Climate Feedback

Money talks, and so do bloggers. Unable to resist the correlation, a number of climate scientists and analysts have adapted their online podiums into betting tables. The RealClimate team are the latest to roll up to the climate casino, staking €5,000 against the predictions of a recent Nature paper (subscription required) that in the next decade, falling temperatures in some regions will cause a slight slowdown in global warming.

The paper's authors, Keenlyside et al., have yet to accept or reject the bet, and it's not available to any other cooling proponent who may be feeling lucky. But if your opinion on global warming is burning a hole in your pocket, you have some options. Brian Schmidt's Backseat Driving, for example, lists several standing offers to all takers.

Those like Schmidt who back the scientific consensus that the Earth is warming, however, have had a hard time convincing anyone to gamble large sums on cooling. A few bookmaker's highlights:

Continue reading "RealClimate roll up to the climate casino" »

Posted by Anna Barnett on May 09, 2008
Categories: Anna Barnett, Climate prediction | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

A paper in Nature Geoscience this week (subscription required) serves up an important figure for climate modellers: the size of the greenhouse effect caused by ozone near the Earth's surface, estimated from direct observations.

Whereas 20 years ago the discovery that the stratospheric ozone layer was thinning led to international prohibitions on ozone-eating chemicals, this new study reflects concerns about excess ozone produced nearer to the ground, in the troposphere, by reacting pollutants. Tropospheric ozone is a greenhouse gas - and although carbon dioxide still gets the most column inches, other greenhouse gases such as ozone (see also methane) are drawing more and more scientific attention.

Previously, the best estimates of the radiative forcing from ozone - its planet-warming power - came from simulations. The latest IPCC report used several such models to assess forcing from anthropogenic ozone alone, excluding ozone from natural sources, and came up with a range of values from 0.25 to 0.65 watts per square metre (in comparison, forcing by all anthropogenic greenhouse gases together was estimated at 1.6 watts per square metre). Now, NASA's Aura satellite has collected enough measurements of infrared radiation and ozone thickness in cloudless patches of sky to pin down the combined effects of natural and human-produced ozone. According to these data, the global average forcing in the year 2006 was 0.48 (+/- 0.14) watts per square metre. No surprises, but a palpable step forward in the hardworking and sometimes underappreciated field of Earth observation.

Anna Barnett

Image: Artist's rendering of Aura satellite, NASA

Posted by Anna Barnett on April 24, 2008
Categories: Anna Barnett, Atmospheric Science, Climate Science | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Sick of fractious climate blogging? MIT researcher Mark Klein and his colleagues are envisioning a souped-up new forum on global warming - described as "simultaneously a kind of Wikipedia for controversial topics, a Sims game for the future of the planet, and an electronic democracy on steroids" - that they say could reshape public discourse.

It's called the Climate Collaboratorium. Here's what it might look like, in part:
(click for larger version, or download the original PDF)

What you see is the heart of the idea, a discussion structure known as an 'argument tree'. Mason Inman*, writing about the project for Nature Network recently, summarized it well:

The structure requires people to present their comments in one of four categories: issues to be addressed, options for resolving those issues, the pros in favor of various options, and the cons against them. In this way, the debate could become self-organized, making it easier for people to see what’s been said, and whether points have been supported or rebutted.

Succinct, logical debate threads instead of arguments spread over dozens of sites... ideas neatly aggregated rather than forgotten with the next news cycle... pardon my nerd-drool.

But will it work? Last December, Klein and two researchers at the University of Naples tried out a prototype on 220 Italian engineering students, asking them to create an argument tree on the question "What is the future of biofuels?" The students seemed to love the forum - their steady 24/7 stream of posts totaled over 5,000 after two weeks - but they weren't particularly good at keeping the discussion on track. The argument trees needed continuous pruning and rearranging by a dedicated group of moderators, who would have to make up 5-10% of the user population in a larger-scale Collaboratorium, the researchers estimated.

Klein is now starting more tests with Swiss and Italian students that will evaluate whether the Collaboratorium produces superior content and better-informed participants compared with ordinary wikis and forums. How to arrange for quality control in the project's next phase, however, is still something of an open question. Climate modeller and RealClimate blogger Gavin Schmidt (who's recently defended climate blogging in Nature Geoscience (subscription) and on RealClimate) told Inman* that generating respect for an open forum on climate "is by far the most challenging aspect of this proposal". Doubtless, many top climate scientists - who may at times volunteer half their workload toward the IPCC reports already - wouldn't get around to participating in the fledgling project. Fortunately, they do have grad students.

