Sunday, June 23, 2013

Links

Looking back from 2030: how the climate war was won
As IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde bluntly notes: “unless we take action on climate change future generations will be roasted, toasted, fried and grilled”.
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Jenny Clad, former Executive Officer of Al Gore’s Climate Project tells a story of evidence and education:
Little by little, every year, the evidence [like what, specifically?], the increased education of the public, of the politicians, the work from businesses. All of this inch-by-inch is going to have the effect of making the deniers and those who profess to do nothing and put more money into drilling oil, digging out coal, more and more marginalised.
...John Schellnhuber, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Climate Adviser to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, draws together all these threads of evidence, innovation and leadership:
One driver is that, very sadly, disasters will happen. Hurricane Katrina changed a lot in America. The second thing is leadership. What Merkel did with the German experiment [driving a rapid shift from nuclear and fossil fuel energy to renewables] is happening because Merkel had the guts to say she was wrong. This type of leadership will be necessary, maybe in China, maybe in the United States, maybe in Australia even. The third thing is social innovation. For example I just went to a region in Germany where people say “We want to have energy supply completely done on a communitarian basis. We the citizens will buy the power plants. We will buy the networks and the grids. We will do it”
Kerry urges climate change action on eve of India talks: Thomson Reuters Business News - MSN Money
The day before he was due to take part in the fourth annual US-India Strategic Dialogue in New Delhi, he urged India to work with the United States to negotiate a global treaty on curbing global warming.

"We should work constructively side-by-side in the UN climate negotiations. I am convinced we can move toward a global agreement ... that is sensitive to and respectful of the diversity of national circumstances," he said in a speech.

"The health of our planet and the irreversible climate challenge speeding toward us, crying out for a global solution, is the place to begin this conversation," Kerry added.
Climate change: the rain in Spain | Editorial | Comment is free | The Guardian
The Met Office conclusion that Britain might be caught in a natural cycle of cooler summers with more rainfall than usual – and that describes six of the past seven summers – is just a reminder that climate is the long-term average of ups and downs.  [Is a string of hot summers also just such a reminder?]

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