Climate Feedback

The fact that a full-fledged climate regulation bill has passed the House Energy and Commerce Committee is nothing less than monumental. It also means that we now have a baseline document to analyze - or criticize, as the case may be.

The agreement that was struck represents a veritable compromise cobbled together to meet any number of scientific issues, philosophical viewpoints and political realities (for more on all of this, see David Goldston's column). This kind of horse-trading is what makes it real, but the process always leaves a sour taste in the mouths of many observers. And as is often the case with a bill this big and this complex, experts are still sorting through things and trying to figure out what it all means.

Much of the discussion has focused on the impact of the committee's predictable concessions to give away most of the permits in the early years (Harvard economist Robert Stavins delved into these questions in a recent Huffington Post column). Others have focused on everything from emissions offsets in the forestry sector to the definition of renewable energy.

But it's the sheer complexity of the legislation that has many worried. The Washington Post's Steven Pearlstein summed up some of the basic fears when the bill came out. Such criticisms have spurred many, including Pearlstein himself, to revive talk of a carbon tax. The top House Democrat on tax issues, Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel of New York, has fueled the fire by saying he wants a crack at the bill and would be open to such an idea (see ClimateWire).

The jurisdictional issues are real and could slow things down, but short of another revolution in political thought on Capitol Hill, the carbon tax proposal isn't going to get much traction. Proponents of cap-and-trade like the cap on emissions, which theoretically guarantees results; a tax only delivers in proportion to the pain it causes those who pay it. Politically, they ask, would it be possible to establish a tax that is free of loopholes and high enough to, say, force an end to conventional coal?

The counterargument is that we are simply deluding ourselves with cap-and-trade, which basically hides a variable tax behind the smoke and mirrors of "market-based regulation." Perhaps, they argue, the appeal of an honest tax will grow as people see what the legislative process produces as an alternative.

Indeed, it's hard to say what kind of deal might ultimately garner the requisite votes, precisely because the dynamic shifts once you move from a theoretical discussion to a process that ends in a law.

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on May 29, 2009
Categories: Jeff Tollefson | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Scientists have long debated how the global climate might be affected by thawing of the Arctic's permanently frozen soils, known as permafrost. As permafrost melts, bacteria break down the organic matter in the soil, releasing greenhouse gases. But at the same time, plants flourish with access to warmer, deeper soils, taking in carbon dioxide. The overall affect on the climate was assumed to be the balance between the gassing and greening.

A new study in this week’s Nature [subscription], suggests that initially, after 15 years of thaw, plants grow faster and take in more carbon than is released by the melting tundra, making the ecosystem an overall carbon sink. But after a few decades, the balance shifts and the ecosystem becomes a source of carbon.

"The plants are growing faster, but after a few decades the rate of carbon loss from the soils is so high the plants can't keep up," says Edward Schuur from the University of Florida in Gainesville, who led the research. When Schuur extrapolated the findings to the entire Arctic region, they suggested a release of around a billion tonnes of carbon every year — of the same order of magnitude as emissions from current deforestation of the tropics. Burning of fossil fuels releases about 8.5 billion tonnes of CO2 a year.

It's estimated that permafrost soils store about twice as much carbon than is currently present in the atmosphere, so the stores of carbon in permafrost are unlikely to run out any time soon. "It's a slow-motion time bomb," says Schuur.

Read the full story over on Nature News.

Anjali Nayar is an intern reporter with Nature News.

Posted by Olive Heffernan on May 28, 2009
Categories: Extreme Events, GHG emissions, In the News, Research | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

The concept of active human efforts to artificially limit or reverse climate change has been around for some years. Collectively called geoengineering, many such plans, some more fanciful than others, have been proposed by the scientific community, and several were discussed during the final days of the AGU Joint Assembly in Toronto.

One plan, described by Alan Robock of Rutgers University, New Jersey, US, would involve continuously placing fine particles of sulphur dioxide (SO2) into the stratosphere, to block sunlight from reaching Earth’s surface. This, proponents say, would be benign, simply mimicking the effect of large volcanic eruptions, and simulations confirm that northern hemisphere or even global cooling would follow.

