#intergovernmental panel on climate change

[mariacallous]

In 2025, we will see a fundamental transformation in the language of climate politics. We’re going to hear a lot less about “reducing emissions” from scientists and policymakers and a lot more about “phasing out fossil fuels” or “ending coal, oil, and methane gas.” This is a good thing. Although it is scientifically accurate, the phrase “reducing emissions” is too easily used for greenwashing by the fossil-energy industry and its advocates. The expression “ending coal, oil, and methane gas,” on the other hand, keeps the focus on the action that will do most to resolve the climate crisis.

This discourse shift has been initiated by the latest report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The world’s climate scientists say that already existing fossil-energy infrastructure is projected to emit the total carbon budget for halting global heating at 2 degrees Celsius over preindustrial temperatures. This statement means two things. It means that the world cannot develop any more coal, oil, or gas, if we want our planet to remain relatively livable. And it means that even some already developed fossil-fuel deposits will need to be retired before the end of their lifetime, since we need to leave space in the carbon budget for essential activities like agriculture.

The international community has already integrated this new science into its global climate governance. The 28th Conference of the Parties—the annual conference of the world’s nations party to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change—called for every country to contribute to “transitioning away from fossil fuels.” Never before in the history of international climate negotiations had the main cause of global heating been clearly named and specifically targeted. The United Nations itself now calls for the phaseout of coal, oil, and methane gas.

This new climate language will become mainstream in 2025. In her policy plans for her second term aspPresident of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen pledged not to work to lower EU emissions, but to “continue to bring down energy prices by moving further away from fossil fuels.” The new UK government promised in its manifesto that it will withhold licenses for new coal and for oil exploration—and states outright that it will “ban fracking for good.” And in France, Macron has explicitly vowed to end fossil-fuel use entirely.

Climate politics in the US will also evolve in the wake of Donald Trump’s reelection for president. Republicans will continue to embrace a “drill, baby, drill” climate agenda, denying the danger or sometimes even the reality of climate change while advocating for expanding domestic crude and methane-gas production. They may try to greenwash their policies by claiming they embrace an “all of the above” energy strategy, but this messaging will have limited effects. Due to political polarization the association of Trump with coal, oil, and gas will raise Democratic support for phasing out fossil fuels. Before the 2024 election, 59 percent of Democrats said climate change should be the Federal government’s top priority, but only 48 percent said they supported a phaseout. In 2025 majorities of Democrats will begin to support fossil-fuel phaseout, especially if climate advocates revive science-based climate messaging, continue to emphasize that clean-energy deployment is job creation, and frame choosing to phase out fossil fuels as a form of freedom that upholds our right to a livable future.

Given that Democrats won many down-ballot races, and cities and states are still pledging to pass climate policies, this shift in the Democratic majority will keep the US on the map in international climate negotiations, whether or not Trump withdraws the US from the Paris Agreement, creating new local alliances with the UK, the EU, and global south nations calling for international fossil-fuel phaseout targets. This bloc can counter the power of petrostates in international climate negotiations. At the very least, the mainstreaming of the language of fossil-fuel phaseout will help undermine the greenwashing strategy of current oil and gas company PR, which falsely advertises industry as pursuing technologies at scale to help “reduce emissions” even as they continue their upstream investments.

Of course the petrostates, along with India and China, will push back against the rhetoric of fossil fuel phaseout. But India can be helped to turn away from its domestic coal stores by clean-energy financing at close to cost along with the international aid and technology transfers already pledged at previous climate conferences. And although its rhetoric may not align with that of the West, China should not be imagined as opposed to climate action. China has enacted the most comprehensive climate policy on the planet, in service of its goal to peak emissions by 2030 and achieve net zero emissions by 2060. If their climate messaging remains focused on “emissions,” in light of their plan to keep using fossil fuels past 2030, they are preparing for next decade’s pivot away from fossil fuels by building out clean energy at a truly extraordinary rate.

