North Atlantic Cycle Change? Northern Europe October Temperature Trends Suggest Autumn Coming Sooner

By Kirye
and Pierre Gosselin

Today we look at October mean temperatures for the emerald island country of Ireland, the Scandinavian country of Sweden and Finland.

Global warming alarmists claim that the globe is warming, which intuitively would tell us summers should be getting longer, which in turn would mean the start of fall is getting pushed back. In such a case, September and October temperatures should be warming, but they are not!

Cooling Ireland

First we plot the mean temperature for 7 stations in Ireland for the month of October, for which the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) has sufficient data going back 25 years:

Data source: JMA

Seven of 7 stations in Ireland have seen a strong cooling trend for October since 1995.

Nothing unusual happening in Greta’s Sweden

Next we look at the October trends for 6 stations in climate activist Greta Thunberg’s home country of Sweden.

Data Source: JMA

Three of 6 stations in Sweden show no warming trend for October. Greta can begin to calm down and stop worrying herself to death about climate doom. As is the case for all the charts shown here, we plot the stations for which the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) has sufficient data going back 25 years

Stable climate in Finland

Finally we look at Sweden’s Nordic neighbor of Finland. Here as well there’s little indication of a widespread warming.

Data source: JMA.

Three of 6 stations in Finland in fact showed a modest cooling trend for October over the past quarter century. There’s nothing to be alarmed about.Donate – choose an amount

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November 11, 2020 at 09:04AM

Prince Harry: Max Two Children for Climate Change

Prince Harry. By Defensie – https://ift.tt/3pgATK5, CC0, link

h/t CFACT; That special royal moment when you accidentally describe your brother, the future King of England as a planet wrecker; British Royal Prince Harry thinks families should limit themselves to two children for the sake of the planet, but his brother and fellow climate warrior Prince William has Three Children, with rumours of a fourth on the way.

Prince Harry reveals he and Meghan Markle will only have TWO children to help save the planet (unlike William and Kate with three) – and says how ‘unconscious bias’ is causing racism in Britain in wife’s Vogue

  • Duke of Sussex said racism is often the result of unconscious bias passed down from one generation to next
  • He told environmentalist Dr Jane Goodall, 85, we have to understand how bias works to overcome prejudice
  • Harry, 34, also revealed he only wants ‘max two children’ with wife Meghan, 37, in face of climate change 
  • He was interviewed by Dr Goodall for the September edition of British Vogue, which Duchess guest edited 

By LARA KEAY FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 22:43 AEDT, 30 July 2019 | UPDATED: 05:58 AEDT, 31 July 2019

Prince Harry has revealed he and Meghan Markle only want two children in a bid to help save the planet.

The Duke of Sussex, 34, made the extraordinary revelation in a candid interview with conservationist Dr Jane Goodall as part of his wife’s edition of British Vogue. 

Discussing the ‘terrifying’ effects of climate change, he assured her he and the Duchess, 37, are only planning on having one more child after the birth of their son Archie. 

He said becoming a father has made him see the world differently and the couple only want ‘two maximum’ to help protect the environment.   

However, Prince Harry’s stance is in stark contrast to his brother William and wife Kate, who already have three children, with speculation mounting a fourth could be announced soon.

The Queen meanwhile has four children, although Prince Charles, Prince Andrew, Prince Edward and Princess Anne all have just two.

Read more: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7301321/Prince-Harry-interviewed-Dr-Jane-Goodall-Meghans-edition-British-Vogue.html

Perhaps Prince Harry thinks its OK to have more than two children if you really want, so this latest pearl of wisdom from a British royal is perhaps more of a guideline than a rule. Even climate hero Al Gore has four children.

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November 11, 2020 at 08:33AM

China’s Coal Power Rising Again

By Paul Homewood

h/t Robin Guenier

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/nov/09/world-is-running-out-of-time-on-climate-experts-warn

While Ban Ki-moon has fallen hook, line and sinker for China’s “promise” to be carbon neutral by 2060, others might prefer to wait until they actually see emissions falling.

There is little sign of that happening anytime soon, if the latest electricity stats from China are anything to go by.

Until the summer, COVID had led to a cut in demand for power, which inevitably impacted solely on thermal generation. Power from wind, solar, nuclear and hydro cannot easily be switched on and off, and as their costs are mainly fixed it is logical to maximise their output while cutting back on coal and gas generation, where marginal costs are much higher.