The fully realized Collaboratorium, as outlined in this paper by Klein and collaborator Thomas Malone, would be even more ambitious. Their vision relies heavily, for example, on users building their own climate models that are integrally linked to the speculation and debate going on in the argument tree. Above all, though, Malone and Klein stress the need for a more powerful tool to help us get our collective heads around climate change:

Today's on-line discussion forums, blogs, and chat rooms do a good job of encouraging lots of people to express their opinions and share them widely. But these systems are not very good at supporting evidence-based, logical deliberation: the quality of contributions can vary enormously.

Andrew Leonard at Salon has aptly compared this to "saying nuclear bombs do a good job when employed for purposes of mass destruction, but are not so great for handcrafting quality woodwork."

What do you think, climate debaters? Could a more sophisticated approach force out a high-quality product?

Anna Barnett

[UPDATE: Klein also pointed me to this 10-minute video summarizing the Collaboratorium structure and its differences from traditional forums]

Continue reading "Can we solve global warming by reshaping Web 2.0?" »

Posted by Anna Barnett on April 16, 2008
Categories: Anna Barnett, Communicating Climate Change | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

James Hansen and Michael McCracken - two extremely prominent and vocal climate scientists - have rallied behind a US high-school senior who questioned statements in his civics textbook that play up scientific uncertainty on global warming. Now the book's publisher, Houghton Mifflin, is promising to reassess its accuracy (AP, Dot Earth, Grist, Treehugger). From the AP:

Legal scholars and top scientists say the teen's criticism is well-founded. They say "American Government" by conservatives James Wilson and John Dilulio presents a skewed view of topics from global warming to separation of church and state. The publisher now says it will review the book, as will the College Board, which oversees college-level Advanced Placement courses used in high schools.

The student, Matthew LaClair, was already an experienced secondary-ed whistleblower, having taped and exposed religious comments his history teacher made in class last year. He contacted the Center for Inquiry, a pro-science think tank, to point out passages like:

"Science doesn't know whether we are experiencing a dangerous level of global warming or how bad the greenhouse effect is, if it exists at all."

"The earth has become warmer, but is this mostly the result of natural climate changes, or is it heavily influenced by humans putting greenhouse gases into the air?"

Some wording that LaClair highlighted from the 2005 textbook used in his class was toned down in a more recent edition. For example, "Science doesn't know whether we are experiencing a dangerous level of global warming or how bad the greenhouse effect is, if it exists at all," was changed to simply "Science doesn't know how bad the greenhouse effect is." Andrew Revkin at Dot Earth parses this:

As we’ve written many times, the climate system’s response to rapidly rising greenhouse gas concentrations remains laden with uncertainty. A doubling of concentrations from the long-term ceiling of 280 parts per million for carbon dioxide before the industrial revolution would most likely raise global temperatures 3.6 to 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit, by the latest I.P.C.C. analysis. So in that legalistic sense, it’s true that science hasn’t defined “how bad” climate change will be.

And that's about the best you can say of these passages, as Revkin, Hansen, McCracken and the Center for Inquiry all make clear in their point-by-point critiques. A response from Houghton Mifflin posted by Revkin falls well short of addressing the problem: the book's authors are describing a climate debate that sounds almost nothing like the IPCC's painstakingly agreed reports. Instead, as Hansen wrote, "these statements are aimed at giving students the mistaken impression that the scientific evidence of global warming is doubtful and uncertain" - a strategy that's familiar to Hansen.

Anna Barnett

Photo: dcJohn

Posted by Anna Barnett on April 11, 2008
Categories: Anna Barnett, Communicating Climate Change, In the News | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

In Bangkok last week, the first UN climate meeting since Bali wrapped up after struggling til after midnight Friday - not to hammer out emissions targets or controversial new approaches to climate change mitigation, but just to agree on how long to wait before restarting discussions of such matters.

Planned from the start as a meeting to decide what would be decided at future meetings, it was never expected to yield any big breakthroughs. But the hard slog required even to set the work schedule for the next two years worried NGO observers.

