Climate Feedback

Keith Kloor

So if Copenhagen doesn’t produce a global warming treaty next month, which now seems likely, what about setting up a global environmental body? The environmental ministers for Italy and Kenya float this idea in a Guardian op-ed. They note that Chancellor Merkel of Germany and President Sarkozy of France are lobbying to have the idea taken up at Copenhagen:

“In a letter to the UN secretary general [Merkel and Sarkozy] emphasised that we must overhaul environmental governance and use Copenhagen climate talks in December to progress the creation of a world environmental organisation.”

In their op-ed, the two environmental ministers argue:

“History has proven that strong international institutions are the precondition for building any successful international cooperation. The global financial crisis and the collaboration through the G20 and the International Monetary Fund are recent examples.”

Anyone familiar with the bad environmental press Canada has been receiving of late will be surprised to learn that the country has agreed to preserve vast tracts of its Boreal Forest from development, which will helpfully soak up huge amounts of carbon. The action, as the Guardian notes:

“is somewhat of an anomaly for Canada, whose government has been accused of sabotaging the global climate change talks by its development of the Alberta tar sands and its refusal to make deep cuts in its greenhouse gas emissions.”

Three days of hearings on climate legislation in the U.S. Senate’s Environment and Public Works committee concluded on Thursday. The big story to emerge, according to Politico, is a key moderate Democrat’s “serious reservations” about the bill. Recalcitrant Republicans, meanwhile, heard about the national security implications of climate change from retired military brass and former Republican Sen. John Warner, who is a close ally of the military. He cautioned:

"We are talking about energy insecurity, water and food shortages, and climate-driven social instability. We ignore these threats at the peril of our national security and at great risk to those in uniform."

Committee Republicans, for their part, seem more interested in winning additional time to study the bill’s cap-and-trade program.

The African Union takes up the issue of "climate refugees" in a new treaty that addresses the plight of displaced people. According to IRIN, a U.N. news service:

“the inclusion of displacement by natural disasters was informed by the global debate on the need to develop a framework for the rights of ‘climate refugees’ - people uprooted from their homes and crossing international borders - because the changing climate threatened their survival.”

Continue reading "Countdown to Copenhagen " »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on October 30, 2009
Categories: In the News, Keith Kloor, UN Conference on Climate Change, Copenhagen | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Olive Heffernan

“Imagine farmers being able to determine what to plant and where based on drought forecasts three to five years out”, said Jane Lubchenco, head of NOAA, in Geneva last month.

Speaking to delegates at the World Climate Conference, Lubchenco was lending her voice to the vision of climate services, which would deliver climate predictions as reliable and useable as weather forecasts, and tailored to meet the needs of specific end-users. Underlying the vision of climate services is the assumption that further research will result in reliable climate predictions indispensable to adaptation planners.

In July, Germany opened a centre in Hamburg to provide the nation with such services. The Waxman-Markey Bill, passed by the US House of Representatives in June, would launch a similar service within the US, and headed by NOAA, to develop and distribute climate information and predictions to decision-makers.

But in a new Commentary on Nature Reports Climate Change, Mike Hulme and co-authors urge caution in relying on climate predictions to aid adaptation. They write:

Scientists and decision-makers should treat climate models not as truth machines, but instead as one of a range of tools to explore future possibilities.

They highlight that unlike weather forecasts - whose value in informing decision-making can routinely be tested over time by comparison with observed weather patterns - the skill of climate predictions is unknown, especially at the decade-to-century timescale.

Hulme and co-authors illustrate the perils of relying on the predict-then-adapt mode of planning with an example from the Australian state of Victoria. In this case, predictions from a 2005 study of the water supply to Melbourne assured decision-makers that existing plans provided a sufficient buffer against projected climate change up to 2020. But by 2006, water supply levels had dropped far below that predicted even for the most severe climate change scenario (see figure below).

Continue reading "Climate Prediction: keeping it in perspective " »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on October 29, 2009
Categories: Climate prediction, Communicating Climate Change, Olive Heffernan, Opinion, WCC-3 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Hopes that the UN conference in Copenhagen will result in an ambitious climate treaty have faded, with UN climate chief Yvo de Boer now conceding that reaching a legally binding agreement will be impossible this year.

If December’s summit fails to deliver a strong accord, there will be some obvious culprits: the global recession, which has made nations reluctant to commit cash to the problem, and the US Senate, where horn-locking among lawmakers has delayed the passage of domestic legislation.

But even without these bumps in the road, some say the challenge set for negotiators in Copenhagen may simply have been too great from outset. In a feature out today on Nature Reports Climate Change (free access), Mason Inman looks at the UN summit from the perspective of researchers who study cooperation, some of whom argue that trying to get an effective multi-faceted treaty agreed between 192 nations is a waste of time. Many behavioural economists say — and common sense dictates — that a strong agreement would be more easily negotiated between fewer parties.

