Climate Feedback

The online publication of sensitive material from a British climate centre is brewing into one of the scientific controversies of the year, causing dismay among affected institutes and individuals, reports Quirin Schiermeier over on Nature News [subscription].

The disclosure of the contents of over 1,000 e-mails and documents obtained illegally from the server at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit is sparking heated debate across the blogosphere, leading to accusations from climate skeptics that scientists are trying to conceal evidence that contradicts anthropogenic global warming.

One email in particular, sent by CRU director Phil Jones, has been poured over for its reference to using a "trick" to hide a decline in the data.

As Daniel Cressey reports on The Great Beyond, even US Senators are discussing it. Republican senator James Inhofe says he will launch an investigation into what has predictably become known as “Climategate”. Inhofe says:

“I certainly don’t condone the manner in which these emails were released. However, now that they are in the public domain, lawmakers have an obligation to determine the extent to which the so-called ‘consensus’ of global warming, formed with billions of taxpayer dollars, was contrived in the biased minds of the world’s leading climate scientists.”

Yesterday, the CRU finally retorted to the accusations of bad behavior with several statements on its website. In one of the statements, Jones writes:

“Our global temperature series tallies with those of other, completely independent, groups of scientists working for NASA and the National Climate Data Center in the United States, among others. Even if you were to ignore our findings, theirs show the same results. The facts speak for themselves; there is no need for anyone to manipulate them.”

He also explains that a large number of data sources, other than the temperature record, show that the world is warming.

In a separate statement, the CRU scientists explain the use of the word “trick” in the email. They say that it referred to adding recent instrumental data to the end of temperature reconstructions based on proxy data. Apparently, this was done for a figure for the WMO Statement on the Status of the Global Climate in 1999. They write:

The requirement for the WMO Statement was for up-to-date evidence showing how temperatures may have changed over the last 1000 years. To produce temperature series that were completely up-to-date (i.e. through to 1999) it was necessary to combine the temperature reconstructions with the instrumental record, because the temperature reconstructions from proxy data ended many years earlier whereas the instrumental record is updated every month. The use of the word “trick” was not intended to imply any deception.

This correlates with the account posted last week over on Real Climate.

Jones admits that he regrets the poor choice of language in some of the emails:

My colleagues and I accept that some of the published emails do not read well. I regret any upset or confusion caused as a result. Some were clearly written in the heat of the moment, others use colloquialisms frequently used between close colleagues.

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 25, 2009
Categories: Data, In the News, Olive Heffernan | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Keith Kloor

Less than three weeks before more than 60 world leaders will gather in Copenhagen for a historic climate change summit, the Obama Administration is saying don’t count them out. According to the Guardian, White House officials have told reporters that President Obama will soon announce a U.S. proposed target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

As the BBC notes:

“The absence of a US target has widely been seen as the single biggest obstacle to agreement at the summit.”

Until now, it’s been assumed that the U.S. couldn’t offer an emissions reduction target until its Congress passed a climate change bill, the details of which are still being worked out in various Senate committees. But as one senior White House official tells Politico:

“It would be a mistake to conclude that the international community's failure to reach a final treaty in Copenhagen is due to a lack of domestic legislation in the United States."

Yale Environment 360 asks ten environmental leaders and climate experts to “outline what they believe can still be accomplished at Copenhagen.”

An increasing sense of urgency for international action comes today with the publication of The Copenhagen Diagnosis. The report, compiled by 26 climate researchers, is an update of the latest climate science since 2007. A number of the participating scientists have issued statements accompanying the report, among them Matthew England, joint Director of the Climate Change Research Centre of the University of NSW, Australia:

"We have already almost exceeded the safe level of emissions that would ensure a reasonably secure climate future. Within just a decade global emissions need to be declining rapidly. A binding treaty is needed urgently to ensure unilateral action among the high emitters."

Continue reading "Countdown to Copenhagen" »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 24, 2009
Categories: Features, In the News, Keith Kloor, UN Conference on Climate Change, Copenhagen | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Daniel Cressey; cross-posted from The Great Beyond

The ice sheet covering east Antarctica may have been melting since 2006, according to new research, contradicting previous suggestions that it has remained stable or even grown in mass.

Using measurements for 2002 to 2009 from a twin pair of satellites, researchers at the University of Texas at Austin in Austin, Texas, say east Antarctica is losing mass at about 58 gigatonnes a year. Most of the loss appears to be from coastal regions and to stem from increased ice loss post 2006.

Previous studies have generally used satellites to measure elevation or movement of ice. The new study - published in Nature Geoscience - instead looks at the Earth’s gravity field and uses that to work out how much ice is there. It also suggests that 132 Gt of the total annual ice loss of 190 Gt per year is coming from the west.

Although there are uncertainties in the data, the new estimates of ice loss are on average consistent with previous calculations, “but, in contrast to previous estimates, they indicate that as a whole, Antarctica may soon be contributing significantly more to global sea-level rise”, the researchers write in their paper.

Continue reading "Is east Antarctic ice melting?" »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 23, 2009
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Everyone's talking about the CRU data hack. Quirin Schiermeier reports on Nature News:

One of Britain's leading climate-research centres has had more than 1,000 files stolen from its computers and republished on the Internet. The cyber-attack is apparently aimed at damaging the reputations of prominent climate scientists.

The full story is here:

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 20, 2009
Categories: Data, Features, In the News, Olive Heffernan, Research | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBacks (0)

Keith Kloor

While many are feeling pessimistic about the prospects for a deal at Copenhagen, Geoffrey Lean at Grist believes the big climate summit still has a pulse. He reports that “environment ministers from 40 key countries—assembled this week for a two-day preparatory meeting in Copenhagen—made good progress towards a political agreement.”

Lean doesn’t deny that the odds for success are still long. But the game is by no means over, he writes:

“It is all very difficult. But there is a chance that, with luck and skill, a climate-saving deal can be reached. And while far from ideal, the hope that a deal is still salvageable is a lot better than the doom that was so widely pronounced at the start of the week.”

Meanwhile, are people suffering from “climate fatigue,” and tuning out the steady drumbeat of alarming news on climate change? Richard Kerr in Science examines the communication challenges [subscription required]. He writes:

“Almost all climate scientists are of one mind about the threat of global warming: It's real, it's dangerous, and the world needs to take action immediately. But they disagree about the best way to convey the urgency of the situation to the public and policymakers.”

