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November 6, 2017 / 12:23 AM / 2 years ago
U.N. warns of heat as climate talks seek action despite Trump
Environment Correspondent Alister Doyle
BONN (Reuters) - This year will be among the three hottest on record, the United Nations said on Monday, as almost 200 countries started talks in Germany to bolster a global climate accord that the United States plans to quit.
Temperatures this year will be slightly less than during a record-breaking 2016 and roughly level with 2015, the United Nations' World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said, part of a long-term warming trend driven by greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels.
"We have witnessed extraordinary weather," said Petteri Talaas, head of the WMO, pointing to extreme events including a spate of hurricanes in the Atlantic and Caribbean, monsoon floods in Asia and drought in East Africa.
The WMO attributed the small dip from last year to the fading effects of a natural El Nino event that released extra heat from the Pacific Ocean in 2016. In terms of economic costs, 2017 will be the most costly hurricane season on record after Harvey, Irma and Maria, it added.
Delegates said sweltering temperatures and weather extremes were a spur for action at the annual conference in Bonn from Nov. 6-17, which will work on a detailed rule book for the 2015 Paris climate agreement and try to step up action before 2020.
"This is our moment of truth," Fiji's Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama, presiding at the Bonn talks, told delegates, urging them to "lock arms with all other nations and move forward together".
Patricia Espinosa, the U.N.'s climate chief, said "the very fabric of life on Earth is under threat" from rising temperatures. "The message cannot get any clearer. We must act right here, right now," she said.
Children are seen during climate march prior to the opening session of the COP23 UN Climate Change Conference 2017, hosted by Fiji but held in Bonn, in World Conference Center Bonn, Germany, November 6, 2017. REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay
U.S. President Donald Trump, who doubts mainstream scientific findings that man-made greenhouse gases are the primary cause of climate change, said in June he would pull out of the Paris agreement and instead promote U.S. fossil fuels.
None of the speakers at the opening ceremony mentioned Trump by name. The meeting included a traditional Fijian warrior ceremony and children parading with models of a whale, jellyfish and polar bear to urge more action.
U.S. DELEGATION SHRINKS
A U.N. list of delegates counts 48 Americans, mostly technical experts and many fewer than in recent years. The U.S. delegation office in a tent village in Bonn has less space, for instance, than those for France or Italy.
A formal U.S. pullout will take until November 2020 and delegates say there are wide uncertainties about how far Washington will balance Trump's pro-coal agenda with the conference's goals.
Fiji's chief negotiator Nazhat Shameem Khan said the U.S. delegation had consistently signaled "a willingness for constructive engagement" in preparations for the Bonn conference.
And some developing nations, including Iran, said all rich countries were failing to do enough, especially to cut emissions before 2020.
The Paris climate agreement sets a goal of ending the fossil fuel era this century and to limit warming to "well below" two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times, ideally 1.5C.
But the United Nations says the world is on track for a temperature rise of about three degrees by 2100.
Monday's WMO report said average surface temperatures in 2017 were already about 1.1C above the pre-industrial era in data from January to September.
Reporting By Alister Doyle, editing by David Evans and Gareth Jones

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ALBUM OUT TODAY! If you're on a computer, watch and listen our web advert!
Off to Cambridge later to create the Uni-mind with Joshua Blackmore and Dave Kane!
Today is a day of very new things. yana — which in my mind will always be "Corey Mwamba | Dave Kane | Joshua Blackmore" — has music on a record label, mainly because Alya from Two Rivers Records believed we should have one, and cared enough to make it happen in the best possible way. We have physical copies of our music, which is not new for us; but instead of them being made by my two hands, the CDs have had a team behind them in terms of design and production. The support and listening we have had from Two Rivers has been wonderful.
As most people who know me know, this group is special to me for a number of reasons. First, it showed me what I could do if I applied my will and stuck with it. I wanted to hear Dave and Joshua together (they had not met previously), and it happened and kept happening because we kept believing it should happen, even when (in the earlier days) people's understanding of what we were doing was limited.
Second, this group allowed me to make the music I wanted to without worrying about... well, lots of things that working in music makes you think you have to worry about. It has always been difficult to get us in the same room as we're all very busy; but when we do get in the same room, things are unbelievably simple.
Third, the musical mind we form is unlike any I have experienced in any other group. It would take me a very long time to talk about what happens inside, but in short there is a love, a language and a groove that I feel palpably, every time we play. And it is amazing to be inside that, and to learn from it. When I listen back to our first recordings, I understand how much we have moved; not away from anything, but deeper into how we communicate. And the time we spend not playing together is immaterial. Today will be the first time we've played together for a year and that is by no means unusual.
I think we have had more support from fellow musicians who have heard/seen us over the years, but also powerful encouragement from audiences over the years. You might wonder why we're doing Cambridge first, but it's for a very good reason (other than Joshua living there). Graham Lee and Carol Garrison are two of the most devoted music fans I know. For us to play for their night is a pure honour; they've travelled with this group from the beginning. There is nowhere else we would want to be.
If you can make it down tonight, it'd be lovely to see you: but if not, then please buy a copy of the album, and I hope you like it.