Paris Climate Poker

 

Behind closed doors as ministers and their negotiators met countries and groups of countries turned candid at the Paris climate change summit. The surprises were unlimited and contentions of countries and groups far from what they speak in public. At the same time news emerged of heads of states of different countries coming back in to the picture – working the phone lines from their respective countries to make political bargains. --Nitin Sethi, Business Standard, 7 December 2015

Delegates meet again in Paris this week for the final five days of negotiations to reach an international deal to cap global warming, painfully aware that much work remains to be done. France has repeatedly asked for delegates to speed up the talks. The plan was that most technical discussions should be over by now. But the wish of Fabius to only have political directions to discuss at this point seems unlikely to be granted as the new 48 pages text is way too long, and leaves many issues open. -- Aline Robert, EurActiv, 7 December 2015

India is formally not willing to show its hand at this juncture. Asked about the growing momentum towards the 1.5 degree limit and India's stand on the issue, Javadekar said, "If you want to freeze (temperature rise) as of now at 0.8 degree celsius, you may do it. Why do you go for 1.5 degree celsius limit? But then you will have to allow the development space, vacate the carbon space (for developing countries). You (mostly the rich world) have already consumed 2,000 Gt. There is no scope now. So, should all (countries) stop (emitting) now? No. Developing countries will grow." --Vishwa Mohan, Times of India, 8 December 2015

Scientists are divided over whether the profusion of extreme weather that has hit Britain over the past few years is a product of climate change or natural variation. The question is not just academic: for the civil servants tasked with marshalling the country’s flood defences, it is a matter of life and death. Dame Julia Slingo, chief scientist at the Met Office, skirted controversy yesterday by claiming that “all the evidence” pointed to climate change as a factor behind Storm Desmond. Thorsten Wagener, professor of water and environmental engineering at the University of Bristol, said that it was simply too hard to know how much to factor in climate change and other shifts when calculating flood risk. “While there are indications that we see increasing extreme rainfall events in the UK, it is difficult to know how much of this change results from climate change,” he said. --Oliver Moody, Paul Simons and David Brown, The Times, 8 December 2015

Way back in June, John Christy and I called 2015 as being the warmest year on record…in the surface thermometer data. Given the strong El Nino in progress, on top of the official thermometer data warming trend, this seemed pretty obvious. Of course, everyone has their opinions regarding how good the thermometer temperature trends are, with periodic adjustments that almost always make the present warmer or the past colder. But I’m not going there today… Instead, I’m going to talk about our only truly global dataset: the satellite data. With the November 2015 data now in, it’s pretty clear that in our UAH analysis 2015 will only be the 3rd warmest year since the satellite record began in 1979. --Roy Spencer, 3 December 2015

 

A very odd thing happened last weekend. The death was announced of the man who, in the past 40 years, has arguably been more influential on global politics than any other single individual. Yet the world scarcely noticed. Had it not been for Maurice Strong, we would not last week have seen 150 heads of government joining 40,000 delegates in Paris for that mammoth climate conference: the 21st such get-together since, in 1992, he masterminded the Rio “Earth Summit”, the largest political gathering in history. Yet few people even know his name. But the wonderful irony is that the reason why Paris will fail, like Copenhagen before it, is that those “developing countries”, led by China and India – now the world’s first and third largest “CO2 emitters” – have not the slightest intention of curbing their emissions. It is for the West to do that, for creating “the problem”. Thus, just as he died, Strong’s dream is more than ever falling apart – thanks to those very countries his socialist vision was intended to help. --Christopher Booker, The Sunday Telegraph, 6 December 2015

Chinese negotiators at UN talks in Paris are being accused of trying to weaken the new global climate accord due to be finalised by Friday. “It is very frustrating,” said one negotiator from a developed country after a meeting where he said Chinese officials had tried to water down efforts to create a common system for the way countries report to the UN on their carbon dioxide emissions and climate change plans. China is supporting a general stocktaking review of countries’ pledges every five years but wants any updating of the carbon dioxide emissions reduction targets contained in these plans to be voluntary, this envoy said. --Pilita Clark, Financial Times, 9 December 2015

China was applauded by greens in the run-up to Paris for its high-profile (and widely reported) eco-friendly overtures, but now that delegates are actually sitting down to hammer out a deal, they’re being reminded that these talks have little to do with morality or some deep abiding love for Gaia. Even when mouthing green pieties, states come at issues like this as cynically as they come at everything else. While greens might have been able to kid themselves into believing the world was on track for some sort of breakthrough in Paris, the core calculus hasn’t changed, and a deal therefore isn’t in the offing. Not only that, but judging by the summit’s progress so far, it seems the three secondary objectives may be dead in the water, as well. --The American Interest, 8 December 2015

A critical "clean" draft text has been published at UN climate talks here in Paris after delays. This new version, 29 pages long, marks the first time the French presidency of the meeting has pulled together an outline of a deal. One observer warned that there could be "fireworks" if countries are unhappy with the compromises proposed. Observers were unsure as to how the parties would react to the new text. --Matt McGrath, BBC News, 9 December 2015

At the juncture when developed countries have joined hands to demand practically an end to the principle of differentiation in the Paris agreement,  the  BASIC  countries, including China, India, Brazil and South Africa came together to demand that the new pact must necessarily be stitched under the existing UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). In a language that showed there was no reconciliation with the developed countries on the fundamental demands or red-lines so far, the four countries said, “ambition and effectiveness of the agreement will be underpinned by operationalizing differentiation between developed and developing countries in each element of the agreement.” --Nitin Sethi, Business Standard, 8 December 2015

Environment Secretary Liz Truss today defended the Government’s near £6billion spend on tackling climate change abroad, despite it being more than double the amount being spent on flood defences in Britain. The Tory minister yesterday told MPs devastating floods in Cumbria over the weekend were likely to be linked to global climate change. Amid the misery, the Government has come under pressure after it emerged spending on flood defences was cut by 14 per cent this year. And critics have also been left wondering why billions of pounds of taxpayers’ cash is being handed over to foreign countries for their own efforts in combating climate change when it dwarfs spending on the UK’s flood defences. --Greg Heffer, Daily Express, 9 December 2015

Prior to 2009, I felt that supporting the IPCC consensus on climate change was the responsible thing to do. I bought into the argument: “Don’t trust what one scientist says, trust what an international team of a thousand scientists has said, after years of careful deliberation.” That all changed for me in November 2009, following the leaked Climategate emails, that illustrated the sausage making and even bullying that went into building the consensus. I came to the growing realization that I had fallen into the trap of groupthink. I had accepted the consensus based on 2^nd order evidence: the assertion that a consensus existed. I began making an independent assessment of topics in climate science that had the most relevance to policy. --Judith Curry, Testimony to the US Senate Commerce Committee, Climate Etc., 8 December 2015

 

Brought to you by Benny Peiser's Global Warming Policy Forum