Although there is currently no way to do it, the problem is not the technology, Robock said in an interview, amplifying on his oral presentation at the meeting. The technology to inject SO2 particles into the stratosphere might not be that difficult; high altitude military planes could be adapted to do it, he suggested, although there are questions about their ability to deliver particles of the appropriate size. Regardless, the ancillary effects of the experiment could be devastating, he said, by reducing the amount of precipitation associated with the summer monsoon in Asia and Africa, thereby threatening the food supply for billions of people.

A secondary proposal that Robock described in his presentation would provide the SO2 seeding only in the Arctic. The problem is, he said, that winds blow the particles southward, with comparable effects on the monsoons, according to simulations, so there would be no advantage to year-round Arctic-only seeding.

Continue reading "AGU 2009 Joint Assembly: Solutions, and sayonara " »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on May 28, 2009
Categories: AGU 2009 Joint Assembly, Harvey Leifert, Politics, Technology | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Solving the climate problem is going to require a massive amount of human ingenuity, of all shapes and sizes – new scientific ideas, novel ways of problem-solving and fresh technologies. Those at the forefront of tackling climate change aren’t shy of sharing their suggestions – painting roofs white, for example, or burning biomass en masse.

If you have an ingenious approach for saving the planet, now is your opportunity to get it into the limelight. The Manchester International Festival, in collaboration with the Guardian, are asking for innovations - technological, scientific and behaviour-changing – to be submitted to a competition they are hosting in the coming weeks. The 12 winning schemes will be presented before a panel of experts during the Manchester festival, on the weekend of 4-5 July.

Submissions need to be in by the end of tomorrow, so you may need to have thought this one through already. Application details here. Free tickets are also available to attend the weekend’s discussions as an audience member.

Olive Heffernan

Posted by Olive Heffernan on May 28, 2009
Categories: | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

Russia has been a rather puzzling actor in the complicated diplomatic game which resulted in the Kyoto protocol, and which will be played out again in Copenhagen in December. Climate warming doesn’t make headlines, and has so far not been a big concern, between Moscow and Vladivostok. What prompted Russian leaders to ratify Kyoto was the prospect of making good money from emissions trading, rather than conviction that man-made climate change is a real phenomenon and a threat to society.

Now they have changed their minds. In April, Vladimir Putin and his ministers approved a new climate ‘doctrine’ – well, that’s how they call these things in Moscow – which for the first time officially recognizes severe risks of global warming and calls for immediate action. My story over at Nature News explains the nature and significance of the baffling doctrine, details of which are beginning to leak.

Critics point out that Russia plans to focus on adaptation to climate change, while putting less emphasis on actually reducing its emissions. Others say Russia’s new climate policy has been quietly constructed behind closed doors, without any involvement from industry, NGOs and the public. That’s all true; but Russia’s recognition of the scientific basis of climate change, and its apparent willingness to pro-actively partake in international climate protection efforts, outweighs these flaws. Let’s see what Moscow will put on the table in Copenhagen.

Sure, all eyes in December will be on China, and Russia’s taciturn climate diplomacy has in the past been a fickle and half-hearted affair. Even so, one must not under-estimate Moscow’s influence at international negotiation tables.

The climatic importance of Russia’s natural landscape, in particular its boreal forests and its permafrost soils, is beyond doubt anyway. For example, huge amounts of old carbon that accumulated over thousands of years are stored in permafrost soils which occupy more than 60% of Russia’s 17 million square-kilometre land area. How much of it will be released as the southern permafrost boundary shifts northwards as a result of climate warming, possibly by up to 100 kilometres in the next 20-25 years?

A paper in Nature this week suggests that, globally, permafrost thawing may lead to the release of an extra billion tonnes of carbon per year into the atmosphere. The team measured carbon flows at a tundra site in Alaska where permafrost has been thawing for 20 years, and then calculated from the data the likely trajectory of global carbon release from thawing permafrost. Here's an editor's summary.

Russian scientists were not involved in the study, led by Edward Schuur of the University of Florida in Gainesville. That’s a pity. If Moscow’s new interest in climate led to more frequent east-west collaborations in science, such as on permafrost, it would be a boon.

Quirin Schiermeier

Posted by Quirin Schiermeier on May 28, 2009
Categories: Adaptation, Climate Policy, Climate Science, GHG emissions, Mitigation, Quirin Schiermeier, Topics, UN Conference on Climate Change, Copenhagen | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today, at the AGU Joint Assembly, I looked into two kinds of risk: of drought leading to civil violence and of the odds that extreme weather events may cause other types of disruption.

