidence is growing that high CO2 levels boost crops and nourish the oceans
France’s leading television weather forecaster, Philippe Verdier, was taken off air last week for writing that there are “positive consequences” of climate change. Freeman Dyson, professor emeritus of mathematical physics and astrophysics at the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton, declared last week that the non-climatic effects of carbon dioxide are “enormously beneficial”. Patrick Moore, a founder of Greenpeace, said in a lecture last week that we should “celebrate carbon dioxide”.
Are these three prominent but very different people right? Should we at least consider seriously, before we go into a massive international negotiation based on the assumption that carbon dioxide is bad, whether we might be mistaken? Most politicians today consider such a view to be so beyond the pale as to be mad or possibly criminal.
Yet the benefits of carbon dioxide emissions are not even controversial in scientific circles. As Richard Betts of the Met Office tweeted last week, the “CO2 fertilisation effect” — the fact that rising emissions are making plants grow better — is not news and is discussed in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The satellite data show that there has been roughly a 14 per cent increase in the amount of green vegetation on the planet since 1982, that this has happened in all ecosystems, but especially in arid tropical areas, and that it is in large part due to man-made carbon dioxide emissions.
Last week also saw the publication of a comprehensive report on “Carbon Dioxide — the Good News” for the Global Warming Policy Foundation by the independent American scientist Indur Goklany, to which Freeman Dyson wrote the foreword. The report was thoroughly peer-reviewed, as was almost all of the voluminous literature it cited. (Full disclosure: I helped edit the report.)
Goklany points out that whereas the benefits of carbon dioxide are huge and here now, the harms are still speculative and almost all in the distant future. There has so far been — as the IPCC confirms — no measurable increase in droughts, floods or storms worldwide, no reversal in the continuing rapid decline in deaths due to insect-borne diseases, and no measurable impacts of the continuing very slow rise in global sea levels. In stark terms, Bangladesh is still gaining land from sedimentation in its rivers’ deltas, has suffered no increase in cyclones, but has benefited from reduced malnourishment to the tune of billions of dollars from higher crop yields as a result of carbon dioxide emissions.
It is worth remembering that commercial greenhouses buy carbon dioxide to enhance the growth of plants, so the growth responses are well known — and it’s not until carbon dioxide reaches five times current concentrations that the benefits level out. As Patrick Moore pointed out, those were normal levels for much of earth’s history.
In addition, hundreds of “free-air concentration experiments” have measured how much increased carbon dioxide levels enhance crop yields in open fields. So it is fairly easy to work out how much carbon dioxide emissions are helping world agriculture: by about $140 billion a year, or $3 trillion in total so far. If reparations are to be paid, perhaps farmers should pay coal producers (full disclosure: I’m both).
Actually, this may be an underestimate: experiments show that crops tend to benefit more than weeds (most crops have a more responsive kind of photosynthetic machinery called C3, while weeds mostly have a less responsive kind called C4). Increased carbon dioxide enhances drought resistance in plants, benefiting dry regions such as the Sahel, which has greened significantly in recent decades. And Goklany calculates that we need 11-17 per cent less land for feeding the world than we would if we had not increased carbon dioxide levels: so emissions have saved — and enhanced the growth of — a lot of rainforest.
Well, all right, but surely the climate harms will one day outweigh the growth benefits? Not necessarily. At the moment, impacts from the modest warming we saw in the 1980s and 1990s are also positive: slightly fewer premature deaths, which peak in cold weather more than in hot weather, slightly longer growing seasons and so on. A paper published last week concludes that if the world does warm significantly, China’s rain systems will shift north, increasing rainfall in the dry north and reducing flooding in the hot south.
Besides, human adaptation means we can capture the benefits and avoid the harms. The IPCC’s forecast warming range includes the possibility that we will still be enjoying net benefits by the end of the century, when the world will (it says) be three to 16 times richer per capita. The fastest way to cut deaths from bad weather today (such as the storm that just battered the Philippines) is to make people richer, not to make weather safer: we have already cut world death rates from droughts, floods and storms by 98 per cent in the past century.
As Goklany demonstrates, the assessments used by policy makers have overestimated warming so far, underestimated the direct benefits of carbon dioxide, overestimated the harms from climate change, and underestimated the human capacity to adapt.
Well, what about the ocean? Here too there’s good news. More carbon dioxide means faster growth rates of photosynthesisers in the sea as well as on land, an effect that is being observed in algae, eelgrasses, corals and especially plankton, such as the abundant creatures known as coccolithophores, whose biomass has increased by 40 per cent in the last two centuries.
That’s not to say coral reefs and fisheries are not in trouble — they are, but because of pollution, overfishing and run-off, not carbon dioxide. The tiny reduction in alkalinity (misleadingly termed “acidification”) caused by dissolved carbon dioxide is potentially negative in the distant future, but has been much exaggerated — as a big review of 372 studies has concluded. One recent experiment with a common Caribbean coral found that rising carbon dioxide levels would have no impact on its ability to build reefs for several centuries, while modest warming would actually help it slightly.
With tens of thousands of activists and bureaucrats heading for a UN conference in Paris next month, there is such vast vested interest now in demonising carbon dioxide that it will be hard to change the world’s mind. Freeman Dyson laments that “scientific colleagues who believe the prevailing dogma about carbon dioxide will not find Goklany’s evidence convincing”, but hopes that a few will try. Amen.
4 ) Patrick Moore: Should We Celebrate CO2? (Lecture Video)
Global Warming Policy Foundation, 14 October 2015
5) Indur Goklany: The Great Carbon Dioxide Boom
Financial Post, 13 October 2015
On the eve of the UN climate summit in Paris, all delegates would be well advised to reflect on how the story of man-made global warming debate started.
