Powering Past Coal Alliance: 20 countries sign up to phase out coal power by 2030

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Twenty countries including Britain, Canada and New Zealand have joined an international alliance to phase out coal from power generation before 2030.

The Powering Past Coal Alliance was unveiled at the COP23 climate talks in Bonn, Germany, which were working out the technical details of the 2015 Paris Agreement.

"I think we can safely say that the response has been overwhelming," Canadian Environment Minister Catherine McKenna said.

"There is so much momentum, there is so much ambition in this room."

The alliance, which isn't legally binding, was launched days after a pro-coal presentation by the Trump administration jarred with many ministers who wanted the talks to focus on cleaner energy sources.

Australia isn't part of the alliance, which also doesn't include some of the world's biggest coal users China, India, the United States, Germany and Russia.

Coal is responsible for more than 40 per cent of global emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.

I trust the news source, John.

I know you now see FAKE NEWS everywhere, but no.

It's just The News.

Plants release up to 30 per cent more CO2 than previously thought, study says

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While much focus is placed on human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, research from teams around the world suggests plants could be contributing up to 11 times as much.

A study involving the Australian National University, Western Sydney University, and centres around the world has found plants release more carbon dioxide through their respiration than previously thought.

And what is more, as global temperatures rise, scientists say the output of carbon dioxide by plants will accelerate.

During daylight hours, plants take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen through photosynthesis, however plants also release carbon dioxide through respiration.

ANU researcher Owen Atkin said plant respiration was previously thought to account for five to eight times the carbon compared to human activity.

However the new findings suggested that number could be much higher.

"Each year the burning of fossil fuels releases around 5 to 8 billion tons of carbon … so the respiration by plants is somewhere approaching 11 times that in our new estimate," he said.

"That's an enormous flux.

"What will happen in the future will be that those rates of carbon released by plants will increase as the world gets warmer, and it will have an impact on how much carbon is stored in vegetation, how much accumulates in the atmosphere in the future."

The study examined about 1,000 plant species in a range of climate extremes, to determine how much carbon dioxide is released in various scenarios.

"This will have fairly substantial implications for our ability to model carbon flows between landscapes and the atmosphere, and ultimately how much carbon dioxide accumulates in the atmosphere," Professor Atkin said.

Researchers said plants could also see a declining ability to absorb carbon dioxide currently in the atmosphere through photosynthesis, and that carbon flow models and budget projections would need to be altered in response to the findings.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-18/plant-respiration-co2-findings-anu-canberra/9163858

Great... Now I have to become vegetarian!

Can China actually lead on climate change?

China is in the "driving seat" when it comes to "international co-operation" on climate, said President Xi Jinping at a major political meeting in Beijing ahead of the UN-led climate talks in Bonn earlier this month, the first annual meeting of the negotiations since President Donald Trump announced his intention to withdraw from the agreement.

Mr Trump's decision had left a power vacuum: the historic accord reached in 2014 between then president Barack Obama and Mr Xi, leading the world's two largest economies, which together account for about 40 per cent of global emissions, had underpinned the consensus reached by the international community in late 2015 in Paris. Could China alone fill that vacuum?

China certainly made its presence felt at the talks, but often in its traditional stance as defender of the developing countries, arguing that rich countries must shoulder the greater burden of decarbonisation, a position reportedly described by Greenpeace East Asia campaigner Li Shuo as "an inevitable result of international climate diplomacy in the post-US era".

China's carbon emissions have also risen this year, after two years of slight decline.

Still, it is committed to peak before 2030, and it leads the world in clean technologies — accounting for five of the world's top six solar PV manufacturers, and seven of the top-15 wind turbine manufacturers.

China is also investing more than $US100 billion a year in domestic renewable energy projects — more than double the US figure. At about $US32 billion, its investment in green technology overseas is also the largest in the world.

Mr Xi has made environmental ambition a signature of his rhetoric, having coined the florid phrase, "clear waters and green mountains are as valuable as mountains of gold and silver". By contrast, the US President is not only averse to environmental regulation, but even once tweeted, preposterously, that climate change is a Chinese hoax.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-29/china-beijing-renewable-energy-climate-change-pollution/9191176

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The world is moving on, as it should.

Didn't you mean to say, People like Trump with moronic ideas?

Looks like there is one sane person in this discussion.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/11/01/global-temperature-continues-to-cool/

DANEDON HOST of The Global Warming Farce

The UN Admits That The Paris Climate Deal Was A Fraud

https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/the-un-admits-that-the-paris-climate-deal-was-a-fraud/

DANEDON HOST of The Global Warming Farce

I do what I can to inject the opposing view - it just happens to fall outside the Cult of Hotcoldwetdry . . .

I find it strange that two people can look at the same graph and see a different line.

You picked two random points and joined them to show no change.

That's not how scientific data works.

You have to look at the whole trend, removing extremes and anomalies.

Also - the sharp downturn at the end may well be the result of global action on climate change.