It’s always encouraging to see undergraduates engaged in scientific research, the more so when it is interdisciplinary. That’s what surprised me about a poster with the intriguing title, “Climate Change and Civil Violence,” which turned out to be a class project at Princeton University, stretching over three semesters, with three successive classes of students involved in the research.

The students, led by their professor, Gregory van der Vink, focused on a swath of West Africa - 21 countries from Mauritania to the Central African Republic, including most of the semi-arid Sahel region, as well as coastal forests. They looked at the likelihood that climate change, especially increasingly severe drought, will lead to civil violence in each of the countries studied. It is obviously difficult to attribute specific environmental causes to social phenomena, but the students—majoring in politics, various sciences, pre-engineering, and other fields—gave it a good try.

The choice of drought as the key climatic factor was based on the expectation that the Sahel will further dry, shortening the growing season by at least 20% over the next 40 years. Nomadic herdsmen will, for example, have to move further south or adopt a more sedentary life, or both.

Another key factor is the resiliency of the population, its ability to cope with the coming climatic changes. This factor varies considerably from country to country, the researchers found, and is related to population size, political system, natural resources, and other variables. The relative significance of each of these is difficult to assess, of course.

Bottom line: after exhaustive analysis, the students concluded that the five countries in the study that are most vulnerable to drought-induced civil violence are Nigeria, Senegal, Mali, Côte d’Ivoire, and Gambia. Of these, three—Nigeria, Senegal, and Mali—have already experienced conflicts that included an environmental factor, they say. Of the five, only Gambia has not experienced any violent conflict during the past 10 years.

The study, as the students themselves note, was a preliminary effort to correlate environmental and socio-economic risk factors that could lead to civil violence. They are not predicting specific events in particular countries, but there seems little doubt that this topic is one that will assume increasing importance in coming years to policy makers and civilian populations alike, and not just in Africa.

Continue reading "AGU 2009 Joint Assembly: Climate risk research " »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on May 27, 2009
Categories: AGU 2009 Joint Assembly, Extreme Events, Harvey Leifert, Research, Society | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Uncertainty in regional climate projections isn’t going away, and that’s an inconvenient truth the development community will have to face, says Christoph Müller of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impacts Research in Germany.

Müller recently authored a report on expected climate change impacts in sub-Saharan Africa, at the behest of the German Development Institute (GDI), a Bonn-based think tank. A top recommendation of the final report, published 24 April and presented at the IHDP conference last month, is that adaptation strategies should not be motivated by specific impact projections, but instead should work on reducing vulnerability to environmental change in general.

An expert on climate impacts on agriculture and land-use, Müller found while scoping the report for GDI that there was a mistaken assumption by development experts that many of the current uncertainties in predicting climate change will soon clear up. “In the adaptation community, they often have the feeling that if we wait for another five years, we will know exactly what the weather will be,” he says.

So he turned the focus of the report around from cataloging impacts to dealing with uncertainty. “This report basically is trying to raise awareness that you will never get very accurate projections of what you will have to adapt to. Don’t wait for that. You have to adapt to uncertainty,” says Müller.

I talked to Müller to find out more about what adaptation planners in sub-Saharan Africa are up against and how they might tackle changes they can't forsee. What climate models agree on is that the continent will warm a bit more than the global average - roughly 2.0 to 4.5 degrees centigrade, according to three emissions scenarios of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“But that’s where the certainty stops,” he says. Precipitation projections, for example, are important for many impacts studies - of freshwater availability, agricultural production, and development of water-hungry industries - but global climate models differ wildly on precipitation in African locales. “There’s maybe only a few locations in sub-Saharan Africa where you don’t have a scenario that says it’s going to get significantly wetter and another scenario that says it’s going to get significantly drier,” Müller points out.

A particular problem for sub-Saharan Africa is that observational data from meteorological stations is sparse, and many stations formerly sending out data have stopped ('historical' stations on map, below) - making it hard to produce local projections. This is usually achieved through a technique called ‘downscaling’, which involves using weather statistics and interpolating data to add details between the distant grid points of a global climate model. But without recent observations to constrain the calculations, it becomes near impossible to fill in this extra information with any degree of accuracy.

Continue reading "Development community must accept uncertainty" »

Posted by Anna Barnett on May 27, 2009
Categories: Adaptation, Anna Barnett, Society, Uncertainty | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Cement and pinot noir were among the highlights of the AGU Joint Assembly in Toronto Tuesday.