The legitimacy of this claim is perhaps evidenced by the recent bilateral talks between two of the world’s major greenhouse gas emitters, China and India, who last week signed a five-year pact to present a united front at international climate negotiations. Now, the US is now seeking to broker similar agreements, and according to some reports, US climate envoy Todd Stern says that such bilateral deals — with Russia and Brazil also — could be the building blocks for an international agreement in December.

From the perspective of political haggling, this makes sense. Cooperation in Copenhagen will only be achieved if those responsible for the majority of emissions can agree on how to apportion responsibility for climate change fairly, as well as on the incentives and deterrents that will ensure compliance, rather than encourage free-riding.

And according to those who study cooperation, it’s all about the carrots and sticks. Writes Inman:

Suppose there’s a country — call it Slackistan — that is emitting loads of carbon dioxide, and doesn’t want to cut back. If Slackistan can somehow convince all the other countries to take action, but do nothing itself, it gets all of the benefits of a cooler climate with none of effort. In game theory lingo, that’s called free riding.

An effective global deal on climate change has to, therefore, use carrots or sticks to nudge countries away from the default strategy — that of Slackistan — and towards cooperation. Figuring out how to create these incentives is the key, many game theorists say, to breaking the current stalemate and to keeping a strong agreement running for many decades.

Continue reading "Climate games: small pacts are no big deal" »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on October 29, 2009
Categories: Features, In the News, Olive Heffernan, Politics, UN Conference on Climate Change, Copenhagen | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Keith Kloor

The public battle starts anew on the U.S. congressional climate & energy bill, as senate hearings get underway today. Keith Johnson over at the WSJ’s Environmental Capital believes that three camps will shape the debate:

“Those that believe climate legislation will actually strengthen the economy, those that figure it will have significant but manageable costs, and those that figure it will further burden a recession-challenged economy. Much of the opposition in the Senate—both from Republicans and Democrats—centers on how big the final bill is and who picks up the tab.”

While the proposed legislation is slated to cut greenhouse gases by about 80 percent by 2050, Grist predicts there will be plenty of concessions to coal, nuclear, and natural gas proponents, and even then:

“Reaching a compromise, as the debate over health care reform is already showing, will come down to a key question: How much are the Democrats willing to give away in order to secure one or two votes from the other side of the aisle?”

Despite the tough congressional slog, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that he was hopeful the U.S. congress would pass the bill before the upcoming Copenhagen climate change conference in December. At a press conference on Monday, the Secretary General said he would be personally calling Senators to pick up the pace.

Whatever happens in Congress, pressure is mounting for President Obama to bring his prestige and Nobel aura to Copenhagen. That’s not likely to happen, reports The Times. According to this story:

“a source close to the Administration said it was ‘hard to see the benefit’ of his going to Copenhagen if there was no comprehensive deal for him to close or sign. Another expert, who did not want to be named, said he would be ‘really, really shocked’ if Mr Obama went to Copenhagen, adding that European hopes about the power of his Administration to transform the climate change debate in a matter of months bore little relation to reality.”

Despite the increasingly bleak outlook for a comprehensive deal at Copenhagen, people around the world on Saturday expressed their concern about global warming. At over 5,000 events, signs and banners were unfurled that read 350, a symbolic number in reference to 350 parts per million, which many scientists have said should be the limit for carbon dioxide concentrations in the earth’s atmosphere. (We’re currently topping out at 387 parts per million.)

Continue reading "Countdown to Copenhagen" »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on October 27, 2009
Categories: In the News, Keith Kloor, UN Conference on Climate Change, Copenhagen | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Cross posted by Katharine Sanderson on The Great Beyond

Two papers in Science yesterday have poured cold water on the promise of second generation biofuels.

Biofuels derived from the cellulosic, woody parts of plants are not having their greenhouse gas emissions properly accounted for, says Jerry Melillo from the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole. Melillo’s study suggests that changes in the way land is used, as a consequence of growing crops for biofuels, is not taken into account, and if it were then those biofuels would be shown to actually cause more greenhouse gases to be released than fossil fuels. Nitrous oxide emissions from increased use of fertilisers are a big part of the problem.

"The problem is, we have a finite amount of land where new crops could be grown. Melillo and colleagues now report that if biofuel crops replace food crops on current farmlands, then the clearing of forested land for additional food crops will release more carbon from the soil there than in the areas where the biofuel crops themselves are being grown," says the press release.

In a related policy forum article, Timothy Searchinger from Princeton University and a bunch of colleagues point out flaws in the ways that carbon emissions are counted for cap-and-trade schemes in both Europe and the US.

They say that the assertion that fuels made from biomass can be counted as carbon neutral is wrong. “Harvesting existing forests for electricity adds net carbon to the air,” the report says. “If bioenergy crops displace forest or grassland, the carbon released from soild and vegetation, plus lost future sequestration, generates carbon debt, which counts against the carbon the crops absorb.”

"In the near-term I think, irrespective of how you go about the cellulosic biofuels program, you're going to have greenhouse gas emissions exacerbating the climate change problem," Melillo is reported as saying in Reuters.

Energy efficiency news says the report is damning for biofuels.

