Riding the Marrakech Express

Here in #Antarcticaw/ some of the world's top researchers. The science is clear: #climatechangeis real, and we ignore it at our own peril. (November 13, 2016)

Climate change directly impacts everyone across all seven continents. We all must do our part to #ActOnClimate." (November 11, 2016)

Headed to #Antarcticato see firsthand some of the drastic effects of #climatechange. Many thanks to @NSFfor making this trip possible.(November 10, 2016)

Today the #ParisAgreementgoes into effect. Proud of this step taken by the int'l community & energized to keep up work on #climatechange. (November 4, 2016)

For those who came in late, the UN is chasing climate-dollars throughtwo channels, the Korean-based UNFCCC Green Climate Fundand Nairobi-based UNEP. With regard to the former, as Tony Thomas explained last week here:

Trump has pledged not only to rip up the Paris deal, but to withdraw all US climate funding to the UN. The UN climate fund is supposed to build to $100b a year for Third World mendicants. Obama has given $500m so far and pledged $3 billion to the UN Green Climate Fund, but Trump will divert those billions to domestic environmental projects such as the Florida Everglades.

The sheer scale of UNEP's ambition and activities is even more significant, as explained here. Inthe weird world of environmental politics, the UN sees no conflict of interest in one powerful body and its agencies being responsible for collecting data, concocting 'projections' and 'storylines'and developing policy; while simultaneously funding and encouraging advocacy groups to pressure governments to design or modify renewable energy (RE) and carbon-pricing regulations in its favour. Why not? Well, the ultimate beneficiaries, surely, are humankind and the planet – not huge ticket-clipping pension funds (some with significant RE sector exposure) and career climate-bureaucrats.

Perhaps it is just as well an entity that claims to have the power to induce a global Goldilocks climate and manipulate the planet's thermostat is protected by legal immunityunder the 1946 Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations; especially if its 'best available science' cannot make genuine predictions.

The UN's latest initiatives are instructive in this context. On 7 October this year, Bank of Mexico Governor, Agustín Carstens, and UNFCCC Chief, Patricia Espinosa, posted an editorial in the agency's Climate Change Newsroom: "Paris will soon enter into force, now we need to move the money." Some of the US$90 trillion they want to move by 2030 could be from your pension fund.

The cost of making the transition to a low-carbon future is measured in trillions. This quickly takes us far beyond the realm of public funds since no government – no matter how rich – can finance climate action through taxation and borrowing alone. One estimate suggests that around US $90 trillion will need to be invested by 2030 in infrastructure, agriculture and energy systems, to accomplish the Paris Agreement.

This won't happen without private capital and underlines why aligning the world's financial system with the needs of climate action and sustainable development is every bit as important as emission reduction pathways and removing fossil fuel subsidies. Moreover, set against the US$300 trillion of assets – held by banks, the capital markets and institutional investors – we're faced with a problem of allocation rather than outright scarcity.

As for UNEP, it just released its annual "emissions gap" reportat COP22. Comparing the goals of Paris 2015 to signatory pledges, it uses all the alarmist rhetoric one would expect from an agency that is the 43-year-old brainchild of the late Maurice Strong. Unless reductions in "carbon pollution from the energy sector are reduced swiftly and steeply", UNEP claims that it will be nearly impossible to keep warming below 2 degrees, let alone to the 1.5 degree aspiration.

According to UNEP the need for urgent, immediate action to confront the "climate crisis" is "indisputable." And yes, you guessed it. We are all drinking in the Last Chance Saloon.

It is likely the last chance to keep the option of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees C in 2100 open, as all available scenarios consistent with the 1.5 degree C goal imply that global greenhouse gases peak before 2020.

As to the source of UNEP's 2 degree threshold, it remains a mystery, at least to the author. Is it a best-guess algorithm from a flawed computer model, or the emphatic conclusion of a new law of nature? Perhaps that is why more and more climate scientists seem to be emoting like tearful Cassandras. Alternatively, they may be merely desperate to be acknowledged as champions of the earth too. Expressing one's feelings about the future in public, however, does not in any way validate DAGW or DACC. Anyway, folk in northern Russiawould welcome some extra warmth right now.

Last week's collision between the Trump Train and Marrakech Express should slow down - maybe even derail - the UN's relentless two-decade climate scare campaign. If it does the latter, there may not be enough hens on the planet to lay all the eggs required to go on the faces of the folk who have promulgated this narrative with such emphatic certainty.

Perhaps there is a god or goddess after all. If so, one of His or Her ninety-nine names just might be – if not Veritas, then - Serpens Oleum. Let us pray.