Sequestration of carbon dioxide, that is, pulling it out of the air and storing it where it cannot affect climate as a greenhouse gas, is a quest that engages many scientists and engineers. Proposals have been made to store CO2 deep in the ocean and in depleted mines far underground. Soon, though, you may be able to walk on sequestered CO2, says Sidney Omelon, a chemical and materials engineer with Calera Corporation, a California start-up.

The purpose of a project under study and described in Omelon’s Joint Assembly poster Tuesday is to capture CO2 from concentrated sources, such as emissions from power plants. Step one is to channel the gas into an aqueous environment, in order to precipitate carbonate minerals. The novel part is what happens next. Calera is developing a process to incorporate this precipitate into the built environment, specifically in concrete used for street paving and buildings.

Cement, a key ingredient of concrete, is an ideal substance into which the precipitate can be added, Omelon said in an interview. She does not know of any other comparable projects. Surprisingly, in her view, it hasn’t been tried until now. “Honestly, I can’t believe no one [else] thought of it first,” she said.

Calera is also looking into using captured CO2 in aggregate, another key component of concrete. Even when concrete structures eventually crumble, the material itself would remain stable, Omelon said, and the CO2 would not escape to the atmosphere.

We are looking at CO2 as a resource, not just as a pollutant, Omelon concluded. “I think if we just turn our brains to this, we can do some really useful things with carbonate minerals and also just try and reduce our general energy consumption, so that we don’t emit as much CO2.”

Continue reading "AGU 2009 Joint Assembly: From paving to pinot noir " »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on May 26, 2009
Categories: AGU 2009 Joint Assembly, Harvey Leifert, Mitigation, Regional climate, Technology | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Level 7 of the Metro Toronto Convention Centre is situated above Level 8, and Level 6 is higher still. Once you find your way around, it’s seems the perfect place to study atmospheric inversions and other climatological phenomena. That’s what is happening at the centre this week during the Joint Assembly of the American and Canadian Geophysical Unions, along with a half-dozen other Earth and space science societies.

This annual event, once known as AGU Spring Meeting, has attracted some 2,500 presentations, ranging from Atmospheric Science to Volcanology, and the ones touching on climate change turn up under a variety of headings. Climate change may occur globally, but it impacts locally, and regional impacts were the topic of numerous presentations Monday at Joint Assembly.

The issue facing researchers and policy makers alike is scaling down the results of global climate models to make useful predictions for specific locales, like cities, counties, or watersheds, predicting how climate change may affect local populations, industries, and wildlife.

In the US state of New Hampshire, for example, the multimillion dollar ski industry depends upon a large and consistent snowpack. Cameron Wake of the University of New Hampshire said that to be economically viable, ski operators must count on a season of at least 100 days, ideally including Christmas week. But, a group of regional scientists estimates that by 2100, New Hampshire will warm between 1.9o and 6.9o Celsius, the extremes of several models tested. The greatest warming will be in winter. Also, there will be more rain and less snow in winter, and anticipated droughts will further reduce the number of days with snow on the ground. By the 100-day standard, Wake said, and even with snowmaking equipment, almost all New England ski areas will be vulnerable by 2100.

New York City has always prided itself on its water supply. New Yorkers turn the tap and enjoy mountain spring water piped from protected watersheds far upstate. But will climate change affect the quality of that water—currently four million liters for nine million customers daily—in years to come? The city is actively addressing that question, said Mark Zion of New York’s Environmental Protection Agency.

Continue reading "AGU 2009 Joint Assembly: Global change, local impacts" »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on May 25, 2009
Categories: AGU 2009 Joint Assembly, Climate prediction, Harvey Leifert, Regional climate | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Republicans and Democrats have been wrangling this week over proposed legislation to tackle climate change. In the course of this spat it emerged that the former were considering frustrating the latter by forcing the entire 900 page bill and its 400 amendments to be read aloud.

Faced with this perceived ‘delaying tactic’ Democrat Henry Waxman, the chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, did what any self respecting person in his position would do … he hired someone who can read really, really fast.

