COP26 is here, real action or more photo-ops?
— — There is no Vaccine for Climate change
Climate change has reclaimed its rank as the most significant headline topic since August 9th when another report was released by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Part 1 of the 6th Assessment Report Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis, the Working Group. Subsequently, two multinational conferences have been convened over the past three days:
· The G20, October 30–31, having had working sessions on Climate Change and Environment and to Sustainable Development;
· And, beginning November 1, 2021, in Glasgow, Scotland, COP26, the United Nations climate change summit;
· Those priorities are further underlined by the commitments announced by the President of the World Bank, David Milpass:
“In 2021, we’re delivering even more. Our Climate Change Action Plan for 2021–2025 dedicates an average of 35 percent of Bank Group financing over the next five years to climate action — with at least half of Bank financing supporting adaptation and resilience efforts. We are aligning Bank Group financing with the Paris Agreement goals”.
The simple model I have presented below is, if not #1 is in the top 3, challenges. How do we reduce CO2, the major green house gas (GHG) and transition our economies?
We’ve recognized for many years that holding global temperatures to no more than 1.5° C (approx. 3° F) above the levels at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution will be very difficult and an inestimable stress on our human populations and the financial health of every country on Earth.
We are presently living at ~ +1.1 °C. More later on viewing this in terms of deviations from normal human temperature.
Above we can see the Temperature anomalies (deviations) from data maintained at CRU, East Anglia University (UK). Zero is the baseline transformed from the average of global surface temperatures between 1961–1990.
Based upon my understanding of a very complicated, and often, nonlinear dynamic system, these two factors shown here are surrogates for possibly thousands of variables.
Over the past ~200 years we humans have built our wealth and lifestyles around this simple model. Climate change and global warming are largely driven by this feedback loop (created by L. Zack Florence).
I have prepared this next graphic using data from NOAA at Mauna Loa and the World Bank .
We need no extraordinary imagination or statistical skills to interpret the relationship shown above. There are monotonic increases in US productivity since 1959 in response to steadily increasing CO2 concentrations (1 ppm CO2~ 2.12 Giga tonnes carbon) over the same time interval.
How will global leaders this week at COP26 manage this. I want to be optimistic, but I don’t think that they can (will). We as Sovereign peoples must do it for ourselves, namely for our children and grandchildren ad infinitum.
