GWPF Newsletter: IPCC Turns Green Energy Lobby

Climate Scientists Call For $2.4 Trillion Per Year For Shift To Renewables

In this newsletter:

1) IPCC Turns Green Energy Lobby: Climate Scientists Call For $2.4 Trillion Per Year For Shift To Renewables
Bloomberg, 8 October 2018
 
2) Most UK Newspapers Ignore IPCC Report On Their Frontpages
Global Warming Policy Forum, 8 October 2018

 
3) Forget IPCC: EU Business Lobby Steps Up Battle Against New Unilateral Climate Targets
EurActiv, 4 October 2018
 
4) Germany Wins Climate Battle: EU Commission Abandons Plans For New 2030 Climate Goal
EurActiv, 2 October 2018
 
5) Christopher Booker: The Truth About China’s & India’s Coal Boom
The Sunday Telegraph, 7 October 2018
 
6) US Tornado Activity Lowest In 65 Years Of Record Keeping
Michael Bastasch, The Daily Caller, 4 October 2018
 
7) Tonight: Prof Richard Lindzen To Deliver 2018 Annual GWPF Lecture
Global Warming Policy Foundation

Full details:

1) IPCC Turns Green Energy Lobby: Climate Scientists Call For $2.4 Trillion Per Year For Shift To Renewables
Bloomberg, 8 October 2018

The world must invest $2.4 trillion in clean energy every year through 2035 and cut the use of coal-fired power to almost nothing by 2050 to slow the quickest pace of climate change since the end of the last ice age, according to scientists convened by the United Nations.

The findings released Monday by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change add pressure on policymakers and businesses to step up their response to global warming, which the scientists said is melting ice caps and making storms more violent (sic). The atmosphere is almost 1 degree Celsius (1.8 Fahrenheit) hotter than it was at the start of the industrial revolution, and burning more fossil fuels will accelerate the shift toward higher temperatures, the group said in its report.

Temperatures are currently on track (sic) to rise 3 degrees Celsius by 2100. That’s double the pace targeted under the Paris climate agreements endorsed by almost 200 nations in 2015.

“We are already seeing the consequences of 1 degree of global warming through more extreme weather (sic), rising sea levels and diminishing Arctic sea ice,” said Panmao Zhai, one of the co-chairs who helped bring together the report by the researchers who reviewed thousands of scientific papers.

Envoys at the 2015 Paris talks asked the IPCC to study what it would take to limit warming to 1.5 degrees, a more ambitious goal than the previous 2-degree target.

The scientists concluded that carbon dioxide emissions should be cut 45 percent by 2030 from 2010 levels then reduced to zero by 2050. That would require “unprecedented changes in all aspects of society,” most especially within the energy industry. The report acknowledged those changes would be difficult and costly, but not impossible.

“These systems transitions are unprecedented in terms of scale, but not necessarily in terms of speed, and imply deep emissions reductions in all sectors,” the IPCC said in the report. “These options are technically proven at various scales, but their large-scale deployment may be limited by economic, financial, human capacity and institutional constraints.’’

To limit warming to 1.5 degrees would require a roughly fivefold increase in average annual investment in low-carbon energy technologies by 2050, compared with 2015. The $2.4 trillion needed annually through 2035 is also an almost sevenfold increase from the $333.5 billion Bloomberg NEF estimated was invested in renewable energy last year.

THE IPCC REPORT ALSO RECOMMENDED THAT BY 2050:
 

• Coal’s share of electricity supply should be cut to 2 percent or less.
• Renewables should supply 70 percent to 85 percent of power generation.
• Carbon capture and storage technology should be deployed to absorb remaining fossil-fuel emissions.
• Natural gas could maintain an 8 percent share of electricity generation if CCS reduced total global net emissions to zero by 2050.

Those ambitions would mark a massive upheaval to the energy system, with coal currently accounting for about 37 percent of power and gas at 24 percent, according to the International Energy Agency.

Full story 
 
2) Most UK Newspapers Ignore IPCC Report On Their Frontpages
Global Warming Policy Forum, 8 October 2018

Today’s frontpages of most UK newspapers ignore the new IPCC report, reflecting the declining concern of most Britons about the climate agenda – despite the habitual alarm.


UK Survey: Brits Are Chilled About Global Warming
Press Release, Global Warming Policy Forum, 11 July 2018

Few Britons have major concerns over climate change

The latest British Social Attitudes Survey reveals that only around a quarter of the public has major concerns over the impacts of global warming and that only a third thinks that humans are the main cause of climate change.

