Board meeting turns ‘toxic’ as UN climate fund runs low

Ructions as poor financial management and zero dollars from the US drain the UN’s so-called ‘green climate fund’. Even agreeing an agenda was a major struggle.
H/T Steve Milloy

Rich and poor country representatives clash over policy priorities and replenishment at Green Climate Fund board meeting, reports Climate Change News.

Update on Wednesday 4 July: UN climate fund chief resigns for personal reasons while board meeting collapses

Disputes between rich and poor nations at the UN’s flagship climate fund are intensifying as the money runs low.

A meeting of the Green Climate Fund (GCF) board in Songdo started unevenly on Sunday, as co-chair Paul Oquist was detained by political turmoil in Nicaragua, leaving Sweden’s Lennart Båge to run the session single-handed.

With developing countries complaining their priorities were not properly represented, it took nearly two days to agree on the agenda for the meeting.

Nature Unbound IX – 21st Century Climate Change

.
.
A wide-ranging discussion of climate scenarios here, including the likely efficiency of global carbon sinks and the pros and cons of a forthcoming solar grand minimum.

Climate Etc.

by Javier

A conservative outlook on 21st century climate change

View original post 8,424 more words

Australian cold snap produces heavy snow, challenges some records

.
Weather report speaks of ‘remarkably heavy early-season snow’ in parts of the Australian alps. Makes a change from tedious climate alarmist whingeing about bits of Western Antarctica ‘melting’.

NZRT NETWORK

A pulse of wintry weather has sent shivers across southeastern Australia during the last few days. So, just how cold did it get and how does this event… #weather

https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=http://www.weatherwatch.co.nz/content/australian-cold-snap-produces-heavy-snow-challenges-some-records&ct=ga&cd=CAIyHjk5NzhlM2U2MGUxZmEwNzg6Y28ubno6ZW46Tlo6Ug&usg=AFQjCNFE2Dd1OQ7S9da-heBBqKT46l7Ncg
via NZRT

View original post

Cheers! Trump to skip climate portion of G7 meeting

Some of the arm-wrestling will be left to the President’s aides, as he may feel he has better things to do than engage in fruitless arguments about what the weather might be like in several decades’ time.

H/T Climate Depot

(CNN) President Donald Trump plans to depart from this weekend’s Group of 7 summit in Canada several hours early, the White House announced Thursday, punctuating an explosion of acrimony between Trump and his foreign counterparts on the eve of the talks.

The White House said Trump would depart mid-morning on Saturday, skipping sessions on climate change and the environment.

An aide will take his place, the White House said.

‘Mission impossible’ for US cities that want to respect Paris climate deal

Crazy world of climate finance [image credit: renewableenergyfocus.com]

They can tinker at the margins with energy policy, but giving up fuel burning altogether is not a serious option given current dependency on it as a power source. The obvious problem being that the preferred ‘renewable’ replacements are too ineffective and unreliable to deliver power on the scale needed. Wasting money on such futile policies must detract from other projects too.

When President Donald Trump announced the US exit from the Paris climate deal one year ago, the mayor of Philadelphia was among those who vowed to keep carrying the torch, says Phys.org.

“Philly is committed to upholding at (the) local level the same commitment made by the US in the Paris climate agreement,” tweeted the sixth largest US city’s mayor, Jim Kenney, a Democrat.

Dutch govt appeals landmark greenhouse gases ruling

Dutch Parliament buildings [credit: Wikipedia]

To what extent can courts tell governments what so-called ‘climate policies’ they should be adopting? Isn’t there a burden of proof in such cases? Appeal verdict awaited – eventually.

The Dutch government on Monday appealed against a landmark 2015 court ruling which ordered it to slash greenhouse gases by a quarter by 2020, reports Phys.org.

“The current government is already extraordinarily active in terms of climate,” lawyer Bert-Jan Houtzagers told the Hague Appeals Court.

New theory finds ‘traffic jams’ in jet stream cause abnormal weather patterns

Wavy jet stream
[image credit: BBC]

This could be a step forward in unravelling the whys and wherefores of the phenomenon of jet stream blocking.

The sky sometimes has its limits, according to new research from two University of Chicago atmospheric scientists.

A study published May 24 in Science offers an explanation for a mysterious and sometimes deadly weather pattern in which the jet stream, the global air currents that circle the Earth, stalls out over a region, reports Phys.org.

Much like highways, the jet stream has a capacity, researchers said, and when it’s exceeded, blockages form that are remarkably similar to traffic jams—and climate forecasters can use the same math to model them both.