Via TPM, here is a video of what happened next:

Continue reading 'Climate change: the need for speed (reading) ' on Nature's The Great Beyond blog

Posted by Anna Barnett on May 22, 2009
Categories: Climate Policy, Daniel Cressey, In the News | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"There is significantly more risk [from inaction] than we previously estimated... There's no way the world can or should take these risks."
Ronald Prinn of MIT, co-author of a new modelling study showing that the climatic consequences of business as usual could be twice as bad as expected.

“They’re hoping that if you ask for 1 per cent, you may get a small fraction of a per cent.”
China's demand that industrialized countries cut emissions 40% by 2020 is not being taken seriously by anonymous policy wonks.

“Right now we’re probably seeing like 10 to 15 résumés a month. But back during Wall Street bonus time, we were seeing two to three times that.”
Evan Ard of the carbon brokerage Evolution Markets says Wall Street professionals have been scampering to join the few US carbon trading firms - especially after the year's bonus season, when traders can make tracks with their fat checks.

"I'm sure that they've gone into a less-than-functional building, but... surely in the whole of central London they could have sourced an up-to-date office block that they could be proud of?"
Greg Clark, shadow climate change secretary of the UK Tory party, on the new Department for Energy and Climate Change receiving the lowest possible score for energy efficiency.

Posted by Anna Barnett on May 22, 2009
Categories: Anna Barnett, In the News | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A survey out this week categorizes Americans according to their attitudes towards climate change - and the two most skeptical camps seem to be shrinking while worry becomes the mainstream view.

The authors, Anthony Leiserowitz of Yale and George Mason University's Edward Maibach and Andrew Light, report that “Global Warming’s Six Americas” now break down as follows:

Continue reading "US climate poll: the difference a year makes" »

Posted by Anna Barnett on May 21, 2009
Categories: Anna Barnett, In the News, Society | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In the latest issue of Science, Mike Hulme, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in Norwich, UK and a group of social scientists have a letter of complaint [subscription] regarding media coverage of the International Scientific Congress on Climate Change, held March in Copenhagen, and point in particular to Science’s own coverage from the event.

I and my colleague Oliver Morton covered the Congress here. Its overall aim was to update the assessment of global warming ahead of the UN negotiations on climate change taking place in the same venue in December.

Hulme et al. point out that the dominant mode of media reporting after the event was of impending doom, even though nearly half of the research presented at the Congress was from scholars in the social sciences and humanities offering new insights on how to avoid the catastrophic outcomes foreseen by biogeophysical scientists,

They’re right, of course, and I think it’s worth thinking about why there was a bias in the type of material covered by the media from the Copenhagen Congress. Is it simply that reporters like to be scaremongers or that editors are only interested in hard figures? Admittedly, there could be some truth in both of those statements, but I think it’s more complex than that.

Partly, the issue is that the responsibility for coverage also lies with those communicating the science – a point that was overlooked by some both during and after the event.

The stated aim of the conference was to update the science on global warming since the IPCC’s 2007 assessment. So the first question on every reporter’s lips was ‘What’s new?’. A partial answer to that question came on the first day in the form of a press conference with climatologists Konrad Steffen, Stefan Rahmstorf and others giving revised estimates of sea-level rise based on new evidence. Needless to say, this resulted in a slew of media reports on the topic - and more than a few dismayed attendees wondering why the media had focused almost exclusively on sea level, at the expense of all other topics on offer. Well, that was hardly surprising considering that sea-level rise was the only topic during the Congress that had a press conference devoted to it.

Some might argue, or course, that by covering this, reporters were simply picking the low-hanging fruit rather than seeking out diverse news stories amid the numerous (57) sessions on offer (each with about 10 presentations). But if you have to file on deadline, then getting a heads-up on new exciting research with sources in attendance isn’t a bad strategy.

Continue reading "Copenhagen Congress: why the biased reporting?" »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on May 20, 2009
Categories: International Scientific Conference on Climate Change, March 2009, Olive Heffernan | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Real Climate blogger Gavin Schmidt has teamed up with photographer Joshua Wolfe to create a new book on climate science and its implications for the planet and policy. Climate Change: Picturing the Science is something of an illustrative adventure, but it’s the book’s essays that really get the message across. So says Bill Hewitt, of the Foreign Policy Association’s Climate Change blog, who has penned a review for us over on Nature Reports Climate Change. Check out the full review here.

