East European Nations Reject New Climate Targets

by GWPF/Reuters, July 14, 2020


The European Union remains deeply divided over plans to increase its CO2 emissions targets, with East European ministers refusing to commit to bigger cuts.

The EU has agreed to unilaterally cut greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by 2030. This target has been criticised by climate activists who claim that more radical cuts are needed to prevent ‘catastrophic’ climate change.

Responding to this campaign, the European Commission plans to publish an impact assessment of the additional cost of a revised CO2 target to 50% or 55% by 2030. The EU would then need to agree a new target with member states and lawmakers.

According to Reuters, a meeting of environment ministers from the EU’s 27 member states failed to find agree on whether the target should be raised at all.

“Some are sceptical,” German Environment Minister Svenja Schulze said after the meeting.

On Monday, Poland, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Czech Republic and Hungary wrote to the European Commission, announcing that they will not support a new CO2 target until they have seen the Commission’s economic impact assessment.

Help! A Short History of Climate Alarmism

by GWPF, July 15, 2020


One of the perennial sources of amusement among sceptics is to look back at the crazy things scientists and activists were saying about global warming back in the early days, when the scaremongering first kicked off.

Who can forget, for example, James Hansen’s notorious speculation in 1988 that large chunks of Manhattan would disappear under the rising waters in the first decades after the millennium? Fortunately, being a thick-skinned fellow, the failure of even small chunks of New York to disappear in the last thirty years since seems to have dented his confidence not one jot, and he cheerfully fends of allegations of alarmism, putting them down to the ignorance of the general public.

Or what about climate scientist David Viner at the University of East Anglia who told the Independent 20 years ago – apparently with a straight face – that snowfall was going to become “a very rare and exciting event” and that children “just aren’t going to know what snow is”? That one hasn’t turned out too well either.

Atmospheric CO2 during the Mid-Piacenzian Warm Period and the M2 glaciation

by de la Vega et al., 2020 in Nature OPEN  ACCESS


Abstract

The Piacenzian stage of the Pliocene (2.6 to 3.6 Ma) is the most recent past interval of sustained global warmth with mean global temperatures markedly higher (by ~2–3 °C) than today. Quantifying CO2 levels during the mid-Piacenzian Warm Period (mPWP) provides a means, therefore, to deepen our understanding of Earth System behaviour in a warm climate state. Here we present a new high-resolution record of atmospheric CO2 using the δ11B-pH proxy from 3.35 to 3.15 million years ago (Ma) at a temporal resolution of 1 sample per 3–6 thousand years (kyrs). Our study interval covers both the coolest marine isotope stage of the mPWP, M2 (~3.3 Ma) and the transition into its warmest phase including interglacial KM5c (centered on ~3.205 Ma) which has a similar orbital configuration to present. We find that CO2 ranged from 389+388389−8+38ppm to 331+1311,331−11+13,ppm, with CO2 during the KM5c interglacial being 371+3229371−29+32ppm (at 95% confidence). Our findings corroborate the idea that changes in atmospheric CO2 levels played a distinct role in climate variability during the mPWP. They also facilitate ongoing data-model comparisons and suggest that, at present rates of human emissions, there will be more CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere by 2025 than at any time in at least the last 3.3 million years.