“The talks managed to keep the momentum going … but it’s hard to leave Bangkok confident that the deadline can be met,” said Elliot Diringer, director of international strategies at the Pew Center on Climate Change. Marcelo Furtado of Greenpeace Brazil agreed, "If we took all these hours to agree on a workplan, one can only imagine what will happen when the real negotiations take place."

Why so slow? For one thing, the G77 group of developing nations finally dug in their heels against Japan's week-long steady pressure to plan greenhouse gas limits for particular global industrial sectors, in addition to Kyoto-style national targets. Sectoral approaches - heralded recently in Nature Reports Climate Change via this commentary by Glen Peters and Edgar Hertwich and this book review by Gwyn Prins - have the advantage of directly pushing the dirtiest industries to clean up, without leaving less carbon-stringent havens overseas for them to be pushed into. They also distribute mitigation responsibilities to the developing as well as the developed world, something which the US has previously insisted on but which developing countries have warned they cannot afford without more help from the rich North.

An attempt Thursday to summarize the first few days of talks noted emerging views that sectoral approaches could be used to support national targets, though they should not replace them. Made sense to me: sectoral limits could make deep emissions cuts less painful, while national emissions targets maintain a bottom line necessary for keeping the temperature down. But according to ENB, the summary raised a concerned buzz among delegates. That's generally how things were going, though: the day before, ENB had reported that "Some delegates realized that they didn't have a shared vision on a workshop on shared vision."

By Friday, Japan met surprisingly fierce opposition to holding a workshop on sectoral approaches at the next climate conference, to be held in Bonn, Germany, in June. G77 countries, including China, had been pointing to promises from Bali that rich countries would set new national targets and provide mitigation and adaptation funds enabling the South to share the burden of industrial emissions cuts. After wrangling at length, they compromised on a sectoral workshop in August.

The difficulties raise a post-Bali paradox. With the the US back at the table and all eyes on a new deal to dwarf Kyoto, stakes are high. The greater the political will for change, the more there is for each party to gain or lose in the shakeup. We'll see in Bonn whether the cautious rehashing of familiar arguments - typical of first negotiation rounds, as Diringer points out - gives way to actual steps forward.

Anna Barnett

Image: The closing session, just after midnight on Friday; photo courtesy of IISD/Earth Negotiations Bulletin.

Posted by Anna Barnett on April 07, 2008
Categories: Anna Barnett, Climate Policy, Conferences and Meetings, Mitigation | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today Australia sees the opening of the world's largest trial carbon storage plant (Sydney Morning Herald, BBC, Reuters), the construction of which was covered by Hannah Hoag in Nature Reports Climate Change last year. Since then, soaring costs have prompted the US to junk plans for its FutureGen clean coal power plant, and the down-under demo project is the most massive noncommercial carbon burial site to make it off the drawing board (this Nature News feature rounds up the other contenders as of 2006; subscription required).

For background on how natural rock formations are being used to trap carbon dioxide - and why environmentalists have called the plant a waste of time and money - check out Hannah's report.

Anna Barnett

Posted by Anna Barnett on April 02, 2008
Categories: Anna Barnett, In the News, Mitigation, Technology | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In a Science paper last year (subscription required), Rahmstorf et al. pointed to 2001-2006 measurements of global temperature at the top end of the IPCC's 2001 projections - and global sea level rise well beyond the range predicted in 2001 - as evidence that "the climate system, in particular sea level, may be responding more quickly to climate change than our current generation of models indicates." Today in a letter to Nature Geoscience (subscription required), Roger Pielke, Jr, questions whether models from that 2001 generation improve on the predictive power of their forbears.

Pielke checks predictions from all four IPCC reports, dating back to 1990, against reality. Each report made a series of 'if-then' statements about the likely results of various emissions scenarios; in hindsight, Pielke can pick out which of these possible greenhouse experiments has actually been running on Earth since 1990 and compare the results to the IPCC's shifting hypotheses.

Whereas the 2001 projections undershot the observed temperatures and sea levels, the 1990 projections overshot them, he concludes. Projections of temperature and sea level fell substantially between the 1990 and 1995 IPCC reports, when aerosols were added to models and carbon-cycle simulations were tweaked. But because they dropped too far, the adjusted post-1995 projections "are not obviously superior in capturing climate evolution", says Pielke.

