Climate Feedback

There's an interesting commenary in Nature this week (currently free to access) by Steve Rayner of the James Martin Institute in Oxford and Gwyn Prins of the LSE, arguing that while emissions abatement is a global priority, the Kyoto Protocol is the wrong tool for the job -- a one-size-fits-all approach that, among other failings, doesn't actually look likely to deliver the reductions that it has promised. Unfortunately, as they argue, this sub-optimal approach has developed an iconic status of its own, so that in many minds to be against Kyoto is tantamount to being against any form of action on climate. They're worried that this means people will uncritically attempt to follow up the Kyoto protocol (which expires in 2012) with a son-of-Kyoto that contains many or all of the same flaws, when they should be having a much more radical rethink.

In their words:

The Kyoto Protocol is a symbolically important expression of governments' concern about climate change. But as an instrument for achieving emissions reductions, it has failed. It has produced no demonstrable reductions in emissions or even in anticipated emissions growth. And it pays no more than token attention to the needs of societies to adapt to existing climate change. The impending United Nations Climate Change Conference being held in Bali in December — to decide international policy after 2012 — needs to radically rethink climate policy...Already, in the post-Kyoto discussions, we are witnessing that well-documented human response to failure, especially where political or emotional capital is involved, which is to insist on more of what is not working: in this case more stringent targets and timetables, involving more countries. The next round of negotiations needs to open up new approaches, not to close them down as Kyoto did.

Continue reading "The wrong trousers" »

Posted by Oliver Morton on October 24, 2007
Categories: Adaptation, Carbon markets, Climate Policy, Mitigation, Oliver Morton | Permalink | Comments (35) | TrackBacks (0)

Olive Heffernan

In Correspondence in this week's Nature, John Shepherd from the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton and colleagues challenge the scheme proposed by James Lovelock and Chris Rapley to help the planet cure itself from the disease of global warming.

For those of you who missed it, a couple of weeks ago, Lovelock and Rapley put forward a geo-engineering solution to climate change in Nature, which involves the installation of large vertical pipes in the ocean that would pump nutrient-rich water from depth to the surface. This, they said, would enhance the growth of algae in the upper ocean, which in turn would transport more carbon to the deep sea.

Now, Shepherd and colleagues claim that the proposed scheme is based on false assumptions. They say the scheme would not lead to enhanced storage of carbon in the deep ocean below 1,000m and in deep ocean sediments, which is necessary for effective long term removal of carbon from the atmosphere. Instead, they maintain the scheme could actually worsen global warming by bringing high levels of particulate carbon back to the surface, where it could be released to the atmosphere. The authors also argue that such large scale engineering solutions could harm fragile ecosystems.

Peter Williams from the School of Ocean Sciences at Bangor University raised some of these same issues on the blog here last week, and also challenged the feasibility of the scheme from an engineering perspective.

Posted by Olive Heffernan on October 17, 2007
Categories: In the News, Mitigation, Olive Heffernan | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Cross posted from The Great Beyond UPDATED

Al Gore will share this year’s Nobel Peace Prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. They were awarded the prize for “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change”.

The prize committee declared Al Gore “one of the world's leading environmentalist politicians” and said the IPCC had “created an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming”.

“Action is necessary now, before climate change moves beyond man’s control,” says the committee (press release).

This may take some of the sting out of the UK court ruling Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth movie will have to carry caveats when shown in schools – a ruling based in part on perceived differences between Gore’s stance and the scientific consensus outlined by ... the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (see the updated blog posting on the ruling).

This is not the first time a prize has been won by an institution. In 2005 the International Atomic Energy Agency took half a prize, and other winners include the UN in 2001 and Médecins Sans Frontières in 1999. The real question is who will get the money at the IPCC?

The question for Gore is slightly different. The impressive Fiona Harvey at the FT has a very good piece up already, noting that the prize was perhaps unsurprising but "reinforced his reputation as the world’s foremost champion of environmental issues." It “also added to speculation that Mr Gore would be persuaded to have another attempt at the US presidency”.

UPDATE
“It’s every scientist's dream to win a Nobel Prize, so this is great for myself and the hundreds that worked on their reports over the years. It is perhaps a little deflating though - that one man and his PowerPoint show has as much influence as the decades of dedicated work by so many scientists,” said Piers Forster, of the University of Leeds School of Earth and Environment (via the Science Media Centre).

Cross posted by Olive Heffernan

Posted by Olive Heffernan on October 12, 2007
Categories: Communicating Climate Change, In the News | Permalink | Comments (18) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by Oliver Morton on behalf of Quirin Schiermeier

A meeting this week in Potsdam, Germany – "Global Sustainability – A Nobel Cause" – ended with the formulation of a memorandum calling for a global contract between science and society and a multi-national innovation programme on the scale of the Apollo programme to meet the challenges arising from climate change.

Earlier at the meeting, the likes of Rajendra Pachauri, Nicholas Stern, Carlo Rubbia and Murray Gell-Mann had reminded the 100 or so participants – among them a dozen Nobel Laureates – about the current state of the science and ecnomics of climate change, and suggested some possible solutions such as solar energy. Convener John Schellnhuber, the scientific director of the nearby Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research, who advises the German government on climate issues, brought together an impressive programme. Most talks were interesting, some were brilliant. The German Chancellor Angela Merkel delivered a vivid and informed speech, seemingly without using any notes, which focussed on the issues of equity and carbon ‘justice’. .

