So the Paris Climate talks were a ‘success’ were they?

By
Martyn Bradbury
-
20
0

195132_5_

Beyond all the self congratulatory bullshit spouted by National, the Greens, Greenpeace, Generation Zero etc etc that the Paris Climate talks were a success is the grim reality that the planet is now experiencing rapid climate change and that the measures agreed to will do nothing to stop us hitting tipping points.

The NGOs and environmental movements need a feel good message to keep their followers believing – the truth is that the planet is super heating and the effects are here and now.

Take a look around the world right now…

Army called in as floods continue to devastate northern England

Warmest Christmas since records began in US

Fires, floods and more wild weather

Feeling the heat

TDB Recommends NewzEngine.com

Britain overwhelmed by widespread flooding

Christmas Eve tornadoes ravage South US

Death toll climbs in Dallas area after tornadoes, flooding

Mass evacuations from South American flood

Southern California wildfire burns 1200 acres, closes 101 highway

Victorian bushfires destroy more than 100 homes

So yeah, while it’s great to have all the environmental NGOs pat themselves on the back, the planet burns. The Paris Climate Talks were a gross failure, they are the equivalent 0f Neville Chamberlain proclaiming, ‘Peace in our time’ after signing a peace treaty with Adolf Hitler.

We need to be on a war footing to fight Climate Change, instead we have multiple Nero’s on the roof fiddling while Rome burns.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

20 COMMENTS

  1. ” is the grim reality that the planet is now experiencing rapid climate change and that the measures agreed to will do nothing to stop us hitting tipping points. ”

    We are experiencing rapid climate change because we’ve already hit 47 tipping points and are well past them all.

  2. We’re doomed. Greed, hubris and apathy have condemned us to a slow but assuredly violent demise. At this point, the best we can manage is damage minimisation. Don’t expect any help from the oil barons, the serial polluters or the vested interests in government however. They’re still labouring under the delusion that if they purchase an underground bunker in the South Island, they’ll be safe from the planet’s wrath. I suspect they’ll be fatally disabused of this notion in time.

    I look at my grand-daughter, and I feel nothing but an immense sadness.

    • Loved Paula Bennetts report on climate change and NZ efforts, quoting international credits the Government have traded.

  3. “Climate change: the Grinch that stole Europe’s Christmas?”, 21 dEC. 2015:
    http://phys.org/news/2015-12-climate-grinch-stole-europe-christmas.html

    “Britain’s Met Office last week said the global mean temperature for 2016 was expected to be about 0.84 C warmer than the 1961-1990 average, even higher than the 2015 prediction of 0.64 C.

    “This forecast suggests that by the end of 2016 we will have seen three record, or near-record, years in a row for global temperatures,” Adam Scaife, head of long-range prediction, said in a statement.”

    “On December 12, 195 nations signed a pact to limit average global warming to “well below 2 C” over pre-Industrial Revolution levels, and aim for 1.5 C in a bid to “significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change”.

    Some fear it could be too late for certain holiday pastimes that rely on natural snow or ice.”

    While I think the Chamberlain comparison is a bit far fetched, we are indeed already in a period, where it seems too late to avoid massive changes, much more serious than many even in Paris would have contemplated. Prepare for sea level rises above 1 m, for more droughts in Auckland (where they want to create a 2.5 million mega city), that will become more prone to drought, that will lead to water rationing with the present population size. Prepare for massive storms at various times in various regions, crop failures, economic and social damage on a large scale.

    COP21 was a bit of a “cop out 21”, I fear, and the major issue is, that there is massive capital still invested in fossil fuel energy use. Whole economies still depend on coal, petroleum and also gas, without it, they would collapse. So a transition is needed, and it will not come cheaply, despite of what the Greens may tell us. Huge investment will be needed in new technologies, in new systems, in new measures to make that switch over to more sustainable energy and resource use.

    One major challenge will be to convince the ordinary citizen to support the needed radical changes, and it will not all come for free, or be as simple as changing from using a petrol or diesel powered car to using an electric one. If all would use electric cars, we would not have enough electricity to provide for that and what other usage we have. It will be limited what can be generated in addition to what we get now, from hydro dams, geothermal, solar and wind generation.

    People will have to learn to live with less and without certain conveniences they have become accustomed to, or have grown up with. And as they say that turkeys will not vote for an early Christmas, I fear that most Kiwis and other people in developed and developing countries will drag their feet on this huge challenge ahead of us.

    As I observe tens of thousands are right now out there across the country, driving to and from beaches, to other holiday spots and events, and enjoying themselves, in their so much loved cars. There are still discussions about how much “public transport” we are supposed to get and need to invest in in the major cities, and we are very far from solutions.

    And then look at such countries like China and India, who still start new coal fired power generation plants every week, wanting to “develop” up to standards we are used to. Any major change there will also come at economic costs, at least for the medium term, and many poor will be badly affected, losing jobs they have and losing subsidies for fossil fuel they use every day.

    There is no time for cheering, which seems to be done by the Paris diplomats and negotiators, and some lobbyists, who have been indulging in “Chardonnay Green Activism”, I fear.

    • Yeah there is too much misery and sadness to add doom.

      That’s immobilising.

      Worse, that’s what the bosses want.

      They think they can pull up the drawbridge and walk over millions of expendable workers as the sea rises.

      We need to give them the shock of their lives.

      The good thing about climate change is that it pulls all the disparate issues into one big issue.

      There is only one fight and that is to survive as a species so that fight has to start now.