That's not to say that 2001 models were no better than those a decade older. Including more information has made recent simulations more sophisticated - but so far it hasn't much improved their ability to sketch out future climates, probably because important factors are still missing. Predictions from the two most recent reports do, however, seem to have crept toward the actual climate evolution, and additional rounds of of refinements may help the models to home in further.

Anna Barnett

Posted by Anna Barnett on March 31, 2008
Categories: Anna Barnett, Climate Science, Climate prediction | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

The Guardian was far from alone in reporting this week that "A vast hunk of floating ice has broken away from the Antarctic peninsula, threatening the collapse of a much larger ice shelf behind it, in a development that has shocked climate scientists." On The Great Beyond, Quirin Schiermeier points out that the the most noteworthy thing about this delicately poised hunk of the Wilkins ice shelf may be its media visibility: the loss of a 400-square-kilometre piece of the same shelf earlier this year received no such fanfare.

Still, that visibility is pretty spectacular. Check out this mashup of the Twin Otter plane's flyover footage with the satellite images that tipped off British Antarctic Survey scientists:

"The ice shelf is hanging by a thread," said David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey. "We'll know in the next few days or weeks what its fate will be."

Anna Barnett

Posted by Anna Barnett on March 28, 2008
Categories: Anna Barnett, Climate Science, Cryosphere, In the News | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Canadians are set to slap the first price tag on their greenhouse gas emissions, thanks to some very different initiatives in the works.

Reuters reported Friday that the long-awaited Montreal Climate Exchange will open on May 30, buying and selling voluntary emissions reductions in the same fashion as the Chicago Climate Exchange, its US partner.

Meanwhile, the Canadian government had a few days earlier put out the details of its plan for mandatory emissions reductions, which had likewise been in the works for over a year (a good summary is here; registration required). They're proposing to cut absolute emissions 20% from 2006 levels by 2020 (for those scoring at home, 20% down from 2005 levels would be 0% below 1990 levels, compared to the standard-bearing EU's 20% cut from 1990 levels).

But absolute emissions isn't what they'll limit - they're talking about regulating emissions intensity, or the amount of emissions per unit of production, from 2010. That could make it tough to integrate into a global climate deal, since the EU caps absolute emissions and all three US presidential candidates want to do the same. Interestingly, the plan also mandates carbon capture and storage for oil sands, a carbon-intensive economic lynchpin of the country.

Besides the voluntary market, local measures could already be in play when and if these limits come down. British Columbia is leading the way with what is to be the first carbon tax implemented outside of Europe. Although the tax hasn't been looking very popular and faces the same too-much-is-never-enough criticism that the EU climate bill came in for, liberal leader Stephane Dion now says he'd like the national strategy to be a carbon tax - or something. Anything. "We can talk about what the best model for putting a price on carbon across Canada might be –– but the fact is we need to JUST DO IT. That is what this provincial government has done, and that is what a Liberal government will do," Dion said in a speech in Vancouver.

Conservatives, who will be defending their control in the next election, countered with praise for the Montreal market. And while other provinces remain skeptical of the carbon tax, B.C. and Manitoba are considering joining western US states in a new cap-and-trade system - so a regulatory patchwork looks likely. As in the US recently, though, the question is no longer whether the Canadian government should intervene to raise fossil fuel costs, but how.

Anna Barnett

Posted by Anna Barnett on March 19, 2008
Categories: Anna Barnett, Business, Carbon markets, Climate Policy, In the News, Mitigation, Politics | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In the race to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, the Royal Society now plans to back promising new technology with venture capital as well as intellectual clout. The Society announced Thursday it will sink its first-ever investment fund into businesses developing carbon capture and renewable energy, along with water purification and other world-saving innovations (Financial Times).

Continue reading "Royal Society to fund carbon capture and renewables ventures" »

Posted by Anna Barnett on February 29, 2008
Categories: Anna Barnett, Business, In the News, Technology | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

This Thursday, take-no-prisoners environmental writer George Monbiot of The Guardian steps up to the podium at Second Nature, Nature's archipelago in the virtual world of Second Life, to give a talk on climate change.

In his 2006 book Heat: How We Can Stop the Planet Burning, Monbiot argued for 90% emissions cuts by 2030 to stop dangerous climate change. With the UK and other governments struggling toward a consensus that 80% cuts must be made by 2050, we'll see how he feels about the planet's current prospects.

