Gordon Brown.Wikimedia CommonsAn international fund of US$100 billion a year will be needed by 2020 to help developing countries mitigate and adapt to climate change, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown said today.
Launching Britain's manifesto for December's international climate talks in Copenhagen, Brown said negotiations on paying developing countries to cope with climate change and develop low-carbon technologies were stuck at "a stand-off over hypothetical figures".
"If we are to achieve an agreement in Copenhagen I believe we must move the debate … to active negotiation on real mitigation actions and real contributions," he said.
Ball-park aid
Saleemul Huq, of the International Institute for Environment and Development, a not-for-profit research group based in London, says Brown's speech is significant "simply because it's the first time a leader of a developed country has mentioned a ball-park figure of what would be needed".
Developing countries' suggestions of the aid needed for mitigation and adaptation have ranged from fifty billion to several hundred billion dollars a year, he adds.
Brown said the money would come mainly from the private sector, via carbon trading markets, but that rich governments would also have to contribute — particularly to support adaptation measures and forest management. Funds would have to start flowing by 2013.
“This is a timely initiative by Gordon Brown to break the international deadlock over climate change.”
Nicholas Stern
Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment
He said aviation and maritime greenhouse-gas emissions should be brought into the Copenhagen agreement — potentially providing extra revenue — and that the UK would support a Norwegian proposal to auction off a percentage of national emissions allowances specifically for a climate fund.
"This is a timely initiative by Gordon Brown to break the international deadlock over climate change, and he rightly identifies finance as the key stumbling block," says Nicholas Stern, chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and author of the UK government's 2007 review of the economics of climate change.
Brown recognized that rich countries' funding must come in addition to existing aid commitments. But Stern notes that the prime minister also said that up to 10% of the UK's official development assistance could count as climate finance.
Copenhagen ahoy
The UK also launched a policy document setting out its priorities for Copenhagen. It calls for developed countries to reduce their emissions to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050, and for developing countries' emissions to be 15-30% lower than their projected 'business-as-usual' levels.
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"At Copenhagen we want to reach agreement to reduce tropical deforestation by at least 50% by 2020, and to halt global forest cover loss by 2030 at the latest," the document adds. Brown said forest-backed bonds might be established to bring early finance into sustainable forest management.
"An ambitious agreement in Copenhagen is certainly achievable. And yet it remains far from certain," said Brown. "We cannot allow this to drift — when every year of delay retards investment, locks us into a higher emissions pathway, worsens the impacts on the poorest and most vulnerable, and increases the costs of eventual reduction."
His speech came ahead of a G8 meeting in L'Aquila, Italy in July.
That's it, Gordon, mess about with something that we can all ill aford! As far as I'm concerned, the Jury is still out on man-made climate change. Statistics show that we are carbon cleaner than ever, but still we are beaten to death by the do-gooders. I can give examples of advancing glaciers, more polar bears,reducing mean temperatures whatever, but still be treated with little more regard than an Heretic! I heard somebody say that religion was the biggest con. No, I think it is warming alarmism that is the biggest con, with lots of money to be made of it. Before you stop reading, I would hasten to add that I am not a carbon junkie,and I fervently believe in minimum pollution of any sort, but if you people that go along with this were really serious you would be stopping those that are responsible for deforestation, (and this should have happened years ago)surely the biggest cause of alleged increasing CO2 levels (apart from the odd farting volcano of course) but selling wind farms is more profitable, isn't it, and that way you get to punish the countryside oiks, of course.
Dr John Coles, You must have fantastic data then to claim that "I can give examples of advancing glaciers, more polar bears,reducing mean temperatures". Those would be fantastic discoveries indeed, they would definetelly make the cover of Nature or Science, I would like to see your references because all the ones I could find seem to indicate otherwise!
Fair enough, HD, I would think that my information to the contrary is probably just a little less credible in it's origins than the usual garbage trotted out by the alarmists, but it is, of course, always censored. If I have even made 1 person who reads this site think again, I am happy to do so. We can argue about this sort of thing forever, but it isn't me that gets oppressive about it, I have nothing to prove, and I believe that I shall be proven right in the end. John.
