Climate Feedback

According to the Times and the Guardian, a new study led by economist Deiter Helm of Oxford finds that the UK's greenhouse gas emissions have actually risen 19% above 1990 levels, not fallen 15% as officially reported to the UN. The discrepancy comes from the official figures' neglect of emissions from aviation, shipping, overseas trade and tourism, and undermines Britain's image as a world leader in greening its economy.

The study itself (PDF), though, doesn't so much expose hypocrisy as highlight a tough methodological question: should we measure greenhouse gas produced within each country, or should we look at fossil fuel consumption? The UNFCCC required the UK to report only greenhouse gasses emitted within its borders, which have decreased in part because domestic manufacturing in the UK has given way to more imports. The finding of a 19% emissions rise comes from flipping that viewpoint to count emissions associated with goods consumed in the UK, no matter where they are manufactured, as well as the impacts of international aviation and shipping and of UK citizens travelling abroad. Call it international roaming of the country's carbon footprint.

The fact that emissions from international aviation and shipping aren't being counted in anybody's carbon budget at the moment is clearly a problem, and one that may not go away anytime soon -- the aviation industry has vowed to fight against joining the EU carbon-trading scheme.

And if British consumers are effectively outsourcing their greenhouse gas production by buying iPods made in China, where 'production' emissions have been rising, it does the planet no good. Unfortunately, the study takes the tactic of thinking globally but blaming locally. To really understand what consumption-based emissions numbers imply about how to grow a low-carbon economy, don't we need to see the equivalent figures from China - and everywhere else?

Photo: Getty

Anna Barnett

Posted by Anna Barnett on December 12, 2007
Categories: Anna Barnett, GHG emissions | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

This year marks not only the release of a clarion IPCC report and the convening of an enormous UN climate conference, but also the 50th anniversary of the Keeling curve -- the longest continuous recording of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, revealing a gradually rising carbon dioxide profile that helped trigger early concern about global warming. As part of this week's Earth Observation special (subscription required), Nature has a commentary by Euan Nisbet, atmospheric scientist at Royal Holloway, on the Keeling curve -- which "ranks very high indeed among the achievements of twentieth-century science", he says -- and similar studies in the field of Earth monitoring. Nisbet writes:

Monitoring is science's Cinderella, unloved and poorly paid. Sustaining a long-term, ground-based programme that demands high analytical standards remains challenging. Funding agencies are seduced either by 'pure' notions of basic science as hypothesis-testing, or by the satanic mills of commercial reward. Neither motive fosters 'dull' monitoring because meeting severe analytical demands is not seen as a worthwhile investment. At one stage, Keeling was ordered to guarantee two discoveries per year and today, modern research has become a planned journey through set 'milestones' to deliverable destinations.

What do you think -- how important is this 'Cinderella science' to ongoing climate research and policy, and how could we secure reliable long-term support?

Image credit: Global Warming Art

Anna Barnett

Posted by Anna Barnett on December 05, 2007
Categories: Anna Barnett, Climate Science, GHG emissions, Opinion | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by Olive Heffernan

While I usually find the FT an excellent source of comment and discussion on climate change, I was somewhat bemused by last week’s Comment from the President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus, who writes that “global warming hysteria has become a prime example of the truth versus propaganda problem” and urges society to “resist the politicisation of science and oppose the term 'scientific consensus', which is always achieved only by a loud minority, never by a silent majority”.

Though clearly no climate expert, Klaus feels sufficiently component to write on the topic of global warming “as someone who lived under communism for most of his life”. He says “I feel obliged to say that I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity now in ambitious environmentalism, not in communism”.

From a man who regards Michael Crichton and Richard Lindzen as voices of reason come denunciations of "Al Gore’s so-called documentary film", "Britain’s – more or less Tony Blair’s – Stern report" and the IPCC’s and G8 Summit’s "ambitions to do something about the weather". (For a direct response to both Crichton’s and Lindzen’s climate denialist arguments, listen to the recent debate with climate scientists Gavin Schmidt and Richard Somerville, among others).

Klaus fails to even attempt to challenge any specifics of the scientific literature on climate change, but instead writes climate science off as ‘propoganda’, making his Comment absurd.

“One exceptionally warm winter is enough…for the environmentalists and their followers to suggest radical measures to do something about the weather”, he writes. Actually, the latest IPCC report on the physical science basis of climate change, which represents the work of thousands of researchers, compiled by hundreds of climate experts, found that “eleven of the last twelve years rank among the 12 warmest years in the instrumental record of global surface temperature”.

He then goes on to claim it is "proven fact that the higher the wealth of society, the higher is the quality of the environment". But with higher per-capita income, the demand for ecosystem services grows. This places more pressure on the environment, often with detrimental effects. For more on this, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment provides a comprehensive discussion of the relationship between wealth and the environment.

As Felix Salmon points out on the Market Movers blog, much of Klaus’ Comment is rather woolly in meaning, with statements such as ‘small climate changes do not demand far-reaching restrictive measures’ being so general as to be meaningless.

