[TheClimate.Vote] December 16, 2019 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/*December 16, 2019*/

[Washington Post]
*U.N. climate talks end with hard feelings, few results and new doubts 
about global unity*
By Brady Dennis and  Chico Harlan - Dec. 15, 2019
MADRID -- Global climate talks lurched to an end here Sunday with 
finger-pointing, accusations of failure and fresh doubts about the 
world's collective resolve to slow the warming of the planet -- at a 
moment when scientists say time is running out for people to avert 
steadily worsening climate disasters.

After more than two weeks of negotiations, punctuated by raucous 
protests and constant reminders of a need to move faster, negotiators 
barely mustered enthusiasm for the compromise they had patched together, 
while raising grievances about the issues that remain unresolved.

The negotiators failed to achieve their primary goals. Central among 
them: persuading the world's largest carbon-emitting countries to pledge 
to tackle climate change more aggressively beginning in 2020.
"We are not satisfied," said Chilean Environment Minister Carolina 
Schmidt, who chaired the conference. "The agreements reached by the 
parties are not enough."
Delegates from nearly 200 nations wrestled for more than 40 hours past 
their planned deadline -- making these the longest in the 25-year 
history of the talks...
- - -
The teenagers were part of a broader group that has staged climate 
strikes across the world this year, many of them inspired by 16-year-old 
Swedish activist Greta Thunberg.

"I am losing all of my trust in the establishment and the people who are 
leading this world," said Jonathan Palash-Mizner, 17, one of the 
American leaders of Extinction Rebellion.

As the negotiations headed toward their drawn-out conclusion, about 300 
people assembled in the middle of the convention hall, where one young 
speaker after another held a megaphone and called for "climate justice."

Outside, they gathered with others in front of the cavernous facility. 
"The oceans are rising and so are we!" they chanted.

But a day, a night and another morning later, when negotiators finally 
gaveled the divisive conference to a close, the protesters were long gone.

All that remained were the now-empty hallways, dead and dying potted 
trees and signs that people had passed each day as they exited the 
subway, warning that time was running short.

"Tick tock," they read. "Tick tock."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/un-climate-talks-end-with-hard-feelings-few-results-and-new-doubts-about-global-unity/2019/12/15/38918278-1ec7-11ea-b4c1-fd0d91b60d9e_story.html 


- - -

[COP25 is done]
*COP25 talks labelled "lost opportunity", as Australia burns its 
international reputation*
Michael Mazengarb

Global leaders have slammed the poor result from the latest round of UN 
climate talks that concluded on the weekend, lamenting the "lost 
opportunity" to ramp up action on climate change as a handful of 
countries, including Australia, sought to undermine the talks.

The 25th Conference of Parties (COP25) in Madrid concluded two days 
late, but it was a lacklustre result which saw Australia, joined by 
Brazil, China, Saudi Arabia and the United States emerge as major 
antagonists pushing for accounting loopholes and weakened commitments. 
It was widely condemned by much of the international community.

The primary objective of the Australian delegation for COP25 was to 
avoid attempts to prevent countries from using surplus from the Kyoto 
Protocol - when Australia was allowed to increase emissions - towards 
achieving targets under the Paris Agreement. This was a 'red line' issue 
for Australian negotiators, who blocked any attempts to ban the use of 
such credits.

While Australia succeeded in preventing agreement on a Kyoto carryover 
prohibition, the issue remains unresolved and will remain a focus of 
future negotiations.

In the process, the Morrison government has burnt through a substantial 
amount of Australia's diplomatic capital, and significantly damaged the 
country's international standing on climate issues; all for a temporary 
reprieve from a prohibition on the use of Australia's surplus Kyoto-era 
emissions permits...
https://reneweconomy.com.au/cop25-talks-labelled-lost-opportunity-as-australia-burns-its-international-reputation-46894/

- - -

[Angry young voices]
*'Stop taking up space with your false solutions,' say furious activists 
at UN COP25 *
- video - https://youtu.be/zYJWw2LQlhg
NGO delegates at the UN's COP25 conference express their anger at the 
lack of progress by world governments to act on climate change. 'Stop 
taking up space with your false solutions and get out of our way,' 
demands New Zealand indigenous rights activist Kera Sherwood-O'Regan. 
Representatives from environmental, workers, indigenous peoples and 
youth NGOs read out closing statements to the conference attendees. 
Francis Stuart from the Scottish Trade Union Congress says the 
conference is nothing less than parties trying to dismantle the Paris 
agreement. 'They are much more interested in trading emissions and 
making money from it than actually reducing them,' he says
https://www.theguardian.com/global/video/2019/dec/16/stop-taking-up-space-with-your-false-solutions-say-furious-activists-at-un-cop25