What the meeting made clear (again) is that the world has a habit – a carbon habit. And just like some alcoholics, the patient has intellectually grasped his state. It seems to understand pretty well what’s going wrong with it and why, and is capable of lecturing eloquently about the causes and symptoms of its problem (although David Gross, 2004 Nobel Prize winner for physics, sceptically remarked that climate sciences could benefit from a good dose of theoretical physics). What it lacks, however, is the firm will and the capacity, an emotional capacity perhaps, needed to lastingly change its behaviour and stop the abuse.

Continue reading "Potsdam symposium" »

Posted by Oliver Morton on October 12, 2007
Categories: Quirin Schiermeier | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Cross posting from on Nature's news blog The Great Beyond, Daniel Cressey reports:

Schools in the UK should be allowed to show Al Gore 's climate change movie, but only if they give balancing information to pupils, a High Court judge has ruled. The case was brought to court by school governor Stewart Dimmock, who objected to government plans to send copies of An Inconvenient Truth to schools across the country. The judge, Sir Michael Burton, ruled there were nine scientific inaccuracies in the film, which he said had moments of “alarmism and exaggeration” (Guardian, BBC, AFP, Independent).

Errors included claiming that polar bears were drowning as they had to swim further and further to find ice and that sea levels would rise 20 feet as a result of melting Greenland ice in the near future. The Times runs down the nine. Some parts of the blogosphere are reporting eleven errors, taking them from Dimmock’s early statement.

Dimmock, a member of the minor political group the New Party, called the judgement a resounding victory (press release). But he added: “However, as a parent, I find it perplexing that, despite agreeing that that the film was riddled with errors and exaggerations, the Court failed to issue an outright ban on its use in the classroom. Perhaps the Government will now do the honourable thing and bin it.”

This does not seem likely. Children’s Minister Kevin Brennan is on record as saying that the “central argument” of An Inconvenient Truth is supported by the scientific community (BBC). “Nothing in the judge's comments today detract from that.”

Plans to distribute the film to schools in America ran into different problems last year: Keith Vranes had the story.
Image: NASA

Over on Real Climate, they featured a pre-launch review of the film back in May 2006, which described it as "inspiring" and "decidedly non-partisan in its outlook", but also highlighted some of the few scientific inaccuracies. They came to the same conclusion as Brennan, however...for the large part, Gore gets the science right and the "small errors don't detract from Gore's main point", which is ultimately that the scientific evidence for anthropogenic global warming is now overwhelming.

Olive Heffernan

Update: we've updated the original post at The Great Beyond -- Oliver

Posted by Olive Heffernan on October 11, 2007
Categories: Communicating Climate Change, In the News, Olive Heffernan | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBacks (0)

An interesting contribution from the comments thread on Lovelock and Rapley propose cure for global warming by Peter Williams which I thought I'd hoist up here for wider circulation. -- Oliver

Lovelock and Rapley (Nature, 449,403, 2007) put forward the idea that by pumping up nutrient rich deep oceanic water, the subsequent stimulation of planktonic photosynthetic production would give rise to a very significant drawdown atmospheric CO2. The concept is flawed scientifically on two accounts. Planktonic photosynthesis results in the assimilation of inorganic nitrogen and CO2 in a ratio which has a modal value in the region of 6.6 – the so-called Redfield ratio. A fraction of the organic particles that arise as a consequence of photosynthetic production, sink into the deeper parts of the ocean. The C/N ratio of these particles is somewhat higher than the Redfield ratio, as there is some fast decomposition of the nitrogen (and phosphorus) rich organic components before the particles reach deep water. The particles are eventually decomposed in the deeps, with the production in inorganic nutrients, along with CO2. If this water, now enriched in inorganic nitrogen (and phosphorus), were brought to the surface, it would indeed stimulate planktonic photosynthesis and result in the assimilation of CO2. However, the upwelled water is not only enriched in inorganic nitrogen but also CO2 produced at the same time, the latter being slightly in excess of the Redfield requirement due to the elevated C/N ratio of the settling particles. Thus, rather than drawing down atmospheric CO2 from the atmosphere, there would be export of CO2. The situation in fact would be worse, as the upwelled water would need to warm up (otherwise it would simply sink back again) this would reduce the solubility of CO2, resulting in further export of oceanic CO2 into the atmosphere.

Further, from the engineering point of view the concept is infeasible – to lift up a 10m diameter column of dense (cold) to the surface would require a net lift of a number of tonnes and would almost certainly collapse a flexible tube or would cause a ribbed tube to concertina.

Even if the engineering problems could be solved, and the system made cost effective, both of which seem very doubtful, the proposal would have the reverse effect of that claimed.

Posted by Oliver Morton on October 08, 2007
Categories: Biosphere feedbacks, Ocean science | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by Oliver Morton on behalf of Alex Witze

It’s not easy being a US state climatologist -- reporters call you every time a freak storm happens, the title generally carries more glory than pay, and every once in a while the governor starts paying attention to what you’re doing.

Patrick J. Michaels, the longtime state climatologist for Virginia, has finally thrown in the towel. A noted sceptic on climate change (see our earlier story), Michaels retired this summer after saying the position had become too politicized for him to function.

Nature reporter Jeff Tollefson has a brief update here (Oct. 4 issue, page 521[I'll post a link when the issue goes live]). A note of warning to the guy who replaces Michaels: you might steer clear of accepting funding from the oil and gas industry while you’re in the job.

-- Alex Witze

Posted by Oliver Morton on October 03, 2007
Categories: Alex Witze | Permalink | Comments (18) | TrackBacks (0)