In 2022, heat waves swept across the planet, but did the G20 give a fig? Not really, they appear intent on carrying on as usual. Borrowing to pay for their political promises, then leaving office with higher National Debts, and leaving the mess to the next buffoon. A good example of which is Boris Johnson's comedy act. From 2010 to 2022, with the Conservatives in office, Britain's National Debt has tripled. And the savings of hard working voters tumbled in value. Britain's got poorer, as MPs profited personally from lying to voters. The Head of State, Queen Elizabeth, was duped by Bojo, and did nothing about it. More concerned perhaps at the institution which she held together, is crumbling around her, as the electorate wise up.

Maybe it's time we began eating our politicians, like the Dutch did with the De Witts in 1672. Where some politicians threaten to “have their opponents for lunch.” Maybe, they should put their political flesh where their mouth is? They might help out a little with the food crisis. Apparently, humans taste like pork.

During her election campaign, Liz Truss aims to carry on, business as usual. This, despite fuel and food prices rocketing. She is making promises of growth, that any reasonably intelligent politician would know, is unsustainable. It's piffle! More than that, it is fraud. To get elected on false promises, and accept money for that position in public office. 

Poor old Liz. It's not really her fault. She must have been brainwashed by senile Maggie. The Tories believe that the electorate are slaves to do with as they will. Liz Truss is quoted as wanting the British workforce to work harder. But they are already at breaking point. Just like Margaret Thatcher, she is out of touch with reality.

The trouble is most politicians around the world are just as bad. They don't know when it's time to start confessing the truth, that we only have one planet, and we've already spent that one. Perhaps we can borrow on the Moon?

PRESIDENT (CHUMP) TRUMP - New York (CNN) President-elect Donald Trump conceded Tuesday there is "some connectivity" between human activity and climate change and wavered on whether he would pull the United States out of international accords aimed at combating the phenomenon, which scientists overwhelmingly agree is caused by human activity.

The statements could mark a softening in Trump's position on US involvement in efforts to fight climate change, although he did not commit to specific action in any direction. During the campaign, he vowed to "cancel" the US's participation in the Paris climate agreement, stop all US payments to UN programs aimed at fighting climate change and continued to cast serious doubt on the role man-made carbon dioxide emissions played in the planet's warming and associated impacts.

"I think there is some connectivity. Some, something. It depends on how much," Trump said Tuesday in a meeting with New York Times reporters, columnists and editors. He has previously called climate change a "hoax" invented by the Chinese.

Asked if he would withdraw the US from international climate change agreements, Trump said he is "looking at it very closely," according to Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Mike Grynbaum, who were live-tweeting the meeting. He added that he has "an open mind to it," despite explicitly promising to withdraw from at least one climate accord on the campaign trail.

Still, Trump's comments do not amount to a full reversal. The President-elect on the campaign trail repeatedly vowed to slash environmental protection regulations burdening US businesses and said that beyond the consequences to the planet, he is particularly mindful of the economic impact of combating climate change.

He said he is considering "how much it will cost our companies" and the effect on American competitiveness in the global market, according to a tweet from Grynbaum. Trump's election sparked concerns from climate change activists that the incoming Republican president will roll back the progress made under the Obama administration.

President Barack Obama made inroads with other countries - China in particular - toward new international agreements to roll back global carbon emissions, progress activist groups have worried will be undone by a Trump presidency.

"The disaster that Donald Trump represents for the climate cannot be understated," Jamie Henn, a spokesman for 350.org, an environmental advocacy group, told CNN last week. "He is the only head of state in the world who is an all-out climate denier and he has the most radical, anti-environmental policies of anyone to ever assume the role of the presidency."

While Trump's comments on Tuesday may suggest an ambivalence - if not a softening - on the issue of climate change, the President-elect's actions suggest his election did not cause him to immediately abandon his climate skepticism.

Trump appointed a leading climate change denier Myron Ebell to lead his transition efforts on the Environmental Protection Agency and has not stepped back from his vow to slash environmental regulations he argued during the campaign are an undue burden on US businesses.

"Whether or not Trump acknowledges the connection between human pollution and climate change, the science is real. Climate change is happening, and fossil fuels are making it worse," Greenpeace USA spokesman Travis Nichols said. "No matter what he says, Trump's 100 days plan and his proposed Cabinet appointees put climate denial front and center in his administration and put the planet and its people at risk."  By Jeremy Diamond, 

DONALD TRUMP - Back in a January interview with Fox News, before he clinched the Republican nomination, Trump said, “Climate change is just a very, very expensive form of tax. A lot of people are making a lot of money. I know much about climate change.” 

He added, “I often joke that this is done for the benefit of China — obviously I joke — but this is done for the benefit of China.”  On his official campaign website, Trump does not have a section focused on climate change listed under “Positions.” There is, however, a section on the candidate’s energy policy.

The Trump campaign website says the presidential hopeful will “make America energy independent, create millions of new jobs, and protect clean air and clean water.” It says he “will conserve our natural habitats, reserves and resources,” and “will unleash an energy revolution that will bring vast new wealth to our country.”

