World leaders sign Paris Agreement, Hinkley decision delayed until September, & more
News
World leaders sign Paris Agreement on climate change
In a landmark moment for international climate diplomacy, more than 170 countries signed the Paris Agreement at the UN on Friday – the first step towards ratifying a deal to slow climate change. But with economists and scientists warning the goal of keeping temperatures below 1.5-2C may already be slipping beyond reach, epic challenges lie ahead if the promises of Paris are going to be put into action, says The Guardian. Last week, Carbon Brief looked at timely new research comparing the impacts for extreme weather, coral reefs, sea level rise and food security of 1.5C and 2C. iNews reported comments yesterday by actor and climate campaigner, Leonardo DiCaprio, urging world leaders to stick to their pledged emissions cuts. DiCaprio said: “We can congratulate each other today, but it will mean absolutely nothing if you return to your countries and fail to push beyond the promises of this historic agreement.” The Times, BBC News, The Telegraph, TIME and InsideClimateNews have more on Friday’s ceremony. Reuters carries some reaction from people at the signing ceremony while Nature asks, what comes next?
Hinkley Point decision delayed until September
The decision on whether to fund Britain’s first nuclear power plant in decades has been delayed again, with French energy firm EDF now set to make a final investment call in September. Economy minister, Emmanuel Macron, said Emmanuel Macron said the £18bn project would still go ahead but the decision “could be confirmed next September”, reports The Financial Times. Macron’s comments cast fresh doubt over the likelihood of the plant starting up in 2025, says The Telegraph. The British government would face huge embarrassment if Hinkley Point was abandoned or postponed, says The Independent. A decision on the nuclear plant had previously been expected at the end of March.
‘Impossible’ coral reef in Amazon baffles scientists
Scientists have found a huge coral reef – 600 miles long and covering almost 4,000 square miles – at the mouth of the Amazon river. The find is unexpected since corals mostly thrive in clear, sunlit, salt water and the equatorial waters near the mouth of the Amazon are some of the muddiest in the world, says The Guardian. The unique reef is already being threatened by oil drilling companies, reports The Independent, with 80 exploratory blocks acquired for oil drilling in the past decade. Elsewhere, a comment by Dr Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, director of the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland, in The Conversation says it’s not too late to save the Great Barrier Reef – currently in the grip of severe coral bleaching – but it does require strong, immediate and decisive action from our political leaders.
The Top 10 Climate Change Articles in The Times, Debunked
DeSmog factchecks the scientific claims made in the Times’s top 10 climate change articles over the past few years. This comes after a group of leading scientists and UK climate advisors wrote a letter to the editor of The Times last week, criticising its “poor quality” and “distorted” coverage of climate change. Matt Ridley, Tory peer and scientific advisor to the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a climate skeptic lobby group, has responded in his Times column, arguing that the episode shows the “climate change lobby wants to kill free speech” with the letter forming “part of a systematic campaign to shut down debate”.
Comment
Climate change sceptics must be able to speak out
Editorial, The Financial Times
The New York attorney-generals’ investigation into oil company ExxonMobil and others over whether senior management knowingly played down the risks of climate change are on flimsy legal ground and the implications for free speech on public policy issues are alarming, says the FT. “Many of the arguments made against action on climate change are foolish, dishonest, or both, but they should be defeated by reason and evidence, not by legal action.”
The Guardian view on the UN climate change treaty: now for some action
The signing ceremony in New York on Friday was certainly a spectacular demonstration of global intent but what matters is making the deal legally binding by at least 55 countries ratifying it, says a Guardian editorial this morning. The Paris deal was only a step on a long, hard road with each country’s targets not going far enough and governments still resisting the commitment to greening their economies. That will be needed to turn the Paris deal from an exercise in global cooperation to a watershed for global warming: “In Churchillian rhetoric, this is not the end, nor the beginning of the end, but it is the end of the beginning.”
Science
Does the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation get its predictability from the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation?
A new study finds mechanisms within the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation that can be used to predict the behaviour of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, part of a global conveyor belt system transporting heat across the oceans. The authors identify three overturning patterns, which, once included in models, extend AMO predictability by two to nine years.
Other stories
- Embarrassingly successful: an obituary for the UK’s Feed-in Tariffs (BusinessGreen)
- Lithium: is the hype justified? (The Financial Times)
- A recipe for global cooling—put seafloor on dry land near the equator (Ars Technica)
- Zimbabwe’s tobacco revenue up in smoke due to El Nino (Reuters)
- Economic pain pushes Russia to drill in high Arctic (Politico)
- World heading for catastrophe over natural disasters, risk expert warns (The Guardian)
- How Climate Change in the Arctic Could Cause Tsunamis in the UK (Motherboard, Vice)
- Europe will soon be hit by deadly ‘once-in-a-century’ extreme weather every year (The Independent)
- Poor countries must find $4tn by 2030 to avert catastrophe, says climate study (The Guardian)
- Volkswagen takes $18 billion hit over emissions scandal (Reuters)