I applaud the UK and Gordan Brown for leading the world in thinking and doing something about the environment. . . . . E.O. Wilson says it would take 30 billion US dollars to reduce habitat destruction in biodiversity hot spots where 70% of endangered species reside. HOPEFULLY the US could at least contribute the 30 billion US dollars (a small drop in the bucket compared to the rest of economic stimulus package). . . . Is there any true biologic harm (not with respect to financies for oil companies), for emissions reductions? . . . . When your physician is pretty sure you have something "rapidly" killing you, you want that physician to act definitively even in the most debatable situations when that physician is "pretty sure". All science is art with interpretation of data. How sure you want to be depends on how quickly you're being injured or eliminated. . . . . . . . . . . The only glacier I know of growing is the one in the crater of Mt. St. Helens at least up here in the great NW part of the USA. Please give literally, links to the places you are saying have proof that the people worried about global warning are either confused or perpetuating a hoax.. . . . . . . . Another medical analogy: if you have a diagnostic challenge--a case that is not straight forward, and the patient is dying in front of you--you literally poll your colleagues and take yours and their best guess, and hope you're right--that includes the question "is the patient dying".
http://anhonestclimatedebate.wordpress.com/2009/06/25/%E2%80%9C%E2%80%A6arctic-temperature-is-still-not-above-32f-the-latest-date-in-fifty-years-of-record-keeping%E2%80%A6%E2%80%9D/
And another: http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba551 Of course, I expect these will be brushed away as non-trustworthy data or similar, and so I do not intend pepetuating the argument, or posting any further messages on here.
John, One thing that annoys me on both sides of the debate is when anyone seizes on excessively time-limited and/or area-limited data to say "this proves Climate Change is/is not happening". The "honest climate debate" article is a clear example from that - just taking the data for the first half of this year by itself from one site doesn't prove anything, still less the temperature for one town in Sweden for a single month. The second article is highly untrustworthy based on the source - a right-wing think tank who only quote their own data to justify their opinion. Not impressive. In my opinion, what we need to work out whether anthropogenic climate change is happening is to set some targets for the next few years and see how they fit. For instance, make a prediction of the average temperature over the years 2010-2014, agree on a way to measure this, and see whether the data exceed or fall below it in 2015. (Arguably, the proposed outcome should make with some adjustment for the solar activity over this period, so that neither side can say "it was just the sun".) At which point, when the world should with any luck be more able to afford them, we can look at serious implementation of countermeasures. In the mean time, the precautionary principle would state that we should preserve our forests (for all sorts of other good reasons anyway), take further steps to improve fuel-efficiency, and do more research on other countermeasures. I agree with you, incidentally, that wind farms would be a pretty poor answer even if climate change were worse than the IPCC estimates. I also fear, as well, that an 80% reduction in CO2 emissions is wildly unrealistic, and makes other measures, such as sticking some kind of heat shield at the earth-sun L1 point, seem cheap and simple by comparison.
Unfortunately in recent times the importance of scientific ideas is measured by the amount of money they can draw from governments. In fact general public blindly follows the tracks of money. I think governments should seriously think about funding scientific projects with unclear outcomes like climate change. To be frank, it is still an open question that how much effects human activities have on recent climate change which has been reported in various studies. Even high school kids know that the planet Earth suffers periodic phases of cooling and heating, and not only that, Earth is an astronomical object therefore one should be very careful in drawing any conclusions at the scale of human life time. In summary I would like to say that the issue of climate change should not take away all the attention from other very important issues like HIV, poverty, social and economical inequality, water and electricity problem, wars & conflicts, research in fundamental science etc. In place of isolating climate change as a separate issue it can be absorbed into the development of green technology.
