Global warming update is ‘wake-up call’ to nations

(Photo of retreating Athabasca Glacier from Flickr and photographer Janet.Powell)



Climate is changing faster than forecast just two years ago by the authoritative IPCC, a new UN report revealed last week.

More CO2 is going into the atmosphere, glaciers and ice sheets are melting faster, oceans are getting more acidic, and perennial droughts are more common, the UN Environment Programme update said.

Global temperatures could rise 8 degrees Fahrenheit (above pre-industrial levels), based on pledges by countries so far to cut greenhouse gas emissions – double the temperature scientists in the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said would be catastrophic. Some think tipping points will come in a matter of years or decades, rather than in a century, as earlier forecast.

Degree of damage
After assessing the latest peer-reviewed science, the report said:
• CO2 in the atmosphere is growing at 3.5% a year this decade, compared with 1.1% a year in the 1990s.
• At least half of the next 10 years should be warmer than the previous record in 1998.
• Glaciers and sea ice have melted since 2000 at twice the rate of the 1980s and ‘90s.
• Greenland ice in 2007 thawed 60% above the record melt in 1998.
• An ice-free September in the Arctic Ocean could come in 2030, not 2100 as earlier predicted.
• West Antarctica ice loss increased 60% from 1996-2006 and the Antarctic Peninsula thaw was up 140% the same decade. Closing of the ozone hole over Antarctic will likely accelerate warming there.
• Melting land ice and thermal expansion could raise sea levels 6 feet by century’s end, rather than the earlier predicted 1.5 feet.
• Marine ecosystems will turn over 60% by 2050 because of extinctions and invasive species.

Impact on treaty talks
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon called the new report a “wake-up call” for countries meeting in Copenhagen in December to try to reach accord on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.

"Shying away from a major agreement in Copenhagen will probably be unforgivable, if you look back ... at this moment,” said UNEP executive director Achim Steiner.

Countries still disagree about the amount of GHG emissions industrialized and developing countries should cut and how much rich countries should help fund poor ones for adaptation and low-carbon economic development. Some European countries pledging 20% or more in cuts (below 1990 levels) by 2020 criticize the U.S., which is responsible for the most existing atmospheric CO2, for doing too little. The House-passed climate bill targets a 17% reduction (from 2005 levels) by 2020 (that’s about 4% below 1990) and the Senate is thought to be looking at reducing that number. That’s pretty pathetic.

As UNEP report contributor Robert Correl put it: Emissions are accelerating. “We’re not going in the right direction.”


To download the report go to www.unep.org/compendium2009

(Sources: Dallas Morning News, Washington Post, UNEP.com, AP.)

Fed climate bill to pre-empt states on cutting GHG

(Photo of power plant in New York City from Flickr and photographer Salim
Virji)

Some states are complaining they won’t be able to set stricter greenhouse gas curbs under a federal climate bill. The House bill passed in June calls for cutting GHG 17% (from 2005 levels) by 2020 and pre-empts states and regional coalitions from requiring stronger measures.

Five state attorneys-general (from California, Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey and Arizona) have written Senate leaders asking them to include in their version of the climate bill a 20% cut by 2020 and permission for states to impose stricter limits if they choose.

At risk is the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, made up of 10 Eastern states, which has already raised $350 million for clean energy and efficiency from auctioning permits in its new cap-and-trade market. RGGI is on its way to cutting emissions from power plants 10% by 2018.

Also in danger is the Western Climate Initiative, a plan for 11 states and Canadian provinces to begin cap-and-trade in 2012. A number of other states are “observers.” They don’t want to make a commitment but are watching to see what happens.

Under the House American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), these programs would have to stop in 2012, which means the Western plan would never get off the ground.

The best solution here would be a stronger Senate bill that caps emissions at 20% (at least) but also allows states to do more if they want, just as California has led the way on auto emissions. The East and West Coasts are far more likely than much of the rest of the country to have the political will to do what needs to be done to stop global warming and they shouldn’t be restrained.

But just to put it all in perspective, industrialized nations altogether have plans to cut GHG an average of 10-14% from 1990 levels (which is lower than 2005), according to Reuters, while the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says the world needs to cut 20-40% and China and India want the U.S. and other industrialized countries to cut 40% by 2020 to allow for economic growth in developing countries.

(Source: Reuters PlanetArk, riggi.org, westernclimateinitiative.org)

Climate change leaders now say global warming is happening faster than expected

(Photo of German coal-fired plant from Flickr and photographer Bruno D. Rodriguez.)

Weekly Angst: At the end of 2006 and early part of 2007, a series of reports finished the job started by Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” and woke the slumbering world to the urgent need to stop global warming or suffer severe consequences. After the Stern and IPCC reports, the debate ended for most, but progress has been slow as governments and fossil-fuel businesses balked at change. Now the same people who told us we needed to take action in the first place are raising the decibels as they warn it’s even worse than they thought. Here is what they and others are saying, little more than a year later.

Nicholas Stern, former World Bank chief economist, whose ground-breaking 2006 report was the basis for policy in the UK and EU, now admits he was overly optimistic about the ability to cut GHG emissions and absorb some of the CO2. Stern now says he "badly underestimated the degree of damages and risks of climate change … Emissions are growing much faster than we'd thought, the absorptive capacity of the planet is less than we'd thought, the risks of greenhouse gases are potentially bigger than more cautious estimates, and the speed of climate change seems to be faster." He now says the developed world must cut emissions by 90% to meet a world-wide 50% reduction by 2050.(Source: Business Green)

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s assumptions were too optimistic about cutting CO2, a new study in the journal Nature says. The IPCC report, which won the panel the Nobel Peace Prize and is the basis for international negotiations, assumed that even without changes in government policy, new technology would dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions this century. But with huge growth in Asia, based mainly on fossil fuels, the world is going in the wrong direction, say scientists from the University of Colorado, the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and McGill University in Canada. We need enormous advances in technology to meet our goals, but also policies that motivate innovation, the researchers say. (E&E News PM, EurekAlert)

James Hansen of NASA, one of the lead scientists to sound the alarm about about global warming, has dramatically reduced the amount of CO2 he thinks the atmosphere can tolerate and still keep the planet similar to the one on which civilization developed. Recent research has led Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, to the conclusion that CO2 in the atmosphere must be brought down to 350 parts per million (from the current 385) to avoid a tipping point that would cause melting ice sheets and rapidly rising seas. The only way to do that, he says, is to phase out the use of coal by 2030 (unless it can be captured and sequestered). He calls for a moratorium on new coal-fired plants, as well as improved agriculture and forestry to reduce carbon 50 ppm by the end of the century. This assumes that we’re nearing the end of oil reserves and no more drilling will occur on public lands or in pristine areas. It also assumes little extraction of unconventional fossil fuels like tar sands. Hansen says bringing down CO2 levels to 350 would also solve the problem of acidity in oceans and destruction of coral reefs. He warned there must be global cooperation and it needs to start in the next few years. (Source: Environmental News Network.)

The UN Environment Programme warns in a new report, by 338 experts, that the future of humanity is at risk and may be pushed beyond the point of no return. The balance between consumers and resources is seriously out of whack, says Achim Steiner, executive director of the programme. The planet is increasingly stressed by climate change, which is “accelerating at a pace that goes beyond the scenarios and models we’ve been using.” Some regions may soon reach a point of environmental devastation from which they won’t be able to recover, he said, noting the increasing droughts in Africa and melting ice in the Himalayas that will leave China and India short of water. (Source: NaturalNews.)

Next week: Some suggested solutions