Paris will host the UN conference on climate beginning Nov. 30. (theenviornment.co.in)
As the Nov. 30, convening of the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris draws near we are already beginning to see an uptick in communications on climate change.
In the past week, the news seems to favor those of us who don’t buy the scare tactics of those who predict doom and gloom. Today’s USA Today seems to poke fun at President Lyndon Johnson’s 1965 science advisory committee report that carbon dioxide levels would increase enough to almost certainly cause significant changes in the temperature and other properties of the stratosphere by the year 2000.
The upshot?,” writes Seth Borenstein, “Not much. The world warmed about 1.4 degrees in the next 50 years, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Yet, as you might imagine, UN climate chief Christiana Figueres says “the urgency is truly on our doorstep.”
Under the headline, “The Next Climate Scandal?,” Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. wrote of the jiggering of warming statistics to hide the pause in global warming temperatures over the past 15 years, and states that, “It doesn’t help that NOAA’s sleight of hand here seems designed precisely to conceal the alleged ‘pause’.”
Reporting how poorer nations are demanding wealthier countries to bankroll their transition to cleaner energy, William Mauldin’s piece in The Wall Street Journal reports the stated goal is for richer countries to kick in $100 billion (with a “b”) for developing nations by 2020.
In view of the Obama administration’s refusal to allow the Keystone pipeline to proceed, his recent moves on automobile cafe standards and the EPA’s Clean Air assault on coal, I expect President Obama to throw open the bank of Uncle Sam when he travels to Paris.
Finally, there’s the charge by New York’s Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, an obvious supporter of global warming, that Exxon-Mobil lied to investors and the public about the risks and financial impact of climate change.
One would expect Exxon-Mobil to report to shareholders on the business risk of countries considering regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions due to the concern over the risk to climate change, and they did. “These requirements could make our products more expensive, lengthen project implementation times and reduce demand for hydrocarbons, as well as shift hydrocarbon demand toward relatively lower-carbon sources such as natural gas,” it warned and added that the new rules “may also increase our compliance costs.”
This charge by the NY attorney general seems to follow my Oct. 8,post, “Climate change profiteers want deniers punished.” You may recall my reference to Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse’s (D-RI) call for the criminal investigation of people and organizations as global warming deniers.
Not to be overlooked. Scientific American reports that the recent Journal of Glaciology study stating that the Antarctic ice sheet is expanding because accumulated snowfall is outpacing melting glaciers “has pried open a long standing debate how warming is effecting the largest ice mass on the planet.” As expected, scientists are calling for more scrutiny into the findings. More statistic “jiggering?”
