Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Just in case you missed this month’s failed Bonn climate summit (don’t forget the extended session in Bangkok), or the Melbourne Climate Adaption Conference earlier this month, there is plenty of climate action happening now at the R20 World Summit in Austria.
Climate change: An ‘existential threat’ to humanity, UN chief warns global summit
None of the world’s challenges loom as large as climate change, the United Nations chief told a major climate action summit on Tuesday, reiterating his belief that global warming poses an “existential threat” to humanity.
Both leadership and innovation are essential for climate action, Secretary-General António Guterres said in his keynote address to the global gathering, known as the R20 Austrian World Summit – a long-term initiative to help regions, States and cities implement the Sustainable Development Goals and meet the Paris Agreement targets.
Mr. Guterres spelled out: “We must use all our resources to build a sense of urgency”, to raise ambition, while keeping temperature rises in the years ahead, as close to 1.5 degrees Celsius as possible.
He said there was reason to hope, declaring that “the world is seeing a groundswell of climate action”, citing examples, including Morocco’s building of a solar farm “the size of Paris, that will power over a million homes by 2020” and China’s achievement in already passing it’s 2020 goal of producing 105 gigawatts of solar power capacity.
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Read more: https://news.un.org/en/story/2018/05/1009782
Isn’t it wonderful that we taxpayers have the opportunity to provide funds for the thousands of bureaucrats and scientists who tirelessly climate conference around the world on our behalf.
Heart disease is his biggest existential threat.
…plus sleep apnea.
He looks rather prosperous.
If he were to give-away all his personal wealth and property … and commit his life to Jesus Christ … he could drastically reduce the size of his carbon footprint, if not reduce the size of his physiognomy
“and commit his life to Jesus Christ …”
& which method would you recomend – gun, high bridge, drugs, exhust gas or rope ?
I think what he meant, was not that climate change is an existential threat to him – which is necessarily true because he’s old and obese. I think climage change, or rather lack of it, is an existential threat to United Nations. He wants money, and he uses strong language to collect that money.
I do think we live now the peak “climate change”. There is no way the current situation can continue for a very long time. Either serious AGW happens and contrarians mostly shut up, or it doesn’t happen, and climate change talk will just dissipate.
The question to pose is how much bad things compared to good things can honestly be attributed to carbon dioxide, and what is return on investment when we try to change that result. While the answer is highly disputed, the return appears to be not remotely as high as these
liarssay.What we have ended up with is talking about economy with socialists. That one never works.
Hugs, agree with you about “Peak Climate Change” – the climatistas have made the same mistake that doom-preaching apocalyptics have been making for centuries. They (correctly) realized that people weren’t paying as much attention to them as they liked, and thus that they weren’t getting the level of control that they desired, so they turned up the DOOM!!!! knob to 11, and began preaching “You will all perish in flame!!!!”
as loudly as they could.
The problem, of course, is that the Perishing has got to turn up sooner or later, or people will start to figure out that the “preacher” is just running a big con game. Because this kind of thing, under different names and wearing different disguises, actually happens pretty regularly.
saveenergy, were you trying to be funny? Because you aren’t.
No, a lack of fear over climate change is the biggest existential threat to a bunch of UN bureaucrats.
The UN is an existential threat to humanity.
+1
² (raised to power of two)
Mark, we find common ground!
Aaahhh, the UN.
The organisation which can take on any bad situation and make it infinitely worse (no strings attached and all paid for by us mugs).
If we didn’t have it we’d need to re-invent it, or something really bad would go real wrong, and would cost us a lot of money, or it would never get better again.
I also agree !
It should NOT be funded by OUR governments BECAUSE it WORKS AGAINST
OUR GOVERNMENTS and especially OUR VALUES and OUR LIFESTYLE !
THE UN is now WORKING TOWARDS “BECOMING OUR GOVERNMENT” !!!
Imagine THAT !!
Endless CHAOS ! Those “Get Smart” TV programmes were on to them though !!
+1
The biggest existential threat to humanity is its own stupidity.