Olive Heffernan

Posted by Olive Heffernan on May 19, 2009
Categories: Communicating Climate Change, Olive Heffernan | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Climate change represents the biggest health threat of the twenty-first century, according to a new report published 16 May in The Lancet. Olive Heffernan talks to lead investigator Anthony Costello, director of the Institute for Global Health at University College London.

How did this study come about?

Just over a year ago, The Lancet challenged us to do this study. Back then, climate change was not one of my top priorities. I would have said that dealing with malnutrition and HIV and having a better health service were more important issues in health. But I’ve changed my perspective now, partly because I’m beginning to notice the effect that rising temperatures are having in certain parts of the globe.

What climate-related health issues can we expect this century?

In a very broad sense, there will be changing patterns of infection. Insect-borne diseases like dengue fever, tick-borne encephalitis and malaria will spread. We’re already seeing blue tongue virus in livestock moving up from southern Europe, for example. But I don’t think that infectious disease will be the major health effect of climate change, unless new viruses emerge, which is a great unknown.

Heat is a silent killer. Certainly as average temperatures rise we’re going to get many more heat waves and people outside of their coping range. When you get above a certain temperature level, the question is how well can people adapt.

But the biggest health effect that will emerge in the next 20 years will be related to food and water security. There could be quite serious shortages and large rises in food prices, which will penalize the poorest. Currently malnutrition is quite a significant factor in about 60 per cent of childhood deaths. This can result in low birth weight and predisposition to infectious diseases, such as measles, tuberculosis and pneumonia.

What can health professionals do?

Firstly, we have to add the voice of the health community to the argument to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We must campaign urgently on emissions and reforestation. Climate change is going to affect the health of our children and grandchildren, and getting that message across does focus minds. Secondly, we need a framework for tackling this problem.

What exactly would that framework involve?

We need more information. I was shocked to find that there are no health impact assessments on the impacts of climate change in Africa. Not one. The World Health Organization has the tools to do this, but there are very few resources. So we need to start by having country-level health impact assessments for climate change. There’s a deficit of data on climate impacts in Africa, but the situation isn’t much better in Asia. Beyond that, we need to get down to localities. It’s quite important to do participatory work with communities on their risks, and we’re interested in launching an initiative to get people to collect their own data.

Continue reading "Q&A: Anthony Costello " »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on May 19, 2009
Categories: In the News, Olive Heffernan, Research, Society | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Climate-change envoy Morley sacked over £16,000 mortgage
Sacked UK MP Elliot Morley is under pressure to resign as the chairman of the Energy and Climate Change Committee, following allegations that he claimed £16,000 of taxpayers' money for a mortgage that no longer existed.

“This man spent all his long ministerial career defending the environment, and lost his job by trying too hard to save it.”
Independent reporter Michael McCarthy comes to Morley’s defense.

“In a competition for resources it cannot be ruled out that military force could be used to resolve emerging problems that would destroy the balance of forces near the borders of Russia and her allies.”
A strategy document steps up Russia’s rhetoric on disputes over the thawing Arctic.

"It's a legislative Susan Boyle. Everyone underestimated it until it started to sing."
Ed Markey, chair of the US House subcommittee on climate change, compares the draft cap-and-trade bill to a contestant on Britain's Got Talent.

“China's controversial railway to the remote and restless mountainous region of Tibet could be threatened by global warming.”
Reuters reports that melting permafrost could undermine the tracks into Tibet.

Posted by Anna Barnett on May 15, 2009
Categories: Anna Barnett, In the News | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The system of surface and deep currents which make up the Atlantic Ocean circulation, a powerful heat conveyor belt and a poster child for abrupt climate change, is a more complex affair than straightforward textbook diagrams suggest.

Atlantic meridional overturning circulation is driven by cold water that sinks in the seas off Greenland and returns towards the equator at depth. How exactly this machinery works, and where its components sit, is interesting for a variety of reasons – not least in that it helps oceanographers look at the right spots for possible system failures.

That’s why a discovery, reported in Nature today [subscription], is worthy of note. Amy Bower of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and colleagues report that on its way back to the tropics cold Atlantic water takes a different pathway than previously assumed.

Bower and colleagues monitored the trajectories of drifting floats released from 2003 to 2006 into the southward-flowing Deep Western Boundary Current off Canada’s east coast. To their surprise, most floats soon drifted towards the high sea instead of strictly following the boundary current which has been thought to be the main pathway linking the Labrador Sea with the subtropical North Atlantic. Virtual floats ‘released’ in a three-dimensional ocean model at similar positions displayed the same preference for internal ocean pathways as did their material counterparts.