At Yale Environment 360, Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger argue that one thing not to do is hype the danger incessantly. Pointing to the consistent polling that shows Americans to have soft support for climate change measures, the authors assert:

“The lesson of recent years would appear to be that apocalyptic threats — when their impacts are relatively far off in the future, difficult to imagine or visualize, and emanate from everyday activities, not an external and hostile source — are not easily acknowledged and are unlikely to become priority concerns for most people.”

Continue reading "Countdown to Copenhagen" »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 20, 2009
Categories: In the News, Keith Kloor | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Olive Heffernan
This week's Nature [subscription required] is the third in a series of special issues celebrating the life of Charles Darwin. It focuses on the dire challenges to Earth's biodiversity — and finds some reason for hope.

Among the numerous biodiversity-related contributions is an opinion piece by Will Turner of Conservation International with Michael Oppenheimer and David S. Wilcove of Princeton University. They argue that natural ecosystems offer some of our greatest tools in mitigating climate change and, as such, must be made a bulwark against climate change, rather than a casualty of it. They write:

REDD is just one of many possible ways to exploit the potential of natural ecosystems to slow climate change and lessen its effects on people. Natural habitats are a hugely valuable tool in the fight against global warming. Use them wisely and they could save many lives and vast sums of money in the decades to come. Abuse them, and much of Earth's biodiversity could be lost, along with the fight against climate change. Urgent action is needed to understand how best to exploit this promise and develop mechanisms that can be woven into the practices of governments, corporations, communities and institutions worldwide.

Turner and co-authors say that natural ecosystems are a clear mitigation option because of their sequestration potential, but also because "the maintenance and restoration of natural habitats are among the cheapest, safest and easiest solutions at our disposal in the effort to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and promote adaptation to unavoidable changes". See the full article here.

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 19, 2009
Categories: Biodiversity and Ecology, Communicating Climate Change, Mitigation, Olive Heffernan, Opinion | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Daniel Cressey; cross-posted from The Great Beyond

The world’s carbon dioxide ‘sinks’ are not able to keep up with the amount of the greenhouse gas being produced, according to a paper published in Nature Geoscience.

Reviewing the recent literature Corinne Le Quéré, of the University of East Anglia, and colleagues report that between 1959 and 2008 43% of each year’s carbon dioxide emissions have remained in the atmosphere with the rest being absorbed by land and ocean sinks. However in the last 50 years they suggest that the fraction remaining in the atmosphere has increased from about 40% to 45%.

They also found that a 29% rise in carbon emissions between 2000 and 2008 can be attributed to a large extent to burning coal and the growth of the so-called ‘emerging economies’.

“The Earth’s carbon sinks are complex and there are some gaps in our understanding, particularly in our ability to link human-induced CO2 emissions to atmospheric CO2 concentrations on a year-to-year basis,” says Le Quéré (press release). “But, if we can reduce the uncertainty about the carbon sinks, our data could be used to verify the effectiveness of climate mitigations policies.”

Continue reading "That (carbon) sinking feeling" »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 18, 2009
Categories: Biosphere feedbacks, Climate Science, Daniel Cressey, Ocean science | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Keith Kloor

After world leaders announced over the weekend that no legally binding global warming treaty would be reached at the upcoming Copenhagen summit, the post mortems have started coming in fast and furious. Christian Schwägerl in Der Spiegel writes:

“The U.S. is quite happy to see itself as the leader of the Western world. But when it comes to climate change, America has once again failed miserably -- for the umpteenth time.”

Foreign Policy Magazine asks “Who killed Copenhagen?” and names President Obama as the top culprit, citing his lackluster leadership on climate change since taking office last year. Prominent environmental activist and writer Bill McKibben levels the same charge over at Mother Jones magazine:

“For a year now it’s been clear that the president is not particularly focused on applying the political pressure that would have been necessary to reach any kind of pact, much less one that approaches what the science demands. Despite the deadline of the Copenhagen conference, Obama placed energy second on his priority list, guaranteeing that health care would occupy most of the year. He talked very little about climate, tending instead to talk about green jobs and energy security, and in the process left the door open for climate deniers to have a field day.”

But John Broder of the NYT says Obama is “hobbled” by the U.S. Congress, which is moving glacially on climate change legislation. As Broder writes:

“Without a firm commitment from the United States — for decades the world’s leading emitter of climate-altering gases — other nations have been reluctant to deliver firmer pledges of their own.”

Never mind all that for now, argues Danish prime minister, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, who, according to the Guardian, told world leaders that “we must, in the coming weeks, focus on what is possible and not let ourselves be distracted by what is not possible.” The new endgame, he said:

“The Copenhagen agreement should finally mandate continued legal negotiations and set a deadline for their conclusion.”

Given the heady built-up over the past year, maybe a delay isn’t such a bad thing, argues David Roberts in Grist:

“If the world’s nations had headed into Copenhagen expecting a legally binding treaty complete with targets and timetables, the result would have been disappointment, acrimony, and worst of all, wasted time. By taking some of the pressure off Copenhagen, the two-steps agreement has avoided disaster and maintained momentum. It’s also given the Obama administration time to engage in more climate diplomacy.”

“while striving for final legal agreement, an agreed outcome at Copenhagen should, based on the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, include emission reduction targets of developed countries and nationally appropriate mitigation actions of developing countries. The outcome should also substantially scale up financial assistance to developing countries, promote technology development, dissemination and transfer, pay particular attention to the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable to adapt to climate change, promote steps to preserve and enhance forests, and provide for full transparency with respect to the implementation of mitigation measures and provision of financial, technology and capacity building support.”

Meanwhile, at the World Summit on Food Security in Rome, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said the Rome and Copenhagen summits "must craft a single global vision to produce real results for people in real need". As the BBC reports, the Secretary General called for a more co-ordinated approach to the issues, saying:

[there] "can be no food security without climate security".

Continue reading "Countdown to Copenhagen" »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 17, 2009
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Olive Heffernan

I've just returned from a two-day visit to the UK Met Office, where scientists are gathered this week to present and discuss the results of a five-year research initiative known as Ensembles. An EU-funded project led by the Met Office Hadley Centre, Ensembles brought together 66 research international institutes with the express aim of developing climate models and projections and applying the newly developed tools to studying climate impacts on agriculture, health and other sectors.

