Some reading for the “anti-warmalists” and “climate-change deniers”

[Im2Sexy4MyPants]

That's your god Al Gore it looks like he's taking a dump on your head

Insurance price increases were caused by Christchurch earthquakes you dumb arse

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

The increase in costs caused by the Christchurch earthquakes were but a mere piffling amount compared to the HUGE increase in costs to insurance companies repairing the damage caused by the vastly increasing numbers of extreme weather events around the world year by year as the planet warms up.

Open your eyes to what is going on before it swallows you. Particularly note how even mainstream economists and business people are noticing how the cost to insurance companies repairing damage from extreme weather-related events have caused insurance premium increases to go ballistic all around the world.

Mainstream business, economists, and insurance companies “get it!” The truly STUPID don't get it, but they eventually will as they are overwhelmed when it happens to them, and not just once either, but eventually multiple times when the weather well & truly fucks them and their property over.

In the meantime, the truly STUPID are free to keep their heads buried in the sand, if they wish, until they feel their arses being undermined, then wonder where that came from.

[Im2Sexy4MyPants]

So your saying that we dont have any problems from the massive world wide money printing causing inflation,causing rising costs for everything,and all our rising insurance fee's are just caused by the weather and not the sun LMAO



Global warming? No, actually we're cooling, claim scientists

A cold Arctic summer has led to a record increase in the ice cap, leading experts to predict a period of global cooling



http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/10294082/Global-warming-No-actually-were-cooling-claim-scientists.html

Cooling is climate change hahaha it's freezing my arse off,

I might bury my head in the sand to keep my ears warm lol

but wait there's more lol

Global Cooling is Here

Evidence for Predicting Global Cooling for the Next Three Decades

http://www.globalresearch.ca/global-cooling-is-here/10783

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

Click on the cartoon to download the FULL IPCC “CLIMATE CHANGE 2013” report (365.29 PDF document)
on global warming/climate change published on March 31st, 2014. You can (if you wish) right-click on
the cartoon, then left-click on Save target as... in the menu which appears and select where you want
to save the document to on your computer's hard-drive, then open it from there.

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

[Im2Sexy4MyPants]

KTJ  lol

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

from The Press....

Extreme weather costs insurers $135m

By NICOLE MATHEWSON | 1:27PM - Monday, 08 September 2014


DESTRUCTION: A small tornado ripped Blaketown on the South Island's West Coast, damaging roofs
and uprooting trees. — SARAH-JANE O'CONNOR/Fairfax NZ.

THIS YEAR is shaping up to be one of the most expensive for New Zealand's insurers, with weather-related damage costing more than $135 million so far.

New data released by the Insurance Council of New Zealand today showed 2014 was looking to be one of the costliest years for the country's insurers, with seven major weather events contributing to $135m worth of claims.

Chief executive Tim Grafton said the final cost of the Easter storm that hit the West Coast had risen to $55.3m, up from an initial estimate of $45m.

The storm was the biggest events of the year so far, resulting in about 10,000 claims and $32m worth of damage to homes, contents and vehicles.

The provisional cost for the storm that hit Northland, Auckland and the Coromandel in July added another $15.1m worth of claims to insurers, with about $8m of that relating to homes and contents.

“Homeowners also bore the brunt of the July storm, which highlights the importance of New Zealand's generally high levels of insurance uptake to ensure a quick economic recovery at times like these,” Grafton said.

Weather-events cost insurers $175m in New Zealand last year, making 2013 the second most expensive year since 1968, the year of the Wahine disaster.

2014 WEATHER COST

July 8th-11th: Severe weather in Northland, Auckland and the Coromandel — $15.1m (provisional).

June 25th: Nelson-Tasman district wind and floods — $4.3m (provisional).

June 9th-11th: Severe weather across New Zealand — $29.8m (provisional).

April 17th: West Coast Easter storm and floods — $55.3m.

March 15th-16th: Cyclone Lusi — $3.6m.

March 4th-5th: Canterbury (Floods swamp Christchurch) and lower North Island storm — $4.8m.

