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UN Secretary-General Says We Have A Year and a Half to Avoid 'Runaway' Climate Change

Charlemagne

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UN Secretary-General Says We Have A Year and a Half to Avoid 'Runaway' Climate Change

In a passionate speech delivered at the United Nations headquarters in New York, the UN chief said we are “careening towards the abyss” and announced a 2019 climate summit.

By Daniel Oberhaus

Sep 11 2018, 12:50pm

On Monday, the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres delivered a speech at the UN headquarters in New York during which he said the world has until 2020 to “change course” in order to avoid “runaway climate change.” This is the hypothesized point at which the cumulative effects of climate change create a feedback loop and result in irreversible damage to the Earth’s climate system. Some planetary scientists suggest that similar runaway climate effects may have turned Venus from a habitable, Earth-like planet into the hellscape we know today.

“I have asked you here to sound the alarm,” Guterres said. “We face a direct existential threat. If we do not change course by 2020, we risk missing the point where we can avoid runaway climate change, with disastrous consequences for people and all the natural systems that sustain us.”

During the half-hour speech, Guterres painted a bleak picture of the future under climate change. He cited the “extreme heat waves, wildfires, storms, and floods” that are already “leaving a trail of death and devastation” around the world as portents of runaway climate change. In order to stem the worst effects, Guterres called upon the leadership “from politicians, from business and scientists, and from the public everywhere.”

Although Guterres commended the Paris Climate Accord as a model for what this leadership might look like, he also said it didn’t go far enough. The Paris Climate Accord committed signatories to implement changes that would restrict temperatures from rising 2 degrees celsius above pre-industrial levels.

“These targets were really the bare minimum to avoid the worst impacts of climate change,” Guterres said. “But scientists tell us that we are far off track. According to a UN study, the commitments made so far by the parties to the Paris Agreement represent just one-third of what is needed.”

Although this was a “bare minimum” agreement, Donald Trump withdrew from the Paris Agreement only a year after it was ratified, claiming that the agreement was “unfair.” According to the treaty, countries must wait three years to withdraw from the agreement which means the United States will officially exit in 2020—the same year Guterres marked as the turning point for runaway climate change. Furthermore, the UN report cited by Guterres didn’t take into account the withdrawal of the US from the agreement. Given that the United States is one of the largest contributors to global greenhouse emissions, the Paris agreement is likely to result in even less emission reduction than predicted by the report.

Guterres also directly addressed the claims made by Trump and other anti-climate science politicians who argue that tackling climate change would hurt economic growth and called these arguments “hogwash.”

“When you’re riding a bus and you miss your stop, you don’t stay on the bus forever. You get off at the next possible stop."

“Over the past decade, extreme weather and the health impact of burning fossil fuels have cost the American economy at least $240 billion a year,” Guterres said. “This cost will explode by 50 percent in the coming decade alone. By 2030, the loss of productivity caused by a hotter world could cost the global economy $2 trillion.”

On the other hand, Guterres cited the economic benefits of climate-friendly business policies. Renewable energy jobs are now outstripping those created by the fossil fuel industries, which Trump has courted throughout his time in office by promising to bring back coal and gas jobs.

So is there any hope of making the changes necessary to stop runaway climate change in the next year and a half? According to Kathie Dello, the associate director of the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute, 2020 isn’t a hard deadline for meaningful change, but does highlight the urgency of the issue.

“When you’re riding a bus and you miss your stop, you don’t stay on the bus forever,” Dello told me in an email. “You get off at the next possible stop. We need to take action as soon as possible, but doing so after 2020 is better than not doing anything. It will take big changes and global cooperation, but we have the framework in the Paris Agreement and it’s tough to ignore climate change as we’re seeing the impacts (fires, heat waves, loss of mountain snow) in a big way.”

In an effort to bring climate change to the “top of the international agenda,” Guterres announced that the UN will organize a climate summit next September that will focus “on the sectors that create the most emissions and the areas where building resilience will make the biggest difference.” The conference will occur exactly one year before signatories to the Paris agreement will have to “enhance their national climate pledges.”