The typical Briton is mildly concerned by climate change, but believes that human and natural causes are equally important in understanding why the climate changes. This is in sharp contrast to green campaigners, politicians and the broad “climate science” community, whose message of impending disaster is dominating the mainstream media.

Similarly, the survey shows that few people feel they should limit their energy use in order to address global warming, with young Britons least likely to indicate a willingness to change.

Welcoming the survey’s key findings, GWPF director Dr Benny Peiser said:

“The British Social Attitudes survey is a great reality check. It makes clear that our message that the climate scare has been hyped is getting through to the public. The climate will continue to change, just as it always has, and humans will keep adapting, just as we always have.

“The public can sense that they are on the receiving end of a sales pitch, and they are very wise to treat it with caution.”

“It is surprising, however, that only few British politicians are willing to openly represent the rational views of the UK public — in contrast to those who have done so successfully in Canada, Australia and the United States.”
 
3) Forget IPCC: EU Business Lobby Steps Up Battle Against New Unilateral Climate Targets
EurActiv, 4 October 2018

One of Europe’s most influential business lobbies is trying to push the EU towards climate action standstill, after a leaked memo obtained by EURACTIV called the bloc’s existing 40% emissions reduction target “already ambitious”.

The BusinessEurope document, dated 3 October, shows that references to an 80%, 95% or carbon neutral climate target have been deleted, while the term ‘trajectories’ has been replaced by ‘scenarios.’

It also does not define action to be taken against climate warming in order to limit it to the 2°C or 1.5°C pathways referred to in the Paris Agreement.

The note is a draft response by BusinessEurope to the European Commission public consultation on a strategy for long-term EU greenhouse gas emissions reductions. It will feed into the Commission’s deliberations and is expected to be released on 28 November.

It follows a leaked memo obtained by EURACTIV that shows how BusinessEurope plans to “oppose” any increase in the EU’s climate ambition for 2030.

The draft underlines that the EU’s existing emission reduction target of 40% is “already an ambitious one”. It is an opposite stand to scientific consensus that says it is not far-reaching enough for the EU to meet its climate target as defined by the Paris Agreement.

While pointing out several times the need to keep business competitive, the note refers to existing climate policies which it calls “ambitious”.

These policies, however, are based on Council conclusions dating back to October 2014 and are therefore inadequate for the purposes of the Paris deal, which was brokered in 2015.

“The EU has the world’s most developed carbon market, and it is estimated that the EU’s emissions will only constitute 5% of global emissions if each Party under the Paris Agreement reaches its current Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs),” the document also reads.

This means BusinessEurope is not taking into account the notion of historic responsibility of developed countries in global warming, which the Paris Agreement refers to in the formulation of “common but differentiated responsibility”.

Full story
 
4) Germany Wins Climate Battle: EU Commission Abandons Plans For New 2030 Climate Goal
EurActiv, 2 October 2018

The European Commission has given up plans to ramp up Europe’s 40% emissions reduction goal for 2030 to 45%, according to German media. But the EU executive insists that a formal increase was never on the table.



In October 2014, EU leaders agreed on cutting emissions by 40% compared with 1990 levels by the end of the next decade. But since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015 and the EU has nearly finalised 2016’s Clean Energy Package that figure has been called into question.

EU energy Commissioner Miguel Arias Cañete said earlier this year that the bloc would “de facto” hit 45% thanks to the new laws on renewables and energy efficiency, suggesting the EU could make the figure legally binding.

The EU’s top energy and climate official revealed on Wednesday (20 June) that the bloc is now set to increase its emissions reduction pledge from 40% by 2030 to 45%, after EU negotiators sealed agreements on three clean energy laws in the past fortnight.

But the Commission told EURACTIV that Cañete never actually announced an official target increase. Changing the target would mean agreement in the Council, which looks unlikely given the opposition of countries like Germany.

According to German media, both Cañete and Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker had been in favour of tighter reduction goals to sharpen the EU’s environmental protection profile.

Together with other European lobby groups, the Federation of German Industries (BDI) opposed tighter targets while Chancellor Angela Merkel had said: “I think we should first stick to the goals we have already set for ourselves. I don’t think permanently setting ourselves new goals makes any sense.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke against setting more ambitious EU climate targets on Sunday (26 August) but supported the idea of a transition towards a decarbonised transport sector.

Germany’s opposition

NGO Germanwatch said the main reason for Cañete’s alleged backtrack was opposition from the German government.