More bad news comes from a UNEP report, highlighted by the New York Times. The report calls for greater debate about biofuels before ploughing headlong into a completely biofuel-powered society, although it focuses mainly on first generation fuels, unlike the Science papers.

Image: Chris Neill, MBL

Posted by Olive Heffernan on October 23, 2009
Categories: Energy, Katharine Sanderson, Research | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Keith Kloor

If all the maneuvering in advance of Copenhagen is beginning to resemble a high-stakes poker game, then the European Union has thrown its cards down on the table this week. As the Guardian reported:

“The EU negotiating position offers to slash greenhouse gas emissions by between 80-95% by 2050 and to deepen cuts from 20 to 30% by 2020 if other world powers sign up for similar action.”

That’s a pretty big if, especially in the case of the United States, since the U.S. official position is that it won’t commit to any targets until its Congress passes a climate change bill that is now in the senate. “Without such a commitment,” the New York Times writes, “other nations are loath to make their own pledges.”

Except the EU, that is. There’s still plenty of deal-making happening on the sidelines, though. For example, the border between China and India may be heating up over competing land claims, but that hasn’t stopped the two countries from inking a deal to cooperate on energy and climate issues ahead of Copenhagen.

As Keith Johnson over at the WSJ's Environmental Capitol notes:

"The battle over the Senate climate bill starts in earnest today, with more details on the Kerry-Boxer bill, fresh economic analysis from the EPA, and a speech by President Obama backing the measure."

Greens are thus wringing their hands over a new Pew Research Center poll that finds:

“There has been a sharp decline over the past year in the percentage of Americans who say there is solid evidence that global temperatures are rising. And fewer also see global warming as a very serious problem – 35% say that today, down from 44% in April 2008.” Andrew Kohut, the director of the Pew Research center, tells AP that the poll's results probably reflect the bleak economic landscape:

“The priority that people give to pollution and environmental concerns and a whole host of other issues is down because of the economy and because of the focus on other things.”

Still, as Grist observes, there is a sliver lining:

"There were two small (and puzzling) bits of consolation in the poll: many respondents support limiting greenhouse-gas emissions, and many want the U.S. to join an international climate-change plan."

That's precisely why people should look at the poll in a larger context, Roger Pielke, Jr., argues, in his analysis of the data:

"One reason to stop focusing on what people think about the science of climate change is that a majority of the public supports action on emissions as well as international cooperation on climate change. The policy challenge is thus to design policies that can be effective given the strong political support that has existed on this topic for some time. The realities are that support is about as strong as it is likely to be, and really hasn't changed much over a decade or longer."

Ironically, the Poll came out a day after 18 scientific organizations sent a letter to the U.S. Congress, reaffirming “the multiple independent lines of evidence” for climate change:

“Observations throughout the world make it clear that climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research demonstrates that the greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver.”

Posted by Olive Heffernan on October 23, 2009
Categories: Communicating Climate Change, In the News, Keith Kloor, Opinion, UN Conference on Climate Change, Copenhagen | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Reaching a climate deal in Copenhagen will depend on rich nations’ proactive commitment to making mandatory emission cuts at home, prominent experts from India and China reiterate in a couple of opinion pieces in Nature [subscription] today. And it will require exceptional diplomatic skill, adds a veteran climate negotiator.

While accepting the United Nation’s principle of ‘common but differentiated’ responsibility, India cannot yet agree to mandatory domestic emissions limits, says Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change. At the most, India might offer “at an appropriate stage of the negotiations” the country’s National Action Plan on Climate Change as part of a global package of commitments.

In return for voluntary domestic action, India will expect from the developed world technical and financial aid for switching to low-carbon technologies and adapting to anticipated climate change, Pachauri explains. “India feels strongly that on the basis of historical responsibility and consideration of equity, developed countries should provide financial support for adaptation in developing countries,” he says.

Jiahua Pan of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’ Institute for Urban and Environmental Studies in Beijing follows a similar line of thought in outlining China’s position. The G8’s intention to halve global emissions by 2050, with 80% cuts by the developed and 20% by the developing world, translates into lasting inequity, he argues. A fair deal, says Pan, would require wealthier countries, which currently emit greenhouse gases at almost five times the per capita rate of developing nations and economies in transition, to cut their emissions by at least 40 % by 2020.

“The developing nations will have every reason to follow suit if the rich nations demonstrate leadership,” he says.

A successful deal at Copenhagen will furthermore depend on financial resources for adaptation measures in poorer countries, including technology transfer, he says. He points out that China already invests more heavily in low-carbon energy than most rich nations. But he cautions that the shift to carbon-free energy sources comes with competitive disadvantages. Fears that a premature shift will slow economic development are virulent throughout the developing world, he says.

“Developed countries are concerned with immediate negative economic effects, whereas the developing countries are worried about their future well-being if they sign up to a legally binding, but unrealistic, target.”

In a third piece, Raúl Estrada-Oyuela, the Argentine diplomat who led the negotiations that produced the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, argues that success in Copenhagen will critically depend on the skills of the lead negotiator.

