EcoRadio

Category: Climate chaos

The atmosphere is to the earth as a layer of varnish is to a desktop globe. It is thin, fragile and essential for preserving the items on the surface.150 years of burning fossil fuel have overloaded the atmosphere to the point where the earth is ill. It now has a fever. Read the detailed article, Soothing Gaia’s Fever for an evocative account of that analogy. The items listed here detail progress on coordinating 6.5 billion people in the most critical project undertaken by humanity. 

  • Kilimanjaro ice could vanish within 20 years, study suggests

     

    A study comparing new measurements with those taken in 2000 show that a layer of ice between six and 17 feet thick has vanished from the summit since that time.

    Not only are the mountain’s glaciers retreating at an unprecedented rate, but its remaining ice is thinning.

    The researchers predict that if current conditions persist, the mountain could be ice-free as early as 2022.

    The Snows of Kilimanjaro will then exist only as a memory — and the title of a short story by Ernest Hemingway.

    Scientists made their forecast after combining data from aerial photographs and ground measurements of ice thickness.

    They found that the total area of Kilimanjaro’s ice fields had shrunk by nearly 85% between 1912 and 2007. More than a quarter of the ice present in 2000 was now gone.

    The team, led by Professor Lonnie Thompson, from Ohio State University in the US, pointed out that the snows had survived intact for 11,700 years.

    Even a 300-year-long drought around 4,200 years ago made little impact on the mountain’s ice fields.

    The chief cause of the current trend was likely to be a fundamental shift in climate, although local changes in cloud cover and snowfall may also be having an effect.

    Similar patterns had been seen elsewhere in Africa on Mount Kenya and the Rwenzori Mountains, as well as in the South American Andes and the Himalayas.

    “The fact that so many glaciers throughout the tropics and subtropics are showing similar responses suggests an underlying common cause,” said Thompson.

    “The increase of Earth’s near-surface temperatures, coupled with even greater increases in the mid-to-upper tropical troposphere (lower atmosphere), as documented in recent decades, would at least partially explain the observed widespread similarity in glacier behaviour.”

    One marker of ice loss on Kilimanjaro was the radioactive signature of fall-out from atomic tests carried out in the early 1950s.

    In 2000 the signal was detected 5.25 feet below the surface of the ice. Today, it is no longer there, showing that this depth of ice has been lost.

    The northern and southern ice fields on the summit of Kilimanjaro had thinned by 6.2 feet and 16.7 feet respectively, said the scientists.

    One of the mountain’s glaciers, the Furtwangler glacier, had lost half its thickness between 2000 and 2009.

    “In the future there will be a year when Furtwangler is present and by the next year it will have disappeared,” said Thompson, whose research appears in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “The whole thing will be gone.”

  • African nations make a stand at UN climate talks

     

    The African countries were supported by all other developing country blocks at the talks. In a series of statements, the G77 plus China group of 130 nations, the Alliance of Small Island States (Aosis), the Least Developed Countries (LDC) group, as well as Bolivia and several Latin America countries, all broadly backed the African action.

    The move by developing countries reflects their deep and growing frustration over the slow progress that industrialised countries are making towards agreeing cuts. With less than three days full negotiating time left between now and the opening of the final talks at Copenhagen, the split between rich and poor countries threatens to blow the talks fatally off course.

    Bruno Sekoli, chair of the LDC group, said: “Africa and Africans are dying now while those who are historically responsible are not taking actions.”

    Algeria, which chairs the Africa group, backed by representatives from Gambia and Kenya, said rich countries were “more concerned with political and economic feasibility” while the poorest were “struggling to survive” with climate change.

    In a press conference, the poorest countries demanded that the rich adopt the science-backed target of a 40% overall cut on emissions on 1990 levels. So far, rich countries have pledged an aggregate of less than 10%. The US, the world’s second biggest polluter, has pledged to cut around 4% on 1990 levels, or 17% on 2005 levels.

    In some of the most frantic diplomacy seen in the talks so far, delegates to hurriedly agreed to dedicate six of the 10 remaining negotiating sessions to discussions on mid-term emissions reductions. The decision received widespread support from all developing countries who stressed the importance of delivering real progress.

    “African countries have shown they are not going to sit back and accept a bad deal in Copenhagen,” said a spokeswomen for Oxfam international.

    “The poorest countries say they are dying now and the rich are just sitting back doing nothing. Hopefully they will take action now,” said Asad Rehman, head of international climate with Friends of the Earth.

