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Paris Climate Deal Adopted
jones_supa writes: 195 countries have adopted the first global pact to fight climate change by reducing emissions. Countries will have to publish greenhouse gas reduction targets and revise them upward every 5 years, while striving to drive down their carbon output as soon as possible, under the ambitious climate-change pact announced Saturday morning at UN talks in Paris. The agreement commits countries to keeping global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius and hopes to limit it to 1.5 C, with the goal of a carbon-neutral world sometime after 2050. The 31-page text called the Paris Agreement (PDF) was distributed to countries for them to assess, then agreed to at a plenary session.
I hate to say it, but we're too late for 2 C. Even if we call a halt to CO2 emissions, the gas already in the atmosphere is likely to carry us up and over. To make matters worse, the carbon capture technologies coal plants were supposed to get don't work as well as advertised. Even if we do hold to 2 C, btw, we are going to have long term sea level rise.
Global warming at this point is inevitable. Even probably 5 C warming. Some are arguing 8 C by the end of the century. However, its not the end of the world. Just a radically different one.
(yeah I've been following this very closely for over a decade)
Amusingly, coccolithophores, the calcium shelled plankton, everyone has been really worried would be seriously impacted by the rise in carbon dioxide causing oceanic acidification actually grow MORE in raised CO2 environments.
Do you know why the road less traveled by is littered with the bones of the unwary?
el nino does that sometimes, I remember the last el nino year we didnt get any snow til late january
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Until I get the time to painstakingly go over the document and we see some real results across the board I'm just going to assume its all pillow talk. Besides the USA doing their own usual workarounds (changing locations for manufacturing), letting China and India do their own thing wont really pan out for this whole 2C thing. 2C is likely an unachievable fantasy at this point.
http://www.carbonbrief.org/paris-2015-tracking-country-climate-pledges
http://www.carbonbrief.org/category/policy/paris-2015
James Hansen is highly skeptical that this agreement will lead to anything tangible. Mostly because it consists of promises without any enforceable mechanisms. I am inclined to agree with him. It looks like large dog and pony show mostly aimed at reducing public pressure without committing to anything.
Conspicuously missing from TFA... a list of the countries that have signed it.
Oh, it'll probably be most but it is roughly as harmless as signing the UN declaration on human rights. There's no mandatory national goals, no incentives or penalties. It "notes" on point 17 that they're not going to actually reach the global goal of the agreement. It's a pot luck lunch agreement, each country sets their own goals and how they want to reach them and the only harm if they don't set very ambitious goals or fail to reach them is a bit of political egg on their face. The environmentalists of course tout this as a massive victory, but it's really just taking existing national initiatives and calling it a global effort.
This was not very surprising, after Kyoto I and II it was clear they wouldn't get anything with binding targets from the US, China, India or any of the other big polluting nations - only Europe and Australia have binding goals now. So instead of aiming for an agreement that would fail, create a toothless agreement and call it a victory. It's certainly working in the local press here in Norway, now they're talking like we've committed to saving the world. Truth is, nobody got committed to anything and that's why it's going to pass.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Gernany is roughly 15 degrees centigrate warmer than it used to be 35 years ago. However that period around 1974 was extraordinary cold, in comparrison to that time it is now nearly 45 degrees warmer .... so I really wonder where this "2 degrees average increase" is aiming for
Bahahahahahaha, 45C warmer.... On an extremely warm summer day in the south maaaaaaybe you can reach 40C, you're saying in the 70s it was -5C and below all year long? And they still easily have freezing temps, so where it's -5C today they had -50C? You don't even pass the giggle test.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Yes, well, I will hijack this post to say that this is a political/ceremonial agreement, not a scientific one. The good news is that oil is loosing its sheen, down below $40 a barrel. Yes, we have past peak oil, in a much better fashion than anticipated.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Unless China stops building out their new coal plants right now, there is no way to stop this.
