@JacquelynGill Your comment and @_HannahRitchie piece very true. India was very concerned at this trend being stoked by IPCC itself in WG I report. SPM highlights very low probability, high impact events from RCP8.5 scenarios.
However some developed countries were evangelically insistent on including this stuff. We pushed back but the language was heavily backed by the IPCC leadership. The matter is on record in the @IISD_ENB account if proceedings.
India also referred to it in closing remarks in plenary. Other pressure was building on IPCC before the approval. Example - Naomi Oreskes and Nicholas Stern claiming IPCC was being conservative on sea level rise in a major news article.
The current doomsday wave is sponsored by some scientists themselves. Also some IPCC authors skew the message of nuanced IPCC language in their presentations on behalf of IPCC later in other forums like UNFCCC.
Finally, the greater the language of hopelessness or apocalyptic finality the less the country from which they hail is doing!! Novels like Ministry of the Future is a good example if this kind of climate tabloid writing ( to put it politely)
Excellent review of #COP26. Sees through the illusion of US as climate leader. Very understanding of India's position. An excellent,nuanced, parsing of the coal para in the decision and the goings on of the plenary.
Notes the importance of PM Modi's early announcements and the eloquent articulation of India's Env Minister @byadavbjp at the closing plenary of the equity dimension and why developing countries still need fossil fuels.
SPEAKING OUT ON CLIMATE FINANCE.
Thanks to @TheIndiaForum. One of the fallouts of the coal "tamasha" at the closing plenary was to divert attention from the developed country failure on climate finance and loss and damage assistance. @moefcc@3rdworldnetwork@JMauskar 1/n
Deliberate, at least in part. @AlokSharma_RDG saying that the world will call India to account is a bit rich. By COP27 the South will be calling the developed world to account yet again -- louder at Sharm-el-Sheikh than at Glasgow!! 2/n
I underline the unprecedented COP decision that "notes with deep regret" the failure to mobilise the promised USD 100 billion. Failure on loss and damage finance. Obdurate and recalcitrant attitude of developed countries on finance called out. 3/n
See video available at (regrettably only in Hindi without translation) - from 1:09:00 to 1:16:00 -significant even for the length of the intervention on the importance of development for India.
The speech notes that the developed world has emitted about 15 times more than India in absolute and per capita cumulative emissions (from 1850 till today). Also notes that US + EU have emitted 11 times more in absolute cumulative and 20 more in per capita cumulative emissions.
Some highlights from the talk:
COP26 was India's COP in 3 important ways. First, PM Modi's announcements at the start that reassured the world. And laid a challenge before the developed world to match the mitigation ambition of developing countries with ambition in finance. 2/n
Second, India was a key player in finalising the Paris Rulebook in a spirit of compromise while providing full support to the fight of colleagues of G77+China on adaptation and loss and damage. 3/n
Glasgow was necessary...Glasgow strengthened the Paris Agreement mechanism...."Glasgow clarified the ‘ambition cycle’, and this appears to have had results in the form of enhanced pledges." What??
How does this trick work? One, confuse two separate stages -- before the meeting and what the meeting decided. Before the meeting, the UK Presidency, US and EU went around "persuading". Global media campaign, etc. Glasgow had nothing to do with it!! Countries provide pledges.
By 2010, @KanitkarT and I were aware of carbon budgets and their importance for burden sharing in mitigation. We had a conference on the subject - Global Carbon Budgets and Equity in Climate Change attended by the Minister at that time, Jairam Ramesh. @JMauskar was there too. 3/n