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Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Maldives Environment Minister Thoriq Ibrahim has warned that unless the Maldives gets its climate cash before 2020, the 1.5C global warming limit will be breached.
We need bold action before 2020 to hold global warming below 1.5C
Published on 26/04/2018, 9:00am
If rich countries fail to live up to their promises over the next two years, they condemn small islands to catastrophic warming impacts, says Maldives minister
By Thoriq Ibrahim
A recent report found that unless bold climate action is taken in the next couple of years – before 2020 – it may become impossible to hold global warming below 1.5C.
This could prove catastrophic for small island developing states like mine that have already witnessed severe climate change impacts at just the 1C of warming the world has already experienced, including the devastating hurricane season that struck the Caribbean last year.
Next week international climate change negotiators will gather in Bonn, Germany for the first in-person meeting of the “Talanoa Dialogue”, the new UN process designed to track international efforts to implement the Paris Agreement.
…
Since the beginning of the UN climate change negotiations and through the Paris Agreement, it has always been understood that developed countries would take the lead in transitioning to low-carbon energy sources because they are responsible for the vast majority of historic emissions.
Time and again they also agreed to provide financial support for developing countries to build their own renewable energy systems.
It has also long been recognised, and is explicitly laid out in the Paris Agreement, that pre-2020 action lays the foundation for a global transition to sustainable energy and, importantly, builds trust among all parties that we will all live up to our commitments in the future.
But many developed countries’ pre-2020 obligations remain unmet and now some seem eager to forego early action altogether.
…
Read more: http://www.climatechangenews.com/2018/04/26/paris-agreement-starts-2020-will-late/
This call for climate cash echoes a similar demand from African nations a few weeks ago.
I’m not sure how the Maldives reconciles their climate concerns with all their fly-in tourism and their aggressive airport and resort building programmes, but no doubt some of that climate cash will help with the reconciliation if it ever arrives.
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Answer: Look in NY,NY or Paris
Maybe it would help if they held another underwater cabinet “meeting”. Because stunts like that are so “convincing”.
I checked on Google earth, and the island of Malé has a park with and elevation of 33 ft above sea level. I guess if worse came to worse its 92,000 people could congregate in that park. Much of the rest of the island has an elevation of 29 ft. down to 3-7 feet in areas near the ocean…
Damn – “an elevation of 33 ft…”
Google earth view location, shows elevation in Sultan Park of 33 ft.:
4°10’39.25″ N 73°30’39.09″ E
But wait! The Maldives Environment Minister is wrong! There is no distinction that’s made between developed and developing countries in the Paris Agreement. It says so in this AP Factcheck article:
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/apnews.com/amp/3cb1758925614d1fb589534412daa4a9
President Trump says this in the article:
“They called India a developing nation. They call China a developing nation. But the United States? We’re developed. We can pay.” — CPAC speech.
But a top climate scientist from MIT says in response that:
“Such differential treatment “has nothing to do with the Paris Agreement,” said Henry “Jake” Jacoby, founding co-director of MIT’s Joint Center on the Science and Policy of Global Change, in an email. “The Paris Agreement does NOT … impose specific differential action among countries regarding greenhouse emissions abatement.””
Henry Jake Jacoby must surely know the Paris Agreement backwards. After all, his department, the MIT Joint Program on Global Change is continually analysing the Agreement and modelling emission/temperature scenarios based on it.
In fact, the MIT Global Change twitter account was so adamant that Jacoby was correct that they tweeted a link to the AP Factcheck article (now a broken link hence link above):
https://twitter.com/mitglobalchange/status/968140827074670592?s=21
The tweet reads “Joint Program founding Co-Director Henry (“Jake”) Jacoby corrects U.S. president’s misinterpretation of the Paris Agreement.”
In fact, Jacoby and his department’s twitter account are so sure Trump is wrong and they are right on this matter that even after I replied with 10 screenshotted pages of the Paris Agreement with 44 references to developed and developing countries and their differential obligations, they didn’t delete their tweet, nor issue an apology to president Trump nor ask AP Factcheck to correct their article.
So if top MIT climate scientists are this adamant that differential treatment between developed and developing countries “has nothing to do with the Paris Agreement” I think they should be publicly rebuking the Maldives Environment Minister for saying we need to stump up the cash and importuning their president to send not a dime more.
It’s amazing how deep the mainstream media is up the ass of these leftist causes, they have lost all perspective and sense of perspective, they cannot see when their side tells egregious lies. Cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias at its best. The mainstream media beat the drum about developed/undeveloped nations ad nauseum for years, and now pretend like that had nothing to do with it? These people are very dangerous.
VERY dangerous.
WR, having dealt with the news media at every level from literally the first week of my career to doing an interview the last day, I can assure you no matter how bad you think it is relative to the MSM being far left, it is far worse than you can imagine. Fundamentally if you are not buying and selling the present leftist orthodoxy you are ignorant, evil, from the dark side, a racist, even a threat to world peace.