“We are careening towards the edge of the abyss,” Guterres said. “Everyday we fail to act is a day that we step a little closer towards a fate that none of us wants, a fate that will resonate through generations in the damage done to humankind and life on Earth. Our fate is in our hands."

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/a38zyk/un-secretary-general-says-we-have-a-year-and-a-half-to-avoid-runaway-climate-change?utm_source=vicefbus
 

NotADcotor

His most imperial galactic atheistic majesty.
Mar 8, 2017
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Right, can't win don't try. There is zero chance that we are going to reverse course in some significant way unless Chuck Norris starts building fusion reactors and kicking various elements into usable batteries.

We have already passed several best before dates. I figure I don't have any kids and nobody else cares so why should I be the one wearing the hair shirt. The ones who speak out the most often have the most damaging lifestyles, at best using their wealth to buy eco indulgences so they don't have to make sacrifices like the rest of us peasants.
 

canada-man

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[FONT=&quot]Apocalyptic warnings on repeat[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]A group of 1,700 scientists and experts signed a letter 25 years ago warning of massive ecological and societal collapse if nothing was done to curb overpopulation, pollution and, ultimately, the capitalist society in which we live today.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]The Union of Concerned Scientists put out a second letter earlier this year, once again warning of the dire consequences of global warming and other alleged ecological ills. Now numbering 15,000, the group warns “soon it will be too late to shift course away from our failing trajectory, and time is running out.”[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]“We must recognize, in our day-to-day lives and in our governing institutions, that Earth with all its life is our only home,” the scientists and experts warned.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]It’s a terrifying warning — if you ignore the fact that none of their 1992 warning has come to fruition.




[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]2. The planet will be “uninhabitable” by the end of the century[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]New York Magazine writer David Wallace-Wells published a 7,000-word article claiming global warming could make Earth “uninhabitable” by “the end of this century.”[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Wallace-Wells’s article warned of terrors, like “Heat Death,” “Climate Plagues,” “Permanent Economic Collapse” and “Poisoned Oceans.”[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]“Indeed, absent a significant adjustment to how billions of humans conduct their lives, parts of the Earth will likely become close to uninhabitable, and other parts horrifically inhospitable, as soon as the end of this century,” Wallace-Wells wrote.



[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]3. Prince Charles’s global warming deadline passed…and nothing happened[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Prince Charles famously warned in July 2009 that humanity had only 96 months to save the world from “irretrievable climate and ecosystem collapse, and all that goes with it.” That deadline has passed, and the prince has not issued an update to when the world needs to be saved.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Though the recently-released “Paradise Papers” show Charles lobbied U.K. lawmakers to enact policies that benefited his estate’s investment in a Bermuda company that does sustainable forestry. So, there’s that.



[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]2015 is the ‘last effective opportunity’ to stop catastrophic warming[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]World leaders meeting at the Vatican issued a statement saying that 2015 was the “last effective opportunity to negotiate arrangements that keep human-induced warming below 2-degrees [Celsius].”[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Pope Francis wants to weigh in on global warming, and is expected to issue an encyclical saying basically the same thing. Francis reiterated that 2015 is the last chance to stop massive warming.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]But what he should really say is that the U.N. conference is the “last” chance to cut a deal to stem global warming…since last year when the U.N. said basically the same thing about 2014’s climate summit.


[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] France’s foreign minister said we only have “500 days” to stop “climate chaos”[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]When Laurent Fabius met with Secretary of State John Kerry on May 13, 2014 to talk about world issues he said “we have 500 days to avoid climate chaos.”[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Ironically at the time of Fabius’ comments, the U.N. had scheduled a climate summit to meet in Paris in December 2015 — some 565 days after his remarks. Looks like the U.N. is 65 days too late to save the world.


[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Former President Barack Obama is the last chance to stop global warming[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]When Obama made the campaign promise to “slow the rise of the oceans,” some environmentalists may have taken him quite literally.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]The United Nations Foundation President Tim Wirth told Climatewire in 2012 that Obama’s second term was “the last window of opportunity” to impose policies to restrict fossil fuel use. Wirth said it’s “the last chance we have to get anything approaching 2 degrees Centigrade,” adding that if “we don’t do it now, we are committing the world to a drastically different place.”[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Even before that, then-National Aeronautics and Space Administration Goddard Space Flight Center head James Hansen warned in 2009 that Obama only “has four years to save Earth.”