Trump’s team writes that his administration would “rescind all job-destroying Obama executive actions,” including that “Mr. Trump will reduce and eliminate all barriers to responsible energy production, creating at least a half million jobs a year, $30 billion in higher wages and cheaper energy.”

The word climate change appears nowhere on the page. Trump has previously suggested he considers global warming a hoax “created by and for the Chinese,” as he put it in an oft-referenced 2012 tweet. The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 6, 2012

In March he also told The Washington Post that he is “not a big believer in man-made climate change.” But despite his public skepticism, Trump applied for a permit to build a seawall next to his golf course and hotel in County Clare, Ireland, to prevent erosion, according to a Politico report from earlier this year. In his application, he included an environmental impact statement that mentions “global warming and its effects.”  Trump’s stance on climate change would make him unique among world leaders if elected. A study from The Sierra Club that compiled statements from leaders of 195 countries found that Trump would be the only head of state to declare climate change a hoax. COMMENT: So don't vote for him, or ask him if he is willing to heed the advice of the experts!

HILLARY CLINTON - “I believe in science. I believe that climate change is real and that we can save our planet while creating millions of good-paying clean energy jobs,” Clinton said during her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in July. 

On her official campaign website, Clinton has a section devoted to climate change under “Issues.” On the page, the campaign writes, “Climate change is an urgent threat and a defining challenge of our time. It threatens our economy, our national security, and our children’s health and futures.” 

The page also states that the former secretary of state will “deliver on the pledge President Obama made at the Paris climate conference” and will not rely on “climate deniers in Congress to pass new legislation.” Her campaign says a Clinton administration would aim to “reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 30 percent in 2025 relative to 2005 levels and put the country on a path to cut emissions more than 80 percent by 2050.”

Clinton would likely have a lot of high-level help in fulfilling Mr. Obama’s climate change initiatives, given that one of the key actors on climate in his administration was her own campaign chairman, John Podesta. Among the policies highlighted on the site, Clinton announces that she will launch a $60 billion “Clean Energy Challenge” that would partner with rural communities, states, and cities to cut carbon pollution “and expand clean energy, including for low-income families.” 

"I believe that climate change is real and that we can save our planet while creating millions of good-paying clean energy jobs." — Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) July 29, 2016

Clinton supports cutting tax subsidies on oil and gas companies. The campaign also says she would create an Environmental and Climate Justice Task Force to focus on the “health, economic, and environmental impacts of pollution and climate change in vulnerable communities.” 

CBS NEWS Oct 20 2016 - Where Trump and Clinton stand on climate change

The third and final presidential debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton Wednesday night in Las Vegas covered a wide range of issues from abortion to foreign policy to the national debt, but there was one glaring omission - climate change. 

Six months after world leaders signed the Paris Agreement, a sweeping accord designed to combat global warming, climate change was only brought up tangentially, in one brief moment, on the debate stage. It was mentioned early on as “a real issue” by Clinton in her answer to an unrelated question. Other than that, moderator Chris Wallace, of Fox News, did not pose any questions about climate policy and neither of the candidates brought up specific proposals about how they would handle the challenges it presents — despite this being a year of record-breaking temperatures, drought, and destructive storms. 

On social media, some observers decried the absence of climate change discussion at any of this year’s debates. Paul Krugman of the New York Times called the oversight “really disgraceful.”

So, four debates; four shout-outs by moderators to deficit scolds; not one question about climate change. It's really disgraceful. — Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) October 20, 2016

We're at the final question of the last debate and climate change has not come up in a serious way once. Criminal negligence. #debatenight — Naomi Klein (@NaomiAKlein) October 20, 2016

It’s been 8 years since a debate question about climate change.

This is bigger than individual moderators. @debates needs new leadership. — Jamison Foser (@jamisonfoser) October 20, 2016

Not a single presidential #debate asked a question about #climatechange, which touches all parts of running our country. Disgusting. — ClimateTruth (@climatetruth) October 20, 2016

Oddly enough, the closest question to touch on the issue of climate change came from the red sweater-wearing, meme-worthy audience member Ken Bone at the second presidential debate. An undecided voter, Bone asked the candidates, “What steps will your energy policy take to meet our energy needs while at the same time remaining environmentally friendly and minimizing job layoffs?”

In response, Trump said: “I will bring our energy companies back ... They’ll pay off our national debt. They’ll pay off our tremendous budget deficits, which are tremendous. But we are putting our energy companies out of business. We have to bring back our workers.” 

Clinton specifically used the term “climate change” in her answer: “So I have a comprehensive energy policy, but it really does include fighting climate change, because I think that is a serious problem,” she said. “And I support moving toward more clean, renewable energy as quickly as we can, because I think we can be the 21st century clean energy superpower and create millions of new jobs and businesses.”