However, in Q3 demand returned to pre-pandemic levels. Indeed, generation is actually up 8% from the same quarter last year.

And as a result we find that about half of this increase has been supplied by thermal generation, which has increased by 3% year on year. Hydro is also up, but this appears mainly to be weather related.

In stark contrast, wind power has actually fallen, while solar is effectively unchanged.

The contribution of wind and solar is still tiny, at less than 5% of total generation.

https://chinaenergyportal.org/en/2020-q3-electricity-and-other-energy-statistics

If that was not bad enough, so far this year, new thermal capacity added has nearly tripled that of wind power.

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November 11, 2020 at 08:27AM

Ocean Chill Increases Oct. 2020

The best context for understanding decadal temperature changes comes from the world’s sea surface temperatures (SST), for several reasons:

  • The ocean covers 71% of the globe and drives average temperatures;
  • SSTs have a constant water content, (unlike air temperatures), so give a better reading of heat content variations;
  • A major El Nino was the dominant climate feature in recent years.

HadSST is generally regarded as the best of the global SST data sets, and so the temperature story here comes from that source, the latest version being HadSST3.  More on what distinguishes HadSST3 from other SST products at the end.

The Current Context

The chart below shows SST monthly anomalies as reported in HadSST3 starting in 2015 through October 2020. After three straight Spring months of cooling led by the tropics and SH, NH spiked in the summer.  Now temps everywhere are dropping the last two months, with SH the lowest in this period, and Global anomalies below average since 2015.

A global cooling pattern is seen clearly in the Tropics since its peak in 2016, joined by NH and SH cycling downward since 2016.  In 2019 all regions had been converging to reach nearly the same value in April.

Then  NH rose exceptionally by almost 0.5C over the four summer months, in August exceeding previous summer peaks in NH since 2015.  In the 4 succeeding months, that warm NH pulse reversed sharply.  Now again NH temps warmed to a 2020 summer peak, matching 2019.  This has now been reversed with SH and Tropics pulling the Global anomaly downward sharply.

Note that higher temps in 2015 and 2016 were first of all due to a sharp rise in Tropical SST, beginning in March 2015, peaking in January 2016, and steadily declining back below its beginning level. Secondly, the Northern Hemisphere added three bumps on the shoulders of Tropical warming, with peaks in August of each year.  A fourth NH bump was lower and peaked in September 2018.  As noted above, a fifth peak in August 2019 and a sixth August 2020 exceeded the four previous upward bumps in NH.

And as before, note that the global release of heat was not dramatic, due to the Southern Hemisphere offsetting the Northern one.  The major difference between now and 2015-2016 is the absence of Tropical warming driving the SSTs, along with SH anomalies reaching nearly the lowest in this period. Presently both SH and the Tropics are quite cool, with NH coming off its summer peak.

A longer view of SSTs

The graph below  is noisy, but the density is needed to see the seasonal patterns in the oceanic fluctuations.  Previous posts focused on the rise and fall of the last El Nino starting in 2015.  This post adds a longer view, encompassing the significant 1998 El Nino and since.  The color schemes are retained for Global, Tropics, NH and SH anomalies.  Despite the longer time frame, I have kept the monthly data (rather than yearly averages) because of interesting shifts between January and July.

1995 is a reasonable (ENSO neutral) starting point prior to the first El Nino.  The sharp Tropical rise peaking in 1998 is dominant in the record, starting Jan. ’97 to pull up SSTs uniformly before returning to the same level Jan. ’99.  For the next 2 years, the Tropics stayed down, and the world’s oceans held steady around 0.2C above 1961 to 1990 average.

Then comes a steady rise over two years to a lesser peak Jan. 2003, but again uniformly pulling all oceans up around 0.4C.  Something changes at this point, with more hemispheric divergence than before. Over the 4 years until Jan 2007, the Tropics go through ups and downs, NH a series of ups and SH mostly downs.  As a result the Global average fluctuates around that same 0.4C, which also turns out to be the average for the entire record since 1995.

2007 stands out with a sharp drop in temperatures so that Jan.08 matches the low in Jan. ’99, but starting from a lower high. The oceans all decline as well, until temps build peaking in 2010.

Now again a different pattern appears.  The Tropics cool sharply to Jan 11, then rise steadily for 4 years to Jan 15, at which point the most recent major El Nino takes off.  But this time in contrast to ’97-’99, the Northern Hemisphere produces peaks every summer pulling up the Global average.  In fact, these NH peaks appear every July starting in 2003, growing stronger to produce 3 massive highs in 2014, 15 and 16.  NH July 2017 was only slightly lower, and a fifth NH peak still lower in Sept. 2018.

