Crypto News: Trump threatens global climate science

Today's newsletter looks at the uncertainty the Trump administration is causing for the world's most crucial report on climate change. Later, our ESG reporter Natasha White tells us what to watch during a key United Nations biodiversity meeting in Rome this week. You can also read and share both stories on Bloomberg.com. For unlimited access to climate and energy news, please subscribe.

Trump creates IPCC uncertainty

By Eric Roston and Sheryl Tian Tong Lee

Climate diplomats beginning work on the next report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — the crucial assessment on global warming that helps shape policy for governments to companies — will meet in China this week without US officials.

US government scientists participating in the IPCC's global assessments were issued a stop-work order from the Trump administration, according to media reports late last week, and NASA's chief scientist Kate Calvin, who holds a leadership role in the new report cycle, is no longer attending as a result, CNN said, citing a spokesperson from the space agency.

NASA, Calvin, and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The IPCC Secretariat hasn't received any official communication in relation to any change in the status of the US-based section of the organization's Working Group III Technical Support Unit — the group that provides scientific and technical guidance, an IPCC spokesperson said in an email. "While awaiting more clarity, we refrain from speculating or commenting on this matter," the spokesperson said.

The US absence comes amid broader cuts to research funding and a retreat from climate diplomacy under the Trump administration, raising new questions on what the IPCC's future might look like without US leadership. The group's assessments are widely viewed as the world's most trusted source of information on climate change.

"Without the US, the IPCC fails," said Benjamin Horton, director of the Earth Observatory of Singapore, who has contributed to past assessment reports. "The US puts more money, more personnel, collects more data and runs more models for climate science than the rest of the world combined."

About 18% of IPCC authors have been from the US, more than twice the next biggest national contributor, the UK, according to a 2023 analysis by Carbon Brief.

Pedestrians during a heatwave. Photographer: Tonje Thilesen/Bloomberg

The Feb. 24-28 meeting in Hangzhou will revolve around outlines and budgets for components of the IPCC's seventh assessment report, which is expected to be released in 2029, and carbon removal and capture technologies. The reports summarize scientific consensus on the state of climate change, guiding policy decisions and negotiations.

It would be difficult to overstate the confidence the IPCC has in the vast basics of climate science and the influence of its findings in shaping global policy, business and investment. The world began a global charge towards net zero in 2018 after the panel published a special report on global temperatures.

The authoritative climate science body has now produced six assessments since its founding in 1988, each thousands of pages long. Over time the IPCC's reports have become more confident and detailed on humankind's contribution to the warming planet. In 1995 the IPCC agreed there was evidence of "a discernible human influence on global climate," while in 2007 it found "warming of the climate system is unequivocal." In 2021 they wrote: "It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land."

Not every scientist thinks the IPCC's existence depends on the US. Detlef van Vuuren, a Utrecht University professor, climate researcher at PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency and a past IPCC contributor, said the group would survive if the US decides to leave the organization for good, despite the country's monumental role over the decades.

"It's obviously highly problematic that a country that has contributed so much to IPCC, but also to global emissions, would decide that facts are not a good basis to inform climate policy," he said.

— With assistance from Jennifer A Dlouhy

Turning up the heat

1.62C

This is how much the world warmed last year, according to Berkeley Earth. Five science agencies confirmed in January that 2024 was the hottest year on record.

Scientists without borders

"Weather does not respect political boundaries. It is not possible to predict the weather in the United States without cooperation from other parts of the world."

Daniel Swain

A climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles

Earlier this month, scientists and staff at forecasting agency NOAA were told to log and clear all international contacts and communication, according to internal communications seen by Bloomberg News.

Stalled UN nature talks resume in Rome

By Natasha White

Global biodiversity talks that collapsed in November will resume Tuesday in Rome, with delegates from about 150 nations expected to try to smooth over differences and agree on how to advance toward 2030 targets to halt catastrophic nature loss.

The 16th United Nations Biodiversity Conference, COP16, held in Cali, Colombia, ended abruptly after countries disagreed in overtime talks about the creation of a new global nature fund.

Negotiators will now race against time to agree on how best to collect and distribute the funds necessary to implement the goals of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, a landmark nature pact adopted in December 2022.

Failure to reach consensus in Rome would leave the pact "handicapped," Susana Muhamad, Colombia's outgoing environment minister and the president of COP16, said in an interview. "We don't yet have the institutional and financial architecture that could allow us to achieve it."

Susana Muhamad speaks at the COP16 summit in Cali, Colombia, on Oct. 29, 2024. Photographer: Jair F. Coll/Bloomberg

Muhamad tendered her resignation from Colombian President Gustavo Petro's cabinet earlier this month, citing concerns about new government appointees. She will continue as COP16 president until after the conclusion of the Rome talks, according to a spokesperson for the secretariat of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity.

With budgets under pressure globally, governments have turned to the private sector to help plug the $200 billion-a-year gap in funding for nature. But financial institutions have stressed that they cannot — and will not — act to address nature loss without clear government guidance and profitable opportunities. It is an "unproven premise" that private financial institutions "can directly and materially influence nature-positive economic outcomes," the Institute of International Finance, the industry's global body, said in a January statement.

After the Cali talks foundered, Muhamad and her team spent November and December consulting regional negotiating groups on possible points of compromise. She's since held one-on-one meetings with ministers in a bid to achieve high-level political support, she said. She said she hopes that "at least a group" of those ministers will turn up in Rome, but declined to name who she expects to attend.

"We need to see a more open door" from developed countries, said Maria Angélica Ikeda, who is leading Brazil's delegation in Rome. "We are ready to make adjustments, but we need assurances that we will really have a dedicated fund for biodiversity."

Read the full story on Bloomberg.com.

Worth a listen

Will developed and developing countries be able to reach consensus at this week's UN biodiversity summit in Rome? Reporter Natasha White, who attended part one in Cali, tells Akshat Rathi what she expects. Listen now, and subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube to get new episodes of Zero every Thursday.