As the Climate Changes UN Secretary General revealed as “Existential Threat” to Humanity
There, fixed the title for you.
Nah! The Climate Change Panic is an existential threat to your wallet!!!
So is the UN a threat to everyone’s wallet. It is just an international coalition of bureaucratic freeloaders that we all pay for.
TomO, it is far worse than just a waste of money
Indeed Stock,
The UN ensures that every problem is treated with the checkbox mentality of increased bureaucratization and institutional inertia. Even relatively small and/or easily solved problems (or imagined problems) are propagated in the UN’s bureaucratic hot house, ensuring they evolve and escalates to a real disasters requiring $billions in resources over many years or generations.
Don’t trust a man to solve a problem, if the existence of his job depends on that problem remaining unsolved.
Maybe it sounds less fatuous in Spanish?
Ever watch Sabado Gigante? Nothing is less fatuous in Spanish… /Sarc
Remember i wrote “sounds less fatuous”, not that it was less fatuous. But Spanish usually sounds better than English.
¡Si, eso es verdad!
He is a fossil fool
No, he dreams of US tax payer largess.
The guy is Portuguese. What he doesn’t realize is that fossil fuel depletion will drive the market to force a move away from fossil fuels.
As you know, I’m in the oil and gas business, so I’m very familiar with what’s going on. To complement what I’m saying I suggest you follow this tweet and track down the author’s comments about coal depletion. His ideas run parallel to mine
https://twitter.com/jritch/status/996453649743147008
That’s true, but it’s not something we need to worry about for 500 to 1000 years.
Plate tectonics, entropy and evolution are actual existential threats to humanity.
Why isn’t the UN addressing the actual existential threats?
5 trillion pieces of plastic in the world’s oceans
Alan Tomalty
Except, the plastic can’t be found. No Pacific garbage patch.
Must be hiding in the deep ocean with the CO2.
Sorry………not CO2, heat.
Duh!
Turns out, the UN doesn’t actually control anything.
The UN controls a narrative of lies. Sad thing is they could be a force for good, but they aren’t.
Alan, you forgot to mention that most of them are smaller than a millimeter in diameter.
Fish love to live in our sunken ships. Sometimes we deliberately scuttle decommissioned vessels in open water, as a gift to our finny friends. Better than leaving them to rust away uselessly on the surface. Real recycling in action. Our trash is their treasure.
In the same vein, plankton and bacteria love to hitch a ride on those tiny rafts of plastic debris.
But there is no money in those.
Alan, I’m not panicking – 5 trillion pieces of plastic in the world’s oceans equates to about 4000 pieces per cubic kilometer, or 1 piece per 250,000 cubic metres. Sounds really scary, unless you are numerate.
Bingo.
And who are the clever guys who have come up with that figure anyway? Even if it is true it is minuscule In any case, none of us, apart from beach holiday makers and those living by the sea will dump plastic into the sea, and if they do, fish and other animals are not going to be so stupid as to eat it, so what is the problem? Another scare caused by ‘caring’. Greenies like Sir David Attenborough and his ilk, whose scaremongering is taken on board by mindless government officials, without thought, just to appease their voters. It is time we had another Thatcher in Britain to open up industry rather than do everything in their power to shut down every industry associated with ‘the problem’ Currently the plastics industry.
Explosive lava is quite a threat of existence on Hawaii at the moment.
Not to mention the universe will eventually run out of Hydrogen to power stars. Consider Peak Hydrogen!
Something else to worry about!!! (/sarc)
The only thing real threat Secretary-General António Guterres has ever had to face is being cut off from the Best Of Everything Buffet provided by Other People’s Money…
Americans with common sense: “the UN is an existential threat to human liberty.”
They are one of the main pushes for 1 world government, with them at the top. Shameful those beasts.
climate change is the 100% natural state of the climate.,,,,,the climate is a set of statistics and those stats constantly change so their output in turn constantly changes……100% natural
According to my local weathercasters … any day that isn’t a crystal clear, mild 82deg. F. with gentle afternoon breezes … is caused by global warming aka climate change aka an existential threat to mankind.