The highest summer NH peak came in 2019, only this time the Tropics and SH are offsetting rather adding to the warming. Since 2014 SH has played a moderating role, offsetting the NH warming pulses. Now September 2020 is dropping off last summer’s unusually high NH SSTs. f(Note: these are high anomalies on top of the highest absolute temps in the NH.)

What to make of all this? The patterns suggest that in addition to El Ninos in the Pacific driving the Tropic SSTs, something else is going on in the NH.  The obvious culprit is the North Atlantic, since I have seen this sort of pulsing before.  After reading some papers by David Dilley, I confirmed his observation of Atlantic pulses into the Arctic every 8 to 10 years.

But the peaks coming nearly every summer in HadSST require a different picture.  Let’s look at August, the hottest month in the North Atlantic from the Kaplan dataset.


The AMO Index is from from Kaplan SST v2, the unaltered and not detrended dataset. By definition, the data are monthly average SSTs interpolated to a 5×5 grid over the North Atlantic basically 0 to 70N. The graph shows August warming began after 1992 up to 1998, with a series of matching years since, including 2020.  Because the N. Atlantic has partnered with the Pacific ENSO recently, let’s take a closer look at some AMO years in the last 2 decades.


This graph shows monthly AMO temps for some important years. The Peak years were 1998, 2010 and 2016, with the latter emphasized as the most recent. The other years show lesser warming, with 2007 emphasized as the coolest in the last 20 years. Note the red 2018 line is at the bottom of all these tracks. The black line shows that 2020 began slightly warm, then set records for 3 months. then dropped below 2016 and 2017, peaked in August and is now below 2016.

Summary

The oceans are driving the warming this century.  SSTs took a step up with the 1998 El Nino and have stayed there with help from the North Atlantic, and more recently the Pacific northern “Blob.”  The ocean surfaces are releasing a lot of energy, warming the air, but eventually will have a cooling effect.  The decline after 1937 was rapid by comparison, so one wonders: How long can the oceans keep this up? If the pattern of recent years continues, NH SST anomalies may rise slightly in coming months, but once again, ENSO which has weakened will probably determine the outcome.

Footnote: Why Rely on HadSST3

HadSST3 is distinguished from other SST products because HadCRU (Hadley Climatic Research Unit) does not engage in SST interpolation, i.e. infilling estimated anomalies into grid cells lacking sufficient sampling in a given month. From reading the documentation and from queries to Met Office, this is their procedure.

HadSST3 imports data from gridcells containing ocean, excluding land cells. From past records, they have calculated daily and monthly average readings for each grid cell for the period 1961 to 1990. Those temperatures form the baseline from which anomalies are calculated.

In a given month, each gridcell with sufficient sampling is averaged for the month and then the baseline value for that cell and that month is subtracted, resulting in the monthly anomaly for that cell. All cells with monthly anomalies are averaged to produce global, hemispheric and tropical anomalies for the month, based on the cells in those locations. For example, Tropics averages include ocean grid cells lying between latitudes 20N and 20S.

Gridcells lacking sufficient sampling that month are left out of the averaging, and the uncertainty from such missing data is estimated. IMO that is more reasonable than inventing data to infill. And it seems that the Global Drifter Array displayed in the top image is providing more uniform coverage of the oceans than in the past.

USS Pearl Harbor deploys Global Drifter Buoys in Pacific Ocean

#oceans-make-climate

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November 11, 2020 at 07:48AM

RECAP: THE CHANGING JET STREAM AND GLOBAL COOLING

 CAP ALLON

Studying the JET STREAM has long been an indicator of the weather to come, and to study the jet stream attention must turn to the SUN.

When solar activity is HIGH, the jet stream is tight and stable and follows somewhat of a straight path. But when solar activity is LOW, that meandering band of air flowing 6 miles above our heads becomes weak and wavy, it effectively buckles which diverts frigid Polar air to atypically low latitudes and replaces it with warmer tropical air.

The jet stream reverts from a Zonal Flow to a Meridional Flow and, depending on which side of the jet stream you’re on, you’re either in for a spell of unseasonably cold or hot weather and/or a period of unusually dry or wet conditions.


This forcing FULLY explains why some far-northern latitudes (such as parts of Siberia) have been experiencing pockets of anomalous heat of late, while the lower-latitudes have been dealing with “blobs” of record cold.