[Activist Nuns and Divine Intervention]
*Investor nuns are turning up the heat on BlackRock's climate change record*
By Natasha Frost - December 15, 2019
Climate emergency-related criticism of the titanic fund manager 
BlackRock seems to be coming from all sides, lately. Last month, 
Extinction Rebellion activists in London protested outside its offices, 
including by dumping ashes outside the building "to represent the 
destruction of the Amazon fires." This week, former vice president Al 
Gore entered the debate, accusing the asset manager of financing the 
"destruction of human civilization." Now, a group of Catholic nuns have 
joined the chorus.

The Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, an investment fund representing 
9,000 nuns, criticized the asset manager for failing to use its 
multi-trillion-dollar might to encourage companies to divest from 
harmful fossil fuels, according to a Financial Times report (paywall). 
The intervention comes via their Mercy Investment Services, which this 
week co-filed a joint shareholder motion with a group of investors, 
including other religious groups, ahead of BlackRock's annual meeting.

"We believe it is BlackRock's fiduciary responsibility to review how 
climate change quantitatively impacts…portfolio companies, evaluate how 
specific shareholder resolutions on climate may impact shareholder 
value, and vote accordingly," the group said.

In 2019, BlackRock supported only six out of 52 climate-related 
resolutions, despite in-house research suggesting that climate change 
would ultimately prove harmful to investment returns. A July 2019 report 
from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis estimated 
that the group had lost around $90 billion in the last 10 years by 
ignoring the financial risk of fossil fuel investment. This voting 
record, Mercy Investment Services said, appears "inconsistent with 
[BlackRock's] statements about climate change."

In 2017, a similar resolution was ultimately withdrawn ahead of the 
annual meeting. But progress since then has been "woefully inadequate," 
shareholders said, necessitating yet another motion. (BlackRock, for its 
part, intends to speak to the filers and said it engaged with hundreds 
of companies globally "on a range of environmental topics.")

In the past month, hundreds of investors called for urgent action on 
climate change, among them UBS Asset Management and the California 
Public Employees' Retirement System. They've demanded an end to fossil 
fuel subsidies, a transition away from thermal coal used in power 
generation, and a "meaningful" price for carbon. BlackRock's name was 
conspicuously absent from their ranks, encouraging still more scrutiny 
from the growing number of investors with an eye on our heating world.
https://qz.com/1768951/sisters-of-mercy-nuns-file-motion-on-blackrocks-climate-change-record/



[Opinion]
*Our Future Depends on the Arctic*
Save it from the ravages of warming and we can save the planet.
By Durwood J. Zaelke and Paul Bledsoe
ADRID -- Delegates from nearly every nation spent the last two weeks 
here at a United Nations climate summit struggling to chart a course to 
meet the extraordinarily difficult goal of net zero emissions of carbon 
dioxide by the year 2050.

Yet long before then, the effects of global warming could spin out of 
control. As the United Nations' secretary general, António Guterres, 
warned in opening the meeting: "The point of no return is no longer over 
the horizon. It is in sight and hurtling toward us."

Perhaps nowhere is that more true than in the Arctic. The surface air 
there is warming at twice the global rate and temperatures over the past 
five years have exceeded all previous records since 1900. This past 
week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that 
the extent of Arctic summer sea ice was at its second lowest point since 
satellite observations began in 1979, and that average temperatures for 
the year ending in September were the second highest since 1900, when 
record-keeping began.

What will this mean? A study published in Geophysical Research Letters 
in June described the catastrophic consequences of losing the Arctic's 
reflective summer sea ice. The ice is a great white shield that reflects 
incoming solar warming back to space during the long summer days of the 
midnight sun. Otherwise, it would be absorbed by the ocean. Losing this 
ice, the study explained, would be the warming equivalent of an extra 25 
years of emissions at current rates, pushing us more quickly past the 
threshold of warming that scientists say could lead to catastrophic 
damage, from more intense heat waves and coastal flooding to extinctions 
of species and threats to food supplies...
- - -

The race to maintain the Arctic's stabilizing role in the global climate 
means, in addition, that we need to put geoengineering into the policy 
mix, despite its hazards, moral or otherwise. This should start with 
"soft" geoengineering that can be carefully monitored as it is scaling 
up, and reversed if side effects become too troubling.

One example, developed by the nonprofit group Ice911, would be to cover 
thin, first-year ice with a type of white sand to enhance the 
reflectivity of the sun's radiation and allow the ice to grow stronger. 
We should start field-testing this strategy immediately.

