Climate Tricks 61, Obama's $1B transfer to the UN climate fund

This is a delayed post. I gathered these news reports in mid-January 2017, about 1-2 weeks before Donald Trump would be officially inaugurated as the next US President.

There was a debate in the US then, whether the US' commitment to the Paris Agreement in 2015 was a treaty (would necessitate Senate ratification) or an Executive agreement. The White House under the previous administration argued that it was the latter and hence, did not require Senate vote to ratify or not. Thus, the White House just freely dispensed and released $1B to the UN Green Climate Fund. $500M in late 2016, around November, and another $500 M in January 2017.

Mr. Obama promised that the US would give $3B to the UN climate fund. If Mr. Trump would honor the same promise, he must give the $2B balance somewhere in his 4-years term. But this will not happen because the new President has already promised during the campaign period that he would defund US' multi-billion $ planned funding to various UN "save the planet" projects. His succeeding pronouncements as President are less explicit to fulfill this promise, but neither did he utter that he will make a U-turn from such campaign pronouncement.

The UN will be in a sad state because they will have less money to hold huge and expensive annual climate meetings and parties to "fight climate change" and they are not used to it. Phoney goal actually because how can humans or governments fight something that naturally occur? Climate change has happened since planet Earth was born some 4.6 B years ago and will continue to happen in the next billions of years into the future.

When governments politicize something, including climate research, the purported anthropogenic or "man-made" CC has become 95% political science and 5% climate science.
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See also:

Climate Tricks 58, Trump's climate advisor to reverse US government alarmism, January 20, 2017 

Climate Tricks 59, Alarmism by the socialists and global ecological central planners, January 28, 2017 

Climate Tricks 60, Alarmism cannot produce data of "unprecedented warming", March 23, 2017

Climate Tricks 35:Follow the Money, Trillions of $$$

One reason why the ecological movement is persistent on "man-made warming/CC" is because they are targeting amount of money, hundreds of billions of dollars per year, not per decade or one time payment. See various reports below.

Hey taxpayers of rich countries, will you remain rich if this large-scale extortion is implemented via the UN and other multilateral bodies (WB, ADB, IMF, etc.)?

(1) From interaksyon, Dec. 6, 2014

Developing countries may need up to $500 billion per year by 2050 to adapt to the ravages of climate change, dwarfing previous estimates, a UN report said Friday.

The figure was about 20 times today's public spending on climate adaptation, according to the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) that warned of a "significant funding gap after 2020."

In 2012-13, the amount of global public finance committed to adaptation was about $23-26 billion, of which 90 percent went to developing countries.

(IPCC) has projected adaptation costs in developing countries to reach $70-100 billion per year by 2050, based largely on World Bank figures from 2010.

And on some calculations, based on national-level rather than global-level studies, "adaptation costs could climb as high as $150 billion by 2025/2030 and $250-500 billion per year by 2050" -- and double that if the global average temperature rise is allowed to approach 4 C.

Ooppss, the climate and environmental socialism movement is not happy with $500 B a year extortion. Some guys there want higher, like $90 trillion over 15 years or $6 T a year. 

(2) From The Telegraph, December 6, 2014

it was again proposed in Lima that richer nations should pay poor countries $100 billion a year to protect them from runaway global warming, the UN’s chief spokesman, Christiana Figueres, dismissed this as “a very, very small sum”. What is needed to decarbonise the global economy, she said, is “$90 trillion over the next 15 years”. It makes the £1.3 trillion we Brits are committed by the Climate Change Act to pay to halt global warming within 36 years look like chicken feed.

(3) From Bloomberg, Dec. 5, 2014

Su was critical of the progress industrialized nations have made to boost climate-related aid to $100 billion a year by 2020. The Green Climate Fund, a UN institution meant to channel an unspecified portion of that aid to developing nations, has pledges for about $9.7 billion so far."

(4) From The Telegraph, Dec, 6, 2014

Developed nations have so far pledged almost $10bn (£6.4bn) of public funds – including £720m from the UK – to a new UN “Green Climate Fund” (GCF) to help developing nations.

China, which aligns itself with many of the poorest countries, has complained the total so far falls far short of a 2009 pledge by developed nations to mobilise $100bn-a-year of “climate finance” by 2020. “$10 billion is just one 10th of that objective,” Su Wei, China’s lead negotiator said, Bloomberg reported.

But Elina Bardram, head of the EU’s delegation dismissed the claim, insisting the $100bn was always intended to be mixture of public and private finance. The GCF was “by no means the only vehicle for delivering the $100bn,” she told reporters on Friday.

(5) From IBT, Dec. 7, 2014

Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) said that adaptation costs could climb as high as £96bn ($150bn) a year by 2025 to 2030, and £160-320 bn ($250-500 bn) per year by 2050, compared with earlier estimates of £44-64bn ($70-100bn) yearly by 2050, reports Reuters.

Responding to the UNFCCC report that between $340 and $650bn in finance for climate action is flowing globally with $40-175bn going to developing countries each year, Oxfam has noted that only a small proportion of climate finance is flowing from developed countries to developing countries.

Hmmmm, the higher the extortion money being demanded from rich countries, the bigger will the climate lies ahead.

Meanwhile, our planet's fever keeps rising, we are sweltering and burning as more CO2 is released in the atmosphere. :-)

From WUWT, Onward marches the Great Pause, by Christopher Moncton of Benchley, December 3, 2014.

