DALLAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov 7, 2024--
RealFoundations, the world’s foremost provider of consulting and managed services for the real estate industry, today announced the appointment of Andy Rothery to the firm’s leadership team as an Enterprise Managing Consultant. Rothery brings over 30 years of real estate experience, along with extensive global operational expertise and industry relationships. With over three decades of experience in the real estate industry and a deep understanding of global real estate operations, Rothery will be instrumental to advancing brand awareness and generating new business opportunities within the UK and across Europe.
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“We are delighted to welcome Andy to our team, which will strengthen our advisory services within the UK and position us for growth across Europe,” said Phillip McCorkle, Chief Executive Officer of Management Consulting at RealFoundations. “Andy’s distinguished record of leadership and real estate advisory will play a critical role in expanding our presence and elevating RealFoundations’ mission to make real estate run better on a global scale.”
Rothery, a seasoned real estate executive, has held executive leadership roles at some of the world’s most well-recognized professional services firms. His prior leadership roles include Equity Partner positions at both Arthur Andersen and Deloitte, where he was the global industry chair and founding managing partner of Deloitte Real Estate. Following his departure from Deloitte, Rothery engaged in various advisory roles and contributed to various charitable and educational initiatives. Most recently, he served as Co-head of Affordable Housing at QSix, a specialized residential investment manager, and as an advisor at Pinnacle Investments, where he supported the development of an institutional key worker housing investment vehicle.
“I am very excited to be joining RealFoundations, who have a unique position as the world’s largest real estate focused operational consulting and managed services firm. I believe the winners in the next cycle will be those organizations that have the most efficient and effective operating platform. Those able to adapt quickly and at scale to growth challenges across markets, integrate ESG reporting, adopt AI tools, address cyber risk, and provide timely and accurate data to increasingly diverse and demanding stakeholder groups we will be positioned for success. RealFoundations is uniquely positioned to help clients with all these challenges in Europe given its experience in the United States,” said Andy Rothery.
To learn more about RealFoundations’ experience serving global leaders in the real estate market, visit www.realfoundations.net.
About RealFoundations
RealFoundations (RF) is the world’s foremost professional services firm focused solely on the real estate industry. Through our delivery of Management Consulting and Managed Services, we help companies that develop, own, operate, service or invest in real estate make better, more profitable decisions. We are proud partners to over 500 real estate companies around the globe, providing accelerated solutions that solve some of real estate’s most complex challenges. We Make Real Estate Run Better.
Andy Rothery, Enterprise Managing Consultant at RealFoundations (Photo: Business Wire)
CHICAGO (AP) — For the second year in a row, Earth will almost certainly be the hottest it's ever been. And for the first time, the globe this year reached more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming compared to the pre-industrial average, the European climate agency Copernicus said Thursday.
“It's this relentless nature of the warming that I think is worrying,” said Carlo Buontempo, director of Copernicus.
Buontempo said the data clearly shows the planet would not see such a long sequence of record-breaking temperatures without the constant increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere driving global warming.
He cited other factors that contribute to exceptionally warm years like last year and this one. They include El Nino — the temporary warming of parts of the Pacific that changes weather worldwide — as well as volcanic eruptions that spew water vapor into the air and variations in energy from the sun. But he and other scientists say the long-term increase in temperatures beyond fluctuations like El Nino is a bad sign.
“A very strong El Nino event is a sneak peek into what the new normal will be about a decade from now,” said Zeke Hausfather, a research scientist with the nonprofit Berkeley Earth.
News of a likely second year of record heat comes a day after U.S. Republican Donald Trump, who has called climate change a “hoax” and promised to boost oil drilling and production, was reelected to the presidency. It also comes days before the next U.N. climate conference, called COP29, is set to begin in Azerbaijan. Talks are expected to focus on how to generate trillions of dollars to help the world transition to clean energies like wind and solar and avoid more warming.