It’s a phenomenon long-predicted by those studying the Sun, and one forecast to intensify as the Grand Solar Minimum continues its deepening.

Let’s note all the recent hysteria regarding the anomalous warmth lingering over Siberia. Well, the region’s cold temperatures didn’t simply up and vanish, nor had they been heated by the magic CO2 affect, or escaped Earth’s atmosphere and leaked into space — no, they were diverted south on the back of a meridional (wavy) jet stream flow: and it is THIS that’s the main reason for the lower latitudes experiencing record low temperatures of late.

Residing to the south of Siberia is Mongolia, Kazakhstan, and little town called China. While Siberia was reportedly melting into oblivion, these regions beneath it were experiencing anomalous, often record-breaking COLD.

And then in June, the Siberian Times reported that a “swing” had now occurred, that northern Siberia’s well-documented heat had been followed-up by unprecedented “June snow, tornadoes and floods” — an update the MSM failed to report on.

Furthermore, and serving as another example of the Changing Jet Stream, the ST article goes on to explain that while snow in the northern mountains melted some two-weeks ahead of schedule this year, “further south, though, several roads in Khakassia –known to locals as ‘Warm Siberia’ for its mild climate– were blocked by snow.”

Rare June snow in in Khakassia aka ‘Warm Siberia’.


North America is another example.

Because while parts of far-northern Alaska/Canada were experiencing anomalous heat back in May, the lower-latitudes beneath them –where the majority of us humans reside– were busy breaking records for all-time COLD:

North America has set 233 new all-time Monthly Low Temperature Records in May (so far) vs just the 18 Record Highs


Earth’s climate is changing alright, there’s little doubt about that.

But it’s the Sun that’s the driving force, not Man and his irrelevant CO2-excretions.

We’ve known the mechanisms outline above for decades, as the the below article from 1975’s Science Mag would indicate, but as they clash with the modern politicized AGW agenda they’ve conveniently been forgotten:


The COLD TIMES are returning, the mid-latitudes are REFREEZING in line with historically low solar activitycloud-nucleating Cosmic Rays, and a meridional jet stream flow.

Both NOAA and NASA appear to agree, if you read between the lines, with NOAA saying we’re entering a ‘full-blown’ Grand Solar Minimum in the late-2020s, and NASA seeing this upcoming solar cycle (25) as “the weakest of the past 200 years”, with the agency correlating previous solar shutdowns to prolonged periods of global cooling here.

Furthermore, we can’t ignore the slew of new scientific papers stating the immense impact The Beaufort Gyre could have on the Gulf Stream, and therefore the climate overall.


Don’t fall for bogus, warm-mongering political agendas — our future is COLD as the Sun continues its descent into its next Grand Solar Minimum cycle.


Prepare accordingly— learn the facts, relocate if need be, and grow your own.

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Grand Solar Minimum + Pole Shift

NASA Predicts Next Solar Cycle will be Lowest in 200 Years (Dalton Minimum Levels) + the Implications

https://electroverse.net/nasa-predicts-next-solar-cycle-will-be-lowest-in-200-years-dalton-minimum-levels-the-implications/embed/#?secret=ePDleAxJRG

The post RECAP: The Changing Jet Stream and Global Cooling appeared first on Electroverse.

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APEX MOUNTAIN RECEIVES RECORD EARLY-SEASON SNOW AS UNPRECEDENTED WINTER STORM HITS BRITISH COLUMBIA

 CAP ALLON

Winter has arrived early across the Okanagan Valley, B.C., and Apex Mountain Ski Resort is gearing up for its earliest opening in history.

As originally reported by kelownacapnews.com, the slopes of Apex will likely be seeing skiers earlier than ever before this season, after a 30 cm (1 foot) dumping in just 24 hours will have the “World Cup course” open by the end of the week.

“It’s the earliest we’ll have ever been open in our history,” said the resort’s general manager James Shalman. “We had about 20 cm last night, five centimetres the day before, and we’re making snow too.”

Below is live footage from a webcam at the resort [courtesy of Nest and apexresort.com]:

https://video.nest.com/embedded/live/g8NtPgzpfh?autoplay=0

blob:https://video.nest.com/51753178-3f33-4267-8a9c-feb252f3f5fe


And while the unprecedented snow is a blessing to the resort team, the bone-chilling cold isn’t — Shalman explains: “The snow right now is falling at minus seven, and it’s so light, when our groomers go to pack it, it just fluffs up around the tracks. When it’s cold, you get light, dry powder which is beautiful to ski through, but as far as packing and base-building it’s not the best.”

