Almost half of the Lower 48 will shiver under sub-zero wind chills Tuesday morning. Countless records will be set. Yet none of that means a thing about the existence of climate change, its severity or its consequences.
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Le Nazioni Unite sono già impegnate a preparare il terreno per il prossimo vertice mondiale sul clima, la 20esima Conferenza della Parti dell’Unfccc in programma a New York per la fine del 2014. In questo clima di preparativi rientra anche la nuova nomina da parte dell’Onu dei due Inviati Speciali per il Climate Change. L’incarico è stato affidato dal segretario Generale Ban ki-Monn a all’ex- presidente del Ghana John Kufour e all’ex primo ministro della Norvegia norvegese Jens Stoltenberg
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That must make a nice change. Even as Centrica, the owner of British Gas, continues to be classed as a public enemy in the UK, it is being greeted with open arms in Ireland. The consortium which it leads has been declared the preferred bidder for Bord Gáis Energy and it has been hailed as an “international strategic investor”. It may have been Irish government relief talking at having got the deal away, at an enterprise value of up to €1.12bn. Still, it suggests that Centrica’s hopes of investing in the Irish oil and gas industry will get a fair hearing.
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Global warming is a misnomer. “Warming” makes it sound as if the climate will get hotter at a steady, predictable pace—like a pot of soup heating on the stove. But that’s not how our enormously complex climate system works. The increasing concentration of carbon dioxide and other warming gases in the atmosphere is just one of many factors affecting the global climate—including the natural year-to-year variability that has always been at work. Over the short term, temperatures can rise and fall like the fluctuating value of a single company in the stock market. But the long-term trends—the important trends—remain unchanged.
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The Peruvian Amazon became a net emitter of carbon dioxide rather than oxygen for the first time in 2012, according to the UN Development Programme’s (UNDP) latest human development country report. The reversal of the rainforest’s usual role as a carbon sink is a direct result of the droughts in the western Amazon in 2005 and 2010 – and a stark reminder, say scientists, that this mega-biodiverse country is highly vulnerable to climate change.
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The geopolitical configuration that emerged after the end of the Cold War has been redefining the world stage. In recent decades, we have observed the fall of decaying political superpowers, the territorial redesign of countries and institutions and were taken unawares with the meteoric ascent of emerging economies. The old binary system is long gone. In this increasingly multipolar arena, new players have risen onto the scene — the cities.
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