Estrada-Oyuela recounts the delicate international diplomacy, seasoned with episodes of near-failure and last-minute breakthroughs, which brought about the all-too modest Kyoto treaty. Inexperience on the part of the Danish minister of energy and climate, Connie Hedergaard, who will officially preside over the Copenhagen talks, could prove a stumbling block on the road to a more ambitious successor agreement, he warns.

Quirin Schiermeier

Posted by Olive Heffernan on October 22, 2009
Categories: Climate Policy, Opinion, Politics, UN Conference on Climate Change, Copenhagen | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

From undersea meetings by Maldives’ ministers to debates in the US Senate, talk of climate change is echoing around every corner of the globe. The message: needs are great and growing fast, while resources remain few and far between.

The task awaiting negotiators headed for Copenhagen this December - to agree a global treaty for saving the planet - is daunting, particularly with hopes of achieving the task in Copenhagen fading rapidly.

But one person eagerly anticipating the conference is Greg Asner, a tropical ecologist with the Carnegie Institution for Science’s global ecology department in Stanford, California. For the past decade Greg and his team have been stationed in the Peruvian Amazon, designing and testing a system that can accurately calculate the amount of carbon locked up in forests and track changes over time. Jeff Tollefson journeyed to the Amazon and reports on Asner’s work in the latest issue of Nature.

Continue reading "No forest too wide or mountain too high in the fight against global warming" »

Posted by Anna Barnett on October 22, 2009
Categories: Deforestation, Stephanie Baudains | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Quirin Schiermeier

The European Union’s environment ministers have reportedly agreed on a negotiation mandate for Sweden for the upcoming climate talks in Copenhagen. Sweden currently holds the EU presidency, which rotates every six months. (German).

The EU has previously said it will reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 20 % by 2020. At a speech to the European Parliament, Andreas Carlgren, the Swedish environment minister, yesterday reiterated that the EU will agree to 30 % cuts only if other parties make sufficient commitments in Copenhagen.

“We see the 30 per cent target as a lever to convince other parties to join us in being more ambitious. By 2050 emissions should have dropped by at least 80 per cent,” he said.

At today’s talks in Luxembourg, environment ministers of the 27 EU member states also called for the Copenhagen climate talks in December to set targets for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from ships and airplanes. By 2020, global emissions from aviation should be cut by 10 %, and emissions from shipping by 20 %, compared with 2005 levels, the group said according to news reports.

Meanwhile, at a meeting yesterday of EU finance ministers, Poland and other eastern EU member countries blocked a decision on climate adaptation aid for developing countries. The group is concerned that their national contribution to the planned adaptation fund will overburden their economies.

Andreas Borg, the Swedish finance minister, complained about “a lack of commitment by certain member states”.

The EU’s heads of states will now attempt to resolve the issue at a council meeting next week in Brussels, when the EU’s negotiation position for Copenhagen is to be rubber-stamped.

Posted by Olive Heffernan on October 21, 2009
Categories: Climate Policy, In the News, Politics, Quirin Schiermeier, UN Conference on Climate Change, Copenhagen | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Has continuing criticism of the controversial Superfreakonomics book taken an ugly turn? Co-author Stephen Dubner believes so and fires back at his NYT blog, asserting that critics have:

“given the impression that we are global-warming deniers of the worst sort, and that our analysis of the issue is ideological and unscientific. Most gravely, we stand accused of misrepresenting the views of one of the most respected climate scientists on the scene, whom we interviewed extensively. If everything they said was actually true, it would indeed be a damning indictment. But it’s not.”

Roger Pielke Jr., never one to shy away from a battle, believes that Dubner and his co-author Steven Levitt have indeed been critized by Joe Romm over at Climate Progress. Dubner's charges have been denied by Romm, who has written multiple, lengthy posts in just the last 24 hours to defend himself. Regardless of who claims the high ground in this episode, Bradford Plumer reminds us over at The New Republic's website that Dubner has yet to "address any of the errors that scientists like William Connolley have pointed out," which Olive Heffernan summarized here:

Meanwhile, Real Climate’s Gavin Schmidt has scolded the Superfreakonimics authors for embracing geoengineering, which Schmidt asserted:

“is neither cheap, nor a fix, and the reasons why it is very likely to be a bad idea are ethical and legal, much more than its still-uncertain scientific merits.”

Incidentally, the book is being published today. Eric Pooley, former managing editor of Fortune magazine, who is friendly with one of the co-authors registers his disappoinment in the book over at Bloomberg. The controversial book, Pooley writes:

“turns out to be the same pile of misinformation the skeptic crowd has been peddling for years.”

In recent weeks, the big news on the U.S. business front has been about all the companies, such as Apple, quitting their membership in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce because of the latter’s hostility to regulatory action on global warming. Now it seems that the climate issue is dividing energy producers as well. The NYT reports:

Continue reading "Countdown to Copenhagen" »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on October 20, 2009
Categories: In the News, Keith Kloor, UN Conference on Climate Change, Copenhagen | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Getting a climate deal agreed in December will require an ‘uphill battle’ said UK energy and climate change Secretary Ed Miliband in London yesterday, despite incremental progress from the world's largest economies on agreeing the way forward.