That is another step towards blurring scientific and political terms to derail the dialog:
Global Change:
First it was global warming, then climate change (because of the pause, the record snowfalls and other things), and now is global change.
And like the other terms, it means what they want to mean. Only more obscure, this way it is more difficult to refute.
By remarkable coincidence, the climate cash is located in the same place as the “missing heat” is. Go figure.
The missing heat is in Switzerland?
So if they don’t get “their” money by 2020, will the next last chance be 2025 (or 2030, 2035, etc.)?
If the sea levels are still rising, years after Obama stepped in to stop them, and if the climate is still posing problems after Paris, the only solution is to issue an international warrant and have the climate arrested.
If it’s not going to abide by the law, make an example of it.
Some interesting history:
Around 900 years ago, the Sultanate of Persia was busy conquering the Indian subcontinent. It turned out to be a whole ‘nother world the Persians didn’t understand, so they dispatched high brain-power expeditions to report on various aspects of what they were getting. A guy we call Alberuni in English covered the Maldives among many other topics. Years after his expedition, he wrote it up in his memoirs. He said that occasionally an island would sink or another would rise from the sea. The locals took it in stride and could transfer stuff from an old island to a new island. So it had always been—a price for having your own islands. Alberuni reported what he saw and what the locals could tell him in straight, objective, naturalistic prose. He blamed no agencies human or supernatural. He conjectured no doubtful causalities. How far government-sponsored earth science has fallen in 900 years!
Perhaps if they are really good and pray 5 times per day, Allah will raise their islands an additional 10’…Or not.
Otherwise they could always ask China who seems to have no problem raising Islands in the South China Sea
Interestingly, China is already very active in the Maldives and wants to make it a “hub” of the One Belt and One Road initiative.
Man. Mitigation writ large. Who’da thunk?
A few millions in adaptation vs. a few trillions of mitigation.
From the Daily Mail and the Guardian;
Rising sea levels will make low-lying atoll islands like the Seychelles and Maldives uninhabitable as soon as 2030
Experts studied Roi-Namur Island in the Marshall Islands from 2013 to 2015
The primary source of drinking water for atolls is rain that soaks into the ground
Rising sea levels are predicted to result in seawater contaminating this source
This is predicted to be an annual occurrence by the middle of the 21st Century
Human inhabitatance of atoll islands could become impossible by 2030 to 2060
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5656793/Rising-sea-levels-make-low-lying-atoll-islands-uninhabitable-2030.html
Climate change to drive migration from island homes sooner than thought (GW refugees, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, USGS)
Low-lying atolls around the world will be overtaken by sea level rises within a few decades, according to a new study
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/25/climate-change-to-drive-migration-from-island-homes-sooner-than-thought
The study;
Most atolls will be uninhabitable by the mid-21st century because of sea level rise exacerbating wave-driven flooding (GHG emissions, models)
http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/4/eaap9741.full
Those atolls drinking water (the eye) will long be polluted with sewage well before sea level rise “gets” them.
Of course they will be uninhabitable if the sea level rises (that’s IF, not when) because they are being covered in concrete so the coral can’t grow up to meet the new sea level.
@Cam_S
For the last 20,000 years sea level has risen by more than 125m at best the argument is that the death of the atolls was brought forward in time. If you care to read the life cycle of an atoll they are always in a fight to stay afloat with lots of forces trying to sink them. Human habitation of them is always going to be fraught with a risk.
I am with Smart Rock the act of people living there is probably contributing more to the problem than CAGW. The reality may well be the island sinks forcing all the humans to leave and then nature takes back over establishing back the atoll.
I am sure the die hard greens believe in santa clause and the tooth fairy and the world is going to magically stop all industrial development to “perhaps” save these people from moving. The truth is nothing will happen and you are selling these people false hope.
Cam_S
Your seriously using the Daily Mail and the Guardian as sources of reliable information?
Pull the other, it has bells on it.
You’re!!!!!!!!!!
The Japanese, advised by Donald Trump I think, sorted it for them. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/3930765.stm
“Male, the capital, is surrounded by a 3m-high (9.8ft) wall, which took 14 years to construct at a cost of $63m. Unable to foot the bill themselves, the government happily accepted aid from Japan, which paid for 99% of the cost.”
Has the UN provided any “developing” nation with renewable energy infrastructure assistance? After how many years? So now they have figured out they’ve been scammed twice? First the UN …. via their World Bank surrogate …. stops loaning money for building fossil fuel energy plants. Then it doesn’t come through with other people’s money as promised? What happened to the $500M Obama gave them on the last day of his Presidency? Is the wealth redistribution not happening? Now people are questioning the whole purpose behind the so called “Globalization” scam as well. Did they over promise and under deliver like they did with Global Warming? Where’s the money going? SHOW ME THE MONEY 🙂
It’s actually amusing looking at the Climate fund expenditure
https://www.greenclimate.fund/documents/20182/490910/GCF_B.15_21_Rev.01_-_Administrative_Budget_of_the_Green_Climate_Fund_for_2017.pdf/a81747f5-e383-4ba9-b232-417482798098
In total the proposed 2017 administrative budget is USD 45.7 million, there are a lot of snouts in the money trough and getting more each year. It has approved 54 projects adding up to USD$2.65 billion. As at 17 May 2017, USD$10.3 billion has been pledged which is actually USD$8.3 billion if the USA does not honor it’s outstanding $2Billion.
