Climate chaos – Page 94

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.Â The items listed here detail progress on coordinating 6.5 billion people in the most critical project undertaken by humanity.Â

Copenhagen: World leaders ‘face public fury’ if agreement proves impossible

The row centres on the draft treaty texts the Danish presidency of the summit must produce for leaders to finalise and whether they end the existing Kyoto protocol, signed in 1997. Rich nations want a new treaty to reflect a much-changed world economic order, while poorer nations insist the legal demands Kyoto makes on industrialised polluters must be preserved.

Yesterday began badly, with Connie Hedegaard, Danish environment minister and chair of the summit, resigning to allow her prime minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen to take over. She called the move “appropriate” with so many heads of state and government attending, though it had not been signalled in advance. Some delegates speculated it was to smooth the way for the introduction of a draft treaty by the Danish presidency that would sideline Kyoto.

But if, as Miliband believes, it will be possible to reassure developing countries over Kyoto, there were some positive steps to build on in other areas.

The most significant of these was progress between the US and China, the world’s biggest polluters and whose actions will determine the fate of summit.

US senator John Kerry gave a packed conference hall a “100%” guarantee to get climate change laws passed through Congress if the countries at the summit managed an overall deal.

“With a successful deal, next year, the US Congress – house and Senate – will pass legislation,” Kerry said to applause. “I will tell you right now, 100%, we are going to pass major climate and energy legislation that is going to have an impact on emissions.”

A critical part of the Copenhagen deal the US wants is “transparency” from China on the curbs on carbon emissions Beijing has promised – an inspection regime. “To pass a bill, we must be able to assure a senator from Ohio that steelworkers in his state won’t lose their jobs to India and China because those countries are not participating in a way that is measurable, reportable and verifiable,” said Kerry, who heads the Senate foreign relations committee and is guiding climate laws through the Senate.

After talks with Kerry, the chief Chinese negotiator, Su Wei, held out an olive branch. He said China would be more open and improve the quality of information about its measures to improve energy efficiency and curb emissions.

“I believe through these measures, we can see that China will only do better in terms of effectiveness, openness and transparency in implementing the goals we set,” Su said.

While stopping short of American demands for independent verification, Su said more data would be made available through existing mechanisms. He was confident this would be enough to end one of the disputes. “I don’t see any further necessity to worry about this,” he said. It is uncertain if other countries will be willing to accept China’s offer, but Su’s comments show China’s efforts to help the Obama administration pass a climate bill through the senate.

Such a bill is crucial if the US is to join a global treaty, while a global treaty would be crippled by the absence of the US. The uncertainty about whether America is prepared to cut its greenhouse gas emissions, and by how much, has dogged the negotiations. It has allowed developing countries, such as China and India, to stall on committing to action and has bred resentment from African and poor countries that will suffer the most from climate change.

India’s environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, was unimpressed by Kerry’s rhetoric. He said India was already prepared to introduce some of the reporting mechanisms America was demanding. A strong offer on climate change finance would help ease the resentment of developing countries, he added.

“If the US comes up with a generous financial offer, the chemistry of Copenhagen would entirely change,” Ramesh told the Guardian. “But they can’t do it on Friday morning when Obama gets here. They must change the atmosphere now.”

Tackling deforestation, which contributes up to 20% of all greenhouse gas emissions, took a step forward, with the UK, along with Japan, Norway, America, France and Australia, agreeing that by 2010 a total of $3.5bn would be spent on saving trees. The money comes from the so-called “fast start” fund worth $30bn to poorer countries over three years.

On the vexed issue of longer term finance, the Ethiopian prime minister Meles Zenawi presented an offer to reduce developing country demands by 75% to $100bn a year from 2020, in return for guarantees of how the money would be distributed. But his offer was derided as a sellout by some nations.

Further to IPCC 9m Sea-level rise prediction

Lets assume that rising temperature follows a regular trajectory, and lets assume that there is a one-to-one correlation between temperature rise and its consequences. Such a regular trajectory is unlikely as the combination of growing C02-e, carbon and ice-melt feedbacks, solar cycles and stronger El Niño may join with extreme weather events and global tipping points to speed up this process.

Though we don’t understand many of the complexities, the simplicity of this calculation has a lot to recommend it.

With steady linear growth the earth will be heated to 1oC by 2012, and to 2oC by 2030.

Paleoclimatic evidence shows that for every 1oC rise we should expect a minimum 4-metre rise in sea levels.

We have just calculated that by 2030 the conditions will be in place to guarantee a minimal 8-metre sea level rise. With the usual inertial delays of thirty years or so built into the earth’s system, and applying a regular trajectory for sea levels as we did with temperature, we could be looking at 50cm rise within a decade and a full metre during the next.

During this time large areas of agricultural land will be gradually flooded, in Egypt, Bangladesh, northern China and the Philippines. Florida, Boston and London will be badly affected, as will Melbourne and much of our coastline.

Food production will be lessened as the Himalayan glaciers melt, there will be a lot less to fish and land will be lost to drought and sea. In the same period global population will rise by one billion, most living in cities.

This is a recipe for catastrophe if we dont prepare.

We are fully aware of the refugee crisis that would follow such sea-level rise, and the likelihood that there wuld be war.

However we vary the parameters, this process shows we have run out of time and should prepare now for what cannot be prevented if we wish to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilisation developed and to which life on earth is adapted.

A National Risk Assessment Council is needed to prepare citizens for the changes that are coming, (Source John James (Planet extinction.com))

IPCC forecasts 9m sea-level rise if temperatures meet 2C threshold

The 2C figure is significant because this is level of warming that is likely to be adopted as the threshold to be avoided by the UN climate negotiations in Copenhagen – although small islands states and developing nations have argued that 1.5C would be a more appropriate target.