Miliband addressed the press following a two-day meeting of the Major Economies Forum, a US-inspired initiative that includes 17 of the world's developing and emerging economies. The meeting aimed to address some of the key obstacles to securing a global treaty and involved six guest nations, including some of the world’s poorest such as Ethiopia.

Although the forum is not part of the formal UN negotiation process, its members collectively account for 80% of global greenhouse gas emissions, so any shift in their positions will significantly affect prospects for reaching an agreement in Copenhagen.

I attended the press conference and reported the story for Nature News [subscription]. It’s interesting, as Andy Revkin points out over on Dot Earth, that the final communiqué from the meeting was seen by some observers as empty rhetoric but by others as containing substantial signs of progress.

Miliband certainly gave the impression that the meeting was successful, saying “there was a sense that substantial progress had been made”. That was reflected to some extent in the press coverage.

But Miliband was scant on the details of what exact progress had been made. He highlighted three areas where agreement had been reached: the need to substantially increase funding for adaptation and mitigation in the developing world (but he didn’t say by how much or by when), how that money will be transferred (this presumably relates to the decision that the UN, rather than the World Bank, will administer the fund) and the need for an international deal to reflect current commitments by both rich and poor nations (an issue that’s important to the US; Stern said there won’t be an agreement without this).

A cursory look at the communiqué suggests that progress by the MEF this week was incremental, and perhaps even insignificant, given the larger issues on the table. The address by US climate change envoy Todd Stern last night suggested that getting a deal that involves the US will be tricky.

I’ve elaborated on this in the full story, but in short, the US is unlikely to sign up to targets if the Waxman-Markey bill hasn’t passed through the Senate by December. And if it has passed, the issue of the legal framework of the treaty will be contentious: many developing nations want a Kyoto-style protocol, whereas the US isn’t keen on such an agreement, instead favouring one that commits both developed and developing nations to mid-term targets for 2020.

Speaking yesterday in London, Stern said that the US is “historically the biggest emitter, but the capacity of the world to get where we need to go [will] be more determined by what happens in China and other major developing nations in the future. It has to involve the major developing economies – that’s the only way it’s going to work”.

Olive Heffernan

Image: PurestockX

Posted by Olive Heffernan on October 20, 2009
Categories: In the News, Olive Heffernan, Politics, UN Conference on Climate Change, Copenhagen | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As promised, here's the YouTube version of the Nature film on climate change:

Posted by Olive Heffernan on October 19, 2009
Categories: Atmospheric Science, Climate Policy, Climate Science, Communicating Climate Change, Olive Heffernan, UN Conference on Climate Change, Copenhagen | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The authors of the bestselling Freakonomics, which was largely an attempt to make sense and fun of economics for those who don’t think they care about such things, are now back with a title that sounds like a bigger and better version of the original: Superfreakonomics. Exploring the topics of global cooling, patriotic prostitutes, and why suicide bombers should buy life insurance, economist Steven Levitt and New York Times journalist Stephen Dubner are again unabashedly aiming for mass appeal.

But on the topic of global cooling….(er, don’t they mean warming, or is that just the theme of the week?), critics are none too impressed with Levitt and Dubner’s analysis. Having tried their utmost to discredit global warming, the authors none-the-less propose a solution, which goes something like: basically, let’s forget about mitigation, pump a load of sulphur into the atmosphere and be done with it.

The trouble here, as Joe Romm and William Connolley have already detailed on their respective blogs, is that Levitt and Dubner clearly have virtually no understanding of atmospheric science. As such, they fail to account for some of the other planetary woes their proposed scheme - a sulphur-spewing 18-mile-long hose pipe - would engender. Ocean acidification? Ozone depletion? Alan Robock’s latest paper gives a more complete list.

"We could end this debate and be done with it," Levitt says, in Monday’s Guardian, "and move on to problems that are harder to solve."

Sorry guys, but it looks like we’ll still need to redefine our energy system and the global economy too.

Olive Heffernan

Posted by Olive Heffernan on October 14, 2009
Categories: Communicating Climate Change, Economics, Olive Heffernan, Opinion, Technology | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Mere exposure to green products can make people behave more altruistically, but purchasing those same products can have quite the opposite effect, suggests a new study in press at the journal Psychological Science.

Nina Mazar and Chen-Bo Zhong of the University of Toronto conducted three experiments to gauge how people’s interaction with green products affected their other social interactions. The first experiment involved 59 students, who were asked to rate green consumers against conventional consumers in terms of various positive attributes. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the participants rated those who buy green products as being more cooperative, altruistic and ethical than those who purchase conventional products.

In a second experiment, each of 156 students was randomly assigned to shop at either a conventional or ‘green’ online store, in which they were either exposed to or offered to purchase items. The same students then participated in a game that involved sharing money with an unidentified person in a separate room. While those exposed to the green products shared more money than those exposed to the conventional products, participants who had actually bought green products shared less money.