“The devastating drought period this summer is hardly over, yet the German government already torpedoes potential success at the upcoming climate summit in Katowice, Poland,” said Christoph Bals, political director of the NGO.

Full story
 
5) Christopher Booker: The Truth About China’s & India’s Coal Boom
The Sunday Telegraph, 7 October 2018

China and India have never had any intention of reducing their dependence on coal, as they had both made abundantly clear in documents each country submitted before the Paris agreement, where China said it planned to double its CO2 emissions by 2030, and India that it would treble them

The BBC and The Guardian recently reported on new satellite pictures revealing that China, as easily the world’s largest emitter of CO2, is now busily building so many new coal-fired stations that they will add 259 gigawatts or 25 per cent to its coal-fired output, more than that of all US coal-fired power stations combined.

This “approaching tsunami” of new coal plants is “wildly out of line” with the 2015 Paris climate agreement, reports The Guardian, quoting a report from the research group Coalswarm. But in no way should this be a surprise. It is just what China announced it intended to do at the time of Paris, when it said it would be doubling its CO2 emissions by 2030.

Official Chinese figures confirm that the country is well on target, having increased its emissions by 6.9 per cent in the first quarter of 2018 alone.

What makes this much odder, however, is that The Guardian itself was already reporting as long ago as 2010 that China planned a massive expansion of its coal-fired power generation. Odder still is that The Guardian also revealed that the UN was planning to pour “billions of pounds of public money” in subsidies to China and India, to enable them to build 20 “heavily-polluting coal plants”.

This was to be done under the UN’s “Clean Development Mechanism” scheme, designed to subsidise “developing” countries like China and India to rely only on “sustainable development” as their economies caught up with the West.

The idea was that these countries would be given “carbon credits”, which could then be sold to organisations in the West, to allow them to “offset” their own CO2 emissions. To earn these credits, the developing countries had to show that on specific projects they were curbing their emissions: as when they replaced a “dirty” old coal plant with a new one using less polluting “clean coal” technology.

By 2010 this system had thrown up so many scandals, including wholesale fraud, that it came under heavy fire, and in some more blatant respects it was modified. But the UN ruled that China and India could still earn carbon credits for closing “dirty” power plants to replace them with “more efficient” new ones.

In fact the real message was that China and India never had any intention of reducing their dependence on coal, as they had both made abundantly clear in documents each country submitted before the Paris agreement, where China said it planned to double its CO2 emissions by 2030, and India that it would treble them.

This was precisely the reason given by President Trump in 2017 for pulling the US out of the “Paris accord”, which he regarded as no more than a cynical charade. But The Guardian and the BBC never mentioned any of this. If they had followed the story properly, they would have no reason for now expressing shock at what China and India are up to because they would have known it all along.

Full post
 
6) US Tornado Activity Lowest In 65 Years Of Record Keeping
Michael Bastasch, The Daily Caller, 4 October 2018

A record-low 759 tornadoes formed in the U.S. so far this year, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Storm Prediction Center (SPC).

Through Oct. 3 of this year, SPC recorded two fewer tornadoes than the previous record-low of 761. Tornado activity has been unusually low in recent years, according to SPC data, which goes back 65 years.

“This lack of tornadic storms in recent years should also correlate with lesser severe thunderstorm activity in general in the U.S., since the conditions which produce large hail and damaging winds are generally the same as are required for tornadoes,” Dr. Roy Spencer of the University of Alabama-Huntsville wrote on his blog.

Meteorologist Steve Bowen noted on Wednesday there’s been 1,961 consecutive days without an F5 tornado in the U.S., based on the Fujita tornado intensity scale. Bowen tweeted this is the second-longest streak without F5 tornadoes since 1950.



Full story
 
7) Tonight: Prof Richard Lindzen To Deliver 2018 Annual GWPF Lecture
Global Warming Policy Foundation

The 2018 Annual GWPF Lecture will be delivered by
Professor Richard S. Lindzen



Global Warming for the Two Cultures

When: Monday 8 October 2018 — 7:00pm

Where: Institution of Mechanical Engineers, One Birdcage Walk, London SW1H 9JJ

Richard Lindzen’s GWPF Lecture will be available tonight after 8pm (BST) on the GWPF website.

The London-based Global Warming Policy Forum is a world leading think tank on global warming policy issues. The GWPF newsletter is prepared by Director Dr Benny Peiser - for more information, please visit the website at www.thegwpf.com.