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. 

  • Kyoto recalcitrance costs billions

    New research released by the Australian Conservation Foundation today shows Australia is losing a staggering $3.8 billion per year in investment opportunities as a result of the Government’s failure to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. “Australia continues to miss out on business opportunities worth billions of dollars by refusing to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, because Australian businesses cannot gain credits under the Protocol’s carbon trading mechanisms,” said ACF executive director Don Henry.

    The Kyoto Protocol’s Joint Implementation (JI) and Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) would allow Australian companies to gain credits from investing in low-emission and renewable energy projects here and overseas.

    The new study, conducted for ACF by sustainability consultancy Cambiar, concludes Australia’s failure to ratify Kyoto means:

    • Australian companies are missing out on $2.4 billion every year in credits from carbon reduction projects through the CDM, because of the immense hurdles facing most Australian companies interested in participating in such projects.

    • Australian companies involved in carbon reduction projects in Australia are not realising the full value of those projects, because they cannot generate offset credits that could be sold on the JI or EU carbon trading markets. This results in an estimated loss of $1.2 billion per year.

    • As a major existing financial hub for the Asia-Pacific region, Australia is a natural centre for a regional carbon trading hub. But this cannot happen without Kyoto ratification. The loss of trading revenue and associated legal, accounting and other services to Australia is estimated at $180 million per year.

    “By ratifying the Kyoto Protocol Prime Minister Howard could achieve a great practical economic result from APEC – boosting Australian investments in renewable energy and efficiency measures and helping reduce emissions in other APEC economies,” Mr Henry said.

  • Arctic ice beats worst case predictions

    Arctic sea ice melt worst than all IPPC projections

    The Arctic’s ice cover is retreating more rapidly than estimated by any of the 18 computer models used by the 2007 IPCC assessments.
    Source: Arctic sea ice decline: Faster than forecast, Geophysical Research Letters vol. 34, L09501, doi:10.1029/2007GL029703, 2007]

    Source: Slide 7 from: "Feedbacks in the climate system and implications for future climate projections", Presentation to ”Climate, Oceans and Policies”, Washington DC, November 1, 2005 by Tore Furevik (Geophysical Institute, University of Bergen
    Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, Bergen, Norway).

    This is of great practical signifance: In 2006, predictions on the final demise of the Arctic’s floating ice were brought forward from 2080-2100 to 2040 and more recently 2030. The melting of the floating ice around the north pole is now considered unstoppable. The polar bear’s only habitant will be the zoo. Data presented at the American Geophysical Union in December 2006 suggests that the Arctic may be free of all summer ice by as early as 2030, "a positive feedback loop with dramatic implications for the entire Arctic region" according to Dr Marika Holland, because the Earth would lose a major reflective surface and so absorb more solar energy, potentially accelerating climatic change across the world. "Our hypothesis is that we’ve reached the tipping point," says Ron Lindsay of the University of Washington in Seattle. "For sea ice, the positive feedback is that increased summer melt means decreased winter growth and then even more melting the next summer, and so on". With no ice, the Arctic region will rapidly begin heating, perhaps by as much as 12 degrees, with dramatic consequences for the stability of the Greenland ice sheet, which is likely to begin irreversible melting at less than 2°C of warming and is almost certain at less than 3°C, resulting in an eventual sea level rise of seven metres.

    NASA’s Prof. James Hansen in "Scientific Reticence and Sea Level Rise" identifies a ‘scientific reticence’ that "in at least some cases, hinders communication with the public about dangers of global warming… Scientific reticence may be a consequence of the scientific method.  Success in science depends on objective skepticism.  Caution, if not reticence, has its merits.  However, in a case such as ice sheet instability and sea level rise, there is a danger in excessive caution.  We may rue reticence, if it serves to lock in future disasters". The case of ice sheet disintegration at the recent IPCC meetings caused deep concern amongst scientists.
    Sources: Fred Pearce, "Climate change: What the IPCC didn’t tell us", New Scientist, 9 February 2007; McKie, R.,
    "Scientists challenge ‘cautious’ UN report", The Observer, 28 January 2007
    Little time to avoid big thaw, scientists warn

    Emissions rises

    CO2 emissions from fossil-fuel burning and industrial processes have been accelerating at a global scale, with their growth rate increasing from 1.1 percent/year for 1990-1999 to >3 percent/year for 2000-2004. The emissions growth rate since 2000 was greater than for the most fossil-fuel intensive of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change emissions scenarios (known as "business as usual") developed in the late 1990s.
    Source: Global and regional drivers of accelerating CO2 emissions

    As well New Scientist reports that the temperature rise from 1990 to 2005 — 0.33°C — was "near the top end of the range" of IPCC climate model predictions.

    Is the IPCC process dangerously conservative?