Alan Carlin: Press Release on new research report showing CO2 has no significant effect on temperatures

In their latest report the authors point out: ‘it is never mathematically proper to attempt to validate any theory embedded in a model using the model itself.’

As discussed last week, several reports have shown in the last year or two that carbon dioxide (CO2) does not significantly affect global temperatures, contrary to endless repetitions to the contrary by climate alarmists and the mainstream press.

Today some of the same authors of the reports discussed last week have released a new report that among other things makes a similar point using a different data set, making a total of 15 such data sets between the earlier reports and this new report.

Alan Carlin: Both sides ignore the major finding of recent climate research

Image credit: livescience.com

The author poses what he calls the ‘major question’: why does CO2 have no significant effect on temperatures in the real world?
(See also this Press Release).

The major development in climate science in the last year or two is something almost no one talks about, says Alan Carlin – strong evidence that changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have no significant effect on global temperatures in the real world over recent decades.

The studies involved conclude that the minor increases in global temperatures during this period can be entirely explained using natural factors.

To accelerate climate action, citizens are suing governments

Case dismissed?

All this rests on the notion that humans can somehow tune the climate to their liking – whatever that may be – which of course has never been shown to be true. Are court cases and ‘rule books’ just the latest attempts to impose the will of one group in society, over everyone else? As this report says: ‘But such court battles are long, and often fail’. And ‘long’ often means expensive.

After climate talks in Bonn, many criticize outcomes as weak. Increasingly, concerned citizens see legal action as a path for climate action — a thousand climate lawsuits are currently active around the world, reports DW.com.

As climate negotiators return home after a two-week “intersessional” climate change conference in Bonn, Germany, their homework is only half finished. The COP24 annual climate conference, scheduled for December in Katowice, Poland, is supposed to decide a “rule book” for implementing the Paris Agreement.

But with so much at stake, there’s not nearly enough action, environmental activists say.

UN climate talks end in stalemate

Yet another climate conference?

So the climate talkshop moves on to Bangkok, by which time it will be nearly three years since the Paris ‘agreement’. But if they still can’t agree on anything after nine days, is waiting another few months going to make much difference? Without the USA the whole process is starting to look a bit forlorn.

H/T The GWPF

UN climate officials add a week-long session in Bangkok in September to the diary, as Bonn talks make insufficient progress on the Paris Agreement rulebook.

Gravity of Jupiter and Venus elongates Earth’s orbit every 405,000 years – study

Arizona, USA

Amazing what can be gleaned from a 1,700 feet long rock core.
H/T Ian Wilson

Every 405,000 years, gravitational tugs from Jupiter and Venus slightly elongate Earth’s orbit, an amazingly consistent pattern that has influenced our planet’s climate for at least 215 million years and allows scientists to more precisely date geological events like the spread of dinosaurs, according to a Rutgers-led study.

The findings are published online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reports ScienceDaily.

Scientists reveal drivers of prolonged spring-summer drought over North China

Drought conditions in Northern China

But what is driving the drivers – that bright thing in the sky perhaps?

A recent study reveals the large-scale dynamic drivers of the prolonged spring-summer drought over North China, where prolonged drought tends to begin in spring and persists to summer with severe societal impacts, says EurekAlert!.

North China, where almost half China’s population lives and most wheat and corn are grown, is facing serious water crisis. Since the late 1990s severe and extreme droughts have frequently dropped by and drought affected area has been increasing by 3.72% decade-1 in the past five decades, posing great challenges for regional sustainable development.

Scientists have been concerned that if climate continues to warm in the future, there is a high confidence level that drought over North China will continue to increase. Thus, it is of great importance to identify the drivers and dynamic mechanisms of North China drought in order to improve drought prediction and better water management.

Rising levels of ‘frustration’ at UN climate stalemate

Warming up for climate negotiations ?
[image credit: businessnewsdaily.com]

Where have we heard this before? Obviously at every other UN climate meeting that tried to extort vast sums of money from unwilling donor countries, to pay for supposedly climate-related schemes. No wonder the USA walked away from the endless wrangling over a trace gas in the atmosphere.

Old divisions between rich and poor over money and ambition are again threatening to limit progress in UN climate negotiations, says BBC News.

Discussions between negotiators from nearly 200 countries have resumed in Germany, aiming to flesh out the rules on the Paris climate pact.

But developing countries say they are “frustrated” with the lack of leadership from the developed world. Commitments to cut carbon are still “woefully inadequate” they said.