A riskier approach would be to introduce sulfates or other particles 
into the atmosphere to reflect solar radiation, mimicking the 
temperature-reducing effect of volcanic eruptions. We don't know enough 
yet to employ this idea.

But we've reached the point where we need to understand whether it would 
be effective, while developing a strong governance system to manage it. 
The risk of losing the Arctic's stabilizing function for the global 
climate now appears far greater than the risk of experimenting with 
geoengineering.

Save the Arctic, and we'll have a chance to save the climate.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/14/opinion/sunday/climate-change-arctic.html 


- - -

[Source material]
*Research Highlight: Loss of Arctic's Reflective Sea Ice Will Advance 
Global Warming by 25 Year*s
Fast mitigation may still avoid complete loss of sea ice
Jul 22, 2019
Losing the remaining Arctic sea ice and its ability to reflect incoming 
solar energy back to space would be equivalent to adding one trillion 
tons of CO2 to the atmosphere, on top of the 2.4 trillion tons emitted 
since the Industrial Age, according to current and former researchers 
from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California 
San Diego.

At current rates, this roughly equates to 25 years of global CO2 
emissions. It would consequently speed up the arrival of a global 
threshold of warming of 2ºC beyond temperatures the world experienced 
before the Industrial Revolution.  Scientists and analysts, including 
the authors of an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special 
Report released in October 2018, have stated that the planet runs the 
risk of catastrophic damage ranging from more intense heat waves and 
coastal flooding to extinction of terrestrial species and threats to 
food supply if that threshold is passed.

The results were published June 20 in the journal Geophysical Research 
Letters. In "Radiative Heating of an Ice-Free Arctic Ocean," former 
Scripps graduate student Kristina Pistone, now with the Bay Area 
Environmental Research Institute based at NASA Ames Research Center, and 
Scripps climate scientists Ian Eisenman and Veerabhadran Ramanathan used 
direct satellite observations to assess the impact of a potential 
ice-free Arctic Ocean. The authors of the study conclude that the loss 
of sea ice will add a globally-averaged 0.7 watts per square meter 
(W/m2) of solar heating to the Earth system, 0.21 W/m2 of which has 
already occurred between 1979 and 2016.

The amount of additional heat introduced into the Earth system because 
of Arctic melt is equivalent to an increase in CO2 concentration from 
400 to 456.7 parts per million.

"Losing the reflective power of Arctic sea ice will lead to warming 
equivalent to one trillion tons of CO2 and advance the 2ºC threshold by 
25 years. Any rational policy would make preventing this a top climate 
priority for world leaders," said Ramanathan, a professor of atmospheric 
and climate sciences at Scripps.

The research was primarily supported by grants from the National Science 
Foundation and the NASA Postdoctoral Program.

While the paper presents a worst-case scenario, scientists' observations 
show the Arctic is rapidly losing ice, and computer forecast models are 
actually underestimating the extent of this trend.

"We analyzed 40 climate models from modeling centers around the world," 
said Eisenman, a professor of climate, atmospheric science, and physical 
oceanography at Scripps. "Not a single one of the models simulated as 
much Arctic sea ice retreat per degree of global warming as has been 
observed during recent decades. This motivated us to use an 
observationally focused approach to investigate the scenario in which 
all of the remaining Arctic sea ice disappears considerably faster than 
the models simulate."

An earlier study by the same team calculated that the ice lost in the 
Arctic between 1979 and 2011 added 6.4 W/m2 to the Arctic, which 
averaged globally is equivalent to as much as 25 percent of the effect 
of CO2 during the same time period. Additional research shows that the 
thicker multi-year ice which survives year to year is down to 1 percent 
of the existing ice. There is great uncertainty about the timing of when 
the Arctic could become seasonally ice-free, with some research 
suggesting that recent trends could lead to an ice-free Arctic as early 
as the 2020s and others suggesting 2030 or substantially later depending 
on factors including future warming and natural variability.

For the baseline calculations, the authors assumed that cloud cover 
would remain constant. However, they calculate that if the loss of the 
Arctic ice is accompanied by complete loss of cloud cover, the total 
added warming could be three times greater.

"One of the really interesting, but somewhat expected, aspects of this 
study was quantifying just how much impact the potential change in cloud 
coverage has on the amount of reflected sunlight," said Pistone.

Conversely, if the Arctic experienced complete cloud cover, the total 
warming could be half as much. Under all scenarios considered, the study 
concludes that the radiative heating of complete Arctic sea ice loss 
could substantially accelerate the rate of future global warming. It 
would advance global warming by 25 years in the baseline scenario. This 
would drastically shorten the time available to adapt to climate change 
and the time for achieving carbon neutrality, the authors said.

