Predictably, Lima talks limp to an end with no results

Tell me what’s new.

Since Kyoto, right through COP-15 in Copenhagen to now, nothing’s changed.

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Kerry Offers 'Fancy Words,' But US Inaction Blasted as Lima Talks Limp To End

Strong rhetoric by US Secretary of State at UN summit in Peru welcomed by some, but experts say agreement still light-years away from what's needed to combat global warming

Common Dreams,

11 December, 2014

As the U.N. Conference of the Parties (COP20) talks enter their last scheduled day in Lima, Peru on Friday, remarks delivered by U.S. Secretary of State late Thursday to climate negotiators from around the world, though welcomed by some, seemed to do very little in terms of moving the talks closer to the kind of agreement experts say are necessary to adequately tackle the crisis of human-caused global warming.

Kerry sounded notes of urgency and shared purpose in his remarks to the delegates as he stated, "Rest assured, if we fail, future generations will not and should not forgive those who ignore this moment, no matter their reasoning. 

Future generations will judge our effort not just as a policy failure, but as a massive, collective moral failure of historic consequence, particularly if we’re just bogged down in abstract debates. They will want to know how we together could possibly have been so blind, so ideological, so dysfunctional, and frankly, so stubborn that we failed to act on knowledge that was confirmed by so many scientists in so many studies over such a long period of time and documented by so much evidence."

Meanwhile, as the Guardian's Suzanne Goldenbergreported, with talks scheduled to conclude Friday, delegates had agreed "on just one paragraph of a deal" and she quoted the Union of Concerned Scientist expert Alden Meyer who said negotiators were "going backward," not forward on a quality agreement.

Though some U.S.-based climate action groups welcomed Kerry's arrival at the talks and his lofty rhetoric on climate, none seemed convinced that the U.S. contributions at the summit or its standing positions on climate action are nearly adequate to the task.

"We appreciate [Sec. Kerry's] comments on the urgency of creating a clean energy economy," saidKyle Ash, Greenpeace's top legislative advisor. "His record as a climate champion, however, contrasts with many of the US positions in the Lima COP negotiations."

350.org's Jamie Henn, also attending the summit in Lima, said Kerry "sure sounded like someone who was gearing up" for strong action on climate change, but argued Kerry's calls for others to act would mean little if the U.S. approves new dirty energy projects like the Keystone XL pipeline; refuses to make stronger emissions cuts; or continues to ramp up oil and gas exploration and fossil fuel export.

"Fancy words are worth nothing if they aren’t backed up with action," Henn said.

 According to Karen Orenstein, senior climate analyst with Friends of the Earth US, the gap between Kerry's rhetoric and U.S. commitments is more like a chasm.

"It is past time to put words into action," Orenstein said. "The emissions cuts the US has put forward put us on a path for a global temperature increase well beyond the already dangerous 2C level. Secretary Kerry said, ‘If you’re a big developed nation and you are not helping to lead, then you’re part of the problem.’ Regrettably, the US is a tremendous part of the problem, and as the hundreds of thousands of people on the streets of Lima and New York have demanded, this must change immediately."

Orenstein was referencing the People's Climate March in New York City earlier this year and a large march in Lima outside the talks on Wednesday where civil society organizations, Indigenous groups, and climate justice advocates rallied for a far-reaching draft agreement at this summit which would be finalized at the next round of talks scheduled for Paris in 2015.

In a policy paper released at the talks, Greenpeace argues that the U.S. approach to its own commitments and negotiating stance are in direct contrast with Kerry's stated desire to forge a strong agreement. The Obama administration has argued that making carbon emission reduction targets and other climate mitigation commitments legally binding is not necessary, but Greenpeace is among those who strongly disagree. Without "binding" targets and enforcement mechanisms, goes the argument, the necessary reductions will simply not be made in time. 