New data imply slower global warming

Leaving aside whether ‘climate sensitivity’ (to carbon dioxide) is a valid concept in the first place, it’s been obvious for a while that climate modellers have seriously overestimated the actual level of any warming that has occurred in recent years. If that doesn’t suggest to them that something is wrong, what would?
H/T The GWPF

London, 24 April — A paper just published by the Journal of Climate concludes that high estimates of future global warming from most computer climate simulations are inconsistent with observed warming since 1850. The implication is that future warming will be 30 to 45% lower than suggested by the simulations.

The study estimates climate sensitivity — how much the world will warm when carbon dioxide levels increase* — from changes in observed temperatures and estimates of the warming effect of greenhouse gases and other drivers of climate change, from the mid/late 19th century until 2016.

The paper also addresses previous criticisms of the methodology used, finding that these are unfounded.

Nitrogen discovery ‘could greatly improve climate change projections’

Earth’s atmosphere [image credit: BBC]

“These results are going to require rewriting the textbooks,” according to the research program director.

Not all of the nitrogen on the planet comes from the atmosphere, according to a UC Davis study in the journal Science. Up to a quarter comes from Earth’s bedrock. 

The discovery could greatly improve climate change projections, says Eurekalert. 

New paper: Model falsifiability and climate slow modes

Image credit: NOAA @ Wikipedia]

Two professors question the validity of current climate modelling, pointing to a number of apparent difficulties.

New understanding of ultra-long timescales provides a new take on climate, says The GWPF.
– – –
A newly published paper in the journal Physica A suggests that there is an undiscovered universe all around us that we are too short-lived to perceive.

Authors Prof. Christopher Essex (Applied Mathematics, University of Western Ontario) and Prof. Anastasios Tsonis (Mathematical Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) explain that even without external influences (e.g. man-made carbon dioxide) the weather patterns change over very long timescales, locally and globally.

If some elderly person claims to recall summers, say, that were different when that person was a child, that may not be faulty memory. Just because summers seemed warmer or colder; spring or winter seemed sooner; more or less snow was recalled, it doesn’t follow that the climate system has changed in any meaningful way.

Prof. Essex explains, “Unlike the stable virtual ‘climates’ seen in computer simulations, corresponding real-world conditions aren’t stable at all. There are perpetual, natural, internal changes in play that take longer than human lifetimes to play out.”

Human-engineered changes on Mississippi River increased extreme floods

Levee breach on the Mississippi river [image credit: Wikipedia]

This shows once again that glib claims about climate-related flooding due to ‘extreme weather’ should be treated with great caution, or even suspicion. The reality is that other factors are at work.

A new study has revealed for the first time the last 500-year flood history of the Mississippi River, as Eurakalert reports.

It shows a dramatic rise in the size and frequency of extreme floods in the past century — mostly due to projects to straighten, channelize, and bound the river with artificial levees.

The new research, led by scientists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), also uncovered a clear pattern over the centuries linking flooding on the Mississippi with natural fluctuations of Pacific and Atlantic Ocean water temperatures.

Climate policies blamed for rising UK electricity prices

Nothing new there perhaps but, like the boiling frog, the reality of an endless upward ratchet of climate charges on bills may still not have fully sunk in with some of the public yet.
H/T The GWPF

Any doubt that increases in UK electricity prices are the result of energy and climate policies, rather than underlying wholesale energy costs, is firmly set aside by the recent announcement from Opus Energy that it must increase its prices to consumers by 7.5% even to those on Fixed Term contracts because of sharply rising “pass through” costs, namely subsidies to renewables, grid management, and the Capacity Market.

Opus Energy, part of the Drax Group and winner of the British Small Business award for Energy Provider of the Year (2017), has written to customers in the last week announcing a 7.5% increase in electricity supply charges.

New greener police cars to run on hydrogen – UK Transport Dept.

Hydrogen-powered Toyota Mirai [image credit: Nikkei Asian Review]

Climate targets are invoked to justify the cost and effort. Hydrogen cars are far more expensive than fuel-burners.

Zero emission vehicles to be used by taxi firms and police, says the DoT announcement.

Police cars and taxis will be among nearly 200 new hydrogen powered vehicles switching to zero emission miles, thanks to a multi-million pound government boost.

The zero emission vehicles are part of a project that has won £8.8 million in funding from the Department for Transport to improve access to hydrogen refuelling stations up and down the country and increase the number of hydrogen cars on our roads from this summer.