Report: carbon emissions flat in last 3 years

This fun on several levels.  If the trend (or lack of it) continues the "fight" is over.  CO2 levels have been stabilized and there is now no further need for action on the global warming front.  We have arrived at where we are going and the temperature  is fine.  Keep the coalfires burning!

Needless to say, the Warmists are once again taking refuge in prophecy.  Instead of extrapolating from the present situation, which is the only data we have, they are saying:  No, No, No -- Anything but that! You can't take our game away from us like that!  So on the basis of nothing at all they are prophesying a resumption of CO2 rises.  No science there:  Just faith.  They haven't got a clue about climate but they do have faith.

But there's another level on which this is fun.  The Warmists have been proclaiming for the same three years that temperatures are leaping -- with 2015 showing a temperature of a whole degree above the reference period.  And there is an element of truth in that.  But what CAUSED the recent warming?  If there was no increase in CO2 the increase in temperature cannot be due to CO2!  The connection which is the very basis of Warmist theory just did not happen -- again.

The increases which the Green/Left have been proclaiming as proof of a global emergency CANNOT have been due to human activity and must have been due to normal natural phenomena like the El Nino climate cycle.  What a teeth grinder!

But will they really grind their teeth over it?  Unlikely.  They already ignore so many inconvenient facts that ignoring this one will be a breeze


Worldwide emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide have flattened out in the past three years, a new study showed Monday, raising hopes that the world is nearing a turning point in the fight against climate change.

However, the authors of the study cautioned it's unclear whether the slowdown in CO2 emissions, mainly caused by declining coal use in China, is a permanent trend or a temporary blip.

"It is far too early to proclaim we have reached a peak," said co-author Glen Peters, a senior researcher at the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo.

The study, published in the journal Earth System Science Data, says global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and industry is projected to grow by just 0.2 percent this year.

That would mean emissions have leveled off at about 36 billion metric tons in the past three years even though the world economy has expanded, suggesting the historical bonds between economic gains and emissions growth may have been severed.

"This could be the turning point we have hoped for," said David Ray, a professor of carbon management at the University of Edinburgh, who was not involved with the study. "To tackle climate change those bonds must be broken and here we have the first signs that they are at least starting to loosen."

The authors of the study attributed the slowdown mainly to a decrease in Chinese coal consumption since 2012. Coal is a major source of CO2 emissions.

Chinese emissions were down 0.7 percent in 2015 and are projected to fall 0.5 percent in 2016, the researchers said, though noting that Chinese energy statistics have been plagued by inconsistencies.

Peters said it remains unclear whether the Chinese slowdown was due to a restructuring of the Chinese economy or a sign of economic instability.

"Nevertheless, the unexpected reductions in Chinese emissions give hope that the world's biggest emitter can deliver much more ambitious emission reductions," he said.

China, which accounts for almost 30 percent of global carbon emissions, pledged to peak its emissions around 2030 as part of the global climate pact adopted in Paris last year. Many analysts say China's peak is likely to come much earlier — and may already have occurred.

"The continued decline of China's CO2 emissions, combined with knowledge of structural change in the energy system, does indicate that CO2 emissions from China may have peaked, however a few more years of data is needed to confirm this," said Bill Hare, of Climate Analytics, a separate group that monitors global emissions.

However, even if Chinese emissions have stabilized, emissions in India and other developing countries could push global emissions higher again. India's emissions rose 5 percent in 2015, the study said.

The election of Donald Trump as president of the United States — the world's No. 2 carbon polluter — could also have an impact.

U.S. emissions fell 2.6 percent last year and are projected to drop 1.7 percent this year, as natural gas and renewables displace coal in power generation, the study showed. But it's unclear whether those reductions will continue under Trump, who has pledged to roll back the Obama administration's environmental policies, including the Clean Power Plan, which was meant to reduce carbon pollution from U.S. power plants.

Other researchers not affiliated with the study stressed that it's not enough for global emissions to stabilize; they need to drop toward zero for the world to meet the goals of the Paris deal.

"Worryingly, the reductions pledged by the nations under the Paris Agreement are not sufficient to achieve this," said climate scientist Chris Rapley of University College London.

The agreement calls for limiting warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) or even 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F) compared with pre-industrial times.

SOURCE





Global warming is already changing genes

This is utter rot.  They cannot know just which influences are behind any selective pressure.  It could be fishing, mining, tourism or whatever.  The article is just an exercise in speculation

Global climate change has already impacted every aspect of life on Earth, from genes to entire ecosystems, according to a new study in Science.

“We now have evidence that, with only a ~1 degree Celsius of warming globally, major impacts are already being felt in natural systems,” says study lead author Brett Scheffers, an assistant professor in the department of wildlife, ecology and conservation at the University of Florida.

“Some people didn’t expect this level of change for decades.”
“Genes are changing, species’ physiology and physical features such as body size are changing, species are shifting their ranges, and we see clear signs of entire ecosystems under stress, all in response to changes in climate on land and in the ocean.”

Scheffers and researchers from 10 countries found that more than 80 percent of ecological processes that form the foundation for healthy marine, freshwater, and terrestrial ecosystems already show signs of responses to climate change.

“Some people didn’t expect this level of change for decades,” says coauthor James Watson of the University of Queensland. “The impacts of climate change are being felt with no ecosystem on Earth being spared.”

Many of the impacts on species and ecosystems affect people, according to the authors, with consequences ranging from increased pests and disease outbreaks, unpredictable changes in fisheries, and decreasing agriculture yields.

Why our grandkids will encounter different plants

“Many of the responses we are observing today in nature can help us determine how to fix the mounting issues that people face under changing climate conditions,” Scheffers says. “For example, by understanding the adaptive capacity in nature, we can apply these same principles to our crops, livestock, and aquacultural species.”