Ash, who authored the report on behalf of the group, explains:

President Obama's team continues to insist that presidential authority is insufficient to sign onto legally binding obligations to reduce climate pollution. At the same time, they claim that making pollution targets binding will reduce ambition. Neither is correct. Rather than portray US presidential legal powers as weak in the face of a politically stunted, soon-to-be climate denier controlled Congress, Secretary Kerry should ask his boss to use every tool he can to fight the climate catastrophe we are facing – including the cessation of the sale of publicly-owned fossil fuels and a significant strengthening of EPA climate policy. The US should increase their 2025 climate pollution reduction target from 28 to 40% and commit to it in an internationally legally binding agreement next year. Our transition to 100% renewable energy by 2050 depends on it.

Familiar sticking points at the talk continue to center around the divide between rich and poor nations.  Whereas the U.S. argues that so-called "developing nations" must make the same kinds of sacrifices that larger and wealthier nations are prepared to make, critics of that view say that because those most-developed nations are also the largest historic greenhouse gas emitters they have a special responsibility to do more—a concept known as "common but differentiated responsibilities."

Advocates of climate justice argue that big polluters, like the U.S., Canada, Australia, and the nations of Europe have should play a more significant role in financing the mitigation and transition efforts of those countries which did much less to create the climate crisis but are much more threatened by the increasing impacts of higher temperatures, rising seas, longer droughts, and more extreme weather.

As the BBC reports:

Some countries are suspicious that the text being developed here in Lima is an attempt to get round the concept of differentiation, which is embedded in 1992's UN framework convention on climate change.

The issue has become critical as the chairs of the talks introduced a new draft text that many felt watered down the original commitment.

A large group of developing nations known as the G77 objected.

"This whole exercise is not meant to rewrite the convention, this is a firm basic position of the G77," said Antonio Marcondes, Brazil's representative at the talks.

"We stand behind the differentiation, we stand behind 'common but differentiated responsibilities', these are issues we hold very strong and these are definite red lines."

Former VP Al Gore Urges Obama to Reject Keystone XL as Kerry, Top U.S. Negotiator Stay Mum

With an impassioned plea for climate action on Thursday, Secretary of State John Kerry is the highest-ranking U.S. official to attend the annual U.N. Climate Change Conference since President Obama took part in the 2009 Copenhagen talks. 

While Kerry spoke for 30 minutes, he never addressed an issue on the minds of many: the proposed Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline. Kerry must make a final recommendation to Obama about whether the $8 billion pipeline should be approved. 

Amy Goodman speaks to former Vice President Al Gore, who attended Kerry’s speech, about why he wants Obama to reject the Keystone XL. She then tries to raise the issue with Kerry and top U.S. climate negotiator Todd Stern, but both refuse to answer.

If we stopped emitting CO2 the gasses would stay in the atmosphere for thousands of years - something very few people bother to point out when they give their optimistic predictions.

What would happen to the climate if we stopped emitting greenhouse gases today?

Richard B. Rood - Professor of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences at University of Michigan

Imagine the smokestacks without the billowing clouds of greenhouse gas pollution. JuergenGER

the Conversation,

11 December, 2014

Earth’s climate is changing rapidly. We know this from billions of observations, documented in thousands of journal papers and texts and summarized every few years by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The primary cause of that change is the release of carbon dioxide from burning coal, oil and natural gas.

International climate talks in Lima this week are laying the foundation for next year’s UNclimate summit in Paris. While negotiations about reducing emissions grind on, how much warming are we already locked into? If we stop emitting greenhouse gases tomorrow, why would the temperature continue to rise?

Basics of carbon and climate

The carbon dioxide that accumulates in the atmosphere insulates the surface of the Earth. It’s like a warming blanket that holds in heat. This energy increases the Earth’s surface average temperature, heats the oceans and melts polar ice. As consequences, sea level rises and weather changes.

