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Global Warming

A Climate Accord Based on Global Peer Pressure

Dec 17th, 2014
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DEC. 14, 2014

CORAL DAVENPORT

LIMA, Peru — Shortly before 2 a.m. on Sunday, after more than 36 straight hours of negotiations, top officials from nearly 200 nations agreed to the first deal committing every country in the world to reducing the fossil fuel emissions that cause global warming.

In its structure, the deal represents a breakthrough in the two-decade effort to forge a significant global pact to fight climate change. The Lima Accord, as it is known, is the first time that all nations — rich and poor — have agreed to cut back on the burning oil, gas and coal.

But the driving force behind the new deal was not the threat of sanctions or other legal consequences. It was global peer pressure. And over the coming months, it will start to become evident whether the scrutiny of the rest of the world is enough to pressure world leaders to push through new global warming laws from New Delhi to Moscow or if, as a political force, international reproach is impotent.

The strength of the accord — the fact that it includes pledges by every country to put forward a plan to reduce emissions at home — is also its greatest weakness. In order to get every country to agree to the deal, including the United States, the world’s largest historic carbon polluter, the Lima Accord does not include legally binding requirements that countries cut their emissions by any particular amount.

Instead, each nation will agree to enact domestic laws to reduce carbon emissions and put forth a plan by March 31 laying out how much each one will cut after 2020 and what domestic policies it will pass to achieve the cuts.

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Crop yields cut by almost half due to India’s dirty air: study

Nov 11th, 2014
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04 November, 2014

The Guardian

Study finds that 90 per cent of falls in production of wheat and rice over 30 years could be attributed to black carbon and ground level ozone

Air pollution in India has become so severe that crop yields are being cut by almost half, scientists have found.

Researchers analysed yields for wheat and rice alongside pollution data, and concluded significant decreases in yield could be attributed to two air pollutants, black carbon and ground level ozone. The finding could also be relevant to farmers in China, as well as having implications for global food security as India is a major rice exporter.

Black carbon is mostly caused by rural cooking stoves, and ozone forms as a result of motor vehicle exhaust, industrial emissions, and chemical solvents reacting in the atmosphere in the presence of sunlight. Both are “short-lived climate pollutants” that exist locally for weeks to months, with ozone damaging the leaves on plants and black carbon reducing the amount of sunlight they receive.

The study looked at both the effects of climate change and the two pollutants on crop yields.

“While temperature has gone up in the last three decades, the levels of smog and pollution have changed much more dramatically,” said Jennifer Burney, an environmental scientist at the University of California, San Diego, and co-author of the paper, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “But this was the first time anyone looked at historical data to show these pollutants are having tremendous impacts on crops.”

Comparing crop yields in 2010 to what they would be expected to be if temperature, rainfall and pollution remained at 1980 levels, the researchers showed that yields for wheat were on average 36 per cent lower than they otherwise would have been, while rice production decreased by up to 20 per cent. In some higher population states, wheat yields were as much as 50 per cent lower.

Using modelling to account for the effects of temperature increase and precipitation changes in that time, they were able to show that 90 per cent of this loss is attributable to the impact of the two pollutants.

The results are specific to India’s seasonal patterns, the crops, and its pollution levels, but may extend to other places with similar problems. Chinese scientists warned in February that air pollution is slowing photosynthesis in plants, with effects “somewhat similar to a nuclear winter”.

Previous studies had used experimental data looking at the impact of ozone on plants to extrapolate potential losses, but this is the first study to use actual historical agricultural and emissions data to account for lower crop yields.

“Overall I think it’s a great paper,” said Stanford University agricultural ecologist David Lobell. “I think in both India and China there is growing recognition of the toll poor air quality has on agriculture. This study will certainly add to that.”

Lobell and Burney both point out that because black carbon and ozone are short-lived pollutants, they present a clear opportunity for tackling climate change. While long-lived greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and nitrous oxides can persist in the atmosphere for decades, addressing sources of the short-lived pollutants will have more immediately perceptible effects.

Measures such as improved cooking stove technology for rural areas, or cleaner coal consumption and diesel filters on trucks in urban ones, could go a long way to improving the impact on agricultural yields.

“Our thought is that these are more politically tractable points of entry for making a meaningful change in the climate,” said Burney. “There’s a really local benefit in taking on some sort of costly action.”

http://www.scmp.com/news/asia/article/1632064/crop-yields-cut-almost-half-indias-dirty-air-study-finds

France and US lead calls for urgent action on climate change

Nov 3rd, 2014
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03 November, 2014

Reuters in Copenhagen

France and the United States led a chorus of alarm yesterday after a major UN report on climate change warned that the earth was on track for potentially disastrous global warming.