Continue reading "The greedy side of green consumers " »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on October 13, 2009
Categories: Olive Heffernan, Personal action, Society | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Cross-posted from The Great Beyond

US billionaire George Soros, founder of the hedge fund Soros Fund Management, has announced plans to invest $1 billion in clean-energy technologies to help stave off global warming.

Speaking at a climate conference in Copenhagen on 12 October, Soros also said he plans to establish - with $100 million of his own money - a new environmental policy group called Climate Policy Initiative.

“I want to apply rather stringent criteria to the investments,” Soros told Bloomberg in an email. “They should be profitable but should also actually make a contribution to solving the problem.”

Soros – estimated to be worth $11 million billion by Forbes – said to reporters in Copenhagen that he lacked scientific expertise, but “the one thing I have is the ability to put money to work” (Guardian).

Continue reading "Soros commits $1bn to clean-tech" »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on October 13, 2009
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The Institute of Marine Engineering, Science and Technology – an international body that traditionally has represented marine industry and more recently, scientists too – today released its position statement on climate change.

The institute has been somewhat slower than many scientific bodies to release such a statement, perhaps given that much of its member base is in shipping, oil and gas. I was involved in helping to ensure the scientific accuracy of the statement, and I joined a panel discussion at the institute this morning, together with oceanographer Ralph Rayner of the London School of Economics (and various other institutes), Colin Summerhayes (executive director of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research), commercial oceanographer Mark Calverley (who instigated IMarEST’s observer status with the IPCC), Ian Leggett (formerly with Shell, now the head of Metocean Engineering for Europe) and Malcolm Newell (marine engineer and former consultant for Shell, Golar, Exxon Mobil, among others).

I was prepared for a certain amount of scepticism from the audience, which may seem surprising in this day and age (or maybe not, given the recent news coverage). But reassuringly this morning’s discussion suggested that views in the industry are now aligned with the scientific evidence. Without exception, members were keen to discuss the practicalities of how to reduce emissions from shipping, and how to move to a low carbon economy.

The institute now has the task of putting together detailed synopses on the science, impacts, mitigation, and adaptation, with specific relevance to the marine sector. I’ll update as and when those reports come out.

Olive Heffernan

Posted by Olive Heffernan on October 13, 2009
Categories: Business, Communicating Climate Change, Energy, Ocean science, Olive Heffernan, Technology | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

International climate policy is largely focused on reducing emissions of carbon dioxide. But even if we reduce emissions now, a proportion of CO2 will stay in the atmosphere for millennia. A faster-acting strategy is needed if we’re to avoid dangerous climate change in the short term. That’s the message from a team of experts writing in the latest issue of PNAS.

What’s needed to mitigate climate change fast, Nobel laureate Mario Molina and colleagues argue, is a focus on phasing out short-term warming agents. They pinpoint four non-CO2 gases and particles that could be regulated under existing legislation. Complementing cuts in CO2, these faster-acting mitigation strategies could “begin within 2–3 years, be substantially implemented in 5–10 years and produce a climate response within decades”, write the authors.

Their message on the need to regulate short-lived warming agents such as hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) and black carbon is not new. To some extent Molina and co-authors reiterate the call for early action that appeared in a Nature editorial back in July. They, too, recommend that the Montreal Protocol be amended to include the phase-out of atmospheric HFCs, currently regulated under the Kyoto Protocol. But they go further in their recommendations for dealing with black carbon, suggesting possible technologies to reduce its production from cooking stoves and diesel emissions, as well as feasible institutional and political arrangements to put these technologies in place.

In addition, they call for efforts to reduce pollutant gases such as methane and nitrous oxides that ultimately increase ozone - a significant greenhouse gas - in the lower atmosphere. Regulating emissions from agriculture and transport would be crucial here. Last on their wish list is more and better biosequestration - through means such as biochar - to give carbon sinks a much-needed boost.

Olive Heffernan

Posted by Olive Heffernan on October 12, 2009
Categories: Aersosols, Climate Science, GHG emissions, Mitigation, Olive Heffernan | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

As promised, Nature’s film on climate change went online last week on October 1. You can view the film in full on nature.com (it lasts about twenty minutes in total). It will also be on YouTube next week, at which stage I’ll embed it here.

The film was shot this July on location in Lindau at the 59th meeting of Nobel Laureates, and follows three young researchers – Brian Krohn, Faroha Liquat and Brandi Kiel Reese – on a journey to discover how their work on various aspects of chemistry can help solve the climate change problem.

Brian Krohn is interested in how algae can be used as a source for biofuels. He was based at the company SarTec Inc. in Minnesota at the time of filming, where he was converting oil extracted from algae to biodiesel using a novel process that is more economical and more environmentally friendly than traditional methods. Now Brian is at the University of Oxford studying for a degree in Environmental Change and Management, for which he received a Rhodes scholarship. He’s going to use this opportunity to look at how governmental policies can best stimulate alternative energy research.

