My second day at COP 25 was 12/10/19. The attendees are very diverse. There are both men and women, young and old, but mostly white and English speakers. Every session I have attended has been conducted in English. The presenters consistently have impressive credentials: CEOs, high ranking government officials, scientists, professors, etc. This does not mean all the presentations are excellent and some are very poor speakers with terrible slides. But the overall impression is that this is an important event and people are taking it quite seriously. They are investing significant time and energy into this entire effort. Today Al Gore spoke, and he is going to be here tomorrow again. Supposedly Michael Bloomberg was here with Harrison Ford. Last week Texas Impact met with a delegation from Washington which included Nancy Pelosi.
Some countries are taking climate change as a real threat and have made significant progress, countries like Denmark, Uruguay, and Costa Rica. It is extremely disappointing that the US is not joining in the effort. There are other countries, such as Australia, who are not taking climate change seriously and lots of countries with limited results. The worldwide use of energy is broken down into three major categories: heating and cooling just over 50%; transportation about 30% and electricity generation. Only the electricity sector is making progress toward converting to green sources. For example, electric cars are a good start but they are less than 10%. This was a point of emphasis in the Circularity challenges, the current economic model towards a sustainable future. This is in regard to our cities building etc. a simple example is we build tall buildings with glass steel and concrete, then they are heated by the sun and lights but must be cooled especially in warmer locations so people can live and work in them.
One of the sessions I attend was presented primarily by Russian scientists who have been studying the ice and permafrost. This has been ongoing; they had data back to 1970. Many of these studies are conducted with other countries including the US and France. 25% of the world is covered by ice, permafrost etc. i.e. Canada, Russia but these guys went to both poles as well! Conclusions: it’s all melting, FAST and this is very bad because there will be additional releases of CO2 during the melting. This in fact could be much more than we are currently doing with our reckless use of fossil fuels. Glaciers are disappearing and they forecasted a flood in Russia but did not communicate well with local police. Three lives were lost but this was such a small number because the day of the flood was September 1 and most of the folks in the small town were at the school enrolling their children. This in some way reminded me of the dam releases in Houston which were done at night causing special hardships instead of warning folks ahead of time. No real estimates of amounts of sea rise or timing but it is happening faster than they were anticipating and papers are almost out of date when released.