Monbiot speaks at 17:00 GDT (12:00 EDT). Second Life avatars can attend here.

Anna Barnett

Posted by Anna Barnett on February 19, 2008
Categories: Anna Barnett, Opinion | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Our latest Climate Podcast is out today, with interviews exploring this month's hot climate stories. In episode three, we find out:

-How the US government tried to silence climate scientist James Hansen

-What’s behind the recent backlash against biofuels

-How the Antarctic is losing ice at an unprecedented rate

-And author Gabrielle Walker tells us why we're nearing the last chance saloon on an international climate change deal

You can tune in here, and suscribe to the podcast RSS feed to stay on top of future episodes.

Anna Barnett

Posted by Anna Barnett on February 14, 2008
Categories: Anna Barnett | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A novel approach to removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere based on the Earth's natural weathering process, which Olive Heffernan reported on in November, is getting more attention.

John Shepherd discusses the technique, developed by graduate student Kurt Zen House and colleagues, in a Journal Club column in Nature today, concluding:

The scheme House et al. outline looks promising if it were operated using a solar or geothermal electricity source near a supply of basic rocks. A mid-ocean volcanic island would be good. And the environmental consequences of the scheme's discharges should be less severe than those of the ocean acidification that humans are already causing.

A simple geoengineering solution to soak up carbon dioxide without catastrophic side effects should raise interest, and it has. But Shepherd says that what geoengineering ideas need now, and haven't got, is seed funding for pilot projects. "None of the research councils has so far felt that it's their patch," says Shepherd, but "DEFRA are beginning to take an interest, and both the Tyndall Centre and the Royal Society are now contemplating meetings or studies on geoengineering, so maybe things will hot up a bit sometime soon."

Anna Barnett

Photo: Getty

Posted by Anna Barnett on February 14, 2008
Categories: Anna Barnett, Technology | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

In what was billed as the largest teach-in ever, over 1,500 universities, colleges, schools, and community organizations across the US held seminars and events on climate change yesterday.

Organized by student volunteers and driven by a project called Focus the Nation, professors of science, economics, engineering and anthropology - among other disciplines - spoke on panels and brought their classes to the discussions. Meanwhile, students staged information fairs and awareness-raising stunts: in Missouri, they stacked up 20 tons of coal to create a 3D graphic of campus energy use, and in Vermont, the fictional protagonist of a one-woman show promoted a boycott on sex as an effective focusing strategy (Focus the Nation, Christian Science Monitor).

I talked to a few of the scientists involved about how the events went at their universities. Ecologist Tom Sherry of Tulane University in New Orleans was brimming with excitement about the sessions there, which were attended by a total of about 750 students and faculty and included a Q&A that carried on for a lively two hours.

Continue reading ""Largest teach-in ever" focuses US on climate change" »

Posted by Anna Barnett on February 01, 2008
Categories: Anna Barnett, Communicating Climate Change, In the News | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

The European Commission's draft blueprint for tackling climate change, announced January 23rd, is praised in today's Nature editorial for hitting "the sweet spot" between politically pragmatic but shortsighted proposals and implausably idealistic ones. Other groups - idealists and pragmatists alike - have reacted differently.

Continue reading "EU climate plan "hits the sweet spot"?" »

Posted by Anna Barnett on January 31, 2008
Categories: Anna Barnett, Carbon markets, Climate Policy, Energy, In the News, Mitigation | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Historian Will Durant ... is said to have cautioned: "Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice."

This warning, re-broadcast in an essay by eminent public scientist Frank Press, wraps up an excellent special supplement on Earth science in this week's Nature. In honor of the International Year of Planet Earth, the supplement features more than a dozen in-depth commentaries on current topics in geoscience, almost all looking warily toward past, present and future climate change (with or without notice).

As an overview of several leading-edge climate science issues, it's well worth a look - and the thoughtful opening article on historical drivers of geoscientific progress is also not to be missed. Act now, because the entire supplement is currently free to access.