Faroha Liquat, a PhD researcher based at Quaid-i-Azam University in Pakistan, is interested in devising novel ways to harness the power of the sun for the benefit of mankind. She’s especially interested in developing cost-effective photovoltaic cells. During the film, she has a very valuable interaction with the IPCC's Rajendra Pachauri on whether developing countries can prosper and be part of the climate change solution. She’s currently visiting Pachauri’s institute, TERI, in Delhi.

Brandi Kiel Reese is also doing a PhD and is based at Texas A&M. Having previously worked as an environmental consultant, Brandi is now looking at how humans are impacting the Gulf of Mexico, a region that has become increasingly devoid of oxygen due to the massive influx of nitrogen fertilizers and due to warming.

During their week at Lindau, our young researchers hear about the changes already underway from climate experts, they challenge (and in some cases agree with) the views of political scientist Bjørn Lomborg, and they learn about the social responsibilities of scientists from the Nobel Laureates who first discovered the danger of CFCs.

Through these interactions, they explore the challenge of keeping global temperatures to within the 2 °C target. Their take: we have the brains and the tools to solve this problem, we just need the political willpower. Despite the expert nature of many of our interview subjects, the film provides a great overview of the climate change problem for anyone in need of an update in the run-up to Copenhagen.

What are the chances of staying within 2 °C? Let us know what you think.

Olive Heffernan

Posted by Olive Heffernan on October 09, 2009
Categories: Climate Policy, Communicating Climate Change, Mitigation, Olive Heffernan, Technology | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

In 2006, Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen suggested that we might need to start deliberately engineering the climate if no progress could be made on curbing our emissions. Since then, atmospheric concentrations of CO2 have continued to rise. So it’s perhaps no surprise that what once seemed like a outlandish idea has recently become a subject of serious scientific endeavour.

Injecting sulphate aerosols into the stratosphere has been one of the various proposed ‘geoengineering’ schemes; others include fertilizing the ocean with iron and stimulating cloud formation.

A new study [subscription] led by Alan Robock at Rutgers University in New Jersey now looks at the prospects for stratospheric ‘geoengineering’ in terms of its benefits, costs and risks. Writing in Geophysical Research Letters, they highlight the pros of injecting a sulphate gas into the stratosphere in the face of a climate catastrophe: it would cool temperatures, stop the melting of sea and land-based ice, slow sea level rise and increase the planet’s ability to sequester greenhouse gas.

But if the public sees geoengineering as a low-cost and easy ‘solution’ to climate change, then it could erode backing for mitigation, say the researchers, who weight the benefits against the associated risks and costs. Among the dangers of such a scheme is the risk of substantial ozone depletion, including delayed the recovery of the Antarctic ozone hole, they say. Other risks include regional drought, ocean acidification, a reduction in sunlight and the end of blue skies. The cost would ultimately depend on how the gas was deployed. Robock and colleagues say that using existing US military planes would be the cheapest option, at roughly several billion dollars per year. Lofting the gas using artillery shells or balloons would be more expensive. Other options, such as pumping the gas through a tall tower or lifting it into the stratosphere using a space elevator, may be possible in the future, say the scientists, but their cost cannot be evaluated just yet.

The dangers, rather than the cost, will ultimately limit the potential of geoengineering as a solution to climate change, conclude Robock’s team.

Olive Heffernan

Posted by Olive Heffernan on October 08, 2009
Categories: Geoengineering, Olive Heffernan, Politics, Technology | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

At the ongoing pre-Copenhagen climate talks in Bangkok, the US has made a step towards resolving the deal-breaker issue of funds to help developing countries respond to climate change. The Guardian’s all over it, perhaps thirsting for some good news to break up the drumbeat of doubt we’ve heard lately on the climate policy front.

The slight but significant shift is that the US now agrees with developing countries that money for mitigation and adaptation should come through a new, single, independent fund administered at least partly by the UN. Before, the US had argued for sticking with existing funding bodies like the World Bank, an institution disfavoured by the global South for its policy of loaning, rather than aiding, money.

But critical questions on climate funding are still up in the air - not least the numbers to be written on the cheques. And on other issues, the US stands accused of putting on the brakes. As the AP reports, it is increasingly being recast in the familiar role of climate villain.

Details are few on the negotiations, which are sealed off from press. But an anonymous EU source told the Guardian last month that the US team is putting forward a new framework for the Copenhagen deal that would scupper Kyoto-style policy. Instead of working top-down to divide a global emission cut among countries, the US reportedly wants the deal to be a patchwork of national commitments, each with its own rules and timetables.

Add to this the long-running demand for emissions commitments from emerging economies like India and China, and they’ve got the developing world in a righteous fury. Yesterday, China was joined by the head of the G77 (which has grown from the eponymous 77 to a group of 130 developing states ) in a coordinated statement charging that rich nations collectively - not just the US - intend to kill Kyoto.