Beyond that exchange, climate change has largely been left out of discussion. So, with less than three weeks to go until Election Day, where do the two candidates stand on climate change?  COMMENT: Do any of the candidates drive electric cars?  Brian Mastroianni covers science and technology for CBSNews.com

CHAMELEON DAVE DOES IT AGAIN, PARIS U TURN BETRAYS CLIMATE TALKS

The prime minister is right. He concluded his speech at the start of the Paris climate change summit by saying: “Instead of making excuses tomorrow to our children and grandchildren, we should be taking action against climate change today.” Friends of the Earth could not agree more.

So why is it that almost everything Cameron’s government has done on climate and energy since being elected in May has moved us in the wrong direction, towards pitiful excuse-making when we come to look our children in the eye, let alone our grandchildren? Though Chameleon Dave's father seems to have put the cat amongst the pigeons and now the Chameleon has changes colour again, finally admitting that he benefited from a Panama-based offshore trust set up by his late father. After three days of stalling and four partial statements issued by Downing Street he confessed that he owned shares in the tax haven fund, which he sold for £31,500 just before becoming prime minister in 2010. He was though a Conservative MP well before then!!!

David Cameron has no plans to appoint a new climate change envoy, a role he created in the run-up to the landmark Paris climate summit.

Opposition politicians said it showed Cameron had given up any pretence of leadership on climate change and that he was sending out the wrong signals by not filling the role.

Lord Barker of Battle was appointed in September 2014 to the position, which Cameron created days before he addressed a high-profile UN summit and warned climate change was “one of the most serious threats facing our world”.

Cameron told Barker in a letter last year that the role was an important post and thanked him for putting the UK in “such a strong position for international climate change negotiations”.

Barker, a loyal ally of Cameron who accompanied him in 2006 to the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard where the then opposition leader was famously photographed hugging a husky, stepped down from the envoy role and as an MP last year.

It was then unclear whether a new climate envoy would be appointed to replace him, but Cameron said in a recent written answer: “The focus now is on implementation [of the Paris deal]. There are no plans to appoint a new envoy on climate change at this time.”

The shadow climate and energy minister, Clive Lewis, said: “The prime minister promised the greenest government ever but he is axing carbon capture, cutting energy efficiency, blocking wind power, threatening the solar industry and selling off the green bank.

“Now he’s giving up even the pretence of leading the battle against climate change, by abolishing the post of his personal climate change envoy only 18 months after creating it – a decision that the government didn’t even announce, in the hope that no one would notice.”

UN PARIS CONFERENCE - GLOBAL CLIMATE MARCH - GUARDIAN 29 NOV 2015

As the last of the day’s climate marches get underway in the western reaches of North America, we will wrap up our live coverage of what has been a record-breaking day in global activism ahead of the COP21 talks in Paris tomorrow.

More than 600,000 people have taken to the streets in 175 countries around the world to call for a strong deal in Paris that will see a swift transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy.

Melbourne and London led the way, with 60,000 people and 50,000 people, respectively, joining marches. Figures including Thom Yorke, Emma Thompson, Charlotte Church and Jeremy Corbyn attended the London gathering.
Pope Francis and Ban Ki-moon were among the people to donate 10,000 pairs of shoes to an installation in Paris to represent people who could not march because of orders imposed by authorities after the 13 November attacks.

Protests in Paris turned violent, with police arresting around 200 people after clashes with anti-capitalists and anarchists. Some activists allegedly hurled candles and bouquets from memorials to victims of the 13 November attacks. Organisers of the climate marches have condemned the violence.

Barack Obama boarded a flight to Paris, where he said he will reaffirm the US’s support for France in the face of “barbaric attacks” as well as forge a deal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and avert the worst ravages of climate change.

Climate talks will go on until 11 December, amid optimism among negotiators that an effective agreement can be reached. Let’s hope Paris can finish the year on a positive note.

Climate events are now underway on the west coast, with people gathering in Los Angeles and Vancouver.

There are tentative estimates of 25,000 people attending the climate march in Ottawa. Organisers expect more than 600,000 people worldwide have attended marches calling for fossil fuels to remain in the ground and for nations to shift to 100% renewable energy use.

 

 

 

 

May Boeve, executive director of organiser 350.org, said: “The scale and diversity of today’s events are astounding. Worldwide people are ready for the end of fossil fuels and the dawn of renewables. World leaders can no longer ignore this urgent call for action as the climate crisis continues to unfold. It is time for them to stand on the right side of history.”

The rather sedate gatherings taking place in the US and Canada are in contrast to the clashes between protestors and police seen in Paris earlier this week.

French newspaper La Figaro has reported that some activists hurled objects from the memorial to those killed in the 13 November attacks at police. Candles and bouquets were launched in the direction of police, the newspaper said.

Others responded, as “many people managed to form a human chain around the memorial to protect flowers and candles”, La Figaro reported (in French).

350.org, one of the major organisers of the climate marches, said that the clashes had violated a “nonviolent pledge that every group involved in the climate coalition here in France has agreed to.” It has distanced itself from violence but said it opposes any attempt to “unnecessarily clamp down on civil liberties.”

The official climate march in Paris was banned due to security concerns. Around 200 people were arrested during the subsequent clashes, with police using tear gas to disperse protestors.