France, which is hosting a UN conference in December 2015 that is supposed to seal cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions, said the report required “immediate, all-round mobilisation”.

“The message from this report is clear,” the foreign ministry and environment ministry said. “The 2015 Paris agreement has to provide a political response that is in line with the science.”

In Washington, US Secretary of State John Kerry said the report was a fresh warning – “another canary in the coal mine”.

“Those who choose to ignore or dispute the science clearly laid out in this report do so at great risk for all of us and for our kids and grandkids,” he said.

The report, published in Copenhagen, is the final chapter in an overview on global warming and its impacts by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The 40-page synthesis, summing up 5,000 pages of work by 800 scientists, said global warming was now causing more heat extremes, downpours, acidifying the oceans and pushing up sea levels.

“Science has spoken. There is no ambiguity in the message. Leaders must act, time is not on our side,” UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in presenting the report, meant to guide global climate policymaking.

With fast action, climate change could be kept in check at manageable costs, he said, referring to a UN goal of limiting average temperature rises to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times. Temperatures are already up 0.85 C.

The study, approved by more than 120 governments, will be the main handbook for negotiators of a UN deal to combat global warming due at next year’s Paris summit.

To get a good chance of staying below 2 degrees, the report’s scenarios show that world emissions would have to fall by between 40 and 70 per cent by 2050 from current levels and to “near zero or below in 2100”.

Below zero would require extracting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere – for instance by planting forests that soak up carbon as they grow or by burying emissions from power plants that burn wood or other biomass.

To cut emissions, the report points to options including energy efficiency, renewable energies from wind to solar power, nuclear energy or coal-fired power plants where carbon dioxide is stripped from exhaust fumes and buried underground.

Without extra efforts to cut emissions, “warming by the end of the 21st century will bring high risks of severe, widespread, and irreversible impacts globally,” the IPCC said.

“Irreversible” could mean, for instance, a runaway melt of Greenland’s vast ice sheets that could swamp coastal regions and cities or disruptions to monsoons vital for growing food.

“The cost of inaction will be horrendously higher than the cost of action,” IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri said.

Environmental groups welcomed the report, including its focus on zero emissions.

“This is no longer about dividing up the pie. You need to get to zero. At some stage there is no pie left for anyone,” said Kaisa Kosonen of Greenpeace.

Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse

http://www.scmp.com/news/world/article/1630853/france-and-us-lead-calls-urgent-action-climate-change

Third runway’s sky-high emissions

Aug 13th, 2014
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ENVIRONMENT

Cheung Chi-fai chifai.cheung@scmp.com

Airport study says carbon footprint could hit 269 million tonnes, higher than Greenpeace’s figure. But it says cost to society is much lower

Having a third airport runway will increase carbon emissions by up to 269 million tonnes in 50 years and this will come at a cost of about HK$50 billion, a study has found.

The emissions estimate from the study, commissioned by the Airport Authority, is higher than Friends of the Earth’s estimate in November that the runway would cause up to 216 million tonnes of extra emissions in 50 years. But the estimated cost is far below Friends of the Earth’s figure of between HK$200 billion and HK$630 billion.

Activists have accused the authority of turning a blind eye to the snowballing level of carbon emissions and asked if the social and environmental costs were worth paying.

The authority commissioned environmental consultancy ERM to conduct the carbon-cost study for the third runway last year.

According to the results released yesterday, the airport’s carbon emissions will peak at 27 million tonnes by 2031 – 62 per cent higher than its 2011 level.

The extra carbon that the third runway will generate ranges from 36 million to 269 million tonnes for the 50 years until 2061, depending on the method of calculation used.

One method – which gives a lower estimate – is to count emissions from planes taking off, landing and cruising within the city’s boundaries. Another, which gives a higher figure, takes into account all the carbon emitted during the entirety of a flight that takes off or lands in the city.

The study’s estimate of the cost of the emissions also depends on which method of calculation is used.

Friends of the Earth adopted pricing based on how much it would cost to keep global temperatures from rising beyond a relatively safe limit.

But the authority’s study calculated the social cost of carbon based on the damage that would be caused by climate change. At about HK$271 per tonne, the carbon cost of having a third runway would range from HK$7 billion to HK$50 billion.

Wilson Fung Wing-yip, the authority’s corporate development executive director, said this cost was small compared with the HK$480 billion of economic benefits the runway would bring.

But Greenpeace campaigner Argo Yeung Man-yau said the latest study confirmed that a third runway would bring “high carbon but low economic benefits”.