    “The world’s largest historical emitter, the US, is missing in action during the climate negotiations, on its targets, on its finance – and the developing world is rightfully calling them out on it,” said Greenpeace USA climate campaign director Damon Moglen.

    “It is clear that for many countries, enough is enough. The fact that this has come today from countries including Kenya, President Obama’s ancestral home, should be his wake-up call. Obama can no longer hide behind failed congressional legislation. He must provide ambitious, science-based emissions reductions targets and come to table in Copenhagen.”

    The talks, which are some of the most complex ever conducted, depend on all countries eventually agreeing to everything. They would be seriously jeopardised to the point of certain failure in Copenhagen next month if the African countries walk out again.

     

  • Global warming could create 150 ‘climate refugees’ by 2050

     

     

     

    Nasheed urged governments to find ways to keep temperature rises caused by warming under 2C. “We won’t be around for anything after 2C,” he said. “We are just 1.5m over sea level and anything over that, any rise in sea level – anything even near that – would wipe off the Maldives. People are having to move their homes because of erosion. We’ve already this year had problems with two islands and we are having to move them to other islands. We have a right to live.”

     

    Last month, the president held a cabinet meeting underwater to draw attention to the plight of his country.

     

     

     

     

    The EJF claimed 500 million to 600 million people – nearly 10% of the world’s population – are at risk from displacement by climate change. Around 26 million have already had to move, a figure that the EJF predicts could grow to 150 million by 2050. “The majority of these people are likely to be internally displaced, migrating only within a short radius from their homes. Relatively few will migrate internationally to permanently resettle in other countries,” said the report’s authors.

     

     

    In the longer term, the report said, changes to weather patterns will lead to various problems, including desertification and sea-level rises that threaten to inundate low-lying areas and small island developing states. An expert at the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations in Paris recently said global warming could create “ghost states” with citizens living in “virtual states” due to land lost to rising seas.

     

    The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts sea-level rise in the range of 18-59cm during the 21st century. Nearly one-third of coastal countries have more than 10% of their national land within 5 metres of sea level. Countries liable to lose all or a significant part of their land in the next 50 years, said the EJF report, include Tuvalu, Fiji, the Solomon islands, the Marshall islands, the Maldives and some of the Lesser Antilles.

     

    Many other countries, including Bangladesh, Kenya, Papua New Guinea, Somalia, Yemen, Ethiopia, Chad and Rwanda, could see large movements of people. Bangladesh has had 70 climate-related natural disasters in the past 10 years.

     

     

    “Climate change impacts on homes and infrastructure, food and water and human health. It will bring about a forced migration on an unprecedented scale,” said the EJF director, Steve Trent. “We must take immediate steps to reduce our impact on global climate, and we must also recognise the need to protect those already suffering along with those most at risk.”

     

    He called for a new international agreement to address the scale and human cost of climate change. “The formal legal definition of refugees needs to be extended to include those affected by climate change and also internally displaced persons,” he said.

  • Carbon markets not working, says Deutsche Bank

    Carbon markets not working, says Deutsche Bank

    Ecologist

    2nd November, 2009

    Carbon markets are not working and UK and US government policy is not encouraging investment in renewable energy, says a leading bank

    A report from Deutsche Bank’s Asset Management division (DeAM) says that the carbon market is not likely to contribute to significantly cutting emissions, ‘for the foreseeable future.’

    It says that governments should focus on introducing stronger incentives like feed-in tariffs if they want to meet emission reduction targets by 2020.

    ‘What investors want is Transparency, Longevity and Certainty – “TLC” – in policy regimes to mobilise capital,’ said Kevin Parker, Head of DeAM.

    ‘Many major emitters such as the US and the UK do not have enough “TLC” in their policy frameworks.

    ‘Our rankings show that China has a lower risk for climate change investors, as does Germany, but the research also shows that in order to avoid catastrophic climate change, all countries will have to do more to encourage investment.’

    Carbon markets

    Looking specifically at the carbon markets, the Bank’s report says:

    • Free allocations of carbon credits tend to create market distortions. Therefore, allowances should be auctioned to covered entities so that prices are determined on the basis of fundamental supply and demand.

     

    • On short-term market intervention (i.e. keeping carbon price high), periods of high volatility and low liquidity can discourage investments in clean technologies.

     

    • On offsets, the provision of domestic and international offsets will encourage entities outside the trading system to undertake projects – and potentially programs of work – that reduce emissions.

