Crazy world of climate finance [image credit: renewableenergyfocus.com]
A UN official claims there’s a ‘need to collectively raise and direct $2.4 trillion annually for climate mitigation’. Billions are too small to mention any more, when trying to ‘avoid devastating impacts of climate change’ (says this article). Since climate models aren’t even much good at replicating reality, and various dire predictions to date have failed, what basis is there for this proposed level of spending?
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The UN’s next climate summit will be an “enabling COP,” focused on drastically scaling up climate finance and making bold emissions reduction commitments, says Axios.
Why it matters: Top UN climate official Simon Stiell delivered a speech this morning in Baku, Azerbaijan, envisioning what will happen if the world meets the climate challenge and avoids devastating impacts of climate change.
Zoom in: The speech, delivered at ADA University, counters perceptions in some parts of the climate community that Baku will involve lower stakes and more technical work than COP28 did in Dubai.
Stiell instead makes clear how much work needs to be done to finance the transition away from fossil fuels to reliable forms of renewables [Talkshop comment – which forms are those?] in both industrialized and developing nations.
“Without far more finance, 2023’s climate wins will quickly fizzle away into more empty promises,” Stiell said. “We need torrents, not trickles, of climate finance.”
The money message was delivered loudly in Dubai, but countries like the U.S. committed little in the way of public financing, given the political realities in Congress.
John Podesta, set to take over from John Kerry as top U.S. climate diplomat, will face similar limitations in Baku.
By the numbers: Stiell said multilateral development banks and the private sector need to collectively raise and direct $2.4 trillion annually for climate mitigation, adaptation and loss and damage funding.
The official outlined what the world would look like in 2030 and 2050 should everything go right: emissions reduced to meet the Paris Agreement targets, a massive financial boost, and a completely transformed energy system.
Reality check: In so doing, he demonstrates what an Olympian task lies ahead, given the current pace of energy transition by companies and governments.
Full article here.
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
Here’s the World Bank estimates:
Yes, those numbers are Trillions of US$.
For perspective:
Neuroscience tells us the human brain is very bad at interpreting large numbers. Most people know that million, billion and trillion are all big numbers but can’t really understand what the difference between them is. Answer: it’s big. A million seconds is 12 days. A billion seconds is 31 years. A trillion seconds is 31,688 years, which is a lot more than 12 days.
Roy Spencer writes:
As seen with the surface air temperature data in Chart 1, the climate models on average produced too much warming in the lower atmosphere since 1979: by 43 percent compared to weather balloons, by 55 percent compared to reanalysis datasets, and by 75 percent compared to satellite datasets.
So, it is clear that the latest state-of-the-art climate models produce too much warming compared to the observations. Yet, those models are used to guide policy in the U.S. and in other countries. This discrepancy is not widely appreciated by the public because seldom (if ever) do news media outlets publish stories that do not fit the narrative that humans are destroying the climate system.
https://www.heritage.org/environment/report/global-warming-observations-vs-climate-models
Chart 1 here — https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/inline-images/BG-observed-warning-vs-climate-models-charts-page1.gif
Heh, $2.4 trillion here, $2.4 trillion there…
Pretty soon adds up to real money…
These people need locking up!
However many zeroes they put on the end of the number they first thought of, the climate effects they claim to want wouldn’t happen. Unless they were going to happen naturally anyway with no money spent, that is.