Svante Arrhenius, winner of the 1905 Nobel Prize, hypothesized over a century ago that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide CO2 due to fossil fuel consumption would warm the world. He also hypothesized that higher CO2 levels would stimulate plant growth. These, he reasoned, would reinforce each other and increase the biosphere’s productivity to the benefit of mankind.
Remarkably, proponents of the notion that global warming would be catastrophic unless CO2 emissions are curtailed drastically (or, in short, “warmists,”) embrace the first, but ignore the second hypothesis. “Remarkably,” because both satellite and ground based data confirm that the biosphere’s productivity has increased in managed ecosystems (e.g., agriculture and managed forests) and in unmanaged or natural ecosystems.
The plant-productivity increase has been steady, large and ubiquitous: widespread evidence confirms that the earth is greener; terrestrial ecosystems’ productivity has increased 14% since 1982. Further, the IPCC estimates that the terrestrial biosphere productivity is 5% over pre-industrial times, that is, “carbon fertilization” due to rising CO2 levels has helped overcome any productivity loss from deforestation and other habitat loss. (Habitat loss is the greatest threat to terrestrial biodiversity and natural ecosystems.)
This productivity increase is to be expected: the results of thousands of scientific experiments indicate that at current levels of atmospheric CO2, crop yields should increase by 9-15% relative to pre-industrial levels because higher CO2 increases rates of plant growth (i.e., photosynthesis), improves the efficiency with which plants use water, increases their drought resistance and, possibly, increases resistance of crops to pests and weeds.
These increases in crop yields, in addition to helping feed a larger population, have limited the need to convert existing habitat to farming. The increased crop yields from higher CO2 levels reduced habitat loss by 11-17% compared with what it would otherwise have been. Consequently, more land has been left relatively wild. […]
Equally important, contrary to warmists’ claims, since fossil fuels helped start the Industrial Revolution in the mid-eighteenth century and CO2 emissions skyrocketed, so have aggregate indicators of human well-being. Data back to 1750 show the dramatic escalation in measures of well being and, as the nearby graph shows, the bulk of the increase has occurred since 1900 as global carbon-based industrial development soared (See graph).
Since 1750:
+ Carbon dioxide emissions increased from the relatively imperceptible (3 million tons) in 1750 to 9.5 billion tons in 2011;
+ Population increased nine-fold from 800 million to 1.6 billion 1900 and 7.3 billion in 2014;
+ Average GDP per capita, perhaps the best measure of economic and material well-being, increased thirteen-fold, from $650 to in 1750 to $1,261 in 1900 and $8,500 in 2014 (in 1990 International dollars);
+ Average life expectancy, probably the single best indicator of human well-being, has more than doubled from 26 years in 1750 to 31 in 1900 and to 71 years in 2013.
These indicators show no sign of a sustained downturn.
Empirical trends indicate that climate-sensitive indicators of human well-being have also improved markedly over recent decades, notwithstanding the gloomy prognostications of warmists. […]
The wide divergence between dystopian warmist claims and empirical reality can be attributed to the fact that those claims derive largely from unvalidated models. Empirical data, however, indicate that these models have overestimated the rate of warming. […]
To summarize, compared with the benefits from CO2 on crop and biosphere productivity, the adverse impacts of CO2-induced warming on the frequencies and intensities of extreme weather, accelerated sea level rise, vector-borne disease prevalence, and human health have been too small to measure, are non-existent or swamped by other factors.
It is very likely that the impact of rising CO2 concentrations is currently net beneficial for both humanity and the biosphere generally. No compelling case has been made that the net impacts of climate change will be negative by the end of this century, particularly given the gradual rate of warming observed recently.
In fact, the more gradual the rate of warming, the greater the likelihood of successful adaptation, and the cheaper that adaptation.
Empirical data confirm that the benefits of CO2 are real whereas the costs of warming are uncertain, dependent as they are on the results of climate models and impact methodologies that tend to overestimate negative impacts.
Halting the increase in CO2 concentrations abruptly, or reducing them, would immediately halt or reverse improvements in plant growth rates, increasing hunger and habitat destruction. On the other hand, any consequential change in warming would happen much more slowly. Thus, any reductions in CO2 emissions would deprive people and the planet of the benefits from CO2 much sooner and more surely than they would reduce any costs of warming.
This op-ed is derived from CARBON DIOXIDE: The good news, a paper from the Global Warming Policy Foundation. Indur Goklany, an independent scholar and author, was a member of the U.S. delegation that established the IPCC and helped develop its First Assessment Report. He subsequently served as a U.S. delegate to the IPCC, and an IPCC reviewer.
6) Petition For Philippe Verdier To Be Reinstated In His Job At France Télévisions
Collectif des climato-réalistes
Philippe Verdier, a journalist in charge of the weather service of the French public TV channels France Télévisions, is threatened in his job and his career for having published a non-conformist book about climate.
Even if he emphasizes that he is not a climate skeptic, Philippe Verdier points out in his book all the erring ways of climate policies. He also criticizes the IPCC and its ideological views that have just nothing to do with science.
The origin of his book is Laurent Fabius’ explicit and recent attempt to get full support of all French weathermen prior to COP21, the international climate conference that will be held in Paris late November. Laurent Fabius is the French Foreign Minister and also the future president of this conference.
In January, citizens from all countries in the world stood up for freedom of speech, with « Je suis Charlie » as a motto. Time has come to stand up again. The Collectif des climato-réalistes call on you to sign this petition regardless of your opinion about climate change.
To sign petition go here
