We'll always have Paris

We had it all
Just like Bogie and Bacall

     -Bertie Higgens

She said to me

I must go back to Paris

I said to her

Oh please don't do that to me

      -Garland Jeffreys
  

Greetings

First the good news   Buddhists make a statement.   Countries are making voluntary pledges    (more below)

Not so good.  Indonesia is on fire.  and he media is ignoring it.   Here's Monbiot

 "It is hard to convey the scale of this inferno, but here’s a comparison that might help: it is currently producing more carbon dioxide than the US economy. In three weeks the fires have released more CO2 than the annual emissions of Germany"

Also :2015 will close out as the hottest year in the 135 year climate record. It will hit temperatures, globally, about 1.1 to 1.2 C hotter than 1880s averages.

China reverses one child policy

And:  Unprecedented Cyclone bears down on Yemen  Oman expect eight years of rain in two days as Chapala forms in Arabian Sea.

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   So, how about those pledges?   Brad Plummer runs the numbers.  They fall a little short of keeping us below 2 degrees.  In fact the "budget" gets busted just about when China starts cutting.

> "There's a big problem here: If the United States, EU, and China all followed through on their current emissions pledges, they'd consume practically the world's entire carbon budget by 2030 — leaving only scraps for the rest of the world (the part shaded in gray).

>
> That's untenable. The "rest of the world" is where most of humanity lives — 5 billion people. It includes India, which is still very poor, has per capita emissions that are justone-fourth of Europe's and China's, and will inevitably need to burn more fossil fuels to grow. It also includes Africa, which still has 620 million people without electricity. No one thinks it'd be fair for these developing countries to cut even more deeply than the United States and Europe.

Here is the paper 

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      Speaking of numbers.  Here is a discussion on what it would take to switch the US completely away from Fossil Fuels to renewable power.  It includes Mark Jacobson, the Stanford prof, who has put together a blue print, and Tom Murphy, a UC prof. of "Do the Math".  Some interesting take aways.  

    The cost in the US would be about $15 trillion.    By comparison the US federal budget is $3.4 trillion.  So, in round numbers it would add 10% to the federal budget.

     

"An estimated $15 trillion in capital investments—approximately $12 trillion in generation plus $3 trillion in storage—would be required to effect the transition for the United States—for the world, an estimate $100 trillion (for comparison, current global investment in the energy sector is between $1.5 and $2 trillion per year). But investments would offset costs or pay for themselves over time–high capital costs but zero fuel cost.

The build out speed would have be ten times faster than the current build out

"Solar and wind had been developing slowly but have taken off since about 2008, in part because of high-volume production in China. However, to approach 100 percent renewable energy by 2050, the rate of deployment would need to accelerate by an order of magnitude (factor of ten).