Schellnhuber will advocate “Energiewende” — a rapid decarbonization.
The media release is below.
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Climate scientist Schellnhuber to brief UN Security Council
It will take place on February 15th at the UN headquarters in New York City. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon plans to attend.
“With unabated greenhouse-gas emissions, humankind would venture into an uncertain future that is much hotter than ever before in its history – so from a scientist’s perspective, climate change is a global risk multiplier,” says Schellnhuber, director of PIK and chair of the Scientific Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU) for the German government. Many millions of people could be affected by severe climate change impacts. They range from sea-level rise that increases the frequency of severe coastal flooding, to changes in atmospheric circulation patterns that could trigger, e.g., monsoon failures.
“Most remarkably, Pakistan and the UK together have called this meeting – illustrating, by action, that climate change is an issue for both developing and industrialized countries,” Schellnhuber says.
If the international community allows global mean temperature to rise way beyond the 2-degree limit that it agreed upon, major environmental tipping points could be crossed. “The Earth system shows a nonlinear response to greenhouse-gas emissions, so elements like the Amazon rainforest could react drastically if some warming thresholds are passed. This in turn might result in tipping international relations from a situation in which an initial increase of cooperation in face of a crisis shifts into a fierce competition for scarce natural resources, like food,” argues Schellnhuber. “However, another kind of social tipping dynamics is imaginable as well – with states, and people, becoming aware of the dangers ahead, and starting the great transformation towards sustainability.” One small example for this might be the German Energiewende (a rapid decarbonization of the national energy system).
Schellnhuber is the only scientist invited to the meeting. The other eminent speakers are Tony DeBrum, Minister-in-assistance to the President of the Marshall Islands, Rachel Kyte, Vice President of Sustainable Development at the World Bank, and Gyan Acharya, Under-Secretary General and High Representative of the least developed countries. Some of the issues to be debated are climate change impacts on food security, sustaining cooperative management of freshwater supply in the face of glacial melting and reduced runoff, and possible large-scale displacements of people across borders.
The informal meeting is being convened under the Security Council’s Arria formula which allows external experts to be invited to speak to the Council. It was first implemented in 1992 by Venezuela’s Ambassador Diego Arria and gained significant importance since then, allowing the Council members greater flexibility. The UN Security Council has twice before deliberated the issue of climate change, under the respective leaderships of the UK and Germany. The Arria formula meeting could help to firmly establish climate change as a security issue on the Council’s agenda.
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“Unabated greenhouse gas emissions” over the last century associate with highly variable weather and with (extremely unreliable) trends toward both warmer and cooler weather. Whatever role “greenhouse gas emissions” have in the climate system, it’s small and other elements completely overwhelm it. We have sufficient data to support that claim, certainly stronger evidence for that position than for the idea that human industrial and energy activities have disrupted weather or climate.
If we had abundant and low-cost energy from sources that left the environment as it was, I’d say use them. We don’t. The only effective, low-cost energy sources we have involve burning, damming, or using nuclear energy. Hydro and nuclear also require a lot of infrastructure, as do coal and natural gas. The environmental impact is real; so is the improvement of conditions for billions of humans and the hope of improving them for billions more.
Wealthy, free nations have generally decided to mitigate their environmental impacts. Poor nations and authoritarian nations have far worse environmental track records.
Most sane people recognize the fact that Herr. Schellnhuber isn’t.
The UN, strewth that’s [an oxymoron] the ‘organization’, who installed a genocidal maniac from a failed southern African state: as a ‘special envoy for tourism’.
IPCC AR5 report anyone – Buena Vista are producing the cartoon fantasy and Obama will star.