One of the most exciting outcomes from Ensembles is the development of a climate mitigation scenario and its analysis by a variety of state-of-the-art climate models, many of which include carbon cycle feedbacks. As I explain over on Nature News, this is a radically different approach from the gold-standard climate projections, which are run by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nation's climate body.

Up until now, the IPCC has run models for a range of 'what if' scenarios that make various assumptions about the future, such as the level of emissions, technological and economic development. None of these scenarios account for the impact of policy on climate change.

The Ensembles scenario, known as E1, works the other way around. It assumes that atmospheric levels of CO2 equivalents cannot rise above 450 parts per million if we are to avoid 'dangerous' climate change of more than 2 ºC and then looks at the mitigation that policy-makers would need to pursue to achieve that.

Most of the models suggest that emissions will need to be near zero by 2100 in order to stabilize atmopsheric concentrations at 450 ppm. But the Hadley Centre model, HadCM3, suggests that we'll need to start actively removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere - by artifical or natural means - by 2050, if we are to keep temperatures within a 'safe' level.

Although E1 won't be be used by the IPCC in its next report (AR5), due out in 2013, E1 is the forerunner of a very similar scenario that will feature prominently in AR5.

The full story is here [subscription].

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 17, 2009
Categories: Climate Science, GHG emissions, Mitigation, Olive Heffernan | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Keith Kloor

The U.S. Congressional climate bill will be tabled until next year, reports The Wall Street Journal. Says Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus:

"It's common understanding that climate-change legislation will not be brought up on the Senate floor and pass the Senate this year."

Just how important is the U.S. climate bill to a climate change agreement in Copenhagen? It’s everything, argues Geoffrey Lean in Grist:

“Never before has such a vital, international treaty depended so crucially on the 535 members of the U.S. Congress. Even previous environmental breakthroughs, such as the Montreal Protocol on the ozone layer or the Washington Convention on Endangered Species, were preceded by U.S. legislation. As such, the rest of the world is experiencing for the first time how its vital interests can be affected by American politics, as senators from coal or oil states object to legislation that would curb emissions from fossil fuels.”

In lieu of this, “the Obama Administration is considering endorsing a limited short-term climate pact,” reports Juliet Eilperin in the Washington Post. She writes:

“Backing an interim agreement -- which would fall far short of what many European and developing nations envisioned when President Obama took office -- would be an attempt to keep the U.N.-sponsored talks from being viewed a failure, say administration and congressional officials.”

Enough of all this gloomy talk, admonished European Union Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas, in a press conference yesterday. As Green Inc. reports, Dimas:

“criticized world leaders who had played down the possibility of a strong outcome at the Copenhagen meeting, suggesting they were too pessimistic.”

Continue reading "Countdown to Copenhagen" »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 13, 2009
Categories: In the News, Keith Kloor, UN Conference on Climate Change, Copenhagen | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Quirin Schiermeier

Rising temperatures cause melting and retreat of large ice sheets, sea ice, and mountain glaciers – that’s pretty much common knowledge by now, as are implications on sea level, ecosystems, water supply and natural hazard risk. But a couple of news stories this week may cause confusion.

That the Greenland ice sheet is losing ice, and that mass loss has further accelerated in recent years, comes as no particular surprise. Using ground observations and satellite gravity measurements, a team led by Michiel van den Broeke from Utrecht University in the Netherlands, estimates that some 1,500 gigatonnes – roughly 1,500 cubic kilometers – have been lost from 2000-2008, equivalent to about 0.46 millimeters of global sea level rise.

Melting rates have accelerated since 2006, with mass loss reaching 273 gigatons of mass per year, equivalent to 0.75 millimeters of sea level rise. Without the moderating effects of increased snowfall, post 1996 mass losses would have been 100% higher, the team writes in a paper in this week’s issue of Science [subscription].

But the cryosphere – those parts of the globe that are permanently or seasonally covered by ice – does have surprises in store. Or so it seems.

Here’s one: Himalayan glaciers (there are tens of thousands of them of) are not – or at least not yet - shrinking as a result of climate change, the world learned this week from an Indian geologist.

“Although shrinking in volume and constantly showing a retreating front, [Himalayan glaciers] have not in any way exhibited, especially in recent years, an abnormal annual retreat,” concludes retired glaciologist Vijay Kumar Raina, formerly of the Geological Survey of India, in a report to India's Ministry of Environment and Forests.

“It is premature to make a statement that glaciers in the Himalayas are retreating abnormally because of global warming,” he goes on.

Following the release of the study – based on observations of 25 glaciers – India’s environment minister Jairam Ramesh was quick to challenge the“conventional wisdom" about melting ice in the world’s tallest mountains.

Fellow Indian Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), was put out: "We have a very clear idea of what is happening. I don't know why the minister is supporting this unsubstantiated research. It is an extremely arrogant statement," he told the Guardian.

The IPCC had warned in its latest report, published in 2007, that Himalayan glaciers "are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate."

So what's going on? I asked Lonnie Thompson, a veteran glaciologist and leading paleoclimatologist at Ohio State University. Here’s what he said:

“First and foremost this is not a peer reviewed report and nothing scientific can be claimed based on 25 glaciers out of over 15,000 glaciers in the Himalayas and 46,300 in the Himalayas and Tibetan region.”

Continue reading "Greenland ice and Himalayan glaciers: What’s going on?" »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 13, 2009
Categories: Climate Science, Cryosphere, In the News, Quirin Schiermeier | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Keith Kloor

Passing climate legislation through the US Senate may be tricky, but that hasn’t scared off the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from doing its part. As Stephen Power at the WSJ’s Environmental Capitol notes:

“Congress might be a long way from passing legislation to fight climate change, but the Obama administration appears one step closer to creating its own regime for controlling greenhouse gases.”

Now the President has said he may even attend the UN conference in Copenhagen ---if a deal is at hand. The AP has the scoop:

"If I am confident that all of the countries involved are bargaining in good faith and we are on the brink of a meaningful agreement and my presence in Copenhagen will make a difference in tipping us over the edge, then certainly that's something that I will do."

But if an accord isn’t reached this year, the global climate-change negotiations may be “headed toward the same aimless end” as the notoriously endless ‘Doha round’ of global trade talks, writes Bryan Walsh at Time magazine.

