1.5 Degree Temperature Rise Poses No 'Existential Threat to Humanity,' Says New UN Climate Change Chief
Climate change activists consistently warning of a doomsday in the near future are harming efforts to tackle the current situation, warned Prof. Jim Skea, the newly elected head of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Mr. Skea made the comments during interviews with major German news outlets over the weekend, just days after he was elected to the new role at the international panel, which monitors and assesses the science related to climate change.
"If you constantly communicate the message that we are all doomed to extinction, then that paralyzes people and prevents them from taking the necessary steps to get a grip on climate change," he told German news agency DPA on July 29.
Elsewhere, Mr. Skea, who has more than 40 years of experience in climate science, stressed that global temperatures increasing by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius compared with the pre-industrial era doesn't pose an "existential threat to humanity."
Under the Paris Climate Agreement—adopted in 2015 and formally ratified in 2016—hundreds of nations agreed to pursue efforts to limit the increase in global average temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius in an effort to "significantly reduce risks and the impacts of climate change."
However, estimates suggest that global emissions mean we are currently tracking above that goal.
'We Will Not Die Out'
Mr. Skea also told Der Spiegel magazine that "we should not despair and fall into a state of shock" if global temperatures increase by this amount and that "the world won't end if it warms by more than 1.5 degrees."
"It will, however, be a more dangerous world," Mr. Skea said, noting that social tensions may rise but "we will not die out."
He did say that "man-made" climate change exists and that we can no longer deny it.
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Greenie versus Greenie in New Zealand
A power company with mana whenua backing is hoping to revive a West Coast hydro scheme already turned down by the Government
It’s clean and blue-green and it could power half the homes on the West Coast.
But a revamped proposal for a modest hydro scheme on the Waitaha River is still in limbo 14 months after it was filed – possibly blown there by the draught from a revolving door of successive conservation ministers.
Greymouth-based electricity company Westpower and local iwi asked then-minister Kiri Allan in May last year to reconsider the Waitaha project three years after it was controversially declined by Environment Minister David Parker.
The consumer-owned company says it’s made significant changes to the design in consultation with the Department of Conservation but has had no luck persuading Allan or her two successors to take another look at it.
Chief executive Peter Armstrong says his efforts to follow up on the application with the minister’s office have been rebuffed.
“We’ve had letters from them acknowledging receipt of it and when I’ve contacted them with updates and offering to re-engage we just get politely declined.”
The turnover in conservation ministers would not have helped, Armstrong says, but there are strong and urgent reasons the project should be reconsidered.
One is the growing effect of climate change.
“In the four years since this project was declined, the Government’s declared a climate emergency and the goal of 100 percent renewable energy by 2030.”
Armstrong says when the country is going to need all the hydroelectricity it can get, such a well designed project should be a priority.
The Waitaha hydro scheme could power 12,000 homes on the Coast, reduce demand on the national grid and make the region more resilient to storms and earthquakes, Westpower says.
The run-of-the-river project would divert some of the Waitaha above the Morgan Gorge and channel it through a 1.5m tunnel to a powerhouse, returning the water to the river downstream.
By 2019, DoC had granted approval in principle for the lease and concessions the company needed to build the $100 million scheme on conservation land.
But the proposal attracted 3000 submissions, many from Green Party and Forest and Bird supporters and kayakers who said the hydro scheme would spoil one of the few wild, scenic and pristine rivers left on the planet.
The job of making the final decision on Waitaha was delegated to Parker. The conservation minister at the time, Eugenie Sage, was seen as conflicted as a Green Party MP and veteran Forest and Bird campaigner.
In rejecting the hydro scheme, Parker said it would have “significant impacts” on the natural character of the area and undermined the “intrinsic values” that trampers and kayakers experience there.
The reaction on the coast was bitter disappointment.
And the decision raised the ire of mana whenua, Poutini Ngāi Tahu, who backed the scheme and had hoped to invest in it.
It triggered the implosion of the region’s conservation board: members with strong conservation credentials appointed by Sage resigned in the face of a boycott by iwi members of the board.
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters takes a similar view.
The Waitaha is the sort of energy project the Government should be backing, not blocking, he says.
“People go on about wind power but the costs are rocketing compared to hydro schemes like this – it’s a sensible use of a natural resource and one we’d support.”
The Greens remain implacably opposed, saying the wild Waitaha is too precious to be altered.
There are 10 existing hydro schemes in the Westpower region, three of which can continue to supply power during outages.
The company’s Amethyst Hydro – also on conservation land – can power the South Westland area on its own and the privately owned Fox Hydro Scheme can power the Fox Glacier area.
If the Waitaha hydro scheme goes ahead, locally generated power together with the Amethyst would be sufficient to run all of South Westland, Hokitika and Greymouth, Westpower says.
