‘Avoiding chaos means unprecedented change’

UN report outlines stark options

INCHEON, South Korea, Oct 6, (AFP): The UN’s 195-nation climate science body plunged deep into overtime Saturday to finalize a report outlining stark options – all requiring a global makeover of unprecedented scale – for avoiding climate chaos.

Working through the night, the closeddoor huddle in rain-soaked Incheon, South Korea, was to convene a plenary later in the day to hammer through a “Summary for Policymakers”.

Can humanity cap global warming at 1.5ºC (2.7ºF)? What will it take and how much will it cost? Would climate impacts be significantly less severe than in a 2ºC world?

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was tasked with these questions by the framers of the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement, which calls for halting the rise in temperatures to “well below” 2ºC – and 1.5ºC if possible.

That aspirational goal – tacked on to the treaty at the last minute – caught climate scientists off-guard.

“Our understanding of 1.5ºC was very limited, all but two or three of the models we had then were based on a 2ºC target,” said Henri Waisman, a senior researcher at the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations in Paris, and one of the report’s 86 authors.

Based on more than 6,000 peer-reviewed studies, the 20-page bombshell will make for grim reading when it is released on Monday.

“Leaders will have nowhere to hide once this report comes out,” said Jennifer Morgan, Executive Director of Greenpeace International, and an observer at the talks.

At current rates of greenhouse gas emissions, Earth will zoom past the 1.5ºC signpost around 2040, and as early as 2030.

After only one degree of warming, the world has seen deadly storms engorged by rising seas and a crescendo of heatwaves, drought, flooding and wild fires made more intense by climate change.

Without a radical course change, we are headed for an unliveable 3ºC or 4ºC hike.

And yet, humanity has avoided action for so long that any pathway to a climate-safe world involves wrenching economic and social change “unprecedented in terms of scale,” the report said.

“Some people say the 1.5ºC target is impossible,” said Stephen Cornelius, WWFUK’s chief adviser for climate change, and a former IPCC negotiator.

“But the difference between possible and

“This is a good day for nature and climate protection and a milestone for the anti-coal movement,” Greenpeace Germany’s Martin Kaiser told a press conference.

The David-versus-Goliath battle in the forest has come to symbolize resistance against brown coal mining in Germany, a country that

impossible is political leadership.”

The report is set to lay out four scenarios that could result in Earth’s average surface temperature stabilising at 1.5ºC.

The most ambitious – dubbed the “low energy scenario” – would see a radical drawdown in energy consumption coupled with a rapid shift away from fossil fuels and a swift decline in CO2 emissions starting in 2020.

It would not require a temporary “overshoot” of the 1.5ºC threshold, and does not depend on sucking vast quantities of CO2 out of the air, known as carbon dioxide removal, or “negative emissions.”

A second pathway emphasises the need for changing our consumption patterns – eating less meat, travelling less, giving up cars, etc. – along with an overhaul of agricultural and land-use practices, including the protection of forests. The final scenario

despite its green reputation remains heavily reliant on this dirtiest of fossil fuels.

The plaintiffs argue that Hambach forest, in the industrial heartland of North Rhine-Westphalia state, is home to rare species like Bechstein’s bat and qualifies as a protected area under EU law.

Judges said RWE must not create an “irreversible” situation on the ground before they rule on the “complex” case. (AFP)

Chernobyl goes solar:

compensates for a “business-as-usual” economy and lifestyle by allowing a large overshoot of the 1.5ºC target.

It also calls for burning a lot of biofuels and capturing the emitted CO2, a system known by its acronym, BECCS. Indeed, an area twice the size of India would have to be planted in biofuel crops.

This “P4” plan also assumes that some 1,200 billion tonnes of CO2 – 30 years’ worth of emissions at current rate – will be socked away underground.

Signficantly, and for the first time, the UN panel quantified changes in the use of coal, oil and gas.

For the low-energy demand pathway, for example, coal consumption would drop 78 percent by 2030, and 97 percent by mid-century. Oil would decline by 37 and 74 percent, respectively, and gas by 25 and 74 percent.

Ukraine unveiled a solar plant in Chernobyl on Friday, just across from where a power station, now encased in CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla, Oct 6, (AP): The NASA spacecraft that explored Pluto has adjusted course as its next target looms.

New Horizons fired its thrusters late Wednesday way out in our solar system’s so-called Kuiper (KIE-per) Belt, or Twilight Zone.

That puts the spacecraft on track for a New Year’s Day flyby of a teeny, frigid world dubbed Ultima Thule (THOO-lee). The name comes from medieval maps and literature.

Lead scientist Alan Stern is tweeting, “YEAH! Go Baby Go!”

a giant sarcophagus, caused the world’s worst nuclear disaster three decades ago.

Built in a contaminated area, which remains largely uninhabitable and where visitors are accompanied by guides carrying radiation meters, 3,800 panels produce energy to power 2,000 apartments.

In April 1986, a botched test at reactor number 4 at the Soviet plant sent clouds of nuclear material billowing across Europe and forced tens of thousands of people to evacuate. (RTRS)

Bronze swords found:

Greece’s culture ministry says archaeologists have found an undisturbed grave with pottery, weapons and jewelry at a heavily plundered cemetery that is more than 3,500-years old.

The ministry said in a statement on Thursday the discovery was made at the Mycenaean-era cemetery near the village of Aidonia and the ancient Nemea site in southern Peloponnese.

The cemetery was looted extensively in the late 20th century. Greece recovered many finds from the United States and tombs that had remained untouched were excavated.

Digs this summer revealed a rock-cut chamber tomb with burials on two levels, the oldest dating from 1650-1400 B.C. (AP)