Speaking of something once thought endless, it’s been 20 years since the cold war crumbled in a heap. Now, a certain key historical figure from that time has emerged to implore today’s leaders to “tear down” another kind of wall. In a guest commentary at The Times of London, Mikhail Gorbachev writes:

“Addressing climate change demands a paradigm shift on a scale akin to that required to end the Cold War.”

If there’s going to be such a paradigm shift, it’s safe to say that most environmentalists weren’t betting that the UK would approve a new fleet of “clean coal” and nuclear power stations. As energy secretary Ed Miliband puts it in The Guardian:

"The threat of climate change means we need to make a transition from a system that relies heavily on high-carbon fossil fuels, to a radically different system that includes nuclear, renewable and clean coal power.”

Ready for another puzzler? What’s going on with that Indian government report claiming there is no evidence that global warming has shrunk Himmalayan glaciers? Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the IPCC, is hopping mad over this, and gives The Guardian an earful, and then some.

"We have a very clear idea of what is happening. I don't know why the minister is supporting this unsubstantiated research. It is an extremely arrogant statement."

Finally, in the feel-good story of the day, Politico reports that two U.S. political combatants know how to set aside their differences at the end of the day and share warm and fuzzy gifts. "We are really very good friends,” Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer tells Politico, referring to Republican Senator Jim Inhofe, who has called global warming 'the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.' Adds Boxer: “It’s a good working relationship we have. People are very surprised about it.”

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 10, 2009
Categories: In the News, Keith Kloor, UN Conference on Climate Change, Copenhagen | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Jeff Tollefson; cross-posted from The Great Beyond

International delegates to the Montreal Protocol wrapped up their meeting in Port Ghalib, Egypt, over the weekend without taking formal action to curb hydrofluorocarbons, modern refrigerants that are also poised to become a major contributor to global warming.

Some 41 countries joined in a declaration in support of regulating HFCs as greenhouse gases under the Kyoto Protocol, according to the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development and the Environmental Investigation Agency. This is in addition to support in North America and Europe as well as Micronesia and Mauritius, which have led the proposal.

Ozone-friendly HFCs represent the culmination of the Montreal Protocol's original mission; regulating them as greenhouse gases would require an amendment expanding the protocol's regulatory umbrella. In Egypt, Montreal delegates called on a technical committee to analyze alternatives to the chemicals in advance of a potential decision next year. For background, see our previous coverage here and here.

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 09, 2009
Categories: In the News, Jeff Tollefson, Politics | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Australia’s national science agency, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), has denied claims that it prevents researchers from publishing work on politically-sensitive issues such as climate change, reports Nature News [subscription].

An ecological economist at the agency, Clive Spash, had a paper accepted for publication in the journal New Political Economy earlier this year, only to find out two weeks later that it had been withdrawn by a CSIRO official because it had not yet been through an internal approval process.

In the article, Spash reportedly criticized carbon trading schemes for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, commenting that they are ineffective even if politically popular.

CSIRO staff are prevented from commenting on matters of policy. The agency has a process in place to ensure that staff only communicate on the results of their research, but Spash argues that such a policy presents real difficulties for academics working in socio-economics. As Nature News reports:

“There's a real issue here about people working in the socio-economic area," [Spash] told one reporter. "It's not at all clear to me how these people are supposed to work and do their job while trying to meet these general guidance principles that have been interpreted at present to say that we're not allowed to comment on any government policy at any level of government, anywhere in the world."

Spash apparently submitted the paper before an internal decision was made, having become frustrated with the slowness of the process and with wrangling over specific wording.

A CSIRO employee told Nature News last Friday that the incident stemmed more from management styles and conservative interpretation of the rules, rather than from any political pressure.

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 09, 2009
Categories: Communicating Climate Change, In the News, Olive Heffernan, Opinion, Politics | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Jeff Tollefson; cross-posted from In the Field

Things are winding down here in Barcelona. The latest negotiating text is out, and everybody is waiting for the final plenary session.

Negotiators seem to have coalesced on what needs to come out of Copenhagen, as opposed to what many would like to see. The basic idea, covered in a bit more detail in my last post, is that leaders could sign an agreement providing decisions on the big issues, including emissions targets, financing, technology, adaptation and deforestation, and then come back early next year to get the details for a formal treaty in place. That might not sound like much, but it eliminates the sense of doubt that was clouding the talks earlier in the week.

There's a bit of confusion in some places, particularly among greens and representatives from developing countries, about what that means, but most see it as a viable solution given that securing a complete, ratifiable treaty might not be possible. Indeed, despite what might be called an air of cautious optimism, the gap between rich and poor countries remains substantial and apparently unbridgeable.

This stark truth was on full display as the G77 group representing developing countries, the European Union and then the United States held back-to-back press conferences giving their assessment of where we stand. I'll take a closer look at the implications of all this in next week's issue, but here's a quick summary: The G77 said it won't support any agreement unless rich countries cut their emissions by at least 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020; the EU said its offer to go up to 30 percent is already aggressive; and the US said its unofficial numbers, which appear in legislative proposals that would reduce emissions to just a few percent below 1990 levels, are both unlikely to change and in line with the science.

I say "apparently" because these are negotiations, and there is a sense that everybody wants a deal. I briefly cornered Alf Wills, a G77 leader from South Africa, to talk about the issue, and he acknowledged that developed countries could always try to bridge the divide with offers of things like money and technology. "That's part of the negotiation," he told me.

Continue reading "Copenhagen conference: Call it a wrap" »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 06, 2009
Categories: Climate Policy, Jeff Tollefson, UN climate talks, Barcelona, November 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Keith Kloor

All hope for Copenhagen seems lost. According to The Times:

“A world treaty on climate change will be delayed by up to a year and is likely to be watered down because countries with the highest greenhouse gas emissions are refusing to commit to legally binding reductions.”

So if Copenhagen becomes just another rallying point for worldwide action, then where to after that? According to The Guardian:

“Sources said a meeting in Mexico in December 2010 would be more likely to see the legal treaty sealed.”

Whatever new roadmap emerges from Copenhagen, religious leaders meeting this week at Windsor Castle in Britain have pledged to galvanize their constituents to take action on global warming. Andrew Revkin at Dot Earth notes the “remarkable conclave”.