February 23th: Canterbury storm — $22.5m.

February storm cost $5m.

Related photograph galleries:

 • Easter storm

 • Storm hits the north

 • Storm hits North Island

 • Christchurch flooding — March 5th, 2014

 • St Albans Flooding

http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/10472363/Extreme-weather-costs-insurers-135m

[Im2Sexy4MyPants]

We should ban weather hahahaha i nearly pissed myself

High cost is caused by the fact that our money is not worth the paper it is written on which is the same reason our food and everything else cost such a lot

[Im2Sexy4MyPants]

Myth of Arctic meltdown: Stunning satellite images show summer ice cap is thicker and covers 1.7million square kilometres MORE than 2 years ago...despite Al Gore's prediction it would be ICE-FREE by now

Seven years after former US Vice-President Al Gore's warning, Arctic ice cap has expanded for second year in row
An area twice the size of Alaska - America's biggest state - was open water two years ago and is now covered in ice
These satellite images taken from University of Illinois's Cryosphere project show ice has become more concentrated


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2738653/Stunning-satellite-images-summer-ice-cap-thicker-covers-1-7million-square-kilometres-MORE-2-years-ago-despite-Al-Gore-s-prediction-ICE-FREE-now.html#ixzz3CgwBSMT0
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

from The Guardian....

IPCC: rapid carbon emission cuts vital to stop severe impact of climate change

Most important assessment of global warming yet warns carbon emissions must
be cut sharply and soon, but UN’s IPCC says solutions are available and affordable.

By DAMIAN CARRINGTON in Copenhagen | 1:23PM GMT - Sunday, 02 November 2014


Carbon emissions, such as those from the Mehrum coal-fired power plant
in Germany, will have to fall to zero to avoid catastrophic climate change,
the IPCC says. — Photo: Julian Stratenschulte/Corbis.

CLIMATE CHANGE is set to inflict “severe, widespread, and irreversible impacts” on people and the natural world unless carbon emissions are cut sharply and rapidly, according to the most important assessment of global warming yet published.

The stark report states that climate change has already increased the risk of severe heatwaves and other extreme weather and warns of worse to come, including food shortages and violent conflicts. But it also found that ways to avoid dangerous global warming are both available and affordable.

“Science has spoken. There is no ambiguity in the message,” said the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, attending what he described as the “historic” report launch. “Leaders must act. Time is not on our side.” He said that quick, decisive action would build a better and sustainable future, while inaction would be costly.

Ban added a message to investors, such as pension fund managers: “Please reduce your investments in the coal- and fossil fuel-based economy and move to renewable energy.”

The report, released in Copenhagen on Sunday by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is the work of thousands of scientists and was agreed after negotiations by the world’s governments. It is the first IPCC report since 2007 to bring together all aspects of tackling climate change and for the first time states: that it is economically affordable; that carbon emissions will ultimately have to fall to zero; and that global poverty can only be reduced by halting global warming. The report also makes clear that carbon emissions, mainly from burning coal, oil and gas, are currently rising to record levels, not falling.

The report comes at a critical time for international action on climate change, with the deadline for a global deal just over a year away. In September, 120 national leaders met at the UN in New York to address climate change, while hundreds of thousands of marchers around the world demanded action.

“We have the means to limit climate change,” said Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the IPCC. “The solutions are many and allow for continued economic and human development. All we need is the will to change.”

Lord Nicholas Stern, a professor at the London School of Economics and the author of an influential earlier study, said the new IPCC report was the “most important assessment of climate change ever prepared” and that it made plain that “further delays in tackling climate change would be dangerous and profoundly irrational”.

“The reality of climate change is undeniable, and cannot be simply wished away by politicians who lack the courage to confront the scientific evidence,” he said, adding that the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people were at risk.

Ed Davey, the UK energy and climate change secretary, said: “This is the most comprehensive and robust assessment ever produced. It sends a clear message: we must act on climate change now. John Kerry, the US secretary of state, said: “This is another canary in the coal mine. We can’t prevent a large scale disaster if we don’t heed this kind of hard science.”