Statistics are being used constantly, every day in every medium, to drive “pantophobia”–the Fear of Everything! Most of the “studies” cited in daily headlines for “health” or dietary scares are either so small or so lacking in methodology they are laughable, but Scare the Masses for clicks is the name of what has become the only relevant game. The Masses being innumerate, a “2.3%” risk can scare them blind without ever asking, “2.3% of WHAT?”
The climate could change some day and pose a threat to all life on the planet.
So far, it hasn’t changed at all and thus we are dealing with a bogeyman.
So some day, the bogeyman could come and pose a threat to all life on the planet.
But then, the bogeyman doesn’t really exist so we are really paying for caviar conferences only in reality.
Hasn’t the World already ended several times from various “Existential Threats” ??
What’s one more time? With Feeling…
I’ve been following the dire predictions of the greens since about 1968, and I should have been dead already.
They believe that Socialism … just hasn’t been done right … yet.
Same with climate change … it just hasn’t been done right … yet.
“WOLF! WOOOOLF!!!”
Existential threat, sustainability, social justice, and anti Earth are the click bait du jour.
Where did he fly from to give the speech?
Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming… Climate Change?
Social justice adventures (i.e. elective wars, resource claims) are first-order forcings of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Immigration Reform, including: trail of tears, excessive immigration, and progressive collateral damage..
A-borting the productive native populations (black, white, whatever) in Africa, and leaving the rest to beg for redistributive change, and charity, in some of the most fertile lands globally, is an existential threat to humanity.
The twilight faith and selective religion are existential threats, that deny individual dignity (e.g. [color] diversity or judgments) and lives deemed unworthy (e.g. planned parenthood), several million annually, globally.
That’s not an existential threat.
This is an existential threat.
http://existentialcomics.com/comic/178
As usual, the grifters at the UN are more than willing to help humanity solve problems that they don’t have.
Much, much easier than solving real problems.
Funny how literally every problem desperately demands these folks get more money and power.
The fake science used to support the UN’s repressive agenda of redistributing wealth under the guise of climate reparations is an existential threat to all scientific truth as their strategy has been to replace the scientific method with political talking points reinforced with guilt and fear.
The UN is a threat to civilization its self.
Existential: “Of or relating to existence,” Oxford American Dictionary, Second Edition. There are two other definitions, one relating to the (failed) philosophy of existentialism, and the other to logic, clearly irrelevant to this speech. Even if the worst fears of Climate Change were true, the human race would go on. Save “Existential Threats” for alien invasions, and other subjects of horror movies. Why would the Sec Gen of the UN want to scare people this way? Or in common parlance, who put the bug up his a**?
Given that the U.N. Secretary General is a convicted Pedophile it stands to reason that the U.N. Secretary General is and Existential Threat to the children of New York City and Burrows.
UN spends over 800 million annually on air travel (not including peace-keeping flights).
Does the UN have a web-page detailing their carbon footprint?
No.
An existential threat eh!
The UN is the biggest existential threat to humanity, not (their version of) climate change.
What does Camus have to do with climate change anyway?
Producing CO2 by his heavy smoking.
http://existentialcomics.com/philosopher/Albert_Camus
The U.N. Secretary General in the video above is giving a speech. Just that – giving a speech.
Watch him and you’ll see he doesn’t really mean what he is saying, he’s just pushing an agenda.
an “existential threat” to humanity.
≠===++++++/&
So make carbon pollution illegal. Forget about carbon taxes. That simply makes it profitable for governments to encourage carbon pollution. The more pollution the more the government makes in taxes. Why would the government want to see this decrease no matter his much they might want us to believe otherwise.
Lead and asbestos are illegal as is R12 and many other substances. And none of these threaten the existence of humans.
Carbon pollution is like nuclear weapons. We don’t allow people to run around with nuclear weapons. Yet we allow anyone to run around creating carbon pollution.
We need to treat anyone creating carbon pollution like terrorists with nuclear weapons.
Seriously. California should lead the way with one of their famous ballot propositions to make it illegal to emit CO2 and show the world they are serious about ending the existential threat.