On the energy front, natural gas continues to be heralded for its various environmental attributes. Recent discoveries of abundant shale gas reserves in the United States, argue Daniel Yergin and Robert Ineson in The Wall Street Journal, transform the debate over generating electricity. They write:

"The US electric power industry faces very big questions about fuel choice and what kind of new generating capacity to build. In the face of new climate regulations, the increased availability of gas will likely lead to more natural gas consumption in electric power because of gas's relatively lower CO2 emissions. Natural gas power plants can also be built more quickly than coal-fired plants."

A broader case was spelled out several months ago by a leading Washington DC think thank, which asserted that natural gas:

"creates an unprecedented opportunity to use gas as a bridge fuel to a 21st-century energy economy that relies on efficiency, renewable sources and low-carbon fossil fuels such as natural gas".

Now, it seems that it has a potential peace dividend as well. Building natural gas pipelines in Central Asia, instead of military transport lines, could bring greater stability to countries such as India and Pakistan, according to this article by Saleem H. Ali and Parag Khanna, in Foreign Policy. There are obvious ancillary benefits for the global climate, since natural gas "is likely to be the cleanest and most cost-effective fuel to meet Pakistan and India’s energy shortfall". The authors add:

"Natural gas development offers a unique opportunity to tackle strategic, diplomatic and environmental goals at the same time.”

Continue reading "Countdown to Copenhagen" »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 06, 2009
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Jeff Tollefson; cross-posted from In the Field

The European Commission's chief negotiator, Artur Runge-Metzger, acknowledged this afternoon that Europe might have to settle for a political agreement rather than a binding legal treaty in Copenhagen (see my post this morning for a quick discussion of the issue). Everybody else has been talking about this possibility for some time, but it's not insignificant when the EU, which has always been the primary driver of this process, starts talking about it. Indeed, one environmentalist told me that once Europe gives up on the idea of a fully ratifiable deal in Copenhagen, the game is over.

As noted by The Associated Press, the official European position on the need for a ratifiable treaty remains in place. When I asked a spokesman about some kind of plan "Plan B", he squirmed and said this represents more of an acknowledgement of what other people are saying than anything else. In fact, people in the United States started saying this last year, shortly after US President Barack Obama's election, citing the monumental difficulty of establishing a new climate policy in less than a year. Interestingly enough, I talked to one former negotiator who said that many Europeans have been thinking along these lines for just as long but simply chose to maintain pressure by pushing for a full deal.

As it happens, UN climate chief Yvo de Boer and Malta's Michael Zammit Cutajar, who chairs the non-Kyoto negotiations that include the United States, both outlined their vision of a political deal in Copenhagen in a closed-door session with non-governmental groups on Wednesday. For a summary of their positions, check a blog posted by Elliot Diringer at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, a group that drew criticism from none other than Yvo de Boer himself for making the very same assessment last year.

The problem, once again, is that the United States is not ready to commit because it doesn't have, and isn't likely to have before early next year, domestic climate legislation in place. The US and the EU discussed the issue at a climate summit this week in Washington but were unable to reach any agreement on how to move forward.

Continue reading "Barcelona climate: Momentum builds for a "political agreement" in Copenhagen" »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 05, 2009
Categories: Climate Policy, Jeff Tollefson, UN climate talks, Barcelona, November 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Jeff Tollefson; cross-posted from In the Field

And now I'll take a look at the major developing countries, as promised both yesterday and today. A new analysis of climate commitments by the six biggest emerging economies - Brazil, China, India, South Africa, Mexico and South Korea - suggests that their cumulative emissions add up to a 25 percent reduction compared to "business as usual" projections for 2020. The report (not yet available on the web but discussed in a session on Tuesday) was commissioned by the German government and this portion was led by Niklas Hohne of the consultancy Ecofys in Koln. For some background, see our earlier coverage here.

Hohne said these six countries make up roughly two-thirds of the developing world emissions, which are more than half of the global total; include everybody and you get a 16 percent reduction in cumulative emissions from the developing world. That is in fact within the 15-30 percent reduction range that has been extracted from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's most recent assessment and made into official EU policy.

This is without word of new commitments expected from Brazil, which ended up delaying its announcement of a new, potentially more comprehensive emissions commitment this week (see our story this week here). President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva held a cabinet meeting to discuss the issue on Tuesday, but the government was unable to settle on a proposal and ended up scheduling another meeting for 14 November.

Continue reading "Barcelona climate: New analysis shows progress in emerging economies" »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 05, 2009
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Jeff Tollefson; cross-posted from In the Field

I’m sitting in the plenary session of the Kyoto Protocol, listening to an old debate over the baseline year used to assess emissions. The protocol is currently tied to 1990 emissions, but Japan, Australia and Canada have all suggested that expressing emissions reductions according to multiple baselines might be useful.

The logic is that although the Kyoto Protocol is tied to 1990, many countries – including the United States - are now pegging their climate proposals to more recent years. That has the advantage of providing a picture of what each country plans to do moving forward. The US and European proposals, for instance, actually look similar using a 2005 baseline (for more on that, see our earlier coverage here). On the other hand, many – including Europeans – have long argued that using new baselines would dilute the protocol and potentially let countries like off the hook (in addition to the United States, think Canada, which has acknowledged it cannot meet its Kyoto targets).

Today, like so many other days, the parties were unable to resolve the matter. Japan’s proposal to illustrate the commitments in tabular form drew initial objections, particularly from China, which said any effort to shift away from the legally binding 1990 baseline would be "totally not acceptable." But those backing the proposal's supporters said there should be a way to ensure that the 1990 baseline remains while noting additional baselines. The idea of using “footnotes” came up.

Discussions about the relative merits of footnotes versus charts seem a bit silly, to be sure, but the issue has been a sticking point for a long time. Some kind of resolution will be necessary in whatever emerges from Copenhagen.

The discussion eventually hit the big issue of emissions targets. The Alliance of Small Island States, which fears the dual impacts of acidification and rising sea levels, led the way by adding up all of the developed country targets (including legislation being debated in the United States) for a grand total of 12-19 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. That compares to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's analysis indicating that a 25-40 percent reduction might be necessary by 2020. And AOSIS is actually pushing for 45 percent cut, to increase the likelihood of keeping temperature increase below 1.5 degrees instead of the generally accepted 2-degree target.

As expected, no headway was made on this issue either, but it does lead into my next posting.

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 05, 2009
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Anjali Nayar, an International Development Research Centre fellow at Nature, recently visited a pioneering project in Madagascar that's aiming to protect one of the country's few remaining forests. About 90% of the species in Madagascar's rainforests are found nowhere else on Earth, but efforts to save the island nation's forests are about more than conserving biodiversity.