Bill McKibben, a high-profile climate campaigner with 350.org, said: “For scientists, conservative by nature, to use ‘serious, pervasive, and irreversible’ to describe the effects of climate falls just short of announcing that climate change will produce a zombie apocalypse plus random beheadings plus Ebola.” Breaking the power of the fossil fuel industry would not be easy, McKibben said. “But, thanks to the IPCC, no one will ever be able to say they weren’t warned.”


Singapore shrouded by a haze as carbon emissions soar.
 — Photo: Roslan Rahman/AFP/Getty Images.

The new overarching IPCC report builds on previous reports on the science, impacts and solutions for climate change. It concludes that global warming is “unequivocal”, that humanity’s role in causing it is “clear” and that many effects will last for hundreds to thousands of years even if the planet’s rising temperature is halted.

In terms of impacts, such as heatwaves and extreme rain storms causing floods, the report concludes that the effects are already being felt: “In recent decades, changes in climate have caused impacts on natural and human systems on all continents and across the oceans.”

Droughts, coastal storm surges from the rising oceans and wildlife extinctions on land and in the seas will all worsen unless emissions are cut, the report states. This will have knock-on effects, according to the IPCC: “Climate change is projected to undermine food security.” The report also found the risk of wars could increase: “Climate change can indirectly increase risks of violent conflicts by amplifying well-documented drivers of these conflicts such as poverty and economic shocks.”

Two-thirds of all the emissions permissible if dangerous climate change is to be avoided have already been pumped into the atmosphere, the IPPC found. The lowest cost route to stopping dangerous warming would be for emissions to peak by 2020 – an extremely challenging goal — and then fall to zero later this century.

The report calculates that to prevent dangerous climate change, investment in low-carbon electricity and energy efficiency will have to rise by several hundred billion dollars a year before 2030. But it also found that delaying significant emission cuts to 2030 puts up the cost of reducing carbon dioxide by almost 50%, partly because dirty power stations would have to be closed early. “If you wait, you also have to do more difficult and expensive things,” said Jim Skea, a professor at Imperial College London and an IPCC working group vice-chair.


The coal-fired Scherer plant in operation in Juliette, Georgia.
 — Photo: John Amis/Associated Press.

Tackling climate change need only trim economic growth rates by a tiny fraction, the IPCC states, and may actually improve growth by providing other benefits, such as cutting health-damaging air pollution.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) — the nascent technology which aims to bury CO² underground — is deemed extremely important by the IPPC. It estimates that the cost of the big emissions cuts required would more than double without CCS. Pachauri said: “With CCS it is entirely possible for fossil fuels to continue to be used on a large scale.”

The focus on CCS is not because the technology has advanced a great deal in recent years, said Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, a professor at the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium and vice-chair of the IPCC, but because emissions have continued to increase so quickly. “We have emitted so much more, so we have to clean up more later”, he said.

Linking CCS to the burning of wood and other plant fuels would reduce atmospheric CO² levels because the carbon they contain is sucked from the air as they grow. But van Ypersele said the IPCC report also states “very honestly and fairly” that there are risks to this approach, such as conflicts with food security.

In contrast to the importance the IPCC gives to CCS, abandoning nuclear power or deploying only limited wind or solar power increases the cost of emission cuts by just 6-7%. The report also states that behavioural changes, such as dietary changes that could involve eating less meat, can have a role in cutting emissions.

As part of setting out how the world’s nations can cut emissions effectively, the IPCC report gives prominence to ethical considerations. “[Carbon emission cuts] and adaptation raise issues of equity, justice, and fairness,” says the report. “The evidence suggests that outcomes seen as equitable can lead to more effective [international] cooperation.”

These issues are central to the global climate change negotiations and their inclusion in the report was welcomed by campaigners, as was the statement that adapting countries and coastlines to cope with global warming cannot by itself avert serious impacts.

“Rich governments must stop making empty promises and come up with the cash so the poorest do not have to foot the bill for the lifestyles of the wealthy,” said Harjeet Singh, from ActionAid.