Patrick Woodburn says "John, One thing that annoys me .. is when anyone seizes on excessively time-limited and/or area-limited data to say "this proves Climate Change is/is not happening"." Of course "Climate Change" is happening. It has happened throughout Earth's 4.5 billion year history. Climate is never still. The Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) alarmists have changed their phraseology from AGW to "Climate Change" to confuse the public even more. If anyone has seized on "excessively time-limited data" its the IPCC and the AGW alarmists. After all to say that the Earth has warmed because of Anthropogenic Green house gasses, chiefly CO2 in the last 100 years by 0.6 C is a staggering claim. 100 years is a mere blink of an eye in geological and climatic history time. Not only that the IPCC says "Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic GHG concentrations." Temperature changes before 1950 was mostly natural. This can easily be challanged by existing data. AGW alarmists will fall back on well "thousands of scientists agree this is so". Maybe they do maybe they dont. But consensus by a thousand scientists or dozens of "peer reviewed" by a AGW clich who peer review each others papers CANNOT TRUMP ACTUAL OBSERVATION. If the predictions or the logic is shown to be wrong then the hypothesis has to be rejected. And here are the observations: From the UK Hadley data - the most respected climate data in the world (and the bosses of whom are ardent AGW supporters). The Global Average Temperature graph from 1880 to 2008 show two major rises rises one from 1911 to 1944 and the other from 1976 to 2008. (From 1880 to 1911 and 1944 to 1976 the temperature goes up and down with an overall fall). The warming trend from 1911 to 1944 comes to 0.161 per decade and that from 1976 to 2008 comes to 0.168 per decade, almost the same. The previous trend the IPCC acknowledges is natural how then can it be said that an exactly similar trend is Anthropogenic? If we go further back using proxy data from ice-cores (the GISP2 ice-core data for example) this rate of increase has been matched and exceeded many many times. There is nothing unusual about this "climate change". No anthropogenic signature can be detected in temperature data, beautiful theories and models notwithstanding.
It was only after reading about the shameful story of the infamous "Hockey Stick" and the manipulations of the working committee of the IPCC and the connivance of Nature in this shameful scandal that I take their "conclusions" with a great deal of salt. Read about that shameful story here and let me know your comments. http://www.lowefo.com/pdf/Letter_UN_Sec_Gen_Ban_Ki-moon.pdf
Sorry that was the wrong one though still worth reading and not responded to. Here is the one about the "hockey stick" http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/monckton/monckton_what_hockey_stick.pdf
Another thing that annoys me about this debate is the frequent use of ad hominems. Whether you're castigating your opponents as "denialists" or "alarmists", it's equally infantile. And when you have broad-brush, conspiracy-theorist pdfs doing highly politicised hatchet jobs on the other side and applying all sorts of invective (that "Science and Public Policy" pdf you linked to), it's equally unconvincing.
Do humans realy consider $s can bail them out of this mess! Science has totally failed to prove Gravity is not an act of creation; and evolution is not actually an act of "God". Thanks to the beliefs of religious leaders; and the theories of scientific, and political leaders; humanity has imprisoned itself; in a believed to be, theoretical "Reality" in which there is no TRUTH! And failure is accepted as an absolute normal. Everything is relative, to a Point Of View. Thus the planet is totally divided. Is it not written: 'United we stand; divided we fall', and unfortunately history has proven the TRUTH of that statement. According to scriptures, the errors of human leaders, has made humans; "The Enemy Of, That Which Is Called God" Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world, is the enemy of God. [James 4:4.]
Mr. Dawson: What is your hypothesis for the natural forcing that has caused the present trend in global average temperature rise? You compare two time periods without referencing the exponential growth in greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere in the latter time period. Your analysis also does not seem to account for the fact that in your latter time period there has been greater negative forcing from volcanic activity and sulfate emissions (as noted by the IPCC), and yet still the temperature is rising. Finally, I would welcome your hypothesis as to why, given our knowledge of radiative physics, increased greenhouse gas concentrations are NOT causing the temperature rise that we are observing.
I think Mr. Brown's suggestion is well-intentioned, though I will be truly impressed if anyone can force a single dime from the private sector. The same goes for 'rich governments', as if any governments will admit to such a thing. Rich countries exist relative to poor ones, but not to the countries' citizens whose spending and material desires are likely to be disproportional to their national GDP. Anyway, thanks for speaking up, Mr. Brown.