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See also::

Climate Tricks 31: High Intolerance by the Alarmist Camp, May 14, 2014
Climate Tricks 32: Yeb Sano and CCC to Save the Arctic, September 16, 2014
Climate Tricks 33: UN Fooling Government Leaders to Accept Expensive Energy, September 25, 2014 
Climate Tricks 34: Watermelon Movement, Green Outside, Red Inside, October 07, 2014

Climate stupidity 15: Fight among alarmists over climate money

Before, the fight was between the pro-AGW (anthropogenic global warming) camps and those who reject AGW as a scam. Now, the fight is between and among the pro-AGW groups themselves. Particularly, between the environmental NGOs and the World Bank and other multilaterals, of who should handle the multi-billion dollars Green Climate Fund (GCF).

There is a new group (or is it an old one, am not sure) called World Bank Out of Climate Finance!. They refer this climate money as

Climate finance is needed urgently by the people of the South to enable them to deal with the impacts of climate change and pursue an alternative development pathway for equitable and sustainable societies. It is part of the reparations for the climate debt that northern countries owe the South for causing the climate crisis. It is also an obligation of northern countries under the UNFCCC. Climate justice movements have been advancing demands regarding 1) the scale and nature of climate finance, 2) sources, 3) a global climate fund, 4) allocation and use....

In its Climate Finance action alert number 1, it declared

Send Messages To the Transitional Committee of the UNFCCC:
No to World Bank Role in the Green Climate Fund!

A new global climate fund that will be responsible for managing and disbursing climate finance for the South is vital and has been the subject of climate justice campaigns and of international climate negotiations. A key demand of climate justice campaigners as well many South countries (“developing countries”) is that the World Bank not be given a role in this new global climate fund given its track record in harmful projects and policies, undemocratic structures and operations, its neoliberal development paradigm, and its involvement in dirty energy.

One of the “decisions” of the Conference of Parties (COP) of the UNFCCC last December 2010 in Cancun was to set up the “Green Climate Fund” or GCF. A “Transitional Committee” was formed with the task of drafting a proposed design for the GCF and submitting it for action at the next COP in Durban, South Africa in December 2011. Further, the World Bank was appointed as “trustee” of the Fund for the “interim period.”

The Transitional Committee had its first meeting last April 28 to 29, and a major issue that sparked debate was the role of the World Bank in the Technical Support Unit (TSU) of the Transitional Committee. A number of developing country members of the TC clearly stated their position that the World Bank not be given an influential role in the TSU and in the regular structures and operations of the Green Climate Fund itself. This position has been strongly articulated by many movements and civil society groups in various statements addressed to the UNFCCC and the Transitional Committee.

I was a bit surprised that many environmental and activist NGOs that love big government can despise one big institution that actually supports big government, the WB. Whaahappened? :-)

So if these NGOs dislike the WB to manage the fund, who will? The Asian Development Bank (ADB)? EU/EC? UNEP? UNDP? Other multilateral bodies?

Wait... In the draft email to members of the Transitional Committee, the last paragraph says,

"We urge you to keep the World Bank and other multilateral development banks out of the Green Climate Fund."

This means that even the ADB, another institution dispensing billions of dollars of loans for "climate adaptation" and "climate mitigation" of poorer countries, will be disbarred by this big group of environmental and activist NGOs.

So, who will handle that huge amount of tax money from rich countries? Greenpeace? The World Wildlife Fund (WWF)? Oxfam?

These three big international NGOs are in the frontline of climate alarmism, along with the UN IPCC, FCCC, UNEP, GISS-NASA, Al Gore, among others. I notice that none of them are in the list of the lobbying NGOs.

Hmmmm, tens (or hundreds?) of billions of dollars of tax money as "climate finance" to save the poor, save the planet, to be handled by some big international environmental NGOs. I smell a rat.

No wonder why they are fighting now. Money-money-money. Tax-tax-tax. The AGW scam must continue. Or many of these guys will be exposed as charlatans and will lose jobs.
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Meanwhile, there's this weird news in Manila today. WUWT made fun of this news in its blog article, So, if you get divorced, can you chop them down?

From national to local governments, the extent of coercion and regulations keep expanding -- to "save the planet."

And those "ice free Arctic" and "ice free Antarctica" fiction-projection repeatedly announced by the alarmists, here's the latest satellite pictures of the polar regions as of two days ago.

Sea ice extent as of this week in the Arctic is around 8 million sq.kms. In Antarctica, it's around 14.5 million sq. kms.

The lowest sea ice extent that occurs in the Arctic is around 4.4 million sq. kms., happening sometime around mid- or late-September each year. That's the lowest or the "worst" scenario that can happen each year.

Just how "small" is 4.4 million sq. kms.? Well, the Philippines' total land area is 0.3 million sq. kms. That's for the whole 7,100+ islands and islets that currently contains 95 million people, the 12th biggest population in the world. So even the "worst" and lowest sea ice record in the Arctic will still be 14.7x larger than the total land area of the Philippines.

The maximum sea ice extent in the Arctic is around 14.4 million sq. kms., happening sometime in mid-March each year. That's 48x the total land area of the Philippines.

So if you listen to the climate alarmists, it's really scary that Arctic will have a totally "ice free" summer in the next few years. The extent of their lies is directly proportional to the amount of money they get -- from governments, the UN, and the public they have fooled for so many years now.