The statement that carbon emissions must fall to zero was “gamechanging”, according to Kaisa Kosonen, from Greenpeace. “We can still limit warming to 2°C, or even 1.5°C or less even, [but] we need to phase out emissions,” she said. Unlike CCS, which is yet to be proven commercially, she said renewable energy was falling rapidly in cost.

Sam Smith, from WWF, said: “The big change in this report is that it shows fighting climate change is not going to cripple economies and that it is essential to bringing people out of poverty. What is needed now is concerted political action.” The rapid response of politicians to the recent global financial crisis showed, according to Smith, that “they could act quickly and at scale if they are sufficiently motivated”.

Michel Jarraud, secretary general of the World Meteorological Organisation, said the much greater certainty expressed in the new IPCC report would give international climate talks a better chance than those which failed in 2009. “Ignorance can no longer be an excuse for no action,” he said.

Observers played down the moves made by some countries with large fossil fuel reserves to weaken the language of the draft IPCC report written by scientists and seen by the Guardian, saying the final report was conservative but strong.

However, the statement that “climate change is expected to lead to increases in ill-health in many regions, including greater likelihood of death” was deleted in the final report, along with criticism that politicians sometimes “engage in short-term thinking and are biased toward the status quo”.

Click the links to download the reports:

 • CLIMATE CHANGE 2014 — Synthesis Report (3.4MB PDF)

 • CLIMATE CHANGE 2013 — The Physical Science Basis (375.0MB PDF)

 • CLIMATE CHANGE 2014 — Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability … Part A: Global and Sectorial Aspects 98.0(MB PDF)

 • CLIMATE CHANGE 2014 — Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability … Part B: Regional Aspects (78.0MB PDF)

 • CLIMATE CHANGE 2014 — Mitigation of Climate Change (links to download individual chapters)

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/nov/02/rapid-carbon-emission-cuts-severe-impact-climate-change-ipcc-report

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

                                                                                      click on the cartoon

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

from the Los Angeles Times....

Right wing freaks out over China-U.S. climate change deal

By DAVID HORSEY | 5:00AM PST - Thursday, November 13, 2014



ABOUT five seconds after the announcement came from Beijing that the United States and China had reached an unexpected and ambitious climate change agreement, Republicans in Washington declared it the worst deal since the Trojans accepted a big wooden horse from the Greeks.

Climate scientists had a different reaction. If China and the U.S. actually reach the goals to which they are committing, and if other nations follow their lead, climate experts are saying the world will have made a huge leap toward averting the worst effects of rising global temperatures.

You would think everyone would be cheering, but the boos and catcalls from the right have just begun.

Throughout his campaign for reelection, Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell said it would be foolhardy to raise carbon dioxide emissions standards on American companies as long as China, the world’s biggest generator of greenhouse gases, was sticking to business as usual. But now that China has agreed to take a big step away from coal as its primary fuel source, McConnell still is not satisfied and stands ready to fight implementation of the new agreement once he becomes Senate majority leader in January.

In McConnell’s case, it is transparently obvious that his prime motivation is to protect his state’s coal industry. If that industry happens to be contributing to shifts in climate that threaten civilization, that’s tough luck. McConnell is far more concerned about the profits of the energy industries that finance his, and his party’s, campaigns.

The Senate’s chief climate change denier, Oklahoma Senator James M. Inhofe, also damned the China deal, branding it a “nonbinding charade”. The rest of the right wing chimed in with similar sentiments, asserting that the Chinese had bamboozled President Obama. Because there are no hard and fast requirements in the deal, just aspirational goals, the critics assert that the sneaky Chinese will do nothing while Obama’s reckless and unnecessary new emissions standards wreck the U.S. economy and turn the nation into an impoverished vassal of Beijing.