"It's important to remember that the amount of warming isn't limited to 
just the ice-free time," said Pistone. "Even as September becomes 
ice-free, we will likely see less ice in other parts of the year as 
well, so for example June could end up having a greater warming impact 
even with some remaining ice simply because there is more sunlight in 
that month."

"Because the Arctic's role in regulating the global climate is a 
critical link in the chain of climate protection it should be the focus 
of an all-out effort to keep it strong and safe," said Durwood Zaelke, 
president of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development 
which partially funded the research.
- Robert Monroe and IGSD
https://scripps.ucsd.edu/news/research-highlight-loss-arctics-reflective-sea-ice-will-advance-global-warming-25-years



[not an apology, rather an explanation]
*Greta Thunberg apologizes for "against the wall" comment*
BY JORDAN FREIMAN
DECEMBER 14, 2019
Greta Thunberg apologized on Saturday for a comment that some 
interpreted as a threat of violence against politicians who ignore 
climate change. Thunberg said she was merely translating a Swedish 
expression into English and apologized for the way her comments may have 
come off.

"Yesterday I said we must hold our leaders accountable and unfortunately 
said 'put them against the wall,'" the 16-year-old climate activist 
tweeted on Saturday. "That's Swenglish: 'att stalla nagon mot vaggen' 
(to put someone against the wall) means to hold someone accountable."

"That's what happens when you improvise speeches in a second language," 
the Swede continued. "But of course I apologize if anyone misunderstood 
this. I can not enough express the fact that I --  as well as the entire 
school strike movement -- are against any possible form of violence. It 
goes without saying but I say it anyway."

The expression in English is often a euphemism for executions. It refers 
to putting someone in front of wall before they are killed by a firing 
squad.

Thunberg, who was recently named Time's Person of the Year for 2019, 
made the comments during a speech in Italy on Friday while talking about 
world leaders who aren't helping to fight climate change.

"We have to make sure that they cannot do that," she said. "We will make 
sure they, that we put them against the wall, and that they will have to 
do their job and to protect our futures."

Thunberg has gotten under the skin of several world leaders, including 
United States President Trump and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. 
Mr. Trump tweeted earlier this week that Thunberg "must work on her 
Anger Management problem, then go to a good old fashioned movie with a 
friend! Chill Greta, Chill!"

Former first lady Michelle Obama, meanwhile, tweeted a message of 
support to Thunberg, writing "don't let anyone dim your light."
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/greta-thunberg-climate-activist-apologizes-for-against-the-wall-comment/ 




[BBC cute video and music]
*Hampshire schoolboy records Christmas climate change single*
An eight-year-old boy has written a song about climate change which he 
hopes could be a contender for Christmas number one.

Frankie and his dad, Charlie Morland, produced the single in their home 
studio in Fleet, Hampshire, and it is now being released by a record 
company ahead of Christmas.

World in Danger focuses on climate change and illustrations from the 
music video have been turned into a lyric book.

Frankie said any money made from the song will be donated to the World 
Wildlife Foundation (WWF).
Video journalist: Matt Graveling
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-england-hampshire-50759403/hampshire-schoolboy-records-christmas-climate-change-single


[Video essay]
*Disaster Capitalism Won't Save Us*
Dec 5, 2019
The Atlantic
Can we buy our way out of a warming planet? Probably not, but 
advertisers will still try to sell Californians respirator masks as they 
flee historic wildfires. In this episode of The Idea File, Atlantic 
staff writer Alexis Madrigal explains how disaster capitalism will 
respond as weather conditions worsen due to climate change.
https://youtu.be/_F3LrUfUifI



*This Day in Climate History - December  16, 2014 - from D.R. Tucker*
In the New York Times, Justin Gillis observes:

    "After two weeks of grinding meetings in Lima, Peru, the world's
    climate negotiators emerged this weekend with a deal. They settled
    on preliminary language, to be finalized a year from now in Paris,
    meant to help keep the long-term warming of the planet below 3.6
    degrees Fahrenheit.

    "That upper boundary was first settled on four years ago at another
    round of talks in Cancun, Mexico. On the centigrade scale, it equals
    two degrees above the global average temperature at the beginning of
    the Industrial Revolution...

    "Yet even as the 2C target has become a touchstone for the climate
    talks, scientific theory and real-world observations have begun to
    raise serious questions about whether the target is stringent enough."

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/16/science/earth/is-a-two-degree-limit-on-global-warming-off-target.html?hpw&rref=science&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well 


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