GWPF | 2 Nov 2014
IPCC Powerless As Deadlock Over Climate Treaty Solidifies
The world is on course to experience “severe and pervasive” negative impacts from climate change unless it takes rapid action to slash its greenhouse gas emissions, a major UN report is expected to warn on Sunday. Yet despite the IPCC’s stark warnings, there is widespread agreement from climate change activists, sceptics and, privately, UK Government officials, that the summit in Paris is unlikely to achieve a legally-binding deal that will curb warming to the 2C level. –Emily Gosden, The Sunday Telegraph, 2 November 2014
Benny Peiser, of the climate-sceptic Global Warming Policy Foundation, said the IPCC report contents would not translate to agreement on a [binding] deal in Paris. “On the science there is no real discrepancy: the governments agree we should make sure warming isn’t more than 2C. But when it really comes to caps on their CO2 emissions there is simply no chance of a [legally binding] agreement whatsoever,” he said. “There are a number of countries that simply can’t afford to forgo the cheap energy they are sitting on, countries like India and China. They will make sure they can use the cheap fossil fuels they have under their feet.” –Emily Gosden, The Sunday Telegraph, 2 November 2014
Carbon Dioxide emissions must be reduced by almost half by 2030 or global temperatures will eventually rise by between 2C and 5C, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will warn today. In its fifth report on climate change, the IPCC is also expected to say humans must pump no more than a further one trillion tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere if temperature change is to be kept below 2C. The body will say it will be clear within six years if the threat of “dangerous” climate change has been averted. —Michael Hanlon, The Sunday Times, 2 November 2014
Benny Peiser, director of the climate-sceptic Global Warming Policy Foundation, said the impact of CO2 levels on the atmosphere remained “open to question”. He added that, “mainly for economic reasons”, it was very unlikely big emitters such as India and China would be able to cap their emissions. He said: “There is a big scientific debate about the lack of global warming over the last 15 years. The question of what happens if we double the level of CO2, will it cause little more warming or much more warming, that remains an open question.” —Michael Hanlon, The Sunday Times, 2 November 2014
Scientists and officials are meeting in Denmark to edit what’s been termed the “most important document” on climate change. Concerns have been raised about the role of the government representatives here in Copenhagen. There are worries that government officials are trying to steer the science in a certain direction, to reflect their negotiating positions in the UN climate talks. One insider told BBC News that the chair of the IPCC, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, had to remind the delegates at one point that they were working on a summary for policymakers, not by them. –Matt McGrath, BBC News, 30 October 2014
1) IPCC Powerless As Deadlock Over Climate Treaty Solidifies – The Sunday Telegraph, 2 November 2014
2) Ritual IPCC Alarm: Just 16 Years To Avoid Climate Calamity – The Sunday Times, 2 November 2014
3) The Political Battle Over IPCC Climate Report – BBC News, 30 October 2014
1) IPCC Powerless As Deadlock Over Climate Treaty Solidifies
The Sunday Telegraph, 2 November 2014
Emily Gosden
The world is on course to experience “severe and pervasive” negative impacts from climate change unless it takes rapid action to slash its greenhouse gas emissions, a major UN report is expected to warn on Sunday.
Flooding, dangerous heatwaves, ill health and violent conflicts are among the likely risks if temperatures exceed 2C above pre-industrial levels, the report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will say.
Yet on current trends, continued burning of fossil fuels could see temperature increases of between 3.7C and 4.8C by the end of the century, the report warns, according to a draft seen by the Telegraph.
Warming beyond 4C would likely result in “substantial species extinction, large risks to global and regional food security, impacts on normal human activities”.
The final document, which has been agreed line-by-line by international government officials at a summit in Copenhagen over the past week, is intended to provide the clearest and most concise summary yet of the widely-agreed scientific evidence on climate change.
It is a “synthesis” document bringing together the conclusions of three major IPCC studies issued over the past year into the science, impacts and ways of tackling climate change.
It is designed to act as a guide for policymakers ahead of a year of intense political negotiations on how to tackle climate change, culminating in a crunch summit in Paris next year where an international deal on curbing emissions is due to be signed.
Yet despite the IPCC’s stark warnings, there is widespread agreement from climate change activists, sceptics and, privately, UK Government officials, that the summit in Paris is unlikely to achieve a legally-binding deal that will curb warming to the 2C level.
Doing so would require a drastic overhaul of global energy systems in order to cut emissions by between 40pc and 70pc from 2010 levels by 2050. The proportion of energy sourced from low-carbon sources such as wind farms, solar power and nuclear reactors would have to triple or nearly quadruple, the draft says.
The expansion of such technologies has already proved controversial in the UK. Owen Paterson, the former environment secretary, has called for the UK’s Climate Change Act, which imposes tough unilateral emissions-reductions goals, to be suspended until other countries agree to similar measures.
Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN IPCC, opened the Copenhagen summit by acknowledging the “seeming hopelessness of addressing climate change” but imploring policymakers to “avoid being overcome” by it. “It is not hopeless,” he said, calling on governments to make decisions “informed by the science”. […]
Benny Peiser, of the climate-sceptic Global Warming Policy Foundation, said the IPCC report contents would not translate to agreement on a deal in Paris.
“On the science there is no real discrepancy: the governments agree we should make sure warming isn’t more than 2C. But when it really comes to caps on their CO2 emissions there is simply no chance of a [legally binding] agreement whatsoever,” he said.
“There are a number of countries that simply can’t afford to forgo the cheap energy they are sitting on, countries like India and China. They will make sure they can use the cheap fossil fuels they have under their feet.”
2) Ritual IPCC Alarm: Just 16 Years To Avoid Climate Calamity
The Sunday Times, 2 November 2014
Michael Hanlon
Carbon Dioxide emissions must be reduced by almost half by 2030 or global temperatures will eventually rise by between 2C and 5C, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will warn today.
In its fifth report on climate change, the IPCC is also expected to say humans must pump no more than a further one trillion tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere if temperature change is to be kept below 2C.
The body will say it will be clear within six years if the threat of “dangerous” climate change has been averted.
According to Professor Dame Julia Slingo, chief scientist at the Met Office, the report will warn of “extremely serious impacts for both people and ecosystems” if temperatures increase by more than 2C.
“This is not a problem for later in the century; it is a problem for us now,” said Slingo. The report is likely to reignite the fierce debate with those who believe climate change has been exaggerated or is fictitious. […]
The report will say that, to have a 66% chance of preventing temperatures increasing on average by more than 2C, no more than 2,900bn tonnes of carbon dioxide — above pre-industrial levels — should have been released into the atmosphere.
It calculates that 1,900bn tonnes had been released by 2011. At the current annual emission rates of about 36bn tonnes, the remaining 1,000bn tonnes “carbon cap” will be reached by about 2039.
Climatologists say the cap is important because carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for hundreds of years, meaning the total accumulated over time is more important than annual levels…
However, Benny Peiser, director of the climate-sceptic Global Warming Policy Foundation, said the impact of CO2 levels on the atmosphere remained “open to question”.
He added that, “mainly for economic reasons”, it was very unlikely big emitters such as India and China would be able to cap their emissions.
He said: “There is a big scientific debate about the lack of global warming over the last 15 years. The question of what happens if we double the level of CO2, will it cause little more warming or much more warming, that remains an open question.”
3) The Political Battle Over IPCC Climate Report
BBC News, 30 October 2014
Matt McGrath
Scientists and officials are meeting in Denmark to edit what’s been termed the “most important document” on climate change. There are worries that government officials are trying to steer the science in a certain direction, to reflect their negotiating positions in the UN climate talks.
The IPCC Synthesis Report will summarise the causes and impacts of – and solutions to – rising temperatures.
It will be the bedrock of talks on a new global climate deal.
But there are concerns that political battles could neuter the final summary.
Over the past 13 months, the IPCC has released three major reports on the physical science, the impacts and the potential methods of dealing with climate change.
On Sunday they will release the Synthesis Report. This new study is meant to take the most important elements of all three and blend them into something new. It is not meant to be a cut-and-paste exercise.
“The new thing is there is going to be a stand-alone document that will be the most important for policymakers for the next few years,” Prof Arthur Petersen, a UCL researcher and member of the Dutch government’s team at the Copenhagen meeting, told BBC News.
“It will be the document for the Paris summit.” […]
During this meeting the scientists and government officials will engage in a word-by-word review of the Summary, a document about 30 pages in length.
Concerns have been raised about the role of the government representatives here in Copenhagen.
There have been worries that they are trying to steer the science in a certain direction, to reflect their negotiating positions in the UN climate talks.
One insider told BBC News that the chair of the IPCC, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, had to remind the delegates at one point that they were working on a summary for policymakers, not by them.
“They are there to make sure that there is nothing in a document that their government approved that is inconsistent with their government’s negotiation position,” said the person with knowledge of the proceedings.
In this series of reports, the IPCC introduced, for the first time, the concept of a “carbon budget”.
They worked out the amount of greenhouse gases that the world could emit to raise global temperatures by no more than 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels.
In Working Group III, issued in Berlin in April, they reported that two-thirds of that budget had been used up by 2011.
But attempts to include this idea in the Synthesis Report have faced considerable opposition from political representatives from a number of countries, including India and the USA.
India sees coal as playing a big part in attempts to get people out of poverty. A global limit on emissions, they argue, would interfere with that