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/sustainable-future/renewed-calls-to-undam-hydro-plan
************************************************Push for more North Sea oil and gas ‘right thing for planet’, says British minister
Jeremy Hunt has defended the Government’s push to maximise the production of oil and gas, arguing it is “the right thing to do” for UK energy security and the planet.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak this week announced plans to grant more than 100 new oil and sea gas licences in the UK - sparking backlash from environmental campaigners.
Chancellor Mr Hunt was on Thursday challenged over his support for the continued licensing of new North Sea developments, after he strongly opposed a gas drilling project in his Surrey constituency on environmental grounds.
The South West Surrey MP in 2022 blasted a Government decision to allow an exploratory gas well to be dug near the village of Dunsfold as “bitterly disappointing and wrong both economically and environmentally”.
Asked why he then backed oil and gas exploration in the North Sea, Mr Hunt told Channel 4 News on Thursday: “Because these are totally different situations.
“As a constituency MP, I do my job and stand up for constituents who are worried about environmental impact.
“But when it comes to the North Sea, something very profound and important has changed in the last 18 months, which is that we realised that what matters is not just the transition to net zero, but also energy security, and it happens to be a lot more carbon-intensive to import gas than to use our own supply.”
It was put to Mr Hunt that with the private companies that own the North Sea fields selling the oil and gas on the international market, there is no guarantee the supplies will end up in the UK.
He replied: “But we’re far more likely to get them if we’re extracting that gas than if we’re not extracting it.”
Mr Hunt also told Sky News that the UK will remain “a bigger importer of gas” and that while “we’re importing it, it uses three times less carbon to use our own gas (than) to import it from the other side of the world.
“And that’s why this is the right thing to do for the planet as well as for our energy security.”
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak this week announced plans to “max out” the UK’s oil and gas reserves by granting more than 100 new oil and sea gas licences alongside a new carbon capture scheme in north-east Scotland.
He also hinted that the UK’s largest untapped oil field, Rosebank, to the west of Shetland, could be approved despite fierce opposition from environmental campaigners.
Climate-conscious Conservatives have joined campaigners to warn against the move, amid concerns it will hinder efforts to reach net-zero by 2050.
Meanwhile, Mr Hunt echoed Mr Sunak in reaffirming the Government’s commitment to banning the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030.
“I think that deadline is important because it encourages a lot of investment,” the Chancellor told GB News.
“But what the Prime Minister has said is that as we transition to electric vehicles, we need to do so in a way that is proportionate and sensible and takes account of the people who will still be driving vehicles that aren’t electric.
“We’re sticking with 2030, but we’re going to do it in a pragmatic way.”
https://news.yahoo.com/push-more-north-sea-oil-183339286.html
******************************************LA Times sensationalizes heat to make a bogus political statement
The Los Angeles Times embarrassed itself Sunday publishing an editorial presenting unsubstantiated climate myths while trying to put a hit on a recent, factual Fox News article. The op-ed, “Dying from the heat is not a political statement” by Times columnist Robin Abcarian, is a master class on how to ignore facts while presenting propaganda.
Abcarian’s editorial begins by telling the urban myth that, “This month looks to be the hottest ever on record for the entire planet.” However, scientists have long documented, and even the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has acknowledged, that temperatures were warmer 1,000 years ago during the Medieval Warm Period, 2,000 years ago during the Roman Warm Period, 6,000 years ago during the Holocene Climate Optimum, and indeed during most of the time period for which human civilization has existed. Moreover, scientists know temperatures were warmer than today during the vast majority of the planet’s existence.
Abcarian then singles out my colleague, The Heartland Institute’s Socialism Research Center Director Justin Haskins, as being “anti-science” for writing in a Fox News column that wildfires are not getting worse due to climate change. “Who you gonna believe? The guy who wrote a book called ‘Socialism Is Evil’ or the entire climate science community?” Abcarian asks.
We’ll discuss Abcarian’s love for socialism in a moment. For now, we can look at objective scientific data and discover for ourselves whether “the entire scientific community” believes climate change is making wildfires worse.
Since 1998, NASA has been using satellite instruments to precisely measure the world’s total acreage burned by wildfires. NASA’s website reports a relatively steady and consistent decline in global wildfires since 1998. Meanwhile, since 1998, there has been a 24 percent decline in lands burned by wildfires.
The significant decline in wildfires since 1998 continues a trend that has been occurring throughout the era of modest global warming. In the peer-reviewed Journal of Geophysical Research, scientists report, “a notable declining rate of burned area globally” during the period from 1901 to 2007.
The same holds true in the United States. National Interagency Fire Center data show more than twice as much U.S. land burned on average each year prior to 1950 than in any wildfire year in recent decades.
So, who you gonna believe? The guy who makes observations based on objective scientific data or the columnist who is appalled that someone at The Heartland Institute isn’t enthralled with freedom-depriving socialism and its real-world embodiments in North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela?
https://www.thecentersquare.com/opinion/article_634267f0-3230-11ee-8ba0-0fa57aa4c1fe.html
***************************************My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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