Yeung said carbon intensity – the amount of carbon emissions for every dollar of gross domestic product – for the runway could be as high as 0.56kg, which is 25 times the entire city’s carbon intensity in 2011. “We are clearly heading away from building a green economy,” he said.

Friends of the Earth’s Melonie Chau Yuet-cheung said the authority had failed to offer any effective solution to minimise the airport’s carbon footprint.

http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1568554/third-runways-sky-high-emissions

Climate change, ‘science’, and skeptics

Oct 21st, 2013
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The latest report (5AR) published by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) created an uproar for all the wrong reasons. In the months leading to the report’s release, many climate observers began to speak of how the global mean temperatures have not been rising as drastically as predicted by climate change models that previous IPCC reports have written about.

This information was seized upon by skeptics of climate change, who then went on to proclaim that according to data, global temperatures have actually cooled and polar ice caps have increased in size. They once again accuse political agendas behind climate change, insisting that programs combating a ‘mythical’ global warming is spending millions for nothing and instead hurting jobs and the economy.

2013 Arctic Sea Ice Minimum. An increase in Arctic ice has led to proclamations of 'Arctic ice is growing' when it is, in fact, still on a long-term decline; this is the 6th lowest extent of Arctic ice on record. (NASA)

It does not help that both sides like to make snide remarks or personal jabs that distracts everyone concerned from the real debates. Nor that the IPCC allow ambiguities to slip into their reports or leaks about internal disagreements between members on their findings. These are the things that colour media reports to make attractive readings, distorting critical thinking on the issue at hand.

What should be made clear is that climate change is a difficult science – it is not a laboratory of tests and trials, it is about observations in the real world of unpredictable changes affecting hypotheses, and making proper scientific interpretations of the observations. Not only is it important that we take note of how skeptics of climate change like to interpret data based on their own theories, it would be prudent to move away from a basic error of conceiving science as some kind of ‘predictor’.

Science is not about making predictions. Observations contrary to predictions does not constitute evidence that the science is wrong - precisely because it is not fortune telling.

Good science seeks explanations of phenomena as close to the truth as possible, setting up controlled experiments to test for explanations, thinking about results and explanations within and beyond the current epistemic framework. A theory is not discarded just because observed data deviates from expected observations; rigorous thinking has to be done about its setup, unaccounted factors, even mistaken assumptions.

The science behind climate change has limited access to these conditions. It has to somehow extrapolate laboratory findings into the world and reap in non-laboratory data, making its theories difficult to test. This does not invalidate its theories, only that more work and time is needed for a more complete understanding to come into being.

Perhaps organizations like the IPCC is rightly criticized for not being rigorous enough with their work and findings. But skeptics of climate change would be foolish to point to data (especially data chopped to their liking) and claim that climate change is a hoax. Climate change is not meant to be a predictor; it is both understanding and warning of how our activities impact the environment.

Acquiring and burning fossil fuels, mining for minerals, deforestation, altering waterways, dumping waste – these activities, ferociously increased in activity in recent years, leave behind visible negative impacts; at the same time, the weather has been changing in such ways that lives, livelihoods and food production are seriously at stake. Current understanding, limited as it might be, could be utilized to make good sense of these significant events. One could also spectate this duel in the media arena between skeptics and scientists about who is politically motivated or who has gotten it right or wrong. But one should not see any reason in gambling against the likelihood that the climate could stabilize if we reduce our demands on the environment by limiting our activities.

Click here for more information on this issue:

Officials’ comments on preliminary ICAO aircraft emissions agreement

Oct 11th, 2013
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SCMP, AFP (Montreal):

A first-ever global deal on curbing the airline industry’s rising carbon emissions was agreed on Friday, the International Civil Aviation Organization said, though hammering out the details could take years.

The full agreement is not scheduled to take effect until 2020 but the most contentious issues have been resolved, officials said, as the ICAO’s full assembly met behind closed doors in Montreal.

The deal “is an historic milestone for air transport and for the role of multilateralism in addressing global climate challenges,” ICAO Council President Roberto Kobeh Gonzalez said in a statement.

Air transport “now becomes the only major industry sector to have a multilateral global market-based mechanism agreement in place to help govern future greenhouse gas emissions,” he added.

Leading up to the vote, China and India had joined the United States and Russia in balking at a European Union push for a carbon levy on flights within three years.

But at midday, after some 1,400 delegates representing 170 member states voted on the executive committee’s resolution, officials said the plan had been passed and details of the accord would follow.

“The good news is (in) having concluded a general agreement that includes China and India,” said a diplomat involved in the negotiations.

Aviation accounts for around three per cent of global CO2 emissions but the ICAO forecasts that by 2050 emissions will have risen between four and six times the levels they were in 2010.