    The summaries of the IPCC research, known as Summary for Policy Makers (SPMs), are subject to political interference. The IPCC process is bogged down in line-by-line negotiations by government representatives from around the world that produces a lowest-common-demoninator, conservative report. British researchers who saw drafts of the February 2007 IPCC Working Group 1 SPM claim it was significantly watered down when governments became involved in writing it. As early as the IPCC’s first report in 1990, US, Saudi and Soviet delegations acted in “watering down the sense of the alarm in the wording, beefing up the aura of uncertainty” (Jeremy Leggett, "The Carbon War: Global Warming and the End of the Oil Era" 2001, p 15).

    Reflecting this reticence, a number of impact events are occuring more rapidly than the IPCC reports. For example, whilst recent research supports climate science models which say that the earth’s carbon sink is weakening, the 2007 IPCC WG1 says "Models used to date do not include uncertainties in climate-carbon cycle feedback… because a basis in published literature is lacking… Climate-carbon cycle coupling is expected to add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere as the climate system warms, but the magnitude of this feedback is uncertain".

    Compiled by David Spratt
    3 September 2007

  • APEC climate proposal damned

    Draft resolutions being prepared for the APEC summit in September and leaked to the ABC called for avoiding deforestation as a partial solution to climate change. The proposal has been criticised by Greenpeace clean energy campaigner, Ben Pearson, as being a step backward from Kyoto. "It is a return to the aspirational targets of the early nineties," he said. he called for the conference to embrace and extend the Kyoto Protocol, rather than undermining it.

    Greens leader Bob Brown has announced an invitation to the APEC heads of government to come to Tasmania  and view the clear felling of native forests which are being destroyed to feed the new pulp mill being built in Tasmania. The pulp mill, proposed by woodchipping giant, Gunns Limited, will burn 500,000 tonnes of wood per annum and put out millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases. Environment minister Malcolm Turnbull has said he will assess the environmental impact of the pulp mill but has not agreed to consider greenhouse gas pollution as part of that assessment.

    "Prime Minister Howard will be an APEC hypocrite if he calls on other countries to stop burning forests but continues to subsidise and promote it in Australia," Bob Brown said.

     

  • Farmers and tree huggers form climate alliance

    Rural communities, and the businesses that support them, are at the front line of climate change impacts. With a changing climate and uncertainty about future government responses to the challenge, rural communities are vulnerable to both the physical and regulatory consequences of climate change.

    The Alliance acknowledges that Australia is tracking close to its Kyoto target due largely to the efforts of Australian farmers reducing emissions, particularly from practices such as minimum tillage and ceasing broad-scale land-clearing, while emissions from most other sectors have continued to increase.

    The Alliance believes that rural Australia can continue to help turn around Australia’s rising greenhouse gas emissions and make the switch to a clean energy economy. While commitments to introduce a price of greenhouse gas emissions are welcome, complementary measures will be necessary to help rural Australia play its part.

    We need to build on rural Australia’s history of innovation and resilience by ensuring a mix of policies and programs to:

    1. Prosper: Create effective and sustainable economic drivers from harvesting clean renewable energy, farming carbon and bio-diversity stewardship, such as setting a target for clean renewable energy.

    2. Strengthen: Secure a viable, vital and productive future for rural Australia by forward planning and providing for social and physical infrastructure and services such as mental health facilities and workforce skills.

    3. Adapt: Make information, tools and resources accessible to rural Australians with a view to adapting to and preparing for the unavoidable impacts of climate change. Recognise that farmers have an ageing profile and many operate small or medium scale enterprises.

    Working together and supported by government, rural Australia can prosper from a clean energy future.

  • World Bank censored climate change report

    It was politics that prevented the publication of that paper, according to
    one senior bank insider who spoke to the Los Angeles Times, and politics
    that has been the principal obstacle to progress since. Only now, with the
    Bush administration on the ropes politically and the scientific evidence for
    global warming reaching such critical mass that even President George Bush
    has been forced to acknowledge its reality, are those same bank officials
    trying again to put the issue on the agenda. "Our biggest obstacle has been
    that politically, [climate change] is very controversial," Kristalina
    Georgieva, the bank’s strategy and operations director for sustainable
    development, told the LA Times.

    She said that, even under the best of circumstances, it will be at least two
    years before the bank starts measuring the impact of fossil fuel-related
    projects on the planet’s health. "We are not moving fast enough," she added.
    "It’s not possible to be moving fast enough."

    The GAP has uncovered evidence of one striking instance of Bush
    administration censorship. In 2006, the bank’s vice presidents responded to
    a request from the Group of Eight industrialised countries and commissioned
    a draft report entitled Climate Change, Energy and Sustainable Development:
    Towards an Investment Framework. They endorsed the report, according to the
    minutes of a meeting obtained by the GAP.

