Weirdly, the Paper Of Record forgot to mention all the long fossil fueled trip, mostly on private jets, world leaders took to NYC

At Global Climate Summit This Week, U.S. Isolation Was on Full Display

At a climate summit at the United Nations on Wednesday, the vast majority of the world’s nations gathered to make their newest pledges to reduce planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions over the next decade.

Geopolitical heavyweights including China, Russia, Japan and Germany were there. Dozens of small island states were there. The world’s poorest countries, including Chad and the Central African Republic, were there. Venezuela, Syria, Iran — there, too.

The United States was not.

There are few issues on which the United States is more diplomatically isolated from the rest of the world than climate change. President Trump’s hostility to renewable energy, which he clearly broadcast in his speech at the United Nations General Assembly, is at odds with the rapid construction of wind farms, solar arrays and other renewable energy sources in a range of countries. The construction boom includes even oil-producing giants like Saudi Arabia, which is adding solar capacity at a rapid clip.

Do we care? Does Trump care? If the other nations want to mortgage their future on this scam, have at it. If the Elites in other countries want to use this to initiate authoritarianism, real, that’s on them. None of those Elites at the UN nor their staffs are practicing what they preach.

At Wednesday’s climate summit, 121 countries were scheduled to deliver a message very different from Mr. Trump’s, pledging to rein in global emissions not only for the sake of trying to slow catastrophic global warming but because renewables are getting cheaper faster than was previously thought. In some cases, renewables now produce electricity more affordably than plants that burn fossil fuels, bolstering the argument made by some countries that solar and wind can help with economic growth while providing energy security by limiting reliance on imports of fuels like coal, oil or gas.

Can they start by making their leaders take trains and sailing ships back to their home companies?

I mean, I’m seriously impressed, the doomsday cult has really been working on coming up with new stuff instead of recycling the same old stuff

Where ‘day-zero droughts’ could happen as soon as this decade

Many parts of the world are predicted to endure “day-zero droughts,” periods of extreme and unprecedented water scarcity, which could happen as soon as this decade in certain hotspots including parts of North America, the Mediterranean and southern Africa, according to a new study.

It’s well known that climate change, driven by burning fossil fuels, is throwing the global water cycle off balance and causing scarcity. What’s much less clear is when and where extreme water shortages will hit. The new research helps provide answers and some of them are surprising, said Christian Franzke, a climate scientist at Pusan National University in South Korea and an author of the study published Tuesday in Nature Communications.

The scientists used a large number of climate models to assess the timing and likelihood of day-zero droughts. These are “unprecedented water scarcity events, events which haven’t occurred so far,” Franzke said. It’s when “you turn on your water tap and no water comes out,” he told CNN.

Day-zero droughts arise from the confluence of various factors, including a prolonged dearth of rain, low river levels and shrunken reservoirs, as well as rocketing water demand to supply people, farms and industries.

Computer models, LOL. They tell the doomsday scientists whatever they want. Anyhow, what happens if this doesn’t happen? Who loses their job, pension, and reputation?

More than a third of these regions, including the western United States, could face this situation as early as the 2020s or 2030s. The finding that day-zero droughts could happen so soon, at current levels of global warming, was “something that surprised us,” Franzke said, even though a few cities have already come perilously close.

Oh, right, no one will remember this particular bit of scaremongering, it’s meant for now, to freak people out and get politicians to pass laws. But, I think people are mostly done being scared. I’ve always watched a ton of horror movies since I was young and read horror books. There’s little that scares me anymore.

I hope it was by Zoom

Six World Leaders on Navigating Climate Change, Without the U.S.

International collaboration on climate change is fraying. The Trump administration withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement, the 2015 treaty aiming to limit global warming, and has penalized the renewable-energy business and promoted fossil fuels. Ten years after Paris, a vast majority of countries are not on pace to meet their climate targets. With the United States sidelined and China ascendant as a clean-energy superpower, the global map of alliances on climate action is being redrawn. On top of all this, the planet keeps warming.

Debates around climate change often focus on the world’s largest economies and biggest emitters. But much of the hard work of figuring out how to adapt — both to a hotter planet and to a new geopolitical landscape — is happening in countries that have contributed relatively little to the problem yet are still navigating complex climate-related issues. Hoping to better understand how global warming and the changing world order are affecting some of these often-overlooked places, I spoke with six world leaders from different geographic regions. I heard some common themes: the ravages of extreme weather, the difficulties posed by the Trump administration’s retreat. But these conversations also illustrated the intensely varied predicaments facing world leaders right now.

They talk to

• Hilda C. Heine, president of the Marshall Islands, who says ‘We will be submerged by 2050 if the world doesn’t do its part.’
• Anthony Albanese, prime minister of Australia
• Mohamed Irfaan Ali, president of Guyana, who says ‘We can’t be naïve. The world will need fossil fuel a long time into the future.’
• William Ruto, president of Kenya who said ‘When it comes to emissions, we are paying for a crime that others committed.’
• Muhammad Yunus, chief adviser of Bangladesh
• Petteri Orpo, prime minister of Finland who said ‘We are going to change our whole society.’

Orpo’s full quote

Today we produce more than 95 percent of our electricity carbon-neutral. We are going to change our whole society to use clean energy and get rid of fossils and to be carbon neutral. And we can do it. Our companies are committed. And our people, the whole of society, is committed to these targets.

You will change whether you like it or not. Oh, also the NY Times

It’s Gridlock Week in Manhattan as U.N. General Assembly Starts

It’s that time of year when Midtown East in Manhattan both brims with action and comes to a standstill.

The 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly, starting Monday, will bring together more than 140 world leaders to discuss contentious issues like the war in Ukraine and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. It is known by many diplomats as the World Cup of diplomacy.

But it is known by many New Yorkers as a pain in the neck.

The main event, which takes place this week along First Avenue between East 42nd and 48th Streets, brings with it impassable streets in Midtown East as well as intermittent closures citywide. The Department of Transportation is encouraging New Yorkers to use public transit and other “nondriving modes” for getting around Midtown over the next five days.

They want New Yorkers to take mass transit while the all the big shots, including the 6 mentioned above, take fossil fueled trips in big SUVs, along with their whole retinues. Climate doom is for you peasants.