[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Remember when we had “hours” to stop global warming?[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]World leaders met in Copenhagen, Denmark in 2009 to potentially hash out another climate treaty. That same year, the head of Canada’s Green Party wrote that there was only “hours” left to stop global warming.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]“We have hours to act to avert a slow-motion tsunami that could destroy civilization as we know it,” Elizabeth May, leader of the Greens in Canada, wrote in 2009. “Earth has a long time. Humanity does not. We need to act urgently. We no longer have decades; we have hours. We mark that in Earth Hour on Saturday.”



[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]United Kingdom Prime Minister Gordon Brown said there was only 50 days left to save Earth[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]The year 2009 was a bad time for global warming predictions. That year Brown warned there was only “50 days to save the world from global warming,” the BBC reported. According to Brown there was “no plan B.”[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Brown has been booted out of office since then.




[/FONT]
 

bluecolt

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You forgot Al Gore's dire predictions over the last twenty years that the earth would boil over and the wrath of the gods would be wrought upon us non-believers in global warming.
 

Charlemagne

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This is the consequence of not preparing...

09/11/2018 21:59 EDT

6 Years Ago, North Carolina Chose To Ignore Rising Sea Levels. This Week It Braces For Disaster.

Confronted with Hurricane Florence, North Carolina prepares for a state of emergency.

By Jenavieve Hatch, HuffPost US

In 2012, North Carolina legislators passed a billthat barred policymakers and developers from using up-to-date climate science to plan for rising sea levels on the state’s coast. Now Hurricane Florence threatens to cause a devastating storm surge that could put thousands of lives in danger and cost the state billions of dollars worth of damage.

The hurricane, which is expected to make landfall on Friday, is shaping up to be one of the worst storms to hit the East Coast. Residents of North Carolina’s Outer Banks and mainland coasts have already been ordered to evacuate. President Donald Trump declared a state of emergency in both North and South Carolina, and a Federal Emergency Management Agency administrator said that the Category 4 hurricane will likely cause “massive damage to our country.”

And the rise in sea levels, experts say, is making the storm surge worse.

Sea level rise is a direct consequence of global warming; the warming of the ocean has resulted in thermal expansion and melted ice sheets and glaciers that are causing the oceans to rise. Since 1950, the sea level has risen 6.5 inches ― a number that sounds small but has actually had major consequences across the country.

“Sea level rising, simply put, makes every coastal flood deeper and more destructive,” said Ben Strauss, CEO of Climate Central, a climate change research organization that has published dozens of studies about rising sea levels and the risks of ignoring the problem. “Ignoring it is incredibly dangerous.”

“It only takes a few extra inches of water depth to be the difference between a ruined floor and no damage, or a ruined electrical system and just a ruined floor,” Strauss said. “Floods tend to be a great deal more destructive and costly than homeowners anticipate.”

Sea level rise can also affect the severity of hurricanes, said William Sweet, an oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “If you compared storm surge heights from the same storm at the same location over several decades, the surge would be higher ― assuming no change in flood defenses ― because of sea level rise,” Sweet said.

But in North Carolina, lawmakers chose to ignore the threats. A panel of scientists on the state Coastal Resources Commission issued a dire warning in March 2010, estimating that the sea levels along the state’s coast would rise 39 inches over the next century. Conservative lawmakers and business interest groups feared the report would hurt lucrative real estate development on the state’s coast and sought to undermine it. A lobbying group committed to economic development on the coast accused the panel of “pulling data out of their hip pocket.”

Conservative state Rep. Pat McElraft, whose top campaign contributors were the North Carolina Association of Realtors and the North Carolina Home Builders’ Association, drafted a bill in response that rejected the panel’s predictions.

McElraft introduced the bill in April 2011, and it passed the legislature in the summer of 2012.

Part of the bill stipulated that state and local agencies must also refer to historical linear predictions of sea level rise rather than current research, and another alarming section required that research look only at 30-year predictions rather than at a century, as the CRC report had done. Supporters of the bill saw short-term benefits in more affordable insurance, and continued opportunities for real estate development and tourism along the attractive coast. Critics saw the long-term consequences of damaged homes and businesses and vast swaths of the state being swallowed by floods.

