“Why the Global Warming Skeptics Are Wrong”

William D. Nordhaus is Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale. (March 2012)

His evidence based article is freely available below and above at

the New York Review of Books…

www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/mar/22/why-global-warming-skeptics-are-wrong/

The UN Climate Talks, otherwise referred to as COP 20, begin next week in Lima, Peru at a time when climate change has rocketed back to the top of the global political agenda. The Lima talks are an opportunity for governments to harness momentum that has been growing around the world for months and begin taking internationally coordinated action to address the global climate change crisis. In Lima, governments can move forward on an international action plan to be finalized in Paris at the end of next year, which aims to accelerate the ongoing transition away from dirty fossil fuels to 100% renewable energy.

The foundation of any agreement in Paris will be built in Lima. That foundation includes getting nations to begin crafting Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs), where countries will offer their plans for how to slash global carbon emissions so that the world’s warming is contained to no more than 2degC. The deadline for the INDC offers is March 2015, making Lima an opportunity for governments to put the finishing touches on what these commitments should contain, how long they should last, and how they should be presented.

COP 20 is also an opportunity for governments to continue supporting the Green Climate Fund, which now has commitments for up to 9.6 billion in funding, but has an investment target of $100 billion by 2020. Politically, COP 20 comes at a pivotal time. In September, hundreds of thousands of individuals from New York to Mumbai took part in the People’s Climate March, where the demand for governments to act on climate was made at historic levels. Days later, the march was referenced by several leaders, including Barack Obama and Ban Ki-moon as a reason to act.

Coverage…

• UN climate negotiators outline priorities for Lima (RTCC)
• China Fears Republican opposition to Climate Talks ($)(FT)
• Below the headlines – the nuts and bolts of a new global climate deal (Greenpeace)
• Leonardo DiCaprio confirmed to attend Lima UN Climate Conference (Peru This Week)
• Lima talks to test political will for global climate deal (WWF International)
• France ready to engage Zim on climate change issues (News Day)
• COP 20: A week prior to its kick-off (Andina)
• COP 20: Indigenous voices to be heard, now more than ever (Peru This Week)
• UN climate negotiators outline priorities for Lima (RTCC)
• China insists rich nations must do more at Lima climate meeting Hurri Daily News)
• 10 questions for delegates heading to UN climate talks in Lima  (RTCC)
• Obama’s Climate Change Envoy: ‘Pretty Obvious’ Fossil Fuels Have To Stay In Ground (HNGN)
• CO2 emissions must be zero by 2070 to prevent climate disaster, UN says (The Guardian)
• ‘Build bridges for Lima climate talks‘ (The Guardian)
• Why we need to talk about the scientific consensus on climate change (The Guardian)

The world needs to take immediate action towards a complete phase out of fossil fuels and force global greenhouse gas emissions onto a downward trajectory. This is the clear message from the United Nations Environment Programme in its latest Emissions Gap Report. Launched today in Washington DC, the report confirms there is no time to waste if the world is to stay under the agreed red line of 2DegC average warming. The good news is that more and more countries are already waking up to this – forced to face facts by the recent government-endorsed IPCC report confirming that carbon emissions will have to be brought to zero.

The US, China and the EU have all recently showed climate action leadership: the EU with its 2030 climate and energy package; the US with its pledge to double the pace at which it will reduce carbon pollution; and China with plans to slow, peak and then reverse the course of its carbon emissions. But today’s report shows that all countries need to take action, and that deeper and faster emissions cuts will reduce climate risks and the costs of action.

Now is the moment – in the run up to the UN climate summit in Lima, Peru – for coal–obsessed blockers like Australia to show that they too wish to be on the right side of history.

Climate change may not be the most obvious subject for a play, but theatregoers in London have been turning up in droves to see scientist Chris Rapley give an impressive account of the subject.

The 75-minute play, illustrated with swirling video images, manages to captivate audiences just with the power of the bare, stripped down facts of science, and without relying on the usual catastrophe imagery and doom and gloom language. “2071” discusses the consequences of mankind’s dependence on fossil fuels – how 90 per cent of the world’s glaciers and ice caps are retreating and raising sea levels. Soaring greenhouse gas levels are affecting the climatic equilibrium which is the basis of modern civilisation, says Rapley, highlighting a global temperature-rise of 2DegC as a crucial “guard rail”.

To avoid such levels of warming, “the greatest collective action in history” is required. But audiences are left with hope that with energy efficiency and a greater use of renewables such as wind farms and solar power, mankind can start to tip the balance in a better direction.

 

While the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has warned that the world must phase out up to 70 per cent of fossil fuels by 2050, Australia and other G20 nations continue to pay lip service to a clean energy transition by spending billions subsidising new fossil fuel exploration activities.

The ‘age of entitlement’ isn’t over for those filthy fossil corporations, and what’s more, we the people are subsidising them…

…A new report from Oil Change International (US) and the Overseas Development Institute (UK) has highlighted the perverse incentives governments are giving to fossil fuel companies, with G20 governments spending $100 billion (USD$88 billion) a year searching for new oil, gas, and coal reserves. The US leads the way with $5.9 billion (USD$5.1bn), but Australia’s $4 billion (USD $3.5bn) puts it a close second, and ahead of the $2.7 billion (USD $2.4bn) Russia spends.

Globally, governments subsidise fossil fuels to the tune of AUD$887 billion a year, while spending, by comparison, a tiny AUD$117bn (USD$101 bn) on renewable energy…

Such skewed support for fossil fuels is a direct threat to the global carbon budget, which states that two thirds of known fossil fuel reserves have to stay in the ground if the world is to keep average warming to 2DegC. The report urges G20 leaders to phase out these dirty, inefficient exploration subsidies as a first step to meeting existing commitments to avoid harmful climate change.

…but don’t take our word for it; here are a selection of tools and resources :::

• Report: The fossil fuel bailout: G20 subsidies for oil, gas and coal exploration(Overseas Development Institute / Oil Change International)
• Case study: Fossil fuel exploration subsidies: Australia (Overseas Development Institute / Oil Change International)
• Report: Lagging Behind: Australia and the Global Response to Climate Change (The Climate Council)
• Report: Mining the age of entitlement (The Australia Institute)
• Report: The mouse that roars: Coal in the Queensland economy (The Australia Institute)
• Report: Unburnable carbon (Carbon Tracker)
• Report: Stranded assets and the fossil fuel divestment campaign (University of Oxford)
• Report: Energy for all: financing access for the poor (International Energy Agency)

Australia is the worst polluter per capita in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), (and that is not counting the significant impact of its coal exports on air pollution and global warming, (click logo below for OECD’s spreadsheet):

The industry and the government are ignoring climate science, and would rather pretend that coal is “good for humanity”, and sell as much of it as possible to the developing world under the guise of ending “energy poverty” when they are really only interested in keeping coal profits alive in a dying market. In fact, the World Bank has called climate change “a fundamental threat to development in our lifetime”, saying that “If we do not confront climate change, we will not end poverty.” Scientists warn that the world needs to phase out coal in the electricity sector altogether by 2050 to keep warming below 2DegC.