Global average temperature has increased. Anomalies are relative to the mean temperature of 1961-1990. Finnish Meteorological Institute and Finnish Ministry of the Environment, Author provided

Click to enlarge

Since 1880, after carbon dioxide emissions took off with the Industrial Revolution, the average global temperature has increased about 1.5F (0.85C). Each of the last three decades has been warmer than the preceding decade, as well as warmer than the entire previous century.

The Arctic is warming much faster than the average global temperature; ice in the Arctic Ocean is melting and the permafrost is thawing. Ice sheets in both the Arctic and Antarctic are melting. Ecosystems on both land and in the sea are changing. The observed changes are coherent and consistent with our theoretical understanding of the Earth’s energy balance and simulations from models that are used to understand past variability and to help us think about the future.

A crack in Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, CC BY

Click to enlarge

Slam on the climate brakes

What would happen to the climate if we were to stop emitting carbon dioxide today, right now? Would we return to the climate of our elders? The simple answer is no. Once we release the carbon dioxide stored in the fossil fuels we burn, it accumulates in and moves amongst the atmosphere, the oceans, the land, and the plants and animals of the biosphere. The released carbon dioxide will remain in the atmosphere for thousands of years. Only after many millennia will it return to rocks, for example, through the formation of calcium carbonate – limestone – as marine organisms' shells settle to the bottom of the ocean. But on time spans relevant to humans, once released the carbon dioxide is in our environment essentially forever. It does not go away, unless we, ourselves, remove it.

If we stop emitting today, it’s not the end of the story for global warming. There’s a delay in temperature increase as the climate catches up with all the carbon that’s in the atmosphere. After maybe 40 more years, the climate will stabilize at a temperature higher than what was normal for previous generations.

This decades-long lag between cause and effect is due to the long time it takes to heat the the ocean’s huge mass. The energy that is held at the Earth by the increased carbon dioxide does more than heat the air. It melts ice; it heats the ocean. Compared to air, it’s harder to raise the temperature of water – it takes time, decades. However, once the ocean temperature is elevated, it adds to the warming of the Earth’s surface.

So even if carbon emissions stopped completely right now, as the oceans catch up with the atmosphere, the Earth’s temperature would rise about another 1.1F (0.6C). Scientists refer to this as committed warming. Ice, also responding to increasing heat in the ocean, will continue to melt. There’s already convincing evidence that significant glaciers in the West Antarctic ice sheets are lost. Ice, water, and air – the extra heat held on the Earth by carbon dioxide affects them all. That which has melted will stay melted – and more will melt.

Ecosystems are altered by natural and manmade occurrences. As they recover, it will be in a different climate from that in which they evolved. The climate in which they recover will not be stable; it will be continuing to warm. There will be no new normal, only more change.

Glacial ice loss over Greenland and Antarctica from 2003 to 2010.

Best of the worst case scenarios

In any event, it’s not possible to stop emitting carbon dioxide today, right now. Despite significant advances in renewable energy sources, total demand for energy accelerates and carbon dioxide emissions increase. I teach my students that they need to plan for a world 7F (4C) warmer. A 2011 report from the International Energy Agency states that if we don’t get off our current path, then we’re looking at an Earth 11F (6C) warmer. Our current Earth is just over 1F warmer, and the observed changes are already disturbing.

There are many reasons that we need to essentially eliminate our carbon dioxide emissions. The climate is changing rapidly; if that pace is slowed, the affairs of nature and human beings can adapt more readily. The total amount of change, including sea-level rise, can be limited. The further we get away from the climate that we have known, the more unreliable the guidance from our models and the less likely we will be able to prepare. The warmer the planet gets, the more likely reservoirs of carbon dioxide and methane, another greenhouse gas that warms the planet, will be released from storage in the frozen Arctic permafrost – further adding to the problem.

If we stop our emissions today, we won’t go back to the past. This is not reason, however, to continue with unbridled emissions. We are adaptable creatures, with credible knowledge of our climate’s future and how we can frame that future. We’re already stuck with some amount of guaranteed climate change at this point. Rather than trying to recover the past, we need to be thinking about best possible futures.