Environmental scientists, coastal researchers and a number of lawmakers called the measure a blatant denial of crucial climate science and criticized then-Gov. Bev Perdue (D) for not acting on the bill and therefore allowing it to become law.

“By putting our heads in the sand, literally, we are not helping property owners,” said then-state Sen. Deborah K. Ross. “We are hurting them. We are not giving them information they might need to protect their property. Ignorance is not bliss. It’s dangerous.”

‘It’s a really bad setup’

In North Carolina, the state’s topography and the rising sea levels have made for even more dangerous storms and floods, Strauss said. Unlike coastal communities that have deep, cliff-like dropoffs, North Carolina’s coast is flat, wide and shallow, “like a kiddie pool,” Strauss said. “When you think about storm surge, some places have higher potential than others. The same storm would produce different surges depending on the topography,” said Strauss.

The state also has a wide, shallow continental shelf compared with places like Miami, which “means there is massive potential for a storm surge,” he said.

“Especially a storm like this, that’s moving straight forward,” he said. “It’s a really bad setup.”

At the same time, climate change has “supercharged” recent storms, as HuffPost’s Chris D’Angelo reported on Friday, putting Florence on track to do as much, if not more, damage than last year’s Hurricane Harvey, which devastated parts of Texas and Louisiana.

“It is fair to say that the very same factors are likely at play here, namely very warm ocean temperatures and an anomalous jet stream pattern favoring stalled weather systems,” said Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University.

Climate change experts say a more proactive approach to emergency preparedness is necessary, including a better understanding of how global warming and sea level rising are affecting storms.

But it’s often complicated to bring the issue of how to adapt to the changing climate into emergency management discussions, said Jessica Whitehead, the coastal communities hazards adaptation specialist at North Carolina Sea Grant. Emergency response is so often dealing with a crisis, and “it is exceptionally difficult” to plan for one catastrophe while recovering from another.

https://m.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/north-carolina-sea-level-rise-hurricane-florence_us_5b985a87e4b0162f4731da0e?ncid=fcbklnkcahpmg00000001
 

Frankfooter

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Apr 10, 2015
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https://climatechangedenial.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Screen-Shot-2016-10-09-at-6.14.08-AM.[IMG]



[IMG]http://fossilfuellobbyists.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Screenshot-2016-02-25-at-04.22.54-AM[IMG][/QUOTE]

And yet extreme weather events are increasing.
How do you account for that?
 

canada-man

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shack

Nitpicker Extraordinaire
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You forgot Al Gore's dire predictions over the last twenty years that the earth would boil over and the wrath of the gods would be wrought upon us non-believers in global warming.
I am a firm believer in man's contribution to climate change/ global warming, but I think it is stupid to state definitive timelines for events to occur.

Actually, when they are off, it gives the deniers more fuel to push their incorrect narrative.
 

canada-man

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canada-man

Well-known member
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You could, but then you'd be guilty of asking a question based on a false premise.
Sort of like you're posts claiming that all of science is wrong and your investor site knows better.
quit complaining about a site you never read and look at
 

canada-man

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I looked, your investor site is dodgy.
Of course you wouldn't understand why, that takes some understanding of the science.
you are the one claiming that CO2(0.04% of air) is responsible for cars heating up in the summer sun ignoring infrared radiation and convection and conduction which are the main cause of cars heating up when windows are closed
and in previous gobal warming threads you are proven to be a scientific illiterate
 

canada-man

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carbon dioxide levels today the same as in 1910

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NOT19100416.2.32.24


“The present proportion of carbon dioxide in the air is about one part in 2,500.”

“If there was 1:2,500 CO2 molecules in 1910 which is 4:10,000 which is 400 ppm by volume as quoted by the greatest scientist of the day where is there any evidence that we have increased the concentration to current record levels of 400 ppm, 1:10,000 or !:2,500 ???

“If it is unchanged according to the father of the CO2 driven global warming hypothesis- 400 ppm in 1910 and 400 ppm now – why do we have any alarm ?
 
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