It's hoped that projects like this will provide a model for efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation. Under a proposal, known as reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD), wealthy nations could meet their emissions targets in part by buying carbon credits from developing countries such as Madagascar. REDD is one of the topics up for discussion at the UN climate-change conference in Copenhagen this December. Countries will negotiate whether REDD should be included in the global climate deal that takes over from the Kyoto Protocol.

But as Anjali reports, to be successful these projects must overcome the poverty and political upheaval common to most developing countries. Read Anjali's full report here. Or see a slideshow video version, here.

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 05, 2009
Categories: Anjali Nayar, Biodiversity and Ecology, Carbon markets, Climate Policy, Deforestation, Features, GHG emissions, Notes from the Field | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Jeff Tollefson; cross-posted from In the Field

I arrived at the conference this morning only to encounter global leaders with unusually large heads pulling funny money out of one box labelled "aid" and putting it into another labelled "climate change." It was a short stunt by Oxfam - and just one of many put on by various activist groups each day - intended to raise awareness of the danger that rich countries will simply reduce development aid as they increase funding for adaptation and mitigation. Developing countries have made this a central part of their platform going into Copenhagen - any climate financing must be in addition to existing development aid.

Things are rolling along at the conference. Two days left, and nobody is panicking yet. I haven't heard of any all-night meetings, although short days at these conferences tend to start with business meetings at breakfast and run straight through late dinner meetings, which basically translates into 12-14 hour days. It's easy to say that they aren't getting enough done, but one certainly cannot claim that they aren't spending a lot of time on the effort.

So I just bumped into Ned Helme, who heads the Center for Clean Air Policy in Washington, and he seemed newly optimistic about the way things are going. He says things appear to be headed toward a political agreement in Copenhagen, which would then be followed up with a binding legal agreement next year. And although he was initially sceptical, the idea has grown on him after talking to the negotiating teams in here in Barcelona. A broad agreement on the core principles from on high would free up the technical negotiators to work out the details that are currently bogging things down, Helme says, namely the ongoing architectural dispute over what to do with the Kyoto Protocol (see the first post below).

One of the other ideas floating around is to just pause the negotiations without producing an agreement and then hold another meeting in the first half of next year, but many here say there will be too much pressure on politicians for them to leave Copenhagen without producing anything. A political statement that spells out the basic commitments on financing, REDD and perhaps even emissions targets - likely requiring a range to allow some flexibility for the United States, which is unlikely to have worked out its domestic policy - would allow everybody to claim success while leaving the details for later. That's one theory, anyway.

Now it's time for lunch. It's a good time to try and catch delegations between meetings. More later, including an update on Brazil and developing country commitments promised yesterday.

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 05, 2009
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Jeff Tollefson; cross-posted from In the Field

And now back to the case of the missing 10-word phrase, which says that any payments for reduced deforestation should include "safeguards against the conversion of natural forests to forest plantations." Just for amusement, here's the gist in UN climate speak: It was in "Non-paper No. 11" but was left out of "Non-paper No.18" when negotiators gathered for a final session before departing Bangkok last month.

"Non-papers" are basically papers with new negotiating text, compiled by facilitators, that are periodically released in order to assess progress and move things forward. Apparently the logic when the practice began was that nobody wanted to give too much weight to unapproved language. At any rate, when this particular section was winnowed down, the phrase was lost.

For the Ecosystems Climate Alliance, a coalition of interest groups that is tracking the REDD debate, this safeguard is critical to ensure that payments for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) do what they are intended to do, which is protect forests. Because plantations can also meet the legal definition of a forest (a separate issue that many are pushing to change), they say countries could get paid to clear native forests and replace them with plantations, which actually increases emissions.

I discussed the issue with a REDD expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists, Doug Boucher, after the Bangkok meeting, and his assessment was that the massive spike in emissions from clearing forests would be enough to prevent such activities. And indeed, it's hard to believe such a practice would be allowed, or that companies or countries would want to invest in it even if it were.

But it also depends on what, exactly, is being measured: overall emissions or forest cover. Non-paper 18 has three options for tracking deforestation, including one that is based on forest cover alone. If that language moved forward, based on the current definition of "forest," the loophole would remain, says Peg Putt, who works on forest and climate issues for The Wilderness Society, itself a member of the alliance.

In the end, the Europeans took the blame for removing the forest-conversion safeguard but claimed it was an accident. The European Commission's chief negotiator, Artur Runge-Metzger, says they have since proposed something to plug the gap, and environmentalists expect to see the new language when the next non-paper is released tomorrow morning.

"There is agreement from all but one party," Putt told me. "I've heard it may be the United States, but that might be pure speculation."

Such speculation is unfortunately common here, due to the fact that the formal talks generally take place behind closed doors. Perhaps we'll find out more tomorrow morning.

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 04, 2009
Categories: Climate Policy, Jeff Tollefson, UN climate talks, Barcelona, November 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Jeff Tollefson; cross-posted from In the Field

This afternoon has been all about deforestation. Environmentalists are busy tracking the debate about an 10-word phrase - mysteriously deleted at the last talks in Bangkok - that is designed to prevent natural forests from being converted into plantations. But I'll deal with that issue in my next post and move on to a Nature Geoscience commentary that has caused quite a buzz here in Barcelona by downgrading the relative contribution of carbon emissions from deforestation.

The commentary by Guido van der Werf and colleagues (reported by the Guardian here) suggests that emissions from deforestation and degradation are closer to 12 percent of global carbon emissions, rather than the oft-stated 20 percent.

It's an important finding, although not entirely surprising. Folks at the World Resources Institute in Washington have been looking into the issue as well, and their numbers seem to point in the same direction. Indeed, their assessment of 2005 greenhouse gas emissions, illustrated in a flowchart here, shows deforestation making up just 11.3 percent of the global greenhouse gas emissions; separate out carbon dioxide, and the contribution of deforestation comes out below 15 percent.

I recently chatted about the issue with WRI's Tim Herzog, who works on greenhouse gas inventories, and he said the problem is that the numbers are still a bit squishy. WRI's initial analysis converged on 15 percent, with the high end of the range coming in around 20. The report in Nature Geoscience also shows a sizeable uncertainty, ranging from 6-17 percent. It will be interesting to see how these numbers hold up.