“Current global climate change agreements aim to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius,” says Wendy Foden, coauthor and chair of the IUCN Species Survival Commission’s Climate Change Specialist Group. “We’re showing that there are already broad and serious impacts from climate change right across biological systems.”

SOURCE






Republicans plan multi-billion dollar climate budget raid

The winds of change following the US election are about to blow through the well-funded – up to now at least – world of climate-related bureaucracy, as CCN mournfully reports.
US Republicans are expected to axe billions of dollars in climate finance when they take the White House and Congress in January.

Funds to help poor countries adapt to the impacts of global warming and develop sustainably will be redirected to domestic priorities.

“We are going to cancel billions in payments to the UN climate change programmes and use the money to fix America’s water and environmental infrastructure,” said President-elect Donald Trump in his 22 October Gettysburg address. With a Republican majority in the Senate and House of Representatives, there appears to be little standing in his way.

Rachel Kyte, head of the UN’s Sustainable Energy for All programme, said Trump did not have a mandate to reverse US climate finance commitments. “All developed countries made promises,” she said. “A promise made has to be a promise kept.”

Notably, the US promised $3 billion towards the UN-backed Green Climate Fund, of which just $500m has been delivered. The outstanding sum is a major chunk of the $10bn seed money donated to the flagship scheme.

UN institutions are also vulnerable. The Republicans have been gunning for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) since it accepted Palestine as a full party earlier this year.

They say continuing to fund it clashes with domestic law supportive to Israel – an argument Barack Obama rejected.

“It would be illegal for the President to follow through on his intention to provide millions in funding for the UNFCCC and hundreds of millions for its Green Climate Fund,” says the Republican platform.

A US exit would leave a $4m hole in the UNFCCC’s annual budget, more than a fifth of the total.
—
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which periodically compiles a mass of scientific evidence on the dangerous impacts of global warming and its human causes, also comes under attack.

It is “a political mechanism, not an unbiased scientific institution”, says the Republican manifesto. “Its unreliability is reflected in its intolerance toward scientists and others who dissent from its orthodoxy. We will evaluate its recommendations accordingly.”

Contributing $5m over the past five years, the US is the biggest backer of the IPCC. While the Republicans don’t explicitly threaten to end that, their hostility does not bode well.

SOURCE





Record Global Cooling Over The Last Eight Months

Over the last eight months, global temperatures over land have cooled a record 1.2 C. November is seeing record cold in Russia and South Australia, so we should see the record cooling trend continue.



As temperatures cool at a record pace, experts say global warming is now unstoppable.

People in Russia might tend to disagree with this assessment.



SOURCE




New Regs Ignore Fact Fracking Doesn't Taint Well Water

Energy: New federal regulations on fracking on public land ignore a study documenting that methane found in well water is unrelated to the location of hydraulically fractured oil and gas wells.

When the Obama administration recently released its new regulations on fracking — regulations that it said were needed to keep up with the advance and success of the decades-old technology to meet public safety needs — the Independent Petroleum Association of America and Western Energy Alliance immediately filed suit, saying that the new regs were based on "unsubstantiated concerns" that lacked any scientific basis.

"Hydraulic fracturing has been conducted safely and responsibly in the United States for over 60 years," noted IPAA president Barry Russell, who also pointed out the impact of the new regulations on job and economic growth. Fracking has produced an oil and natural gas boom, making them energy sources of the future, not the past.

The Obama administration doesn't like fracking and wishes that fracking would just go away so it can go on subsidizing the Solyndras of the world. But Russell is right: Fracking is safe, and the new study proves that any concerns are politically motivated fear-mongering.

Published online in late March in Environmental Science and Technology, the study focused on 11,309 drinking wells in northeastern Pennsylvania. It found that background levels of methane in well water are unrelated to the location of oil and gas wells drilled using fracking technology.

The study calls into question the validity of studies released in 2011 and 2013, touted by the White House and its environmentalist base as proving the dangers of fracking. But these studies involved selected groups of only 60 and 141 domestic well samples from wells near Dimock, Pa.

As we noted in June of 2013 ("EPA Covers Up The Safety Of Fracking"), Dimock was the centerpiece of "Promised Land," a film financed by a company owned by the United Arab Emirates that did nothing to alter Hollywood's stereotype of businessmen — particularly energy-industry executives — as greedy plunderers of the planet.

The oil and natural gas boom from the shale of the Bakken Formation in North Dakota and the Marcellus in, yes, Pennsylvania, threatens the Emirates and other OPEC members.

Critics of the new study will point out that Chesapeake Energy, which has large oil and gas interests in Pennsylvania, provided the database for the researchers. But they did not provide the conclusions, and we think a study from a team led by hydrologist Donald Siegel of Syracuse University has more credibility than a film starring Matt Damon and financed by OPEC.

Siegel does not dispute that there may be occasional individual instances of well contamination due to poor construction and faulty casings. But he points to a 2014 study that found that just 0.24% of the thousands of wells in northeast Pennsylvania were ever given citations for well water contaminated with methane.

Speaking of his mega-study vs. the 2011 and 2013 selected samplings, Siegel says: "I would argue that (more than) 10,000 data points really tell a better story."

Shale formations in which fracking is used are thousands of feet deep. Drinking-water aquifers are generally only a hundred feet deep. There's a lot of solid rock in between. And as we've said, the technology is not new, with the first well employing fracking being drilled in Oklahoma in 1947.

As noted by Energy in Depth, a petroleum-industry research, education and outreach campaign, CO2 emissions are at their lowest in 20 years due to greater use of natural gas from fracking — part of an energy boom creating thousands of jobs and enhancing energy security.

SOURCE

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