A secret interior ocean path? There you go, modelers!

Quirin Schiermeier

Posted by Olive Heffernan on May 13, 2009
Categories: Journal Club, Ocean science, Quirin Schiermeier | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The World Ocean Conference in Manado, Indonesia, opened yesterday with an appeal to the world to act on climate change now. Climate change threatens ocean ecosystems, food security and economic development alike, Indonesia’s Minister of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries said in his opening speech (Xinhuanet).

But when it got down to the political nitty-gritty agreement wasn’t easy to find.

Indonesia hopes that under a new climate agreement it might get credit (and funding) for protecting its vast ocean territory, reports the German Press Agency DPA.

The idea failed to impress scientists. "To get credit for preserving the ocean or avoiding deforestation is like getting credit for not beating your wife," Tony Haymet, director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California, told DPA.

Scientists and officials from over 70 countries have come to the Indonesian island of Sulawesi for the five-day meeting, touted as the first major global talks on the role of oceans in mitigating climate change and global warming.

Cross-posted from Daniel Cressey on The Great Beyond

Posted by Anna Barnett on May 12, 2009
Categories: | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

If the UN conference in Copenhagen succeeds in hammering out tough limits on greenhouse gas emissions around the world, how can they ensure that nations will keep their climate vows in good times and bad, for better or for worse?

The Guardian’s Julian Borger flags up a new report, commissioned by the British government in preparation for the negotiations, that recommends sweeping changes to international institutions so that the policing can begin.

The authors, Alex Evans and David Steven of the Centre on International Cooperation at New York University, say this would include the creation of powerful new UN bodies. They suggest an “International Climate Control Committee” that would do for climate policy what the International Monetary Fund does for fiscal policy, pulling together and auditing data about how well countries are performing. A bit more glamorously, they also envisage a “coercive inspection regime” that - like the International Atomic Energy Agency hunting for nuclear weapons in the works - could show up unannounced to sniff out any illicit emissions.

Continue reading "Calling all wannabe climate cops" »

Posted by Anna Barnett on May 12, 2009
Categories: Anna Barnett, Climate Policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Most of the biofuels debate as of late has been about the merits and trade-offs of various fuels, be they corn ethanol, sugarcane ethanol, biodiesel or more advanced second and third generation fuels. But a new study suggests we need to take a step back and consider an alternate pathway for biomass: Electricity.

The research comes on the heels of California's adoption of a low-carbon fuels standard, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency's release of draft rules regarding the federal biofuels mandate. In both cases, regulators calculated indirect emissions from agriculture, but only California's regulatory approach is flexible enough to capitalize on potential bioelectricity (see our story here)

Continue reading "A better pathway for biomass?" »

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on May 11, 2009
Categories: Jeff Tollefson | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Despite pressure from many environmentalists, the Obama administration upheld a Bush administration rule limiting the regulatory impact of last year's decision to list the polar bear as a threatened species.

The rule would essentially prevent the Endangered Species Act from becoming a venue for arguments about greenhouse gas emissions. And the logic is simple enough: Bear biologists hopefully have better things to do than analyze greenhouse gases from, say, a cement plant in Georgia, even if emissions from that plant contribute to global warming and the retreat of sea ice, which ultimately translates into hungry bears.

"We already are doing everything we can to protect the polar bear," US Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told reporters Friday. "The Endangered Species Act, however, is not in my view the proper mechanism for controlling our nation’s carbon emissions."

Continue reading 'Obama backs Bush on polar bear' on Nature's The Great Beyond blog

Image courtesy of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Posted by Anna Barnett on May 11, 2009
Categories: Biodiversity and Ecology, Climate Policy, Jeff Tollefson | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

"The pika is the fire alarm."
Environmental attorney Greg Loarie argues that this temperature-sensitive, adorable mammal should be protected as an endangered species because of the threat posed by warming.

"China used to think the developed world is not serious. But now they know the US is on the pitch and ready to engage with them. It has made a real difference to what China is saying."
Ed Miliband, back from a meeting with senior officials in Beijing.