Climate activists in the US and Canada haven’t been able to muster the kinds of numbers seen at marches in Europe and Australia (in particular), nor is there the celebrity impact of, say, Radiohead’s Thom Yorke DJ-ing for the crowd, as happened in London earlier.

But hundreds of people have shown their support for a shift to renewables across North America, including the White House, New York and the Texas capitol building in Austin. 

EXXON KNEW ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE IN 1981, FUNDING TO ARGUE DENIAL

According to an article in the Guardian newspaper, published on the 8th of July 2015, ExxonMobil, the world’s biggest oil company, knew as early as 1981 of climate change – seven years before it became a public issue, according to a newly discovered email from one of the firm’s own scientists. Despite this the firm spent millions over the next 27 years to promote climate denial.

The email from Exxon’s in-house climate expert provides evidence the company was aware of the connection between fossil fuels and climate change, and the potential for carbon-cutting regulations that could hurt its bottom line, over a generation ago – factoring that knowledge into its decision about an enormous gas field in south-east Asia. The field, off the coast of Indonesia, would have been the single largest source of global warming pollution at the time.

“Exxon first got interested in climate change in 1981 because it was seeking to develop the Natuna gas field off Indonesia,” Lenny Bernstein, a 30-year industry veteran and Exxon’s former in-house climate expert, wrote in the email. “This is an immense reserve of natural gas, but it is 70% CO2,” or carbon dioxide, the main driver of climate change.

However, Exxon’s public position was marked by continued refusal to acknowledge the dangers of climate change, even in response to appeals from the Rockefellers, its founding family, and its continued financial support for climate denial. Over the years, Exxon spent more than $30m on think-tanks and researchers that promoted climate denial, according to Greenpeace.

Exxon said on Wednesday that it now acknowledges the risk of climate change and does not fund climate change denial groups.

Some climate campaigners have likened the industry to the conduct of the tobacco industry which for decades resisted the evidence that smoking causes cancer.

THE GUARDIAN MARCH 2015 - PETITION BILL & MELINDA GATES

PERU, LIMA DECEMBER 2014 - LIMA CALL FOR CLIMATE ACTION

International negotiators at the Lima climate change talks have agreed on a plan to fight global warming that would for the first time commit all countries to cutting their greenhouse gas emissions.

The plan, agreed at United Nations talks on Sunday, was hailed as an important first step towards a climate change deal due to be finalized in Paris next year. The proposals call on countries to reveal how they will cut carbon pollution, ideally by March next year.

let us hope that this includes sustainable zero carbon housing and smart cities with an energy framework to support electric vehicles.

Negotiators working on a deal to fight climate change had agreed on just a single paragraph of text as the deadline loomed large, casting a shadow over the prospects for a strong outcome in Lima.

While negotiators descended on Lima in a positive mood, buoyed by recent commitments from the US and China, the talks have fallen into a rut. “We are going backwards,” said Alden Meyer, who monitors the climate negotiations for the Union of Concerned Scientists.

“I am not really sure that we will see a clear outcome coming here in Lima,” said the former Mexican president, Felipe Calderon, who addressed the meeting.

The text started at a reasonable 6 pages, ballooned to about 50 by Thursday, with negotiators throwing in their objections to almost every single clause. Just one section, paragraph 34, on countries intensifying engagement in the years up to 2020, has been agreed by negotiators.

“You have got this weird dynamic where China has stood up with their president and president Obama and committed to putting forward economy wide commitments but their formal negotiating position is that those kinds of commitments shouldn’t happen,” Meyer said.

There is also deep division about the next critical phase of a move towards a climate deal in Paris: the March 2015 deadline for countries to announce what they will do to cut greenhouse gas emissions after 2020.

An additional sticking point is monitoring of those pledges. China in particular is opposed to an official audit of its pledges. “Essentially China is saying ‘we will show you our cards but don’t read them’,” De Brum said. The deal could be much weaker than needed to curb warming to 2C above pre-industrial levels, the agreed goal of the talks.

“One of the fundamental flaws of the negotiations is the lack of a clear global goal for limiting global warming based on science,” said Lidy Nacpil of Jubilee South Asia Pacific from the Philippines.

“The Lima talks are setting us up to risk crashing that physical limit,” said Nacpil. “ If countries are not required to make legal contributions on finance and technology there will be no justice - and if there’s no justice there cannot be a deal.”

NOVEMBER 6 2014 - THE GUARDIAN

Obama faces a fight to protect his climate change agenda after midterm results suggest Senate’s top environmental post will fall to Republican stalwart of climate denial.

However, advocates believe Obama will work to protect his signature power plant rules from Republican attacks, and to live up to his earlier commitments to a global deal on fight climate change.

“We think he sees this as a critically important part of his second term legacy and there is no reason why he should not continue to go forward on this... both domestically and around the world,” Gene Karpinski, president of the League of Conservation Voters, told a press briefing.

The campaigners were less clear, however, how far Obama would be willing to fight to block the Keystone XL pipeline project. Obama will get a chance to show he is still committed to fighting climate change during a trip to Beijing next week, where the US and Chinese are expected to announce new energy co-operation.