Questions quickly arose about whether these new numbers would undermine efforts to include forest carbon in a future climate treaty, but it's not at all clear why or how better information would stall the debate. Forests are being chopped down, releasing carbon into the atmosphere, and stopping this practice remains a relatively cheap and possibly fast way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The only question is how much of the problem we would be solving were we to accomplish that goal.

The van der werf commentary also assesses emissions from peatland fires and degradation in southeast Asia. Including peatland emissions brings the total to 15 percent of global emissions, according to their analysis. As it happens, the conservation group Wetlands International released a new report in Barcelona looking at global peatland emissions. They said their analysis on Southeast Asia is similar to that in the Nature Geoscience, but adding in the rest of the world doubles the impact. Surprisingly, the results suggest that the European Union has the second-highest peatlands emissions, behind only Indonesia.

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 04, 2009
Categories: Climate Policy, Jeff Tollefson, UN climate talks, Barcelona, November 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Jeff Tollefson; cross-posted from In the Field

Following up on yesterday's agreement, the leader of the African Group said during an afternoon press conference he is "guardedly optimistic" about the talks going forward.

But Sudan's Lumumba Di-Aping refused to give any ground on developing countries' demands that rich countries curb emissions by 40 percent by 2020. Current proposals aren't even close to that number, and most political leaders in the United States and Europe consider that goal unattainable. Asked about a compromise and assessments that achieving a 40 percent reduction could be a "heavy lift," Lumumba cited the massive financial investments that followed the economic crisis in suggesting that developed countries are simply lacking the will to act aggressively in response to the climate crisis.

"It cannot be heavy lifting, unless you say that some people are more equal than others," Lumumba said. "We cannot accept total destruction as a choice for developing countries in order to simply appease some political leaders in the West."

Speaking at a press conference an hour later, European officials fell back on the EU position of unilaterally cutting emissions by 20 percent by 2020 and 30 percent if there is a global agreement. Sweden's chief negotiator, Anders Turesson, said those commitments are in line with the science and urged developing countries to put pressure on other rich countries that have not yet announced positions (read: United States) and others whose current offers are "insufficient."

The talks are now "on track, moving forward," said Artur Runge-Metzger, chief negotiator for the European Union. "But of course we'll have to see during the coming days what kind of resonance we get from the African Group" and other developing countries.

More to come soon on the state of REDD talks ( reducing deforestation and forest degradation) and Brazil's climate change discussions.

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 04, 2009
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Jeff Tollefson; cross-posted from In the Field

I arrived at the United Nations climate conference today - late, on the second day, after a red-eye flight over the Atlantic and an all-too-brief nap at the hotel – and encountered drama much sooner than expected. I registered, oriented myself at the conference centre, gathered the requisite daily briefing documents and then found a bathroom to deploy a newly purchased toothbrush. It was there, after bumping into a colleague, that I learned the African Group had announced at the opening session on Monday that it would boycott the Kyoto Protocol talks until developed countries get serious about their climate commitments.

The Associated Press covered the story, and our coverage of the last climate meeting in Bangkok has additional background. But the important thing to understand here is that the talks are split into two main tracks. One is designed to extend the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, and the other is under the original 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change. The main difference is that the United States is party to the latter but not the former. Developing countries have taken the stance that the Kyoto Protocol should retain its central role going forward – particularly as there is as yet no alternative - but Europe is seeking a new agreement under the convention.

After brushing my teeth, I met with a representative of the conservation group WWF, Keya Chatterjee, who proceeded to fill me in. What followed the African protest was a full day of informal talks intended to restart negotiations (Chatterjee called them “trust-building sessions”). We then proceeded to a plenary session where a new agreement was announced. Henceforth, negotiators under the Kyoto track would dedicate at least 60 percent of their time talking about emissions targets for industrialized nations; the rest of the time would be used to talk about offsets and land-use and forestry issues that affect the emissions calculations.

So. Here we are at the end of day two, with three days of formal negotiations before the big climate summit in Copenhagen this December, and we have an agreement on how to structure negotiations on one of two tracks. Not exactly promising, but it’s clear that the African countries – largely supported by the G77 representing most developing countries – have made their point. Now we’re back to core issues, such as who does what, how to ensure that it gets done, where the money comes from and how to bundle everything into a single package.

The thought of ironing out all of this by December is daunting, and conventional wisdom posits that it’s now virtually impossible. As a result many are starting to think about minimum requirements for success in Copenhagen, which is perhaps as it should be. But for perspective, it took WWF about a week to piece together a sample treaty (based on language already on the negotiating table) that would resolve the architecture issue by allowing the Kyoto Protocol to continue while including the United States and additional commitments by developing nations in a separate agreement.

The copy Chatterjee gave me is 37 pages; just fill in the numbers. Point being that there is plenty of room for compromise, Chatterjee says. From this perspective, what is missing is trust and political will, but she says one shouldn’t forget about a third factor: shame. Indeed, the idea of shame leads her to a remarkably optimistic conclusion: countries will manage to fill in the numbers in Copenhagen, simply because nobody wants to be responsible for blocking a deal. “There’s not a single country in the world that wants to take the blame for failure in Copenhagen,” she says.

There’s been no shortage of challenges to this view, but it’s worth noting that not everybody has given up on Copenhagen here in Barcelona.

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 04, 2009
Categories: Climate Policy, Conferences and Meetings, Jeff Tollefson, UN climate talks, Barcelona, November 2009 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Stephanie Baudains

Al Gore was yesterday questioned on climate change policy by Katie Couric, anchor and managing editor of CBS Evening News, in an interview that coincided with the release of his latest book Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis' . In a polished delivery the erstwhile American Vice-President said that humanity is in possession of enough tools “to solve three or four climate crises” - if we could only pull together to use them.

Though he praised climate-focussed leaders like President Obama, Gore said that success in solving the climate problem will only be possible when the green movement is truly adopted by the people. The situation calls for a ‘grassroots’ movement, he argued, as for American Civil Rights, with action coming from the bottom up.

The clip below shows Gore responding to critics who anticipate escalating costs from domestic climate policy:

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Later in the interview he compared climate skeptics to those who still believe that the moon landing was a hoax, commenting that the reasoning behind climate change is ‘as settled as [science] ever gets’. A key part of his message focussed on the Copenhagen climate conference in December, which he believes has a good chance of producing a globally ratified treaty. He says that an alternative outcome would be dire, as ‘we don’t have a lot of time’.