      Better Red than Dead.
      https://situationsvacant.wordpress.com/2015/12/18/better-red-than-dead/

  4. It’s a bit presumptious to assume there isn’t a great deal of cynicism amongst members of Greenpeace, the Green Party etc. There is going to have to be one almighty battle to save the planet. BGOs etc did the best they can and there seemed to be some general realisation that things are serious except from peopke like John Key but now everyone is going to personally participate in the battle for the rest of their lives. Don’t expect others to save the planet for you.

    • It’s not about saving the planet. The planet will do just fine long after we are gone. It’s about saving ourselves, or at least much of the civilised part of ourselves. If anything short of an unavoidable path to becoming a burning cinder in space happens, then the resulting sea level rise will result in massive re-locations that will dwarf the Syrian refugee crisis, the breakdown of order will occur in many previously stable parts of the world as the communities battle for dwindling resources. The CO2 production problem will probably self-regulate over a long period as the World population takes a dive and the demand for power follows.

      Who’ll take a bet that the 0.1% would still do okay while the rest of us struggle to survive in an increasingly hostile environment? They would have to see a clear and present danger to themselves and their own life-styles before they can be counted on to act decisively.

      Unfortunately, even now, there are many among them (and us) who believe that science is subject to political challenge.

  5. ‘the grim reality that the planet is now experiencing rapid climate change and that the measures agreed to will do nothing to stop us hitting tipping points.’

    Actually, abrupt climate change is already underway and we are witnessing the early stages of the very rapid transition to a largely uninhabitable planet, courtesy fossil fuel use, over population and overconsumption. I and others have been warning of this for over 15 years….and the warnings have fallen on deaf ears.

    No one knows how fast the transition to a largely uninhabitable planet [for humans] will take: best estimates range from 15 years to 50 years. Certainly, nothing agreed to at COP21 will make slow the rate if meltdown.

    Of particular significance is the melting of the last remnants of Arctic sea ice. Once those melt (almost certainly within the next 3 years) the rate of climate change will accelerate markedly.

    ‘What we witness here are both climates and weather features changing before our eyes in the form of what to us may seem a freak event — but what is actually part of a dangerous transition period away from the stable climates of the Holocene.’

    http://robertscribbler.com/2015/12/27/warm-arctic-storm-to-hurl-hurricane-force-winds-at-uk-and-iceland-push-temps-to-72-degrees-f-above-normal-at-north-pole/

    • Yes I read that Robert Scribbler article yesterday. And if that isn’t scary enough during this abrupt climate change trashing and thrashing the 400 and something nuclear power plants around the world will not be decommissioned in time before they melt down to ramp up this total environmental catastrophe which makes sure life on earth doesn’t survive the 6th mass extinction event.
      Now I feel like I am watching the lunitics continuing to carry on as if nothing is happening, it is the most surreal feeling I have ever felt.
      I am shocked how wilfully ignorant the human race can be. We are so fucked!

  8. In much the same way Climate Change skeptics misuse weather events like a cold spell you are conflating weather with climate.

  9. We need no further proof of the wide spread ignorance and dinosaur mentality of too many, we can see the evidence of it in the many down-votes of the comments above. Kiwiblog is a bit dull at present, there is not so much being discussed, with Farrar and his buddies also on holidays, so the “bored” climate change deniers are looking elsewhere to display their contempt for informed debate.

    Take a hike, dear climate change deniers, or has the sand turned cold at the beach, so it is not warm enough for you to stick your heads in?

  10. We have relatives who live in Baltimore USA and skyping with us over Christmas they thought it crazy that their daytime temperature there on Christmas Day was higher than ours here in Auckland. They are in mid-winter over there. Also there is no snow on the European ski fields for their Northern winter so yes, the world is turning on us. Its not the planet which is in trouble, it will sort itself out like it always has done, its the mere mortals who reside on it which will suffer. And no, bunkers and safe havens will not suffice for the wealthy – like mortal illnesses they will suffer like the rest of us. All the money in the world didn’t give Steve Jobs his life and so it will be with the world heating up, they will fry with us all. I thankfully do not have grandchildren to worry over but I feel for families with little ones who must be terribly concerned.

  11. Daily atmospheric CO2 concentrations continue to track very high compared to the 12-months-ago data, and hellishly high compared to just a decade ago. We are witnessing 3 to 3.5ppm increases per annum at the moment.

    https://www.co2.earth/daily-co2

    If present trends continue -and in fact there is no reason to believe they won’t just continue but will be made dramatically worse by the insane policies foisted on us by governments and bureaucrats around the world- we will break through 410ppm in 2017 and break through 420ppm by 2020.

    The degree of suffering to be endured as a consequence of the fossil-fuel insanity foisted on us will be approximately inversely proportional to age, i.e. the maniacs who promote continued fossil fuel dependency condemn their children to misery and their grandchildren to destitution and premature death.

  12. I find it incredible that the most important survival issue that the human race will ever face has attracted only 8 comments. It shows how we all filter reality to fit our cosy outlook and we do this for grim death! As it happens we won’t survive this as Hester says so let’s die full of our booze and pharmaceutical drugs and hopium much much preferable to nasty reality! Don’t worry I’m one of the escapists as well I fully and am sympathetic why people must at all costs ignore this reality! I do!

    • …perhaps only eight comments …but more silent readers and votes..and it is holidays…and it is a complex subject often left to the scientists

      ….speaking as someone who comes from the drought stricken East Coast…i believe climate change is happening alright ( although there always were droughts)…I will really worry when the sea turns luke- warm like in Bali

  13. Monbiot summed Paris up neatly “A triumph compared to what it could have been, a disaster compared to what it should have been “

Comments are closed.