Extracting a pledge from China to cut emissions is hugely important now for Obama, who faces growing pressure from Republicans to demonstrate that other countries beyond the US – especially the high-emissions, rising economies – are acting on climate change.

“It is a domestic political imperative for the president to gain emissions reductions from China and other major emitters as much as it is an international policy goal,” said Paul Bledsoe, a climate change official in the Clinton White House.

“The president is under increasing pressure to gain emissions reductions from China and other major emitters in order to justify US domestic mitigation policy. That is going to be the spin Republicans put on it – that we are wasting our time with domestic emissions reductions because they will be swamped by developing countries’ pollution.”

Obama is going to feel that pressure the most from Congress. With his opponents now in control of both houses, the top slot on the Senate’s environment and public works committee passes from a climate defender, the California Democrat, Barbara Boxer, to Inhofe. He published a book in 2012 calling global warming a hoax, and has compared the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to the Gestapo.

A spokeswoman for Inhofe said his first concern was passing the defence budget, and that he would make no comment on his leadership roles until next week. But if, as expected, Inhofe becomes the new committee chair next January, he will probably try to dismantle the EPA rules cutting greenhouse gas emissions from power plants – the centrepiece of Obama’s environmental agenda.

Industry lobbyists and campaigners said Inhofe lacked the votes to throw out the power plant rules entirely. Obama would also veto any such move, said Scott Segal, an energy and coal lobbyist with Bracewell & Giuliani.

“I’m not sure we have the votes to advance those across the finish line particularly if they are vetoed,” Segal told a conference call with reporters. Instead, he said he expected “tailored changes”, which could weaken the rules. Bledsoe did expect, however, that Obama will sign off on the controversial Keystone XL project early next year.

Republicans have said approving the pipeline, built to pump tar sands crude to Texas Gulf Coast refineries, would be an early order of business.

Obama in his post-election press conference gave no indication what he would decide. But Bledsoe said: “I actually believe the president is likely to approve the pipeline and in the process deny Republicans a politically potent issue.”

From his perch in the Senate, Inhofe is expected to launch multiple investigations into the EPA – including Republican charges that the agency leaned heavily on a campaign group in drafting the proposed new rules.

But as committee chair, Inhofe is unlikely to indulge in quite the same level of theatrics on climate denial, said RL Miller, a California lawyer and founder of the grassroots organising group, Climate Hawks Vote.

“I expect we are going to see less headline-grabbing efforts on the EPA and more of simply throttling their budget,” Miller said. “If he touches climate denial at all he is going to be ridiculed in public and in the media. If he is smart, he is going to be very quiet publicly, and it will be death by a thousand cuts in the kind of budget battles that people like Jon Stewart don’t pay attention to.”

Despite their upbeat postures, Tuesday’s results were a big setback for campaign groups which had invested an unprecedented amount in trying to elect pro-climate candidates to Congress.

The former hedge fund billionaire, Tom Steyer, spent nearly $75m on advertising and organising in only seven races, making him the biggest known single spender in these elections. Only three of his candidates won.

“There is no way to dance around the issue that in too many races we lost good allies,” Michael Brune, the director of the Sierra Club, told a briefing. “We see those people being replaced by people that are against our values.” But the environmental leaders blamed the poor showing on low turnout in an off election year – and continued to insist that climate change was becoming a top-tier issue.

They insisted their effort had put climate change on the electoral map – a big shift from 2012 when virtually no candidates would even utter the words climate change. This time around, Republican candidates were forced to back away from outright climate denial, the campaigners said.

They noted Cory Gardner, the newly elected Republican Senator from Colorado, had appeared in campaign ads with wind turbines, after earlier disparaging climate science. “Climate denial is an endangered species,” Brune said.

INDIAN EXPRESS - NOVEMBER 2 2014

The United Nations’ expert panel on climate science on Saturday finished a report on global warming that the UN’s environment agency said offers “conclusive evidence” that humans are altering the Earth’s climate system.

The document, which combines the findings of three earlier reports, was adopted after all-night talks that went on until 5 am Saturday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The scientists and government representatives on the panel, who jointly approved the document line by line, then rested for a few hours before resuming the session in Copenhagen to finish the document. The report is scheduled to be released to the public on Sunday.

Apart from discussing the human influence, the report is expected to describe how climate impacts, including melting Arctic sea ice and rising levels, are already happening and could become irreversible unless the world curbs its greenhouse gas emissions.

The IPCC says scientists are now 95 per cent certain that the buildup of such gases from the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation is the main cause of warming seen since the middle of the 20th century.

IPCC vice chair Jean-Pascal van Ypersele wrote on Twitter that the report was adopted Saturday afternoon following round-the-clock talks.

The UN Environment Program said the report “offers conclusive scientific evidence that human activities continue to cause unprecedented changes in the Earth’s climate.”

In an interview with The Associated Press, UNEP head Achim Steiner said the world has the technology and capacity to act, and needs to do so urgently. The cost of achieving emissions cuts increases exponentially with each year “because you will have to make far more drastic changes in our economy,” Steiner said.