Anna Barnett

Photo: NASA

Posted by Anna Barnett on January 21, 2008
Categories: Anna Barnett, Climate Science | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Royal Society today released a report on the future of biofuels, which have recently been the subject of intense debate, as Kurt Kleiner reported in Nature Reports Climate Change last month. New UK rules to begin this April require transport fuel suppliers to include a small percentage of 'renewable fuel' in their fuel sales, working up to 5% by 2010. But according to the Royal Society report, this policy intiative (called the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation or RTFO) is not guaranteed to meet its climate-preserving goals. When it comes to lowering greenhouse gas emissions, the report points out, there are biofuels and biofuels. That is, while some plant fuel sources promise as much as 80% greenhouse gas savings over fossil fuels, it's also possible to keep trashing the planet by using unsustainable methods to produce and supply renewable fuels. Unless the UK sets emissions targets per se in its fuel policy, warns the report, the new UK rules and the EU Biofuels Directive that they reflect "will do more for economic development and energy security than combating climate change".

Continue reading "Making biofuels sustainable" »

Posted by Anna Barnett on January 14, 2008
Categories: Anna Barnett, Climate Policy, Energy, Mitigation | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Did you resolve to use less energy for your home appliances in 2008? In a study released yesterday, a lab within the the US Department of Energy found that lots of Americans (or at least lots of Pacific Northwesterners) want to do the same - and given more information, tools, and sophisticated market incentives, they'll actually do it. To the tune of 15% less peak power use and 10% lower household electric bills.

Continue reading "Technology lessens Americans' power hunger " »

Posted by Anna Barnett on January 10, 2008
Categories: Anna Barnett, Climate Policy, Energy, Personal action, Technology | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

From the BBC radio show Digital Planet:

Bali has not been the only island to host a climate change conference recently.

The science journal Nature has purchased a little archipelago of islands in Second Life called Second Nature.

While participants at the United Nations Climate Change conference in Bali have been agreeing on a roadmap to replace the Kyoto protocol, climate experts – or their representational avatars – have been hosting talks and discussions on one of the Second Nature islands.

Timo Hannay, publishing director at Nature, tells Digital Planet how they went about achieving this series of virtual talks.

The Digital Planet podcast episode with the interview is worth a listen, especially if you're wondering how a conference in Second Life's virtual world stacks up against one in the real word (or First Life, as it's known to enthusiasts) - or against a traditional webcast.

The Second Nature climate conference was announced on CF here; Second Life avatars can visit Second Nature here.

Anna Barnett

Posted by Anna Barnett on December 20, 2007
Categories: Anna Barnett, In the News | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

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)

Kevin Rudd, the Australian prime minister who won his recent election on a green platform (Nature News - subscription required) and signed Australia onto the Kyoto Protocol as his first act in office, now refuses to support a proposed 25-40% cut on 1990 emission levels by 2020. The worst part: he rejected the cut days after an Australian delegate to the UN climate conference in Bali promised support for it (Herald Sun).

What's holding up Rudd's vision of a greener Australia? A bad case of sticker shock -- specifically, fear of spiking electricity prices. According to the Herald Sun, the Energy Supply Association of Australia has reported that cutting 30% of 2000 emissions levels by 2030 would raise power costs by 30%, and energy industry representatives are telling Rudd that a faster cut would be much more expensive because of current technological obstacles. So it turns out that Rudd is happy to agree to deep long-term cuts whose price tag is harder to predict, but he won't ask Australians to get out their checkbooks in the next few years. For that, he says, he'll need more economic advice.

A BBC survey (PDF) this year found that worldwide, "most people say they are ready to make personal sacrifices – including paying more for their energy – to help address climate change". A whopping 81% of Australians agreed that prices needed to rise -- a majority second to none in the developed world. But like Rudd's long-term emissions pledge, the poll didn't mention any specific price.

How high an electric bill would you pay - and insist that neighbors and businesses pay - to meet the 2020 target?

Anna Barnett

Posted by Anna Barnett on December 08, 2007
Categories: Anna Barnett, Climate Policy, In the News | Permalink | Comments (0) | 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)

Starting today, Second Nature -- the Second Life space for all things Nature -- hosts a series of climate change talks to coincide with the UN conference in Bali. Avatars can attend with a carbon-clean conscience.

Continue reading "Second Life climate talks on Second Nature - no air travel required" »

Posted by Anna Barnett on December 04, 2007
Categories: Anna Barnett, Climate Policy, Conferences and Meetings |