Seriously there are nuclear free cities. California can lead the way and become a carbon pollution free state. Moonbeam and CARB should be all over this.
Given the hype over the dangers of carbon pollution I’d expect a ballot proposition to make it illegal to emit CO2 would have a good chance of passing in California.
This would place elected officials in the impossible position of eventually having to arg that they need to make a harmful substance legal even though the people voted to make it illegal. Class action lawsuit?
‘…illegal to emit CO2….’ – Does that mean that everyone in California would be required to wear rebreathing equipment? Humans alone emit megatonnes of CO2 by exhaling, never mind what cows and dogs and cats do.
Yes, I can see that right now: Governor Moonbat with an airmask and rebreather making a speech about not emitting CO2, and waht the fines and penalties should be.
He’s right though!
Crop failures and food shortages due to the likely Global Cooling period we are entering, is a greater threat than the warming conditions.that produced record crops!
Morocco’s building of a solar farm “the size of Paris, that will power over a million homes by 2020”
The INSEE (French National Institute of statistics) made an inventory of about 1 322 540 dwellings in Paris in 1999. That it is going to take a solar farm the size of Paris to power that lot is an indication that putting up enough solar panels to meet the needs of every city in the world is going to create one hell of a silicon footprint.
” tracking mirrors of the first two phases concentrate the sun’s rays onto a synthetic oil that runs through pipes and heats it to 350°C (662°F), creating water vapour that drives a turbine-powered generator. ”
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/05/morocco-is-building-a-solar-farm-as-big-as-paris-in-the-sahara-desert/
saveenergy
Oops…….Oil.
Back to the drawing board.
” tracking mirrors of the first two phases concentrate the sun’s rays onto a synthetic oil that runs through pipes and heats it to 350°C (662°F), creating water vapour that drives a turbine-powered generator. ”
How many birds is that going to kill?
A solar farm the size of Paris to power the households of Paris…And another solar farm the size of Paris to power the businesses of Paris? And how large of a solar farm to power the vehicles of Paris? But no amount of solar panels will be able to power the industrial manufacturers Paris!
SR
Stevan Reddish
“A solar farm the size of Paris to power the households of Paris”
During the day.
At least they have stopped blaming it on non-existent global warming, but don’t explain how CO2 causes climate change if it is not by global warming
Climate change alarmism creates a role for the UN.
Just more of the self serving agenda.
The reality is that climate change has been going on for eons and will continue to take place whether mankind is here or not. So the threat has always been and will always be. The climate change we have been experiencing is caused by the sun and the oceans over which mankind has no control. And concerning the threat, there is nothing that we can do to change it. Mankind does not have the power.
This pseudo-scientific Pope has spoken.
History repeats itself. The purported Armageddon around the first millennium generated by Christianity gave rise to the economics of indulgencies which were in effect a tax on lessor mortals for the benefit of the few. The similarities are remarkable.
Then: Catholics. V Protestants. Now: Warmists. V Sceptics? …. Worth a ponder upon?
They have zero awareness of how relentlessly stupid they’re making themselves look. Still, ‘never interrupt your enemy when they’re making a mistake’ and all that.
From the article: “Mr. Guterres spelled out: “We must use all our resources to build a sense of urgency”, to raise ambition, while keeping temperature rises in the years ahead, as close to 1.5 degrees Celsius as possible.”
The latest ECS estimate I’ve seen is 1.2C, and there are other estimates in this range or lower, so it looks to me, going by those estimates, like we won’t exceed 1.5C even if we burned all the fossil fuels on Earth. So the problem is already solved. There is no need to cut back on the burning of fossil fuels. We can’t burn enough to exceed Mr. Guterres’ 1.5C.
Mr. Guterres still has visions of the worst-case 4.5C increase, which is not even close to reality. That’s where the money is at.
We’ve faced the challenges of a changing climate since evolution began. The nanny pseudo-scientific/political-activist circus is totally convinced that nothing can survive without their guiding hand.