Continue reading "Bangkok negotiations: US concedes on funding as accusations fly" »

Posted by Anna Barnett on October 06, 2009
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At the UN climate conference in Copenhagen this December, talk will turn to scientific, political and economic issues with a global reach and a long history — not easy to pick up from the daily news. We asked select experts on climate change what books we should be reading ahead of the big event.

Here's a peek at some well-informed desks, bookshelves and bedside tables. Read the full roundup here - and join in our pre-Copenhagen book club by commenting below.

When your last work led to an Oscar and Nobel Prize, anticipation is high on the sequel. And Al Gore's new book delivers, says Joe Romm, the voice of Climate Progress at the Centre for American Progress. Gore's Our Choice collects the most effective climate change solutions that policymakers could put in place now.

Tony Juniper, the campaigner and onetime director of Friends of the Earth, picks out Mark Lynas's Six Degrees (also a favorite of the Royal Society). The book vividly paints the changes expected as the world warms - revealing the practical implications of compromises we could see at Copenhagen.

A lively new book by an ex-oilman and geologist tells some of the insider history behind the UN talks - an eyewitness account of shifting views on climate change within the oil industry. Lord Ron Oxburgh, former chairman of Shell, says Brian Lovell's Challenged by Carbon is an instant tonic for 'climate change fatigue'.

Roger Pielke, Jr., a University of Colorado science-policy expert, argues that climate negotiators are failing to learn from history. He recommends the 1998 book Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott, which recites a litany of failed attempts at centralized planning.

Oliver Tickell's climate policy proposal Kyoto2 is just the thing a truly intelligent species would come up with, according to Mark Lynas, environmentalist and Six Degrees author. But it's nothing like what's on the table for December.

Can we 'solve the climate crisis'? In Why We Disagree About Climate Change, Mike Hulme of the University of East Anglia asserts that "climate change is not 'a problem' waiting for 'a solution'" but rather is an idea whose shape can differ completely depending on one's political and cultural biases. New York Times reporter and Dot Earth blogger Andrew Revkin recommends the book and sketches out its implications for Copenhagen.

In turn, Mike Hulme points to a book that looks beyond the usual dichotomy of climate change 'believers' and 'sceptics' to find a more fundamental split in thinking. John Foster's The Sustainability Mirage explores some crucial social and psychological realities of climate change that you won't be hearing much about during the conference.

Another good read when you want to lift your head from the trenches, the new book Whole Earth Discipline by Stewart Brand takes an overview of environmental issues in the twenty-first century. Former Nature editor (and sun-eater) Oliver Morton dubs it a lucid big picture put together with experience, wisdom and optimism.

Could you call yourself ready for Copenhagen without taking a look at the IPCC report? Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, says their 2007 Synthesis Report - a sum-up of the masses of policy-relevant research reviewed by the three working groups - has perhaps been the panel's most effective report thus far in creating awareness across every section of society.

Here are the book reviews in full. What do you think - are these the right reads to get ready for the conference? What others should be on the list?

Anna Barnett

Image: © iStockphoto / Pertunisas

Posted by Anna Barnett on October 02, 2009
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Robert Corell, chairman of the Washington-based Climate Action Initiative, recently illustrated the appeal of a remarkably simple modelling tool by giving reporters a direct answer to a difficult question: What is the impact of the international climate commitments announced thus far? Citing results from C-ROADS (for Climate Rapid Overview and Decision-support Simulator), Corell suggested that we are headed toward warming of 4 degrees Celsius by 2100.

Corell was speaking at a news conference held by the United Nations Environment Programme to release a compendium of the research that has come out since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its fourth assessment in 2007. It's a useful contribution to the dialogue, but reporters, like politicians, are often looking for simple answers.

The predictable result was media coverage suggesting that the UNEP report found that current commitments are vastly insufficient to solve the problem. Technically true, perhaps, but the results from this particular model are just a tiny part of the larger compendium, which hardly got a mention. In effect, Corell accidentally hijacked the news conference.

We decided to take a look at the model itself, and the result came out in this week's issue of Nature. It turns out that this tool, which we first encountered at a global warming war game last year, has gone viral in the admittedly small world of international climate negotiators.

One place where the model isn't being rolled out, at least not publicly, is at the US Capitol. Indeed, the global warming debate there seems oddly disconnected from global warming itself. When US Senator John Kerry stepped up to the podium to discuss the newly released climate bill on Capitol Hill Wednesday, he summed up the situation in one word: security.

"Economic security. Energy security. National security."

Climate security? Sure, there's that too, but Democrats are now making their pitch to a different audience that is at least as concerned about the jobs, fuel bills and troops deployed overseas. The first people at this press conference to go into details about what global warming actually means - including rising seas, droughts and volatile weather - were soldiers. Representatives of all of the major environmental organizations were present, but they were not at the podium.

Not new, of course, but it does say something important about the selling power of global warming in the United States. Democrats know they have the votes from environmentalists, but that's not enough. The question now is whether they can make an alternate case for action. For an update on the current state of play, check Nature's latest online new briefing.

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on October 01, 2009
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