‘Target too low, progress too slow’

US to fall short of Paris targets

BONN, Nov 11, (Agencies): The world must sharply draw down greenhouse gas emissions and suck billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide from the air if today’s youth are to be spared climate cataclysm, a top scientist has warned.

“This reality is being ignored by governments around the world,” said James Hansen, who famously announced to the US Congress 30 years ago that global warming was underway.

“To say that we are ‘moving in the right direction’ just isn’t good enough anymore,” he said in an interview.

Head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies until 2013, Hansen and his 18-year-old granddaughter — who is suing the US government for contributing to the problem — delivered that message this week at UN climate negotiations in Bonn.

Thousands of diplomats at the 12day, 196-nation talks are haggling over the fine print of a “user’s manual” for a treaty that will go into effect in 2020.

Inked in the French capital in 2015, the Paris Agreement calls for capping global warming at two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).

With the planet out of kilter after only one degree of warming — enough to amplify deadly heatwaves, superstorms and droughts — the treaty also vows to explore the feasibility of holding the line at 1.5 C.

“That is a good impulse, because if we go to 2 C, it is guaranteed that we will lose our shorelines and coastal cities,” said Hansen. “The only question is how fast.” Earth’s surface temperature, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, and sea levels have all changed in lock-step

wan, police said Saturday, just weeks after a similar incident in the region popular with foreign tourists.

The girl was fetching water in a heavilyforested area of the island Thursday when a crocodile dragged her away in front of her horrified siblings, a police report said.

A search is underway but the coast guard and police are yet to find any sign of the child. (AFP)

Greek resort plan at risk:

New archaeological over hundreds of millions of years, he pointed out.

In 2016, atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide — the main greenhouse gas — tipped over 403 parts per million (ppm), 40 percent above the pre-industrial average and the highest level in at least 800,000 years, the UN’s weather agency reported this week.

Even under optimistic scenarios, that number is projected to rise for decades.

What’s the limit for a climate-safe world?

The UN’s science advisory body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has said we can “likely” stay under the 2 C threshold if CO2 levels don’t exceed 450 ppm by 2100.

For Hansen, that’s a recipe for disaster.

Levels

Meltwater from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets could add metres to sea levels by 2100, he has calculated.

“The last time in Earth’s history that CO2 concentrations were at 450 ppm, sea level was 25 metres (80 feet) higher,” he noted.

When writer and environmentalist Bill McKibben decided a decade ago to launch a campaign to fight global warming, he asked the world’s best known climate scientist what he should call it.

“He had in mind the name ‘450. org’,” Hansen recalled.

By coincidence, Hansen was about to publish a major study that concluded the ceiling for CO2 levels should be 350 ppm, at most.

Thus was born 350.org, probably restrictions have put plans to build a luxury resort on a disused Athens airport at risk, the developer said on Friday, in a potential blow to one of the biggest privatisation projects Greece is pursuing under its bailout.

Greek property developer Lamda, backed by Chinese and Gulf funds, submitted an 8 billion euro ($9.3 billion)proposal in July to convert 620 hectares of wasteland at the former Hellenikon airport into a complex of luxury residences, hotels, a yachting marina and casinos. the largest grassroots climate action organisation in the world.

“Hansen does make a compelling case that many climate change impacts are occurring sooner and with greater magnitude than we expected,” said Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University.

“Jim’s past predictions have proven prescient and we do indeed ignore him at our peril.”

“Hansen’s contributions to the basic science of climate change are fundamental to our current understanding — no one has contributed more,” said Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University.

A crescendo of efforts at the subnational level to shrink the country’s carbon footprint will not fully compensate for US President Donald Trump’s decision to scrap his predecessor’s climate policies and promote the use of fossil fuels, it found.

“Given the stated policies of the present US administration, currently committed non-federal efforts are not sufficient to meet the US commitments under the Paris Agreement,” concluded the 120-page analysis, entitled “America’s Pledge.”

California Governor Jerry Brown and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg unveiled the report in Bonn, flanked by UN climate chief Patricia Espinosa and Fijian Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama, who is presiding over the 12-day talks.

Under the 196-nation treaty, agreed outside the French capital 2015, the United States made a voluntary commitment to cut the country’s emissions 26-28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.

The planned resort would be three times the size of Monaco.

The group signed a 99-year lease with the state in 2014. But the project has been beset with delays, partly due to a long-running dispute with critics who fear it will damage the local environment and cultural heritage. (RTRS)

Rare Bornean clouded leopards seen:

A Bornean clouded leopard and her two cubs were captured on camera strolling through a Malaysian forest reserve last week, a rare daytime sighting of the elusive animals in the wild.

Found only on the Southeast Asian islands of Borneo and Sumatra, the big cat species is known to zoologists as Neofelis diardi, with just 700 estimated to live in a habitat shrunk by poaching and deforestation.

“Seeing it in daytime is nearly unheard of, and never with its young,” said Michael Gordon, who filmed the animals cross a road and walk into bush in Deramakot in Malaysia’s Sabah state on Borneo, where camera traps first spotted the cats in 2010. (RTRS)

Bloomberg gives $50 mln:

Former New York mayor and billionaire Michael Bloomberg is donating $50 million to help nations around the world shift from coal to combat pollution and climate change, expanding his funding outside the United States.

The project would start in Europe and expand into other countries later on, his charity, Bloomberg Philanthropies, said in a statement on Thursday on the margins of UN climate negotiations among 200 nations in Bonn, Germany. (RTRS)