As an interesting aside, currently there’s quite a disturbance in the force regarding student suicide rates in the UK A large part of the kerfuffle centres on Stephan Lewandowsky’s employer…
Three students from the University of Bristol have committed suicide in as many weeks.
http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/stop-playing-politics-with-student-suicides/21399#.WvwpKogvz4Y
I wonder what they were reading.
. . . and the POINT of worrying about an asteroid strike would BE???
Everyone is missing the by far largest existential threat: an asteroid hit – even a small one could well destroy most life. And recent reports say that NASA has “lost” the locations of a large number of near earth asteroids. Just maybe NASA should drop their global warming/co2 scam and concentrate their efforts on a truly serious problem.
MAYBE !
BUT what the hell could they do about it anyway !
I mean , Bruce Willis has already destroyed one asteroid……but died in the process !
Where are you going to keep finding “Kamikaze” rocket riders ???
I DON’T THINK THAT “WE” HAVE ANY PRACTICAL SOLUTION TO THE IMPACT OF A
LARGE ASTEROID apart from ” Always look on the bright side of life ! “
You have not been paying attention. The answer is to stop burning fossil fuels, we need more socialism.
AHA !!!!
So………………..Your NAME is just DAVIS…………..but like AL GORE…………………….
.
YOU are planning to make it “RICH” too !!!!
.
You Got Me !! I missed the inherent sarcasm !!
Without a solution to cope, it’s not even a problem. Actually, knowing about doomsday would make things worse, turning lots of people into desperadoes with literally nothing to lose
He is dumb.
current “Existential Threat” to Humanity is Artificial intelligence. Nothing else.
Those dumb robots we call “government” already rule over us. As dumb as they are. Now, imagine the same with intelligence…
“None of the world’s challenges loom as large as climate change, the United Nations chief told a major climate action summit on Tuesday, reiterating his belief that global warming poses an “existential threat” to humanity.”
“You Keep Using That Word, I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means” – Inigo Montoya
More audits of UN corruption are needed. The recent convictions of bribe taking by staff are just the tip of the iceberg.
Those template statements get around fast.
https://calmatters.org/articles/commentary/jerry-brown-once-again-shuns-tax-reform/
The UN Secretary General has resurrected the BIG LIE from Hitler’s Mein Kampf (1925): “If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself. “ (Paraphrased by anon.) The goal in the case of the UN is to take wealth from the rich nations and distribute it to UN bureaucrats and special interests. The guise, as many have noted, is to solve a problem that does not exist and, if it did exist, cannot be solved. This a transcendental threat, not an existential threat.
This guy (Guterres) is a former president of Socialist International. I’m sure he’s giddy over the prospect of the world’s resources and people under UN control…
“The ultimate objective of the parties of the Socialist International is nothing less than world government. As a first step towards it, they seek to strengthen the United Nations so that it may become more and more effective as an instrument for maintaining peace.”
Source: http://www.socialistinternational.org/viewArticle.cfm?ArticleID=2133
What is the difference between a threat and an existential threat?
An existential threat is doublespeak and without meaning. A threat is someone pointing a gun at you. The meaning is clear.
the difference between “i Will ruin your car” and “I will kill you, your parents, friends, spouse, kids and even cat, and wipe you out of all world archives as if you never existed in the first place”
This UN clown doesn’t have a clue what an existential threat is . He will understand that unless the UN
starts to do something productive with the billions they are handed they won’t exist . Pushing a phoney earth has a fever con-game is a sure fire way to be defunded .
How about solving some real problems like the on going one sided massacre of Palestinians .
Sling shots vs 50 cal sniper rifles fired by cowards . The UN is impotent to solve real problems perhaps that’s why they chase hot air fables .
UN is a solution in need of problems to justify its existence, so why do you expect it to solve problem? Far easier to create or fuel them, like it does for the one you mentioned. After all, it is UN (and EU) money that is used to pay for kid brainwashing into hate, to have them gotten killed, so that antisemite can shout “see? Jews are really bad guys, they kill poor kids”.
It’s getting so you could call the UN itself an ‘existential threat to humanity’ – they seem to be against us pretty much down the line.
Ignorance is ruling the world for the time being…