Besides ignoring the positive bump the American economy would receive from turning to renewable energy sources, the conservatives’ argument misses a very big factor driving China’s sudden willingness to do something about the bad stuff their factories and cars are spewing into the atmosphere. The pollution clouding Chinese cities is a political danger to the regime. China’s President Xi Jinping has agreed to cap emissions and move 20% of the country’s energy consumption to alternative fuels by 2030, not to please the international community or to pull a fast one on Americans, but to avoid a revolt in his own smog-choked country. It’s called self-interest.

Unfortunately, in the United States, too many politicians interpret self-interest as whatever it is that will get them re-elected. The true self-interest of our nation is far larger. It is to keep heartland farms from drying up, to avert extreme sea level rises that would flood coastal cities and to avoid increasingly intense and destructive wildfires, tornadoes, blizzards, floods and hurricanes — all the calamities that will come with climate change.

Anyone who actually cares about America — and the future American economy — would welcome the deal with China as a step in the right direction and would be engaged in making sure it is fully implemented by both countries. Instead, we have pseudo-patriots in Congress and the conservative media doing what they do best: spreading paranoia and protecting the interests of those who are getting rich today by forsaking generations of Americans to come.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-chinaus-climate-deal-20141112-story.html

[nitpicker1]

http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/player/20157286

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

from the Los Angeles Times....

California drought puts a chill on L.A. pool time

By DAVID HORSEY | 5:00AM PST - Wednesday, November 26, 2014



AS the East Coast gets pummeled with rain and heavy snow, messing up Thanksgiving plans for thousands of travelers, folks here in Southern California are looking forward to a Turkey Day with temperatures in the 80s. Please pass the sunblock and cranberry sauce.

Enjoying day after day of nice weather makes a person feel somewhat disconnected from the meteorological travails that beset the rest of the country. Last week, when icy air and heaps of snow blasted most of the U.S., it was still possible to walk around in shorts and a T-shirt here in L.A. — and worry about a sunburn. Newscasters kept noting that there were freezing temperatures in all 50 states, but, in California, that was in the Sierras, not in the city.

Not having lived in Los Angeles until recently, I now understand why Angelenos are generally so good-natured and laid back. Who wouldn’t be if almost every day can be a beach day? When I tell people here I moved down from Seattle, a look of pity crosses their faces and they ask how I ever survived all the rain. When I note that, for three or four months of the year, Seattle is often as dry and sunny as San Diego, the fact doesn’t even register. For them, Seattle equals rain. Chicago equals cold wind. Boston equals icy winters. New York equals humid, muggy summers. And everywhere else is just a wasteland of tornadoes, ticks and hurricanes.

Los Angeles equals sunshine. Yet, not all is serene in La La Land. There is way too much of a good thing.

This year has been the hottest on record in California. According to the National Drought Mitigation Center, every area of the state is stuck in an extended drought, with about two-thirds of the state experiencing “exceptional drought”, the highest level.

The lack of rain is slamming California’s agriculture industry and, as a result, food prices are likely to shoot up all over the country. Already, the drought has cost the state more than $2 billion and has killed more than 17,000 jobs, according to a study done at the UC Davis.

As the state dries up, wildfire “season” is becoming a misnomer. Fire danger is a near constant. All those additional fires are not only burning the land, they are polluting the air. Wetter weather may come, but it is most likely to arrive as torrential rains that create mudslides yet do little to replenish groundwater, rivers and snowpack.

UC Davis researchers do not expect the drought to end this year or next year. In fact, they predict it will stretch into 2016. This means water is going to get even more scarce. There will be a lot less for irrigation, for drinking, for taking showers, for watering golf courses, for washing cars, not to mention the low river levels that will inhibit salmon from swimming out to sea.

In various parts of the state, mandatory restrictions on consumption have been put in place to conserve water supplies. In a few remote towns in Central California, though, it is already too late. Wells have gone completely dry and residents drive to towns miles away to get a ration of water to take back home.

All of this sends a little metaphorical gray cloud into the sunny sky. When pondering the fate of those poor schmucks back in Buffalo with a mountain of melting snow covering their front lawns, it’s no longer easy to feel smug. Sure, lying back and relaxing in a lounge chair in the sunshine is better than shoveling slush, but it’s not quite the same when the shimmering swimming pool a few steps away only reminds you it may need to be drained one day so your family will have something to drink.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-california-drought-20141126-story.html

[reality]

...."but it’s not quite the same when the shimmering swimming pool a few steps away only reminds you it may need to be drained one day so your family will have something to drink."