The FT invites readers to challenge Klaus by posting questions to ask@ft.com before this Thursday, June 21, when answers to a select few will appear online from 1pm BST – although the Q&A session is situated in the somewhat misleading category ‘ask the expert’! Personally, I find it disappointing that they are only allowing questions rather than comments, and select ones at that.

Posted by Olive Heffernan on June 19, 2007
Categories: Climate Science, GHG emissions, In the News, Olive Heffernan | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (1)

Posted by Olive Heffernan on behalf of Maxwell T. Boykoff

The climate talks at the G8 summit (see Olive Heffernan’s post on the G8 climate talks) have spurred a recent increase in media attention. At the center of this coverage is discussion of cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. Over the past week, proposals ranged from binding emissions cuts across all G8+5 countries by mid-century to ‘aspirational goals’ of cuts, decided on a country-by-country basis through talks over the next two years.

As these rival ‘visions’ of international policy action to combat anthropogenic climate change have been negotiated, the June 7 ‘agreement’ within the G8 put forward a simple plan: 50% emissions cuts by 2050. While this pronouncement has the makings of progress, one of the key yet unresolved facets of the agreements is that of time-scale. While Japan and the EU have pushed for 1990 as the baseline for the metric of 50% emissions, the US has proposed 2007 as the baseline. This tweaking of time scales has a real impact on the actual volume of greenhouse gas emissions that will be removed from the atmosphere, and/or prevented from being emitted.

Continue reading "Climate change and media, science and policy: is time on our side?" »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on June 11, 2007
Categories: Climate Science, Communicating Climate Change, GHG emissions, Maxwell Boykoff | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Olive Heffernan

The latest news from the G8 Summit meetings in Heiligendamm, Germany is that leaders of G8 nations have agreed to a ‘compromise deal’ to tackle climate change. According to the BBC, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said that

'nations have agreed that CO2 emissions must first be stopped and then followed by substantial reductions.’

Although Merkel pushed for a mandatory 50% slash in carbon emissions by mid century, no specific emissions reductions targets have been agreed. Leaders have purportedly said they will negotiate the successor to the Kyoto Protocol within a UN framework. If true, this in itself would be an achievement, as the US recently announced its refusal to participate in global post-2012 negotiations scheduled for the end of the year. Without a consensus on mandatory global emissions reductions, however, today’s compromise deal may be worth little. The need for effective emissions caps is simply the first of numerous contentious issues to be hammered out in determining a global post-Kyoto pact, as reported by Amanda Leigh Haag on Nature Reports: Climate Change, launched today.

Launching in the midst of the G8 climate talks, the site has kicked off with a strong focus on climate policy, emissions reductions, carbon storage and offsetting, as well as covering climate science in research highlights, news and views and in the Journal Club. In our main feature, Amanda takes an in-depth looks at how the Kyoto Protocol has fared thus far – its major triumphs and downfalls. Perhaps the most prominent disappointments have been the failure of some nations to meet what seemed to be modest emissions reduction targets at the outset, and the backtracking of the US on their commitments in 2001. As well as bringing the US back on board, key issues beyond 2012 will include persuading countries such China, India and Brazil to take bold steps to reduce emissions in the next phase, assisting developing nations to adapt to climate change, and avoiding further deforestation, to name but a few.

While some believe that a global extension of the European Trading Scheme is what is needed for mandatory and aggressive reduction of emissions, others are not convinced. In a Commentary, also published today on Nature Reports: Climate Change, Jeffrey D. Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, argues against ‘an unwieldy global emissions permit system that would be virtually impossible to negotiate and even harder to police’. Yet, despite the considerable global efforts needed to reduce emissions, avoiding dangerous climate change is both practically and economically achievable, says Sachs, if we use a targeted approach aimed at specific sectors.

Continue reading "Shaping the Kyoto successor" »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on June 07, 2007
Categories: Recent contributors, Climate Policy, Climate Science, Conferences and Meetings, GHG emissions, In the News, Olive Heffernan | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by Olive Heffernan on behalf of Paty Romero Lankao

It does make sense to compare the per capita CO2 emissions of Mexico City and Los Angeles (see figure below) to illuminate the debate on shared but differentiated responsibilities on greenhouse gases emissions and show that just as urban centers register different levels and paths of economic development, cities do not contribute at the same level to global warming. For instance, the real GDP per capita of Los Angeles (US$40,031) is almost 3 times that of Mexico City (US$13,470). The paradox here is that many of those urban centers with almost negligible contributions to the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are more vulnerable to the negative impacts of climate change are. One reason of this relates to the local level of expenditures per capita in Mexico City, which are similarly tiny when compared with those of Los Angeles. In such conditions, the binding constraint for this and other cities of the developing world is the lack of economic resources from peoples’ taxes and of economic growth to deal with any component of the climate agenda.

Continue reading "Does it make sense to compare cities’ per capita emissions?" »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on May 12, 2007
Categories: Climate Science, GHG emissions, Paty Romero Lankao | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)