While the IPCC tries to avoid explicitly telling governments what they should do, the report will present scenarios showing that warming can be kept in check if the world shifts its energy system toward renewable sources like wind and solar power and implements technologies to capture greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

Lord Nicholas Stern, a professor at the London School of Economics and the author of an influential earlier study, said the new IPCC report was the “most important assessment of climate change ever prepared” and that it made plain that “further delays in tackling climate change would be dangerous and profoundly irrational”.

“The reality of climate change is undeniable, and cannot be simply wished away by politicians who lack the courage to confront the scientific evidence,” he said, adding that the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people were at risk.

Bill McKibben, a high-profile climate campaigner with 350.org, said: “For scientists, conservative by nature, to use ‘serious, pervasive, and irreversible’ to describe the effects of climate falls just short of announcing that climate change will produce a zombie apocalypse plus random beheadings plus Ebola.” Breaking the power of the fossil fuel industry would not be easy, McKibben said. “But, thanks to the IPCC, no one will ever be able to say they weren’t warned.”

The report calculates that to prevent dangerous climate change, investment in low-carbon electricity and energy efficiency will have to rise by several hundred billion dollars a year before 2030. But it also found that delaying significant emissions cuts to 2030 puts up the cost of reducing carbon dioxide by almost 50%, partly because dirty power stations would have to be closed early. “If you wait, you also have to do more difficult and expensive things,” said Jim Skea, a professor at Imperial College London and an IPCC working group vice chair.

“Rich governments must stop making empty promises and come up with the cash so the poorest do not have to foot the bill for the lifestyles of the wealthy,” said Harjeet Singh, from ActionAid.

The statement that carbon emissions must fall to zero was “game changing”, according to Kaisa Kosonen, from Greenpeace. “We can still limit warming to 2C, or even 1.5C or less even, [but] we need to phase out emissions,” she said. Unlike CCS, which is yet to be proven commercially, she said renewable energy was falling rapidly in cost.

Sam Smith, from WWF, said: “The big change in this report is that it shows fighting climate change is not going to cripple economies and that it is essential to bringing people out of poverty. What is needed now is concerted political action.” The rapid response of politicians to the recent global financial crisis showed, according to Smith, that “they could act quickly and at scale if they are sufficiently motivated”.

THE GUARDIAN SEPTEMBER 21 2014 - WORLD WIDE PROTESTS ON EVE SUMMIT

More than 300,000 marchers flooded the streets of New York on Sunday in the largest climate change march in history, vaulting the environmental threat to the top of the global agenda.

On a day of 2,700 simultaneous climate events from Melbourne to Manhattan, the US secretary of state, John Kerry, reinforced the calls from the streets for action by calling on world leaders to take the threat of climate change as seriously as Isis or Ebola.

Organisers had called the day of protests in order to put pressure on world leaders gathering in New York for a UN summit on climate change on Tuesday. It will be the leaders’ first such meeting in five years.

Kerry, in remarks to foreign ministers of the 20 biggest economies, said climate change should be at the top of the agenda despite competition from more immediate challenges.

“While we are confronting [Isis], and we are confronting terrorism and we are confronting Ebola, this also has an 
immediacy that people have come to understand,” he said. “There is a long list of important issues before all of us, but the grave threat that climate change poses warrants a prominent position on that list.”

Organisers claimed 570,000 people protested in 161 countries, from a handful of protesters in Aleppo, Syria, to the mega-march by 310,000 through New York City – three times as many as the 100,000 people organisers had expected, and easily overtaking the 80,000 who demonstrated for climate action in Copenhagen in 2009.

In Manhattan, the noisy, hopeful cavalcade of protesters – led by Hurricane Sandy survivors carrying placards of sunflowers and Native Americans in traditional headdresses – took over the streets of Midtown, juggling, singing, blowing synagogue shofars and conch shells, whistling and beating drums, with biodiesel-powered floats chugging along.

They hoisted a papier-mache representation of Mother Earth and a giant parachute emblazoned with monarch butterflies, and carried signs reading “Melt chocolate, not polar ice caps” and “May the 
forest be with you”.

Upper West Side mothers pushed expensive strollers alongside protesters carrying signs reading “angry pacifists”.

“I think it will make a difference,” said Tashina Red Hawk, aged 10, who wore intricately beaded traditional Sioux Indian dress, and who lives on the Rosebud reservation in South Dakota. “But it would still be good to do all kinds of other stuff.” She went on: “If you don’t take care of the land, it won’t take care of you.”

In London, organisers said 40,000 took to the sunlit streets and marched to the Houses of Parliament. The protest was peaceful, although loud jeers rose up as the crowd passed both Downing Street and the Department of Energy and Climate Change.

In Melbourne, protesters paraded a giant puppet of the Australian prime minister, Tony Abbott.

The People’s Climate March came two days before the US president, Barack Obama, and about 120 other world leaders gather for the UN meeting on climate change.