...and which day exactly is that

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

   (click on the picture to read the news story)

[reality]

Ah..so the conspiracy theorists are blaming every storm on climate change now....probably hard to prove..buy hey..lets not let the FACTS get in the way of a good conspiracy theory ...the reasoning is up to your usual standard...there aint any

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

[reality]

...Finally the 194 nations at the UN climate talks agree ...to try and find an agreement next year.....

14 December 2014
UN members agree deal at Lima climate talks
COMMENTS (1065)
A dried up irrigation reservoir in the Yala national park in Sri Lanka - 11 September 2014
Developing countries have accused wealthier nations of failing to take responsibility for climate change
Continue reading the main story

United Nations members have reached an agreement on how countries should tackle climate change.

Delegates have approved a framework for setting national pledges to be submitted to a summit next year.

Differences over the draft text caused the two-week talks in Lima, Peru, to overrun by two days.

Environmental groups said the deal was an ineffectual compromise, but the EU said it was a step towards achieving a global climate deal next year in Paris.

The talks proved difficult because of divisions between rich and poor countries over how to spread the burden of pledges to cut carbon emissions.

'Not perfect'
The agreement was adopted hours after a previous draft was rejected by developing countries, who accused rich nations of shirking their responsibilities to fight global warming and pay for its impacts.

Peru's environment minister, Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, who chaired the summit, told reporters: "As a text it's not perfect, but it includes the positions of the parties."

Miguel Arias Canete, EU Commissioner for Climate Action and Energy, said the EU had wanted a more ambitious outcome but he still believed that "we are on track to agree a global deal" at a summit in Paris, France, next year.

UK climate change minister Ed Davey said: "I am not going to say it will be a walk in the park in Paris."

He described the deal as "a really important step" on the road to Paris.

"That's when the real deal has to be done."

Grey line
Analysis: Matt McGrath, BBC News, Lima
Peruvian environment minister Manuel Pulgar-Vidal shakes hands with his colleagues after sealing an agreement in Lima - 13 December 2014
There was a good deal of optimism at the start of these talks as the recent emissions agreement between the US and China was seen as an historic breakthrough. But that good spirit seemed to evaporate in two weeks of intense wrangling between rich and poor here in Lima.

It ended in a compromise that some participants believe keeps the world on track to reach a new global treaty by the end of next year.

None of the 194 countries attending the talks walked away with everything they wanted, but everybody got something.

As well as pledges and finance, the agreement points towards a new classification of nations. Rather than just being divided into rich and poor, the text attempts to reflects the more complex world of today, where the bulk of emissions originate in developing countries.

While progress in Lima was limited, and many decisions were simply postponed, the fact that 194 nations assented to this document means there is still momentum for a deal in Paris. Much tougher tests lie ahead.

Climate deal heralds historic shift

Grey line
A delegate rests during a break at the UN climate change talks in Lima - 13 December 2014
The talks, which began on 1 December, had been due to end on Friday but ran over into the weekend
The final draft is said to have alleviated those concerns with by saying countries have "common but differentiated responsibilities".

"We've got what we wanted," Indian environment minister Prakash Javedekar told reporters, saying the document preserved the notion that richer nations had to lead the way in making cuts in emissions.

It also restored a promise to poorer countries that a "loss and damage" scheme would be established to help them cope with the financial implications of rising temperatures.

However, it weakened language on national pledges, saying countries "may" instead of "shall" include quantifiable information showing how they intend to meet their emissions targets.

The agreed document calls for:

An "ambitious agreement" in 2015 that reflects "differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities" of each nation
Developed countries to provide financial support to "vulnerable" developing nations
National pledges to be submitted by the first quarter of 2015 by those states "ready to do so"
Countries to set targets that go beyond their "current undertaking"
The UN climate change body to report back on the national pledges in November 2015
Environmental groups were scathing in their response to the document, saying the proposals were nowhere need drastic enough.