In 2025 climate discourse will recenter on the message that halting global heating requires the phaseout of coal, oil, and gas. This new consensus will shift the politics of climate change and help motivate an urgent sprint to a clean-energy, ecologically integrated economy—the only economy that ensures a livable future.

[darkmaga-returns]

A group of leading climate scientists have declared that the so-called ‘climate emergency’ is a scam being perpetuated by the global elite.

A two-day climate conference in Prague, organised by the Czech division of the international Climate Intelligence Group (Clintel), which took place on November 12-13 in the Chamber of Deputies of the Czech Republic in Prague, “declares and affirms that the imagined and imaginary ‘climate emergency’ is at an end”.

Wattsupwiththat.com reports: The communiqué, drafted by the eminent scientists and researchers who spoke at the conference, makes clear that for several decades climate scientists have  systematically exaggerated the influence of CO2 on global temperature.

The high-level scientific conference also declared:

“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which excludes participants and published papers disagreeing with its narrative, fails to comply with its own error-reporting protocol and draws conclusions some of which are dishonest, should be forthwith dismantled.”

The declaration supports the conclusions of the major Clintel report The Frozen Climate Views of the IPCC [presented to the Conference by Marcel Crok, Clintel’s co-founder].

Moreover, the scientists at the conference declared that even if all nations moved straight to net zero emissions, by the 2050 target date the world would be only about 0.1 C cooler than with no emissions reduction.

So far, the attempts to mitigate climate change by international agreements such as the Paris Agreement have made no difference to our influence on climate, since nations such as Russia and China, India and Pakistan continue greatly to expand their combustion of coal, oil and gas.

The cost of achieving that 0.1 C reduction in global warming would be $2 quadrillion, equivalent to 20 years’ worldwide gross domestic product.

[wastelesscrafts]

New IPCC report (March 20, 2023)

The newest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was published on the 20th of March 2023.

Read the synthesis report, or check out the IPCC's YouTube channel if reading isn't your thing.

Climate YouTubers Zentouro and ClimateAdam have also released a short summary video of the report.

(If you're currently dealing with climate anxiety, you may want to skip these reports.)

[aperint]

Reprobados en cambio climático

Reprobados en cambio climático #aperturaintelectual #vmrfaintelectual @victormanrf @Victor M. Reyes Ferriz @vicmanrf @victormrferriz Víctor Manuel Reyes Ferriz

12 DE DICIEMBRE DE 2023 Esto es para ti papi POR: VÍCTOR MANUEL REYES FERRIZ El día de hoy culmina la cumbre del clima “Conferencia de Partes” (COP) en su edición número 28 que comenzó el pasado 30 de noviembre en el “Expo City” de Dubái y ésta reúne a los delegados de 197 países, organizaciones no gubernamentales, empresas, científicos, representantes de la industria, activistas y por supuesto…

[man-and-atom]

Quite a few people have seen this image, and said “well clearly wind and solar are the way to go, there’s no need or role for nuclear”.

Look again at that headline.

“Relative potentials and costs will vary across countries and in the longer term compared to 2030.”

Simply put, although in broad strokes the industrial potential of the world is equal to installing (say) 10 GW of new nuclear-electric capacity a month, which would make a vast difference to global emissions, getting to that point by 2030 would be exceedingly difficult and costly.

Even if we imagine all the legal barriers swept away ― if we imagine, for instance, Germany to say “well, now that the nuclear power plants have all been shut down, you can start building new ones as of July” ― it takes time to build or expand the necessary production facilities, train personnel, and so on. Likewise, a programme of building power stations must begin at a modest pace and ramp up, so that designs can be optimized.

If we extend the time horizon just to 2035, the situation looks very different. Again, of course, that assumes we start now, and don’t allow ourselves to be lulled into inaction.

[carolkeiter]

How to Persuade Others to Care about Biodiversity?