The challenge for those leaders is clear: left unchecked, the world is on course for a 4.5C temperature rise. “For us that means annihilation,” said Tony deBrum, the foreign minister of the Marshall Islands.

Annual carbon dioxide emissions rose 2.5% over last year, a new study found at the weekend. At those rates, that means the global “carbon budget” – the amount governments can afford to emit without triggering catastrophic change – is likely to be used up within just 30 years.

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced last week that June, July, and August were the hottest months on record and that 2014 was on course to break the record for hottest year, which was set in 2010.

But the agenda for Tuesday’s gathering is uncertain. The UN has said repeatedly the gathering is not a negotiation. That will take place in Lima in two months’ time, when diplomats will enter the final stretch of long and difficult negotiations aimed at reaching an international agreement to cut the greenhouse gases that cause climate change, by the time they meet in late 2015 in Paris.

The UN said it will use Tuesday’s gathering to press world leaders to do more: to cut more carbon and, for the rich countries, put up more cash to help poor countries cope with climate change.

DeBrum said countries such as his, on the frontline of climate change, needed to see concrete signs that leaders were prepared to make deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions and put up the cash needed to help poor countries cope with climate change. He said he was disappointed that leaders of some of the biggest polluters – China, India, Canada, and Australia – would not be at the climate summit.

The day started in Melbourne, where demonstrators carried their giant Abbott in protest at his repeal of the carbon price. This time the usual call-and-response of “What do we want? Climate action. When do we want it? Now” was revised to “10 years ago”, for a crowd that felt it had already fought this battle.

“I’m deeply concerned about my children’s future. They are the ones who will have to clean it up,” Victoria Marshall-Cerins said. “Australia is now dragging its heels. From one of the world’s leaders, we’re now going backwards. We’re embarrassing.”

In London, the campaign group Avaaz, which helped organise the event, said 40,000 people attended, although other estimates put the crowd at 27,000. A rally was held outside parliament, which the compere kicked off by asking the crowd: “Who’s sick of the ice receding faster than David Cameron’s hairline?”

The bishop of London, Richard Chartres, gave the first speech. “We are tenants, and we must keep the Earth fit for our children,” he said. “Climate change is a moral issue.”

The designer Vivienne Westwood railed against capitalism in her address: “A triad of [fossil fuel] monopolies, banks and politicians are ruining the planet. If runaway climate change kicks in then within a generation there will be very little habitable on the planet and the suffering will be unimaginable.”

Alice Hooker-Stroud, a scientist from the Centre for Alternative Technology in Wales, used the platform to argue that a zero-carbon Britain was attainable with existing energy technologies. “We have huge renewable energy resources in the UK,” she said. “Business as usual is not a possible future.”

In the crowd, Victoria Bamford, a 66-year old gardener from Wales, had left her home at 6am to reach the capital in time. “We are on a knife edge now in every way,” she said. She had noticed changes in the climate in her work. “You cannot rely on the seasons any more, and plants are getting stressed and ill,” she said. “I’m no bloody expert, but we have to tackle the fossil fuel business, but I don’t think the government is doing anything.” 

Nearby, 10-year-old Lauren [her mother declined to give her surname] from Oxford, was carrying a colourful homemade banner which declared: “Tick tock climate clock – stop climate change now.”

The gay rights activist Peter Tatchell told The Guardian: “Climate change is a global emergency – governments governments must act soon.”

Ben Phillips, the campaigns director of the charity Oxfam, explained why his organisation took part: “In the past five years alone, that’s since the last time leaders met to discuss climate change, 112,000 lives have been lost, 650 million people have been affected by climate-change related disasters and half a trillion dollars has been lost.”

He said the march was about keeping the pressure up on politicians. “If you ask the suffragettes, the civil rights 
movement or the India freedom movement just 10 years in, 20 years in, ‘what have you achieved?’, they’d say: ‘Well we’ll keep on fighting until we win’, and so will we.”

Numerous marchers wore costumes, including a polar bear and small herd of gazelles. One of the latter, Merlin from Brighton, said: “People are important, but animals are vital as well. We are here representing all the animals not here today.”

The London march ended with a minute of silent reflection, followed by loud cheers.

In Paris, organisers said 25,000 people attended – heavy with the knowledge that history would be made on climate, one way or another, in the city in a year’s time. Police put the attendance at 8,000.

An Avaaz campaigner, Pascal Vollenwieder, said the global action was designed to restore the sense of momentum at the beginning of a year-long campaign leading up to the Paris conference.

“This is just the starting point,” he said. “After Copenhagen, we had to show the people that there is still a climate movement.”

JOHN KERRY FEBRUARY 2014 - CLIMATE CHANGE WAKE UP CALL

Kerry, who has long been a passionate advocate of the need to protect the environment, arrived in Indonesia late Saturday for bilateral meetings.

On Sunday he toured a mosque to pay tribute to the country with the world’s largest Muslim population.

Later he was to deliver his speech before Indonesian students and professors at a US-run centre in Jakarta. It will be beamed live to other hubs on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra.