Saying that, Shalman adds: “We are probably two weeks ahead of where we’d usually be, with our freestyle course, with our snow-making, everything is going really well.”

Polar air has been increasingly dropping out of the Arctic of late, thanks to a weak and wavy “meridional” jet stream flow (caused by the historically low solar activity we’re currently receiving). This, while being a key driver of the anomalous cold, isn’t the only climatic forcing at play this season.

La Niña is a coupled ocean-atmosphere phenomenon that is the colder counterpart of El Niño, caused by cooler than average temperatures in the Pacific Ocean.

“We keep getting these big dumps early, in the middle of October we probably had about 50 cm,” concludes Shalman. “The forecast for the season is phenomenal. The La Niña years have been some of our best snow-years.”

And there’s much more to come, particularly over the weekend and into next week. The GFS is forecasting accumulations that are simply ‘off the charts’:

GFS Total Snowfall Nov 11 – Nov 27 [tropicaltidbits.com].


Prepare.

The COLD TIMES are returning, the mid-latitudes are REFREEZING in line with historically low solar activitycloud-nucleating Cosmic Rays, and a meridional jet stream flow.

Both NOAA and NASA appear to agree, if you read between the lines, with NOAA saying we’re entering a ‘full-blown’ Grand Solar Minimum in the late-2020s, and NASA seeing this upcoming solar cycle (25) as “the weakest of the past 200 years”, with the agency correlating previous solar shutdowns to prolonged periods of global cooling here.

Furthermore, we can’t ignore the slew of new scientific papers stating the immense impact The Beaufort Gyre could have on the Gulf Stream, and therefore the climate overall.


Prepare accordingly— learn the facts, relocate if need be, and grow your own.

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Grand Solar Minimum + Pole Shift

The post Apex Mountain receives record early-season Snow as Unprecedented Winter Storm hits British Columbia appeared first on Electroverse.

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Remembering the Korean War

America had good reason to be hostile to Communism.


US troops, Korean War. Click to enlarge. Photo attributed to Corporal Peter McDonald, USMC. Source here.

Today is Remembrance Day here in Canada. Normally, we gather at cenotaphs across the nation, unfurl flags, play bagpipes, lay wreaths, and observe two minutes of silence for our war dead.

In the small town in which I reside, Main Street is closed to vehicular traffic, and many hundreds of citizens – from school children to aged uniformed veterans – faithfully assemble no matter how inclement the weather. Our town is, after all, surrounded by farmland. Farming families are a principal source of the young men who are sent into battle.

The Canadian Legion is the main organizer of Remembrance Day ceremonies. Normally, hot soup and steaming coffee are served afterward at Legion halls. In this pandemic year, some ceremonies have been cancelled, and Legions aren’t inviting crowds inside. Commemorating the fallen must happen in other ways.

Few people remember much about the Korean War. The short version is that, 70 years ago this year, Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union orchestrated the invasion of South Korea by North Korea. Mao Zedong’s Communist China also joined the fray.

Leftist rhetoric has long painted capitalist countries as imperialist empire builders, and communist countries as peace loving bystanders. But in 1950, a mere five years after the end of World War II, when the UK was still enduring post-war food rationing, Communist governments recklessly tried to grab more territory. They invaded South Korea with tanks, sparking a major new conflict.

The Korean War was a war against Stalin and Mao – ruthless dictators who’d promised utopia to their own populations, and instead delivered starvation, torment, and mass murder.

Technically, multiple UN countries defended South Korea during this three-year war. 90,000+ British soldiers served, as did 27,000 Canadians, and 17,000 Australians. Between us, we three nations lost 2,000 lives. The lion’s share of the fighting and the dying was, in fact, borne by America. An estimated 1.8 million US troops participated. 34,000 Americans perished, and 100,000 more were wounded.

The BBC calls the Korean War the Forgotten War. Our short memories prevent us from understanding many of the historical events that followed. The ‘Red Scare’ in America is now portrayed as unfounded hysteria, as a product of fevered imaginations and paranoia.

But in America, in the 1950s, Communists were bona fide military aggressors. Communist governments had plunged the world into a major new conflict. A world already weary of war was now back at it.

Big surprise that the American soldiers who fought in that war, and the families who experienced this new wave of loss, were hostile to Communism.