Nine metres of sea level rise is higher than anything predicted so far because the new study takes into account the potential that the Greenland and west Antarctic ice sheets start to melt as the Earth warms. This did not factor into the most recent assessment of the state of climate science by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2007. It forecast a sea-level rise of up to 59cm by 2100, and between 4-6m in the next few hundred years, if average global temperatures stabilised around 2C.

“Everybody’s known that the IPCC’s last numbers were underestimates because they didn’t include all the factors that can accelerate ice sheet melting,” said Robert Kopp of Princeton University, who led the latest study. “If the future models are limited, you want to look at other approaches to get at the question of sea-level rise one approach is to turn to the past record of sea-level rise.”

Kopp’s team reconstructed the sea levels in the last interglacial period, around 125,000 years ago. At the time, polar temperatures were around 3-5C warmer and equatorial sea-surface temperatures were around 2.5-3.5C warmer than today. “So you look at things like coral reef terraces and how high they grew and, if you know something about the ecology of corals, you can say how high sea level was relative to the top of the coral reef. Or you look at old beaches that are now stranded above the sea-line, or you look at sediments that have textures that indicate they were deposited inter-tidally.”

His results, published in the journal Nature, showed that sea levels around the world during the last interglacial were between 6.6m and 9m higher than today. “During this period when temperatures were 2-3C above pre-industrial levels, global sea level looks like it was very likely at least 6.6m higher than today, which implies significant melting of the Greenland and west Antarctic ice sheets.”

Kopp said the results could be used to infer what could happen to future sea levels over the next few hundred years, as a result of human-induced global warming. “The warming we’re on track to do now is more than enough to commit us to last-interglacial levels of sea-level rise.”

Kopp’s work echoes recent research by the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) suggesting that sea-levels could rise much higher than predicted by the IPCC by the end of the century. The study by SCAR suggested that sea levels could rise by up to 1.4m by 2100 if the Antarctic ice began to melt.

The Australian runs a smear campaign against Tuvalu negotiator

Hi all,

The Australian today runs a front page smear story on the amazing Tuvalu
negotiator Ian Fry. His home has been staked out by them, his wife and
neighbour intimidated.

Ian has been a tireless worker for Tuvalu 11 years. Working endless to
help the small state push for better global action on climate change.

Letters to the editor needed ASAP – letters@theaustralian.com.au

A sentence or two will do!

We stand with the islands, we stand with the vulnerable. We abhor those
who use their power to intimidate and threaten the vulnerable for their
own short-term gain. The Australian is doing it to Ian Fry, but Rudd is
doing it to all the island leaders over in Copenhagen.

It’s disgusting and they need to know that.
Tim

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Penny Wong jeered, Hugo Chavez cheered

She said, for example, that all major economies, and all major emitters needed to make binding emission reduction commitments if a Copenhagen deal was going to help the climate.

And she said that it was time to “seal a deal”, which after nine days of negotiation that have achieved very little and a “text” that remains a sea of brackets – indicating the yet-to-be-agreed bits – that seems self evidently true.

It wasn’t a particularly strong, rousing or detailed statement – the only real commitment was that the umbrella group emission reductions would be “substantial”.

But before she rose to speak the conference proceedings were interrupted by people with whistles and sirens chanting “stop green capitalism” – a sign of the anger in the developing world that the Danish host government is trying to wrest the process from the professional negotiators, who have failed to make any progress, and hand it to politicians, who might have some chance of achieving something before we all leave on

Speaker after speaker from the developing world railed against this idea, with the Sudanese vice president Nafie Ali Nafie speaking on behalf of the developing world and declaring that they stood ready to agree to a new commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol. That would be the agreement where developing countries aren’t obliged to do anything. The other proposed agreement that would require big developing country emitters to bind themselves to their own type of emission reductions they are a lot less keen on.

Then President Chavez brought the house down.

When he said the process in Copenhagen was “not democratic, it is not inclusive, but isn’t that the reality of our world, the world is really and imperial dictatorship…down with imperial dictatorships” he got a rousing round of applause.

When he said there was a “silent and terrible ghost in the room” and that ghost was called capitalism, the applause was deafening.

But then he wound up to his grand conclusion – 20 minutes after his 5 minute speaking time was supposed to have ended and after quoting everyone from Karl Marx to Jesus Christ – “our revolution seeks to help all people…socialism, the other ghost that is probably wandering around this room, that’s the way to save the planet, capitalism is the road to hell….let’s fight against capitalism and make it obey us.” He won a standing ovation.

And the Ethiopian President Meles Zenawi – who made a sensible and considered and detailed proposal about how to get financing to help climate change adaptation and mitigation in poor countries? He was far less enthusiastically received.

Support the Island Leaders now

Australian Greens Senator Christine Milne

Dear friend,

I am writing to you again from Copenhagen, where the conference has been reverberating for days with the brave voices of island leaders.

The island leaders, from Tuvalu to the Maldives, Grenada to Kiribati, are pleading for serious climate action from developed and developing countries alike. They rightly point out that the kind of weak deal that rich countries like Australia have on offer is a suicide pact for them and they will not sign it.

Support the island leaders now!

But Kevin Rudd responded to this heartfelt plea from the world’s most vulnerable people by trying to bully them into submission. He picked up the phone and started to call Pacific leaders, berating them for what he called their “unproductive stance”. You can read about it in my blogs from Copenhagen on our website.

These island leaders will be coming under immense pressure from the world’s largest and richest countries in the next few days. Those who want a political outcome more than they want a meaningful safe climate outcome are pressuring the islands to pull back and accept a weak deal.

Island leaders need our support now!