Climate Change News & Discussions

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Developed Countries Reveal $100 Billion Climate Finance Plan Ahead of COP26
by Andrew Freedman
October 25, 2021

(Axios) After 12 years of fits and starts, industrialized nations on Monday put forward a detailed plan to provide at least $100 billion annually in climate aid to developing countries starting by 2023.

Why it matters: The plan, presented by representatives of Canada and Germany, is aimed at defusing one of the biggest sources of tension at COP26, which is the failure of industrialized nations to follow through on their financial commitments.

Yes, but: The original goal set in 2009 was for the countries most responsible for climate change to date, such as the U.S. and European Union, to pay developing countries to help them withstand climate impacts and develop renewable energy resources.
  • The $100 billion was supposed to be mobilized beginning in 2020, and climate vulnerable nations are seeking back payments for the shortfall from that year, as well as 2021 and 2022.
  • However, some developed nations, such as the U.S., are opposed to making up for such a shortfall.
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New Data Shows CO2's Peak in 2020
by Andrew Freedman
October 25, 2021

https://www.axios.com/co2-greenhouse-ga ... 42f9e.html

Introduction:
(Axios) The economic downturn had no clear effect on either the atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases in 2020 and 2021 or how quickly they climbed, a new UN report finds.

Why it matters: The findings of the World Meteorological Organization's (WMO) Greenhouse Gas Bulletin are another alarm bell ringing louder ahead of the COP26 summit.

Details: The official 2020 annual level of carbon dioxide (CO2) in Earth's atmosphere was 413.2 parts per million, which is 149% of the preindustrial reading, the report found. This was a 2.5 ppm increase from 2019.
  • The year-over-year climb was faster than the 2011-2020 average annual rise of 2.4 ppm.
  • The findings also show that methane, another powerful global warming pollutant, is at 262% of preindustrial levels, and recently has been increasing at faster rates.
  • About half of the CO2 put into the atmosphere by human activities, such as burning fossil fuels and cutting down forests, is taken up each year by the land and oceans. The rest can stay in the air for hundreds of years.
  • There are mounting signs that so-called carbon sinks may become less effective as global warming's impacts mount, from droughts to warming and acidifying oceans, the report warns.
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caltrek wrote: Mon Oct 25, 2021 2:44 pm New Data Shows CO2's Peak in 2020
by Andrew Freedman
October 25, 2021

https://www.axios.com/co2-greenhouse-ga ... 42f9e.html

[...]

It's too late, isn't it.

We might peak in the 2030s if we're lucky. Then a decline towards 2050, but with many countries overshooting their net zero targets. A few more years after that and we'll be into 3°C territory, and then it's pretty much game over.
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wjfox wrote: Mon Oct 25, 2021 2:59 pm
caltrek wrote: Mon Oct 25, 2021 2:44 pm New Data Shows CO2's Peak in 2020
by Andrew Freedman
October 25, 2021

https://www.axios.com/co2-greenhouse-ga ... 42f9e.html

[...]

It's too late, isn't it.

We might peak in the 2030s if we're lucky. Then a decline towards 2050, but with many countries overshooting their net zero targets. A few more years after that and we'll be into 3°C territory, and then it's pretty much game over.
Yeah, let's hope we build a massive number of direct carbon capture plants before we reach the point of no return (we already are but we can at least avoid total devastation).
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Greenhouse gas levels hit record; world struggles to curb damage
Source: Reuters
Greenhouse gas concentrations hit a record last year and the world is "way off track" on capping rising temperatures, the United Nations said on Monday, showing the task facing climate talks in Glasgow aimed at averting dangerous levels of warming.

A report by the U.N. World Meteorological Organization (WMO) showed carbon dioxide levels surged to 413.2 parts per million in 2020, rising more than the average rate over the last decade despite a temporary dip in emissions during COVID-19 lockdowns.

WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said the current rate of increase in heat-trapping gases would result in temperature rises "far in excess" of the 2015 Paris Agreement target of 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average this century.

"We are way off track," he said. "We need to revisit our industrial, energy and transport systems and whole way of life," he added, calling for a "dramatic increase" in commitments at the COP26 conference beginning on Sunday.
Read more: https://www.reuters.com/business/cop/wo ... 021-10-25/
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The UN’s Big Climate Summit Is Ignoring a Giant Red Flag
by Tom Philpott
October 29, 2021

https://www.motherjones.com/environment ... -red-flag/

Introduction:
(Mother Jones) When politicians, scientists, and activists from 196 nations convene in Glasgow for the United Nations’ 26th annual climate summit, they’ll nosh on “‘plant-forward’ seasonal food sourced overwhelmingly from the U.K., with a focus on ingredients produced using environmentally friendly practices,” Bloomberg reports. What won’t be on the table at COP26, as the confab is known: a plan for cutting greenhouse gas emissions from food production, or for preparing the globe’s farms for the accelerating shocks of a fast-warming climate.

Hailed by its organizers as the “world’s best last chance to get runaway climate change under control,” COP26 is the place where the world’s nations come together to deliver their plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions. It will devote not a single day of its 10-day schedule to food and agriculture, a sector that accounts nearly a quarter of emissions worldwide.

In an important sense, before the conference even started, it had already condemned the world to a highly uncertain food future. Days before the confab’s Oct. 31 start, the UN Environment Programme released its assessment of all the new national climate pledges nations are expected to make at COP26. The result: they “put the world on track for a global temperature rise of 2.7°C by the end of the century,” blowing past the goal of limiting warming to 1.5°C set by the Paris Agreement in 2015. (So far, the mean global temperature has risen about 1.1°C since the Industrial Revolution.) That’s bad news for your kitchen table.

In an authoritative 2017 report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a global team of researchers crunched data on the effect of rising temperature on yields of wheat, rice, corn, and soybean, which together provide about two-thirds of human caloric intake worldwide. They found that “each degree-Celsius increase in global mean temperature would, on average, reduce global yields of wheat by 6.0 percent, rice by 3.2 percent, maize by 7.4 percent, and soybean by 3.1 percent.”

Here in the United States, warmer temperatures are already decimating the snowpacks of Western mountain ranges that irrigate the great bulk of US fruit, vegetable, and nut production—and the additional heat embedded in the COP26 commitments will sap them even further.
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