    Subsequently, however, Mr Wolfowitz’s office put out a memo asking the team
    to rework the paper, "shifting from a climate lens mainly to a clean-energy
    lens". The edited paper issued a few months later was eventually called
    Clean Energy and Development: Towards an Investment Framework.

    The World Bank has come under fire from environmental groups for a number of
    decisions, including a recent grant to develop lignite mining and power
    plants in Kosovo. Lignite — or brown coal — pollutes the air heavily when
    burnt and is generally regarded as one of the dirtiest fuel sources on the
    planet.

    The investment appears to go against the bank’s own policy, from 2001,
    whereby it decided to try to phase out oil and gas investments by 2008 and
    to extend an existing moratorium on investments in coal mining.

    The GAP put out a report in March detailing similar problems at other
    agencies, most notably the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
    which, among other duties, tracks hurricanes and other extreme weather
    phenomena. The report cited "objectionable and possibly illegal restrictions
    on the communication of scientific information to the media" — including
    censorship of interviews and press releases.

    More recently, the GAP has reported the Bush administration’s refusal to
    consider climate change as it prepares to expand the national air transport
    system threefold over the next 20 years. A multi-agency group called the
    Next Generation Air Transportation System has simply ignored global warming
    in its past two annual reports.

    Mr Wolfowitz was forced to step down in June after it emerged that he had
    given a lucrative sinecure to his girlfriend and offered her excessive pay
    rises.

  • Arctic metldown will release greenhouse gas


    For thousands of years, the fossil fuel deposits lay locked under the ice
    and inaccessible. Ironically, the very process of burning fossil fuels
    releases massive amounts of carbon dioxide, or CO2, and forces an increase
    in the Earth’s temperature, which in turn melts the Arctic ice, making
    available even more oil and gas for energy. Burning these potential oil and
    gas finds would further increase CO2 emissions in coming decades, depleting
    the Arctic ice even more quickly.

    But there is an even more dangerous aspect to the unfolding drama in the
    Arctic. While governments and oil giants are hoping the melting ice will
    allow them access to the world’s last treasure trove of oil and gas,
    climatologists are deeply worried about something else buried under the ice
    that, if unearthed, could wreak havoc on the biosphere, with dire
    consequences for human life.

    Much of the Siberian sub-Arctic region, an area the size of France and
    Germany combined, is a vast, frozen peat bog. Before the most recent Ice
    Age, the area was mostly grassland, teeming with wildlife. The coming of the
    glaciers entombed the organic matter below the permafrost, where it has
    remained ever since. Although the surface of Siberia is largely barren,
    there is as much organic matter buried underneath the permafrost as there is
    in all of the world’s tropical rain forests.

    Now the permafrost is thawing on land and along the seabeds. If it occurs in
    the presence of oxygen on land, the decomposing of organic matter leads to
    the production of CO2. If the permafrost thaws along lake shelves, in the
    absence of oxygen, the decomposing matter releases methane. Methane is the
    most potent of the greenhouse gases, with a greenhouse effect 23 times that
    of CO2.

    Katey Walter of the Institute of Arctic Biology at the University of Alaska
    in Fairbanks wrote in the journal Nature last year, and in Philosophical
    Transactions of the Royal Society in May, that the melting of the permafrost
    and subsequent release of methane is a "ticking time bomb."

    Walter and her researchers warned of a tipping point sometime within this
    century, when the release of methane could create an uncontrollable feedback
    effect, dramatically warming the atmosphere, which would in turn warm the
    land, lakes and seabed, further melting the permafrost and releasing more
    methane. Once that threshold is reached, there will be nothing humans can
    do. Scientists suspect that similar events have occurred in the ancient
    past, between glacial periods.

    Scientists are particularly concerned that the thawing permafrost is also
    creating shadow lakes across the Siberian sub-Arctic landscape. The lake
    waters have a higher ambient temperature than the surrounding permafrost. As
    a result, the permafrost near the lakes thaws more quickly, forcing the
    ground surfaces to collapse into the lakes. The stored organic carbon then
    decomposes into the lake bottoms. Methane from that decomposition bubbles to
    the surface and escapes into the atmosphere. Scientists calculate that
    thousands of tons of methane will be released from Arctic lakes as the
    permafrost thaws.

    A global tragedy of monumental proportions is unfolding at the top of the
    world, and the human race is all but oblivious to what’s happening.

    When U.S. astronauts stepped onto the moon in 1969, Neil Armstrong’s first
    words were, "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." The
    Russian aquanauts, landing on the Arctic seabed, might just as well have
    said, "One small dive for man, one giant leap backward for life on Earth."

    …………

    Jeremy Rifkin is the author of "The Hydrogen Economy: The Creation of the
    World Wide Energy Web and the Redistribution of Power on Earth."