Kerry will make “the compelling and undeniable scientific case of this growing challenge that is pushing the planet towards a tipping point of no return”, the State Department official said, asking not to be named.

Global warming was threatening not just the environment, but also “the economy and our way of life”, the official said.

He will also “underscore the ways in which Asia is particularly impacted”, she added.

Along with the United States, Indonesia, an archipelago of 17,000 islands, is one of the world’s biggest carbon emitters - in Jakarta’s case because of rampant deforestation.

Kerry announced on Saturday in Beijing that China and the United States had agreed to share information on their efforts to combat climate change ahead of 2015 UN-led efforts to set emission reduction goals for after 2020.

Together the United States and China account for some 40 percent of total emissions of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.

But traditionally they have been on opposite ends of the bitter debate on how to tackle the problem, with China maintaining it is still a developing country and should not be held to any international regime on emissions reductions.

Paris will host the 2015 UN climate change conference at which a new pact to cut global emissions applicable to all countries is due to be hammered out.

The Paris talks are aimed at reaching a deal to succeed the 1997 Kyoto treaty, which the United States never ratified, maintaining any global pact must include China. The Kyoto protocol runs out in 2020.

The agreement to collaborate ahead of next year’s talks between China, the developing world’s largest emitter, and the United States, the developed world’s biggest greenhouse gas producer, could send a powerful signal to other developing countries to clean up their act.

Currently developing countries account for some 55% of global emissions, with developed countries having made major efforts to cut carbon pollutants escaping into the atmosphere.

But much of those emissions come from manufacturing goods which are then exported to the developed world.

If little is done to reduce emissions from developing countries, experts fear that by 2030 they could account for as much as 60% of all greenhouse gas emissions.

SHIPPING

Cargo ships and cruise liners are major polluters, pumping out millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. Ships that are solar and wind powered could change all that, but at the moment there is no political will to even want to investigate the possibilities with studies, and/or test projects aimed at the eventual phase in of truly clean ocean transport.

LINKS & REFERENCE

https://twitter.com/brimastroianni

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/2016-election-donald-trump-hillary-clinton-climate-change/

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/apr/07/david-cameron-no-climate-change-envoy

The Guardian 2014 December 14 Lima-climate-change-talks-reach-agreement

The Guardian 2014 Lima climate talks fail to reach agreement

The Guardian rapid-carbon-emission-cuts-severe-impact-climate-change-ipcc-report

BBC news science-environment

Indian Express United Nations panel adopts landmark climate report

The Guardian environment 2014 Sept 21 climate change protest melbourne london new york

The Guardian environment 2015 June 29 Barack Obama turns tables in davi attenborough climate change interview

https://www.conservatives.com/

http://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/07/david-cameron-admits-he-profited-fathers-offshore-fund-panama-papers

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/apr/07/david-cameron-no-climate-change-envoy

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/nov/29/climate-change-marches-au
stralia-sydney-canberra-perth-weekend-of-protest

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jun/29/barack-obama-turns-tables-in-david-attenborough-climate-change-interview

https://www.edx.org/course/making-sense-climate-science-denial-uqx-denial101x#!

http://www.gci.uq.edu.au/john-cook

http://skepticalscience.com/

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/may/21/the-worlds-largest-cruise-ship-and-its-supersized-pollution-problem

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/dec/11/lima-climate-talks-fail-agreement-single-paragraph-deal

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/nov/06/climate-denier-jim-inhofe-in-line-for-senates-top-environmental-job

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/nov/02/rapid-carbon-emission-cuts-severe-impact-climate-change-ipcc-report

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/science-environment-29820051

http://www.ipcc.ch/

http://www.un.org/en/

US http://www.msc.navy.mil/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Oceanographic_Office

http://www.cruiselawnews.com/tags/bunker-fuel/

http://www.maritimejournal.com/news101/pollution-control/low-sulphur-fuel-supply-from-2015

http://www.cruiselawnews.com/tags/bunker-fuel/

http://indianexpress.com/article/world/world-others/united-nations-panel-adopts-landmark-climate-report/

http://www.ths.org.uk

http://www.spri.cam.ac.uk/friends/committee/

http://www.thefutureofnavigation.com/ten_steps.aspx

http://www.quaynote.com/ankiti/www/?code=ecdis13&f=programme

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/can-the-military-meet-its-renewable-energy-goals-July24-2013

http://www.renewableenergyworld-events.com/register.html

SEAVOLUTION - The patent Bluefish zero carbon development platform, is a proposal for a robotic ocean workhorse capable of relatively high speeds with a suitable hullform, or for ocean cleaning duties as seen above. These designs could lead to clean ocean transport. The robot ship uses no diesel fuel to perform whatever function it is programmed to carry out, such as monitoring the oceans autonomously (COLREGS compliant) 24/7 and 365 days a year - only possible with the revolutionary (patent) energy harvesting system. The hullform could be adapted for zero carbon cruise liners. We would welcome the opportunity to discuss the potential with international fleet operators.  It is estimated that this vessel pays for itself in fuel saved every ten years. That is suggestive that cruise ships may be run more profitably if zero carbon, by design.

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