Last year, the EU suspended its CO2 Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) for intercontinental flights, after facing a storm of criticism.

Under the EU’s ill-fated arrangement, airlines flying in EU airspace were required to buy pollution credits to cover 15 per cent of their CO2 emissions for the entire flight, wherever it originated.

Several nations rejected the scheme that threatened to tip into a trade war.

The ICAO resolution “is a strong message to Europe after it lost three votes on its proposals,” a negotiator said.

According to a draft text of the agreement submitted for consideration at the ICAO meeting, countries must agree by 2016 on a global market-based mechanism and reject all regional schemes, according to the negotiator.

The measure is to be accompanied by a series of technical and operational steps to reduce emissions, said a European Commission statement.

Specific proposals under consideration for curbing CO2 emissions include a carbon tax and a carbon trading system.

The European Union would thus have to abandon its more ambitious ETS and adhere to the new global system for curbing greenhouse gases linked to global warming.

Even so, European Commission Vice President Siim Kallas praised Friday’s outcome.

“I am very pleased that after long and hard negotiations we finally have a global deal on aviation emissions,” Kallas said in a statement.

“This is good news for the traveling public, good news for the aviation industry, but most importantly it is very good news for the planet,” he said.

Furthermore, he added, the deal averts a “damaging conflict among trading partners.”

European Commissioner for Climate Action Connie Hedegaard meanwhile congratulated the ICAO members.

“After so many years of talks the ICAO has finally agreed to the first-ever global deal to curb aviation emissions,” she said.

In addition to the mechanism for curbing emissions, the accord also calls for promoting the use of better alternative aviation fuels and fuel-saving navigation.

There is also an exemption clause that provides a “fair and equitable solution” for a number of countries facing “special circumstances or with limited capabilities,” said the EU.

China and India unhappy with EU over Aircraft Emissions Taxes

Oct 10th, 2013
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The European Union has, for the past few years, pushed for capping aircraft carbon emissions and taxation, in an effort to reduce one of the biggest contributors to greenhouse gases. The proposed plan, however, ran into an insurmountable obstacle: taxing aircrafts of foreign airlines flying to and from Europe. Taxation for emissions that take place outside of Europe (for instance, a large part of a journey between Shanghai and London will not be in EU airspace) is considered by non-EU countries to be extraterritorial and sovereignty-violating, and many threatened retaliatory tariffs on European airlines if the EU went ahead with the plan unilaterally. The US even passed a preemptive law banning US airlines from compliance, and China flashed warnings of a trade war with a moratorium on aircraft orders from Airbus that was only partially lifted recently.

The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) of the UN has stepped in with a plan to hash out a global agreement over aircraft carbon emissions. Brussels then agreed last November to a one-year suspension of emissions taxes for foreign airlines while the agreement is being worked out. As it turns out, the ICAO target for reaching full agreement is 2016, coming into force only in 2020. Non-EU countries, however, continue to voice their displeasure, fearing that the plan would severely impact their fast-growing aviation networks.

Some in the European transport industries do not consider airlines outside the EU and US as big players in global aviation. (Jimmy LWH/flickr)

It remains to be seen if this round of politicking will be resolved at all.

Click here for the most recent coverage by Charlotte So of SCMP:

Climate Change Forum to be held on 15 Oct 2013

Oct 8th, 2013
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The Hong Kong Observatory and World Green Organisation are jointly organising “Climate Change Forum: Overview of Latest Scientific Findings of IPCC AR5 Report” on 15th October, 2013 (Tuesday). This forum will present a number of highlights from the new report. Academicians and professionals will then exchange their ideas about the possible threats to our economy and human health, which will lead us to the discussions on community initiatives.

* IPCC : Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change

The forum will be presented in Cantonese. It is free of charge but registration is needed. Click here for more details.

Billions are being wasted on global warming measures

Sep 27th, 2013
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Friday, 27 September, 2013, 12:00am

Business

LAI SEE

Howard Winn

Stand by for a flurry of concern over the future of the planet as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) today issues its latest assessment report (AR5) on the extent to which man is contributing to changes in climate. From the leaks that have already appeared it is clear that the IPCC will assert it is more confident than ever (95 per cent – compared with 90 per cent in 2007) that global warming is real and is at least 50 per cent due to the carbon dioxide-producing activities of man.

Earlier reports have issued dire warnings of soaring temperatures and rising sea levels. But today’s report is expected to scale back some of its earlier predictions and will forecast temperature increases by the end of the century of between 1 degree Celsius to 3.7 degrees Celsius.

