Tiempo Climate Newswatch

Reaction to the twin agreements reached at the Cancún climate summit has been generally positive. "We have strengthened the international climate regime with new institutions and new funds," said European Union climate commissioner Connie Hedegaard. Jake Schmidt of the Natural Resources Defense Council in the United States, citing progress on emissions reductions, greater transparency, forest preservation and the creation of the green fund, described the Cancún Agreements as a detailed set of visionary, yet pragmatic principles. "The Cancún Agreements, combined with the efforts of millions of people around the world working at the personal, local, state and regional levels to deal with this problem, signify real progress" he said. "We now have a solid foundation from which to build upon." Saleemul Huq from the International Institute for Environment and Development, a Tiempo editor, commented that "we're on a very good start" with the Green Climate Fund. "The two things that we did achieve in Cancún, against expectations somewhat in fact, we now have the new climate fund and countries have started pledging," he explained. "Market participants didn't really expect much and what we saw was a clear political commitment," said Martin Schulte, a director at First Climate. "We've got out of the complete standstill," he concluded.

Agreement on forests and emissions, REDD, was a major outcome of the meeting. Greenpeace spokesman Steve Campbell said that the REDD mechanism could be a major step forward for forests, though "the devil is really going to be in the detail." He was pleased that forests will not be included in carbon markets. Ben Powless from the Indigenous Peoples' Forum on Climate Change welcomed the forest agreement but considers that the language on safeguarding indigenous peoples' rights is weak. "That still maintains the possibility to privatize a large part of our natural resources, our lands and territories. And really the ones who would suffer from that would be indigenous communities as well as biodiversity," he said.

There was a very positive response to the possibility that China will accept a degree of international verification of its emissions control. "It's a huge step in the right direction," said Fred Boltz of Conservation International. In a letter sent to the Mexican president, Felipe Calderón, Mohamed Nasheed, president of the Maldives, pledged his country's backing for the Cancún Agreements and congratulated Calderón for his government's "remarkable achievement in successfully brokering the balanced package of decisions." The atmosphere throughout the meeting was far more constructive than at the previous summit. "There is more camaraderie than I saw in Copenhagen, more dialogue and much more intense engagement between the United States and China, and less shadow boxing," commented Indian environment minister Jairam Ramesh.

Governments are risking human lives by underestimating the emissions cuts needed over the next 40 years, according to a new report from Friends of the Earth (FoE). For a reasonable 70 per cent chance of avoiding unacceptable impacts, a global temperature rise of less than two degrees Celsius, emissions would need to fall 16 per cent below 1990 levels by the year 2030. Government calculations are based on a 50 per cent probability. Andy Atkins from FoE commented that "it's astonishing that the United Kingdom, European Union and Group of 8 have adopted policies based on a 50:50 chance of avoiding a two degree rise in global temperatures - this is a reckless gamble with the lives and livelihoods of millions of people on the planet."

If the maximum amount of global emissions that could be permitted were allocated equally amongst the world's population to 2050, the United States would have to reduce its emissions by as much as 95 per cent by 2030 and the European Union by 83 per cent. Following peak emissions in 2013, China would need to reduce its emissions by five per cent a year. "The failure to curb emissions over the last 20 years means that millions of people around the world face an increased risk of drought, flooding and hunger," said Atkins. "This is a global emergency that requires immediate global action - wealthy nations must show leadership by rapidly slashing their emissions and provide poorer countries with sufficient finance and technology to do the same."

Real-world observations have confirmed that clouds are likely to respond to greenhouse gas-induced warming by amplifying that warming in a positive feedback. "No one has really rigorously quantified this feedback, and that's basically what I've done," said Andrew Dessler from Texas A&M University. "The cloud feedback is indeed positive. It does amplify the warming we get from greenhouse gases. The results suggest that our understanding and the models' simulation is actually quite good."

The analysis suggests that, for every one degree Celsius warming, clouds will trap an additional 0.5 Watts per square metre of energy. "If you ask the question, how could mainstream science be wrong about climate change? There would have to be something in the climate system that would cancel the warming," Dessler said. "One of the main places that could be would be clouds. Based on this work, I don't really see any evidence that that would happen." The research used satellite data as well as analyses of conventional weather observations for the first decade of the present century.