Also on Thursday, a report released by the United Nations Environment Programme called for increased funds to adapt to global heating and its consequences. It found that the $28 billion spent worldwide to adapt to climate change in 2022 — the latest year the data is available — is an all time high. But it's still far short of the estimated $187 to $359 billion needed every year to deal with the heat, floods, droughts and storms exacerbated by climate change.
“Earth’s ablaze,” said U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in a pre-recorded statement marking the report's release. “Humanity’s torching the planet and paying the price” with the vulnerable most affected, he said.
Buontempo pointed out that going over the 1.5 degree Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) threshold of warming for a single year is different than the goal adopted in the 2015 Paris Agreement. That goal was meant to try to cap warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times on average, over 20 or 30 years.
A United Nations report this year said that since the mid-1800s on average, the world has already heated up 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 degrees Fahrenheit) — up from previous estimates of 1.1 degrees (2 degrees Fahrenheit) or 1.2 degrees (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit). That's of concern because the U.N. says the greenhouse gas emission reduction goals of the world's nations still aren't nearly ambitious enough to keep the 1.5 degree Celsius target on track.
The target was chosen to try to stave off the worst effects of climate change on humanity, including extreme weather. “The heat waves, storm damage, and droughts that we are experiencing now are just the tip of the iceberg,” said Natalie Mahowald, chair of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Cornell University.
Going over that number in 2024 doesn’t mean the overall trend line of global warming has, but “in the absence of concerted action, it soon will,” said University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann.
Stanford University climate scientist Rob Jackson put it in starker terms. “I think we have missed the 1.5 degree window,” said Jackson, who chairs the Global Carbon Project, a group of scientists who track countries’ carbon dioxide emissions. “There’s too much warming.”
Indiana state climatologist Beth Hall said she isn't surprised by the latest report from Copernicus, but emphasized that people should remember climate is a global issue beyond their local experiences with changing weather. “We tend to be siloed in our own individual world,” she said. Reports like this one “are taking into account lots and lots of locations that aren’t in our backyard.”
Buontempo stressed the importance of global observations, bolstered by international cooperation, that allow scientists to have confidence in the new report's finding: Copernicus gets its results from billions of measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft and weather stations around the world.
He said that going over the 1.5 degree Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) benchmark this year is “psychologically important” as nations make decisions internally and approach negotiations at the annual U.N. climate change summit Nov. 11-22 in Azerbaijan.
“The decision, clearly, is ours. It’s of each and every one of us. And it’s the decision of our society and our policymakers as a consequence of that,” he said. “But I believe these decisions are better made if they are based on evidence and facts.”
Associated Press reporters Seth Borenstein in Washington and Sibi Arasu in Bengaluru, India contributed to this report.
Follow Melina Walling on X, formerly Twitter: @MelinaWalling.
The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
FILE - Tourists with an umbrella walk in front of the Parthenon at the ancient Acropolis in central Athens, June 12, 2024. June 2024 was the hottest June on record, according to Europe's Copernicus climate service on Monday, July 8. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris, File)
FILE - Firefighter Geo Mulongo, center, finishes his water while taking a break during the Line Fire in Highland, Calif., Sept. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)
FILE - Ricky Leath, an outreach specialist with the City of Miami, talks with Bei Zhao, right, as he works with the Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust to distribute bottles of water and other supplies to the homeless population, helping them manage high temperatures, May 15, 2024, in Miami. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky, File)
FILE - A man fills containers with water due to the shortage caused by high temperatures and drought in Veracruz, Mexico, on June 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez, File)
FILE - A tourist shelters from the sun by a fountain in front of the Sforzesco Castle in Milan, Italy, July 11, 2024. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno, File)
FILE - Counselor Izzy Kellar, of Dayton, Ohio, fills up her campers' water bottles, June 20, 2024, at YMCA Camp Kern in Oregonia, Ohio. (AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel)
FILE - A woman, center, weeps as patients of heatstroke receive treatment at a hospital in Karachi, Pakistan, June 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Fareed Khan, File)
FILE - A volunteer pours water to cool a man off during a hot day in Karachi, Pakistan, May 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Fareed Khan, File)