One of the difficulties for the report will be to explain the “pause” in the rise in temperature over the past 17 years. The IPCC is now forecasting a rise in sea levels of 40-60 centimetres by the end of the century, which is a good deal less than earlier forecasts of one to two metres, and altogether less alarmist than Al Gore’s predictions in his film An Inconvenient Truth of increases of seven metres. This would have submerged places like the Netherlands, Bangladesh and Florida.

Although the IPCC is reducing its more dire forecasts, it is still preoccupied with the idea that the production of carbon dioxide through the burning of fossil fuel contributes 50 per cent of global warming. There are many climate scientists, who are beginning to get their voices heard above the hubbub of the alarmists, who believe variations in climate are more due to natural occurrences such as changes in ocean temperature cycles, volcanic activity, sun spot activity and so on. But the preoccupation with carbon has led to billions being spent on pointless policies to mitigate the perceived problem.

Writing on his blog, Bjørn Lomborg, an adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Business School, says that the European Union “will pay US$250 billion for its current climate policies each and every year for 87 years. For almost US$20 trillion, temperatures by the end of the century will be reduced by a negligible 0.05ºC.” This is clearly nonsensical but governments and corporations are blithely committed to these policies, some because they believe the science, others because they feel they can’t afford not to and will incur reputational risk if they don’t, while governments feel it could cost them votes.

Special treatment needed

China Daily has a cheery tale about Beijing’s sewage. Some 17 per cent of it goes straight into its rivers untreated. Unsurprisingly an investigation into the quality of surface water in the capital, by the Department of Environmental Protection at the North China Centre for Environmental Inspectors in early August, found all its 50 rivers, except nine that had run dry, were polluted.

Beijing’s water treatment facilities are based on its population hitting 18 million by the end of 2020. However, the city’s population, according to the statistics bureau, exceeded 20 million last year. Although the government has been expanding its sewage works, it is expected to take some time before these measures have significant impact on the polluted rivers.

Have you got any stories that Lai See should know about? E-mail them to howard.winn@scmp.com [2]


Links:
[1] http://webb-site.com
[2] mailto:howard.winn@scmp.com

Warming ‘extremely likely’ man-made, says Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Sep 27th, 2013
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www.heraldsun.com.au%2Fnews%2Fworld%2Fwarming-extremely-likely-man-made-says-intergovernmental-panel-on-climate-change%2Fstory-fni0xs61-1226728799752&ei=yXJFUtiIOY7DkQXmVA&rt=SECTION&vm=STANDARD&bvm=section&did=-1062249457947115052&sid=4395379506845772486

Warming ‘extremely likely’ man-made, says Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

  • by: Malcolm Holland
  • From: News Limited Network
  • September 27, 2013 7:06PM

Ice melting climate change global warming

The IPCC says a human footprint can be found in the warming of the atmosphere and oceans, in rising sea levels, melting snow and ice and in changes in some climate extremes. Picture: AFP/ University of Washington/Ian Joughin. Source: AFP

THE latest major report on climate change by the United Nations says the world is on track to become hotter by 2C by 2100 and that it is more certain than ever that human activity is the main cause of global warming.

Compiled by scientists from around the world and released Friday evening Sydney time in Stockholm, Sweden, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s fifth assessment paints a gloomy outlook.

It says the earth’ average surface temperatures has increased by 0.85C since 1880.

It says it is now ”extremely likely” — with a 95 per cent certainty — that humans rather than natural variations, are the dominant cause global of warming.

The report says sea levels are expected to rise between 26cm and 8cm by 2100.

It says “with high confidence” that a slow down in warming in the past decade was because the ocean has absorbed 90 per cent of the extra heat generated by human activity between 1971 and 2010

If emissions from human activities remain high, the IPCC report predicts that the world is on track to warm by more than 2C, and possibly by more than 4C, by 2100.

The IPCC said its latest report was based on multiple and independent evidence, much of which is new since the IPCC’s previous report in 2007.

The new report warns heatwaves will be more common and last longer and most wet regions will get more rainfall.

Most dry areas of the earth will become dryer, the report says.

The report says that since 1850, each of the last three decades has been warmer than any preceding decade.

The last 30 years have been the warmest since 600AD, and that between 1901 to 2010, the sea level rose by 19cm.

This rise was quicker than the average sea level rise for the last 2000 years.

It says greenhouse gases have reached levels unseen in at least 800,000 years. The cause, it says, is fossil fuel emissions and land use.

The ocean has also become more acidic as it absorbs a third of the carbon dioxide being emitted.

Critics of the IPCC report have said it still fails to properly take into account the earth’s heat varies because of natural climate cycles.

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