"When you say ‘global warming,’ a certain group of Americans think that’s a code word for progressive liberals, gay marriage and other such issues.”
Robert M. Perkowitz, founder of the environmental marketing firm ecoAmerica, says the term “our deteriorating atmosphere” would resonate better.

“[Will] global warming … make the hairy, meat-eating wolf spiders of northeastern Greenland bigger[?]”
National Geographic gets the creepy-crawly angle on climate change.

Posted by Anna Barnett on May 08, 2009
Categories: Anna Barnett, In the News | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The White House this week stepped back from a proposal to shift regulation of hydrofluorocarbons from the United Nations climate convention into the Montreal Protocol, which has been successful in phasing down chemicals that damage the ozone layer (NYT's dot.earth, Reuters).

HFCs are commonly used in things like refrigerants and were first deployed for their ozone benefits. They are also powerful greenhouse gases and were as a consequence included in the climate convention. Now the Montreal crowd is arguing that they can clean up their own mess, saving everybody money and time.

The proposal is part of a broader fast-action climate agenda being promoted by groups like the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development in Washington. We first covered the Montreal Protocol piece in depth back in January, but this week marked the deadline for amendments that can be considered under the Montreal Protocol this year.

Clearly it would have been significant if the United States had decided to sponsor an amendment, but the proposal will remain on the table courtesy of a separate filing by Mauritius and the Federated States of Micronesia. Indeed, US State Department notes as much and says it plans to continue studying the issue in a letter to the Ozone Secretariat.

Montreal negotiators will discuss the issue during a workshop in July, but the soonest a decision could be made would be at the annual conference in November.

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on May 06, 2009
Categories: Jeff Tollefson | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

After months of saying that recession wouldn’t stop climate policy plans in Australia, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced yesterday that the country’s cap-and-trade program is in fact going to be delayed a year and will not roll out until July 2011.

As Roberta Kwok wrote in Nature last month, Rudd’s Labour party government had called for a 5% emissions cut from 2000 levels by 2020 - to be raised to 15% if an ambitious global climate deal is reached in Copenhagen - but the proposed legislation was under fire from both the right and left. The Financial Times notes that Greens in the Australian Senate had demanded a 40% cut with a global deal, while conservative opposition parties wanted the plan delayed to cushion the impact on businesses. Rudd met the Greens halfway, raising the conditional 15% target to 25%. Industry got extra soothing with a new tweak: fixed carbon prices for the first year (The Age has details).

Rudd, who had called any delay in cap-and-trade “reckless and irresponsible”, now says "I believe (this) is the most sensible, rational, balanced response to a fundamental change in economic circumstances."

Halfway around the world, British Columbia may also be about to take a U-turn on a climate policy milestone. Nicola Jones reports in Nature today that the province has been uneasily bearing the burden of North America’s first carbon tax. The BC Liberal Party started the tax in July, but their challengers in an upcoming election on 12 May are against it. Jones writes:

Continue reading "Hard times for climate plans in Australia and Canada " »

Posted by Anna Barnett on May 05, 2009
Categories: Anna Barnett, Carbon markets, Climate Policy, Politics | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

In April I reported that economic and political pressures were beginning to impact the UN carbon-credit programme that supports clean technology projects in the developing world, otherwise known as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). The full story is also in the latest issue of Nature Reports Climate Change.

Now, for the first time in two months, fresh data are being reported on the number of new projects entering the programme's approval process. While the dip in project submissions that I wrote about has turned out not to be as bad as it looked at the end of February, the figures from the UNEP Risoe research centre confirm that the CDM is likely to do less in the long run to cut greenhouse gases that was expected pre- credit crunch.

Continue reading "CDM crunch continues " »

Posted by Anna Barnett on May 05, 2009
Categories: Anna Barnett, Business, Economics, Mitigation | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Some of my fellow Open Meeting attendees were musing at dinner about how many Bonn Declarations exist. The top ten Google results point to six different texts named after the eminent city. The organizers of this conference originally proposed to add yet another Bonn Declaration to the list, one laying out the way forward for research on human dimensions of global change. But it turned out not to be easy to articulate a common vision that the motley group gathered here - who work on everything from emissions scenarios to development policy to the sociology of knowledge - could accept.

Continue reading "IHDP: the Bonn Declaration that wasn't" »

Posted by Anna Barnett on May 01, 2009
Categories: Adaptation, Anna Barnett, IHDP Open Meeting 2009, Society | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)