Sam Smith, chief of climate policy for the environmental group WWF, said: "The text went from weak to weaker to weakest and it's very weak indeed."

Jagoda Munic, chairperson of Friends of the Earth International, said fears the talks would fail to deliver "a fair and ambitious outcome" had been proven "tragically accurate".

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-30468048

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

[reality]

Brian Fallow: Lima's main gain - We're all in it together

5:00 AM Tuesday Dec 16, 2014

Latest climate change talks not a train wreck this time but most of the decisions have been put off till next year.

At least the global climate change conference at Lima was not a train wreck, like Copenhagen five years ago.

But most of the divisive issues which generated so much rancour during the talks have been bulldozed forward into 2015.

Achieving an agreement in Paris in a year's time which gives us a fighting chance of not rendering the planet inhospitable to us as a species remains a daunting challenge.

One important principle was preserved at Lima. The agreement to come for the post-2020 period will be "applicable to all parties" to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, that is to most countries in the world.

That is a vital step away from the 22-year-old dogma which has bedevilled the geopolitics of climate change: that the world can be neatly divided into developed countries, which must bear all the cost of curbing emissions, and the rest of the world which can concentrate on economic development.


What is equally clear is that the form of the commitments countries will undertake - "independent nationally determined contributions" in the jargon - will vary widely in their nature and level of ambition.

And Lima was unable to agree that the offers countries tabled have to be in a form that makes them able to be compared as to time-frames and base years or scope and coverage, or why they consider them fair and ambitious given their national circumstances.

Climate Change Minister Tim Groser argues that abandoning the top-down uniformity of the Kyoto Protocol is a geopolitical necessity which reflects entirely different policy environments among even the big three emitters, China, the United States and Europe.

China is prepared to commit to its emissions peaking before 2030, but not to a specific level, and to serious targets for emissions-free electricity generation.

The US Congress will not agree to be legally bound to an agreement if China is not, but the Administration has offered a target which represents a significant reduction in emissions. Europe continues to lead the pack with an offer to reduce emissions to 40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2030.

Groser says that at this point the focus needs to be on a wide-ranging agreement covering say 80 per cent of global emissions rather than how far the aggregate pledges fall short of what scientists say is needed to avoid dangerous climate change - lest the best be the enemy of the good.

The Lima accord also agrees post-2020 pledges will represent progress beyond what countries have already undertaken to do.

That suggests New Zealand's target will have to better the 5 per cent reduction from 1990 levels which is our commitment for the period out to 2020.

Trouble is, actual emissions are running 25 per cent above 1990 levels and climbing, unconstrained by any meaningful carbon price from the emissions trading scheme.

The post-1989 "Kyoto" forests which have generated credits to offset that emissions growth will have flipped from being a net sink to a net source of emissions by the 2020s.

It is difficult to make big gains from decarbonising electricity generation when three-quarters of it is renewable already.

And nearly half of national emissions arise from the bodily functions of livestock, which are harder to redesign than the propulsion systems of vehicles, for example.

So coming up with a "respectable" target for the post-2020 period, as the Government must before May next year, will be challenging, Groser says, especially as the key legally binding ground rules for the international agreement, covering for example access to international trading and accounting for land use change and forestry, have yet to be agreed.

- NZ Herald

Read more by Brian Fallow Email Brian Fallow Save

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

• Our stormy year came at a massive cost


• 12 ways to deal with a climate change denier — the BBQ guide

[reality]

Watchout out theres a squall coming through....bloody global warming

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

Watchout out theres a squall coming through....bloody global warming

There are a shitload of scientists who can produce reports and studies proving that global warming (and the resultant climate change) is happening.

And their reports and studies are peer-reviewed.

The funny thing is that the denialists can only produce a few dodgy scientists who have been discredited by the mainstream scientific community.

Yet the denialists keep on desperately clutching at straws.

Talk about idiots!