Back in Rhode Island when I was bicycling 6 or so miles from Providence – to swim in the only nearby lake at Lincoln Woods State Park – I encountered a dead deer along the road. The Police were already standing next to it. It was upsetting. It’s an area where Power lines cut through the trees, which in fact provide space to allow animals (with no residential properties or fences blocking their…

[indizombie]

Searing heat has forced 33 million children out of schools in Bangladesh, as temperatures in parts of the country soared past 42C (108F). Schools and colleges will be shut for at least until 27 April. This is the second year in a row that authorities made such a move due to extreme weather. “Children in Bangladesh are among the poorest in the world, and heat-related school closures should ring alarm bells for us all," said Shumon Sengupta, Save the Children's Bangladesh director. Low-lying Bangladesh is one of the countries most vulnerable to the impacts of the climate crisis. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a 30- to 45-cm rise in sea level could displace more than 35 million people from coastal districts - about a quarter of the country's total population.

Kelly Ng, ‘Searing heat shuts schools for 33 million children’, BBC

[omg-erika]

Who is afraid of CO2?

by Dr.Harald Wiesendanger– Klartext What the mainstream media is hiding Why we should fear and hate carbon dioxide – A guest article by Elena Louisa Lange about the sense and folly of worrying about “man-made climate change.” In September, the world witnessed five minutes of climate ideology at its finest. Apple, the world’s most capitalized company, produced a promotional film designed to…

[irreplaceable-spark]

Hot or Not: Steven Koonin Questions Conventional Climate Science and Methodology| Uncommon Knowledge

Steven Koonin is one of America's most distinguished scientists, with decades of experience, including a stint as undersecretary of science at the Department of Energy in the Obama administration. In this wide-ranging discussion, based in part on his 2021 book, Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn't, and Why It Matters, Koonin gives a more refined look at the science behind the climate issue than the media typically offers, guiding us through the evidence and its implications. As Koonin explains in this interview, he was “shaken by the realization that climate science was far less mature than I had supposed” and that the “overwhelming evidence” of catastrophic implications of anthropogenic global warming wasn’t so overwhelming after all.

[n0thingiscool]

Last week, the judge in Held v. Montana handed down a victory for the 16 young plaintiffs, who argued that the state’s continued production of fossil fuels violated their constitutional rights. Advocates say the landmark ruling could have broad ramifications for future climate litigation. But it’s also clear that Montana was woefully unprepared to face climate science on trial.

[rodgermalcolmmitchell]

How to be a climate and COVID denier by calling warnings, "panicked fearmongering."

If you were in a burning building and people yelled at you, “Get out, the building is on fire,” I assume Bjorn Lomborg and Jordan B. Peterson would call that “panicked fearmongering.” It is the only conclusion I can draw from the ridiculous Trumpian article published under their names. Stop the panicked fearmongering if we want to make the world better By Bjorn Lomborg and Jordan B. Peterson…

[thoughtlessarse]

The UN’s climate science advisory group, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is currently meeting in Bulgaria to decide on a timeline for its next “cycle” of reports over the rest of this decade. That decision should have been taken in January, but government divisions arose over aligning IPCC outputs with UN climate negotiations, at a meeting that the IPCC chair described as “one of the most intense” he had experienced. Political struggle over the final wording of IPCC reports is well known, but this division at the start of the process reflects the organisation’s achievements. The more successful it becomes in disseminating climate knowledge, the more deeply imbued in climate politics it becomes. I have studied the IPCC for 15 years and think these political factors are often overlooked. For instance, though the reports are written by scientists, governments play an integral role throughout the process. The IPCC is after all an intergovernmental body – it’s governments that decide to produce the reports and give the final approval, not scientists. Most notably, this involves the final line-by-line approval of a report’s key findings in the “summary for policymakers” (the only bit most people read). Media reporting and accounts by IPCC authors frequently reveal the extent of negotiation over how the latest knowledge of climate change is presented to the public. This has lead to whole sections being deleted and open conflict between scientists and government delegates. However, decisions made at the start of an assessment cycle are equally fraught with politics. These include electing the bureau and approving the report outline. The politics sometimes come to light, as it did when Wikileaks revealed US manoeuvring to secure the election of the US co-chair candidate for a previous round of reports which were published in 2013 and 2014.

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We're being lied to, in case you were wondering.