     

    • On investment in clean technologies, the proceeds of allowance auctioning should be used by government to provide financial incentives that promote investments in renewable energy and other clean technologies integral to a low carbon economy. Interventions that reduce risk for clean technology projects, such as feed-in tariffs or loan guarantees, are particularly attractive.

    Useful links
    Deutsche Bank report

      READ MORE…
    INVESTIGATION
    Carbon Trading and the limits of free-market logic
    Carbon trading, its backers claim, brings emissions reductions and supports sustainable development in the global south. But, argues Kevin Smith, it may do neither, and is harming efforts to create a low-carbon economy

  • Climate expert Clive Splash ‘ heavied’ by CSIRO management

     

    Dr Spash said he believed the letter was intended to, and did, intimidate him and denied him due process. None of the matters were raised with him prior to the letter being sent and each of the alleged misdemeanours could be explained.

    “We are not members of the Defence Department, we are scientists who are supposed to be discussing research in an open forum. How do you advance knowledge if you stop people from publishing their work?

    “I am totally happy to have my work criticised and debated but I’m not happy to have it suppressed.”

    Dr Spash said it was impossible to publish research in his field that did not have an impact on government policy. “The idea that you cannot discuss something like ETS policy when you’re working on climate change as a political economist seems ridiculous,” he said.

    The gagging of Dr Spash’s work is embarrassing for Science Minister Kim Carr, who defended academic freedoms in opposition and last year trumpeted a new CSIRO charter he said would give scientists the right to speak publicly about their findings.

    Yesterday, Senator Carr told The Australian he supported the publication of peer-reviewed research, even if it had negative implications for government policy. He said he had not tried to gag the research.

    Last night CSIRO chief executive Megan Clark said the organisation would work with Dr Spash on his paper.

    “There is some important science in the paper and we will now work with Dr Spash to ensure the paper meets CSIRO internal review standards and the guidelines of the Public Research Agency Charter between the CSIRO and the federal government,” she said.

    “I encourage CSIRO scientists to communicate the outcomes and implications of their work and one of the underlying core values of CSIRO is the integrity of our excellent science.

  • Copenhagen is only the start of climate change

     

    Only then, say scientists, will it be possible to prevent global temperatures from rising by 2 degrees Celsius by the year 2100. This figure, they argue, is the maximum warming that our planet can tolerate. If we go beyond it, we will face global calamity in the form of spreading deserts, increasingly violent storms, destruction of swaths of farmland, flooding and widespread loss of life. It is a grim list, one that should guarantee delegates give maximum concentration to their work in Copenhagen. This is their last chance, if not to save the world, then at least to prevent major losses of life later in the century. Failure should not be an option.

    Yet there are now signs that a deal which would tie every nation on Earth to a declared cut in their carbon emissions, and which would do so much to tackle global warming, will not be achieved.

    Despite the urgency of negotiators’ work and despite the fact they have been meeting regularly for the past two years in order to prepare for this summit, most observers now believe it is unlikely that a strong, ratifiable agreement will be signed on 18 December, the meeting’s final day.

    A key problem has been the failure of Barack Obama’s administration to pass a climate change bill in time for Copenhagen. This has left the US, the world’s major carbon emitter, unable to participate meaningfully in discussions. Without an American lead, not much can be achieved, it is argued. Thus the talk is of squandered opportunities instead of expectations of breakthroughs. Agreeing long-term global deals is simply beyond human nature, suggest the sceptics, obsessed as we are with our own local, short-term concerns.

    Politicians have known for a long time that this day was approaching and should have realised they would have to sit down to work out a meaningful agreement. However, it would be premature to suggest that everything that has happened over the past two years has been a waste of time and to dismiss, out of hand, the talks that will take place in Copenhagen – no matter how unsatisfactory they turn out to be. Much has happened in the run-up to the summit to indicate there is sufficient goodwill in the political system to tackle the crisis posed by global warming – if not at Copenhagen then in the following months and years.

    China, once the most difficult nation to convince about the need to cut greenhouse gas emissions, has pledged that it will make “substantial reductions” in its citizens’ individual carbon output. Countries such as Indonesia and Norway, as well as the European Union, have promised to make tight, binding cuts. Europe has also proposed to make significant contributions to a £90bn a year fund that would help developing countries cut their carbon emissions while the US has begun a process that should lead it to establish carbon emission legislation.

    A few years ago, such progress would have seen improbable. Today, it is a reality. The world may not get a good global warming deal from the Copenhagen summit, but enough has been gained in its preparations to suggest that a binding agreement will eventually be signed. Whether that can be done in time to halt the worst effects of climate change is a different issue.