Here is the current pledge status at 20 April 2018
https://www.greenclimate.fund/documents/20182/24868/Status_of_Pledges.pdf/eef538d3-2987-4659-8c7c-5566ed6afd19
You will see the USA is still shown as $3B having paid $1B
What a fricken joke! They don’t show how much money has actually been deposited to the fund.
I live on the Atlantic Ocean in Eleurthera. The ocean level has creeped up by .0001 inch since I bought my property. I demand reparations!!
I see Emangela ‘Jupiter’ Merkron was delivering Globalist speeches in Congress where he attempted to humiliate Trump and his administration on the usual leftist tropes -including of course global warming and the Paris Accords – to interminable rapturous standing ovations from the entirety of Congress. Dark and dangerous times.
A long time ago, I learned that with liberals the primary issue is taking the money. The secondary is what it is spent on. Although secondary, it is the banner or the sizzle, that inspires the fundraising or taxing.
In the 1970s Canada, Foreign Affairs was sending aid to African countries that had ended colonialism. It became obvious that it was “one-man-one-vote, once”. Then it was discovered that most of the “aid” was going into Swiss banks. To end this outrage was unthinkable. The department of foreign aid employed many in Ottawa and its job was to take the tax-payers’ money and give it away. That id did not get to desperate people did not matter.
More lately, the banner has been global warming. But it is the same story, taking money from taxpayers for some grand scheme.
It’s time for a big, loud “No!”.
We only have 2 years to “fix” the rise and we’re out of cash. Too bad. We’re all toast.
Can’t we have a paid climate troll get on here and provide us some entertainment?
Well I’m pretty amenable but how much does it pay? You are looking for a consummate professional stand in I presume.
I have the credentials! Over my professional career I’ve B.S.ed numerous bureaucracies and political bodies.
In fact, I lobbied the Nevada Legislature for renewable portfolio standards. Why? I was developing a geothermal electric power plant for which I wanted to force the local investor owned utility to buy the output at an inflated price!
Yes, I’m a ho. But a fun one!
I’m a troll, fol-dee-rol, I’m a troll, fol-dee-rol
I’m a troll, fol-dee-rol, fol-dee-rol-dee-rullee
I have three heads and I have three hats
I have three chins and I have three cats
I have six eyes and I have six ears
When I cry, I cry six tears
I’m fed up with sitting under this bridge so I’ll do it
…but terms & conditions apply.
Why do I think 2020 will come and go, yet he will still be saying the same thing, only with a different deadline?…
…Because that is what always happens. Doom is perpetually upon us, we are told, but it never actually arrives. It’s like one of those Disney cartoons where Wile E. Coyote seems to have an infinity of time before the falling anvil actually hits him. And even when it does, he lives to experience it again in the next episode.
The Maldives islands are not sinking into the sea. In fact most of the islands have increased in land area or remained stable over the last few decades. They are coral atolls, which grow taller as the sea rises. That is why they exist. If they did not grow they would have disappeared beneath the waves long ago.
Clearly we need a Go-Fund-Me Page to raise a whole $5.00
If I’d known that all we have to do to stop CAGW was to send a couple of billion to the Maldives, I’d have voted for that years ago.
Has the USA actually contributed 1 billion dollars, or is that only Obama’s promise?
Obama handed it over, and he gave them an IOU for another $2Billion on your behalf.
Wasn’t it delivered in cash in small denominations via an unmarked aircraft in the dead of night?
The old two words come to mind.
Yes, they are already experiencing severe climate change impacts. Impacts like their islands are growing. Horrors! Quick, send them $billions so the climate will stop changing!
I was seriously considering vacationing in the Maldives in the next month or two. This, and the fact that they are run by an intolerant Muslim government, has changed my mind. Every hotel is super expensive there, as well as the transfer from the int’l airport to your hotel ($500 pp for a 15 minute flight, thanks to a monopoly by the local airline, and you know the corrupt gov’t is taking a cut of that). I’ll spend my tourist money elsewhere thanks.
Gawd, I love private enterprise. People vote with their money.
Maldives doomed without more windmills? Follow the money: https://www.globalpropertyguide.com/Asia/Maldives/price-change-1-year No sign of any flooding there.
To which I would reply: “Go pleasure yourself”. What about this new runway, built to accept the Airbus 380?
http://maldivesindependent.com/business/new-runway-construction-begins-at-maldives-international-airport-136515