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November 11, 2020 at 06:41AM

World Ignores Green Recovery–Prefers To Avoid Devastating Recession Instead

By Paul Homewood

h/t Robin Guenier

The Guardian is spitting its dummy out because the rest of the world does not want to waste money on green crap!

The prospect of a global green recovery from the coronavirus pandemic is hanging in the balance, as countries pour money into the fossil fuel economy to stave off a devastating recession, an analysis for the Guardian reveals.

Meanwhile, promises of a low-carbon boost are failing to materialise. Only a handful of major countries are pumping rescue funds into low-carbon efforts such as renewable power, electric vehicles and energy efficiency.

A new Guardian ranking finds the EU is a frontrunner, devoting 30% of its €750bn (£677bn) Next Generation Recovery Fund to green ends. France and Germany have earmarked about €30bn and €50bn respectively of their own additional stimulus for environmental spending.

On the other end of the scale, China is faring the worst of the major economies, with only 0.3% of its package – about £1.1bn – slated for green projects. In the US, before the election, only about $26bn (£19.8bn), or just over 1%, of the announced spending was green.

n at least 18 of the world’s biggest economies, more than six months on from the first wave of lockdowns in the early spring, pandemic rescue packages are dominated by spending that has a harmful environmental impact, such as bailouts for oil or new high-carbon infrastructure, outweighing the positive climate benefits of any green spending, according to the analysis.

Only four countries – France, Spain, the UK and Germany – and the EU have packages that will produce a net environmental benefit.

“The natural environment and climate change have not been a core part of the thinking in the bulk of recovery plans,” said Jason Eis, chief executive of Vivid Economics, which compiled the index for the Guardian. “In the majority of countries we are not seeing a green recovery coming through at all.”

Even countries that have boasted of green recovery plans are frequently spending much more on activities that will maintain or increase greenhouse gas emissions. South Korea set out plans for a green new deal in July, worth about $135bn. But its continued spending on fossil fuels and carbon-intensive industries means it ranks only eighth in the world for the greenness of its stimulus.

While countries fail to muster a green recovery, they are also falling behind on their obligations under the Paris climate agreement. The International Energy Agency has calculated, exclusively for the Guardian, that countries are planning emissions cuts that amount to only 15% of the reductions needed to fulfil the Paris agreement. The IEA has also found that China’s emissions, which dipped sharply in the initial phases of the pandemic, have already rebounded to 2019 levels and are likely to exceed them.

Fatih Birol, executive director of the IEA, said: “China has not yet started on a green recovery. But they have not yet missed the opportunity for a Chinese reset, if China changes its next five-year plan [due to be settled next March]. Whatever China builds now should be green.”

Without China, a global green recovery looks impossible. “If China does not come up with green recovery packages, putting a new five-year plan in line with the target of net zero, then the world’s chances of reaching its climate targets will be close to zero,” Birol warned.

Climate Action Tracker, an independent scientific analysis, found that governments in many countries, far from prioritising low-carbon growth, were bolstering carbon-intensive industries and loosening environmental regulations. Niklas Höhne, of the NewClimate Institute, one of the partner organisations behind CAT, warned: “What we’re seeing more of is governments using the pandemic recovery to roll back climate legislation and bail out the fossil fuel industry, especially in the US, but also in Brazil, Mexico, Australia, South Africa, Indonesia, Russia, Saudi Arabia and other countries.”

However, Lord Nicholas Stern, the climate economist, said countries still had time to move into a new phase of recovery, where green spending could be prioritised. Most of the initial $12tn in rescue packages around the world has gone to increase liquidity, prop up wages and stop companies going bust, which offers little opportunity for greening.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/nov/09/revealed-covid-recovery-plans-threaten-global-climate-hopes

The idea that governments all around the world are fiving billions to bail out oil companies is absurd, and of course no evidence whatsoever is provided to back this up.

What is clear is that the money has gone, as Nick Stern notes, to increase liquidity, prop up wages and stop companies going bust. Would the Guardian rather have millions of unemployed, just so that we could have more windmills instead?

There is a very simple reason why governments outside of Europe are not going for a green recovery. It is no more than a sham, which will see trillions of dollars tipped down the drain, accompanied by the collapse of traditional economies.

Most governments see this clearly. It is only Sleepy Joe and the political class in Europe that have lost all touch with reality. A “green recovery” is no recovery at all.

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November 11, 2020 at 04:39AM