Stephanie Baudains is an intern at Nature Geoscience

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 03, 2009
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Keith Kloor

Prospects for the U.S. congressional climate bill appear grim, writes Juliet Eilperin in the Washington Post:

“With Democrats deeply divided on the issue, unless some Republican lawmakers risk the backlash for signing on to the legislation, there is almost no hope for passage.”

David Roberts at Grist offers a similar prognosis for a bill he says that is already “far weaker than what’s needed.” Because of America’s institutional “political dysfunction,” Roberts predicts:

“There’s every chance it will a) get weaker still and b) fail to pass in the end.”

Amidst this backdrop, cap-and-trade, which is the basis for the congressional climate legislation, is getting raked over the coals again. Two attorneys for the U.S Environmental Protection Agency penned an op-ed for the Washington Post, in which they asserted:

“The House and Senate climate bills are not a first step in the right direction. They would give away valuable rights in cap-and-trade permits and create a trillion-dollar carbon-offsets market that will not lead to needed reductions. Together, the illusion of greenhouse-gas reductions and the creation of powerful lobbies seeking to protect newly created profits in permits and offsets would lock in climate degradation for a decade or more.”

Columbia University’s Jeffrey Sachs in the November/December issue of Scientific American takes a similarly dim view of “the cumbersome cap-and-trade system proposed by the House of Representatives. Too much is at stake, argues Sachs:

“We’ll need to spend trillions of dollars over time to save the planet from climate change. All the more reason not to let lobbyists make a financial game out of this deadly serious effort.”

Did American politicians thus bet on the wrong horse, muses Keith Johnson at the WSJ’s Environmental Capitol? He suggests it might be wise to set aside the conventional wisdom about carbon taxes being “a political dead-end.” Johnson lays out how environmentalists can find common ground with deficit hawks on a climate bill centered on a carbon tax.

Whatever policy instrument eventually gets put in place to reduce carbon emissions, it may still be too late to save the snows of Mount Kilimanjaro, according to a new study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. As The Times of London reports:

“The snows of Mount Kilimanjaro will be gone within two decades, according to scientists who say that the rapid melting of its glacier cap over the past century provides dramatic physical evidence of global climate change.”

Continue reading "Countdown to Copenhagen " »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 03, 2009
Categories: In the News, Keith Kloor, Politics, UN Conference on Climate Change, Copenhagen | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Nature reporter Jeff Tollefson will be at the United Nations climate summit from 2-6 November 2009 in Barcelona, Spain. It is the last negotiating period before the seminal climate summit in Copenhagen in December. He'll be blogging at Nature's In the Field blog and here on Climate Feedback. For more on the UN negotations, see www.nature.com/roadtocopenhagen.

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 03, 2009
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Olive Heffernan

532,151,027,622: that’s the amount of carbon in tonnes that we’ve released into the atmosphere over the past 250 years from burning coal, making cement and chopping down forests, according to the calculations of Oxford University researchers.

You can watch this number climb rapidly on the newly launched website, trillionthtonne.org. Hosted by the Oxford e-Research Centre, it shows in real time just how close we are to reaching one trillion tonnes of cumulative carbon dioxide emissions, the maximum level allowable if we are to limit warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius.

The concept of restricting cumulative emissions to one trillion tonnes comes from work by Oxford climatologist Myles Allen and collaborators, who, in April this year, published two seminal papers in Nature [subscription]. They also wrote a commentary in Nature Reports Climate Change [free access] at the time, explaining the policy implications of their work: essentially, their point is that we need an overall carbon budget, as well as short term emissions targets. That’s because CO2 hangs around in the atmosphere for millennia, which means that peak warming is determined by cumulative emissions, rather than by the rate at which CO2 is emitted over the short-term.

Though a trillion tonnes may sound like rather a lot, the fact that we’re more than half way there is alarming. Unless we start to reduce emissions rapidly, we’ll have released the trillionth tonne by 2045, shows the counter on the website. And we could go way beyond a trillion tonnes by the second half of this century, unless we mitigate, because there are several trillion tonnes of carbon available in fossil fuel reserves.

To make matters worse, the researchers estimate that to have less than a one-in-four chance of global warming exceeding 2°C, we may well need to keep our cumulative emissions to 750,000,000. The challenge is large: emissions will need to start to fall between 2 and 4.5 percent per year immediately and indefinitely if we are to avoid dangerous warming, according to these estimates.

The website was launched on October 22 to coincide with the unveiling at London’s Science Museum of a one tonne heap of anthracite coal, representing the trillionth tonne of carbon to be released into the atmosphere.

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 02, 2009
Categories: Climate Science, Communicating Climate Change, GHG emissions, Olive Heffernan | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Cross-posted from Daniel Cressey on The Great Beyond

Climate negotiators are in Barcelona, Spain, this week for the last bout of negotiating prior to the two-week Copenhagen meeting. In December this year, parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will descend on Copenhagen to wrangle over the details of a new global climate deal — a potential successor to the Kyoto Protocol. See Nature’s Road to Copenhagen special for more coverage.

“The clock has almost ticked down to zero and, as always, time will fly. These last five days are critical on the road to success to Copenhagen. They need to be used wisely.”

Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, tells the meeting to make progress (AFP).

“A good deal for the climate is still possible. All that is missing is political will, not least from the US, which under President Obama has fallen far behind the rest of the world, and is threatening to undermine a planet-saving agreement in Copenhagen.”

Damon Moglen, of Greenpeace US, comments after his organisation stormed the town’s Sagrada Familia to unveil banners (AFP).

“I feel it [is] very hard to imagine how the US president can receive the Nobel peace prize on December 10 in Oslo only a few hundred kilometres [from Copenhagen] if he has sent an American delegation to Copenhagen with no offer.”

Connie Hedegaard, Denmark’s environment minister, takes aim at America (Guardian).

“Climate change is a ticking time bomb. Global leaders need to act now to stop the needless deaths of millions of children.”

David Mepham, Save the Children’s policy director, says climate change could kill 250,000 children in 2010 and over 400,000 by 2030 (Daily Telegraph).

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 02, 2009
Categories: Daniel Cressey, In the News, UN Conference on Climate Change, Copenhagen | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)