Global Climate Change Science News

[Scot Dutchy]

Nice words Brian but you and I know it will never happen. It is just greenwashing and nothing else.

[Scot Dutchy]

Cop26 will be derailed unless the rich world meets its obligation to the poor

It’s no use telling developing nations to decarbonise. The west must accept it bears the bulk of the blame for the climate crisis

A couple of hundred years ago Britain was not a lot different from many poor countries today. Life expectancy was low, infant mortality was high, living standards barely rose from year to year, water-borne diseases were rife. People worked long hours and life for the struggling was, as Thomas Hobbes put it, “nasty, brutish and short”.

Then the Industrial Revolution came along and Britain, followed by other countries in the world’s temperate zones, discovered the elixir of economic growth. After pretty much flatlining for more than a thousand years, incomes per head started to rise much more quickly.

Growth has resulted in shorter working weeks, longer lives and fewer people living in absolute poverty. More money has been spent on health, education and sanitation – all of it much needed. But – and there was always going to be a but – it has come at a cost. Two centuries of using fossil fuels to power economic activity with no regard for the consequences has led to global heating, which has now reached potentially catastrophic levels.

The good news from the early days of the Cop26 conference in Glasgow is that everybody admits there is a problem. The US president, Joe Biden, gets it, as does the British chancellor, Rishi Sunak. President Xi Jinping of China, although he has given the talks a miss, is as cognisant of the threat as France’s Emmanuel Macron or Germany’s Angela Merkel. The big beasts of global finance know they have to pledge obeisance to carbon net zero targets even while continuing to bankroll the fossil fuel sector.

A nice bit of greenwashing.

[Svartalf]

I have no obligation to any poor country. I have not exploited them, nor do I think my ancestors did.

[macdoc]

St Svart...western civ has in its own interest obligations to poorer countries.

[Scot Dutchy]

What would you know about that? Just get back to your tv room and watch one of your stupid American movie channels on your 320k television.

[Brian Peacock]

Woah there. Chill out pal - it's only the internet.

[macdoc]

Nah chilling on the deck in a lovely tropical morning ...Scot has trouble with time zones too.
Media rooms are for media and music practice and the rare cyclone shelter purpose. I'll watch media from whereever, there are even a few Dutch bits that are okay.....perhaps it was a docu on raw herring.

[pErvinalia]

[macdoc]

Early work on climate earns a Nobel ...

https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/a ... l-pursuit/

This blew me away.

Manabe extends this result to predict a temperature increase by 2000 of 0.8ºC based on a 25% increase in CO2, which was pretty close.

1970 !!!

[Scot Dutchy]

The climate crisis is just another form of global oppression by the rich world

At Cop26 the wealthy nations cast themselves as saviours, yet their efforts are hopelessly inadequate and will prolong the injustice

The story of the past 500 years can be crudely summarised as follows. A handful of European nations, which had mastered both the art of violence and advanced seafaring technology, used these faculties to invade other territories and seize their land, labour and resources.

Competition for control of other people’s lands led to repeated wars between the colonising nations. New doctrines – racial categorisation, ethnic superiority and a moral duty to “rescue” other people from their “barbarism” and “depravity” – were developed to justify the violence. These doctrines led, in turn, to genocide.

The stolen labour, land and goods were used by some European nations to stoke their industrial revolutions. To handle the greatly increased scope and scale of transactions, new financial systems were established that eventually came to dominate their own economies. European elites permitted just enough of the looted wealth to trickle down to their labour forces to seek to stave off revolution – successfully in Britain, unsuccessfully elsewhere.

At length, the impact of repeated wars, coupled with insurrections by colonised peoples, forced the rich nations to leave most of the lands they had seized, formally at least. These territories sought to establish themselves as independent nations. But their independence was never more than partial. Using international debt, structural adjustment, coups, corruption (assisted by offshore tax havens and secrecy regimes), transfer pricing and other clever instruments, the rich nations continued to loot the poor, often through the proxy governments they installed and armed.

Unwittingly at first, then with the full knowledge of the perpetrators, the industrial revolutions released waste products into the Earth’s systems. At first, the most extreme impacts were felt in the rich nations, whose urban air and rivers were poisoned, shortening the lives of the poor. The wealthy removed themselves to places they had not trashed. Later, the rich countries discovered they no longer needed smokestack industries: through finance and subsidiaries, they could harvest the wealth manufactured by dirty business overseas.

Chumocracy in other words.

[Scot Dutchy]

Are they going to change?

‘Luxury carbon consumption’ of top 1% threatens 1.5C global heating limit

Richest 1% will account for 16% of total emissions by 2030, while poorest 50% will release one tonne of CO2 a year

The carbon dioxide emissions of the richest 1% of humanity are on track to be 30 times greater than what is compatible with keeping global heating below 1.5C, new research warns, as scientists urge governments to “constrain luxury carbon consumption” of private jets, megayachts and space travel.

In keeping with the Paris climate goals, every person on Earth needs to reduce their CO2 emissions to an average of 2.3 tonnes by 2030, about half the average of today.

The richest 1% – which is a population smaller than Germany – are on track to be releasing 70 tonnes of CO2 per person a year if current consumption continues, according to the study. In total they will account for 16% of total emissions by 2030, up from 13% of emissions in 1990. Meanwhile, the poorest 50% will be releasing an average of one tonne of CO2 annually.

“A tiny elite appear to have a free pass to pollute,” said Nafkote Dabi, climate policy lead at Oxfam, which commissioned the study by the Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP) and the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI). “Their oversized emissions are fuelling extreme weather around the world and jeopardising the international goal of limiting global heating,” she said.

The research comes as global leaders gather in Cop26 to discuss ways to curb emissions and keep the 1.5C target on the table, with a number of delegates arriving at the climate conference by private jet, including Boris Johnson, Prince Charles and Jeff Bezos. The charity is urging the richest citizens to speed up action on global heating by cutting their own CO2 emissions in line with Paris targets, and using their influence and financial backing to drive a green economy.

Like hell they are. Greenwashing Chumocracy.

[Brian Peacock]

Johnson flew to and from COP26 in a private jet.

[macdoc]

That is really immaterial if offsets were purchased which are easily available and not costly.

https://www.privatefly.com.au/about/sustainability.html

https://carbonneutralbritain.org/?utm_s ... 4GEALw_wcB

Why billionaires like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos buy carbon offsets — and how they work
Published Fri, Nov 5 20219:02 AM EDTUpdated 36 Min Ago

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/05/why-bil ... -work.html

https://planetair.ca/en/carbon-offsets/

Gold Standard Credits

Planetair’s carbon offsets are certified by the Gold Standard. The Gold Standard is the most stringent carbon offset standard on the market. That standard also requires that certified projects contribute to other United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The Gold Standard is supported by WWF International, Greenpeace, the David Suzuki Foundation, the Pembina Institute and 80 other NGOs.

idea is catching on to offset twice or three times the carbon footprint which I try to do even tho my own is very low since covid came around.

So our carbon footprint is roughly 1.4 tonne for the household and the offset cost is circa $25. from Gold Standard sources.
https://carbonpositiveaustralia.org.au/calculate/
That's inclusive of household and travel.

No public figure in their right mind would not offset travel to COP26

[Brian Peacock]

Offsetting is a scam. The CO2 still goes into the atmosphere.

[JimC]

Offsetting is a scam. The CO2 still goes into the atmosphere.

If it actually involves tree planting on a large scale, in areas that need reforestation which wouldn't happen without the offset money, then they can indeed work (by the trees absorbing X amount of CO2 as they grow). But I'm sure there are also some scams out there as well.