In fact, all nations really need to stop building new coal plants. These are the bane of the emissions.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Also missing is what they will be required to do. America needs to come down, but even more important is China. The numbers that put up are wrong.
According to OCO2, China accounts for more than 40%, and possibly 50%, of current CO2 emissions.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
No, 15C is NOT 60F. More like 27F.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
No, we passed Peak Oil because it was a warmed over retread of 1970s shortage scares, where physical scientists stick their noses in economics and make literally ignorant predictions about economics.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
No, 15C is NOT 60F. More like 27F.
It seems you're both pretty terrible at communicating this clearly.
15C is 59F.
0C is 32F.
A change (+/-) of 15C equates to a change (+/-) of 27F.
www.gaiageek.com
Since the last big El Nino (1997) RSS shows a slight decline in temperature. So maybe not forever - but definitely for the last 18 years. And curiously enough, if you look at the RSS data prior to that big El Nino you see basically a flat line, too. We don't have the "continual rise" in temperature so often modeled and predicted as we have, it appears, flat (or actual declining) temperatures with occasional big events that cause a shift in the baseline. Something none of the current models used for the COP21 talks even considers.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Absolutely not. If your citations are carefully chosen to misrepresent, then none would be better.
And none are better than using three opinion pieces to represent anything like a scientific argument, unless your science is the study of propaganda.
You are welcome on my lawn.
if they are that bad, they should be easy to tear down. not as easy as calling out a strawman or an ad hom, but easy none the less
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
..the old libertarian geezers of Slashdot who whine about conspiracy theories on every climate-related post here.
Whatever happened to global warming?
Calm down cuz. Some of us here are qualified to understand climate data. The way you're talking you make it sound like there's a high church of Climatology and we have no choice but to believe what the high priests say.
That's not necessary. If Feynman could explain QED well enough that a layman could understand it, then laymen/women can also understand climate science, it's much simpler than QED. The difficult part IMNSHO is actually statistics: figuring out how to accurately average out all the temperature readings collected across the planet, etc.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Obama will never submit it to the Senate. It doesn't have the force of law behind it.
LOL! Obama punked the Environmentalists and the World. They think they have an agreement but all they have is Obama's worthless promises.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Communism. Fascism is inherently a national movement, communism - or socialism in general - international. Furthermore, there's no clear charismatic leader but faceless bureaucracy associated with this deal, although I suppose that's also compatible with the Illuminati. Then there's the religious possibilities to consider - which you should had considered beyond a vague reference to "sky fairy" - perhaps the Vatican is trying to cause hardship in hopes people will seek salvation? Or you could simply blame this on lizard men from Regulus trying to de-industrialize the world in preparation for their occupation.
Seriously, put some effort into your conspiracy theories. Don't just post the first buzzword that comes to your mind. That's neither a good smokescreen nor entertaining.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
All we get are these suggestions like "you'd better stop doing what you're doing now and enjoying an easy life. We'll tax you for it otherwise!"
If governments were really serious about controlling emissions, they would be willing to directly pay for carbon sequestration - that is, forget carbon credits and all that, simply establish companies that would use solar/wind to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere, and pay them per ton removed. After all, this would be a good investment, right? Spend $10 now to prevent $100 damage due to war/famine/whatever in 100 years is a very good deal for society (well, relatively, that's about 2.3% compounded return). If the future is so "catastrophic" this is what the government should be doing.
But we don't see plans like that, which would cause change "overnight" as people would be falling over themselves to start building atmospheric condensers. Instead we get suggestions do "live with less". It's no wonder there is so much push back - most of it is on the policy, not the science (I think people push back on the science because it is used to justify onerous policy.)
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
..the old libertarian geezers of Slashdot who whine about conspiracy theories on every climate-related post here.
Whatever happened to global warming?
It got re-branded in response to the nit-picking skeptics who claimed it was falsified every time there was a cold spell.
I stole this Sig
It started testing poorly in focus groups when the globe stopped warming 18.8 years ago.