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  • John Kerry hails progress of US-China climate talks

     

     

    The senator’s comments mark a further sweetening of the mood music between the two nations that together account for almost half of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, but this has yet to translate into concrete progress.

    In their formal positions, the two sides remain far apart. China wants developed nations to make a 40% in emissions by 2020 from 1990 levels, far above the goal set by President Obama’s administration.

     

    The United States wants China to set voluntary but verifiable goals to reduce its energy use and, in the longer term, to join richer nations in cutting overall emissions.

     

    But Kerry said senior Chinese politicians had shown a willingness to compromise, particularly over the 40% target that he described as politically impossible in the US at present.

     

    By sharing know-how and conducting joint research into renewable and energy-saving technology, he said China would realise that it can go beyond its current target of a 20% cut in energy intensity relative to economic growth.

     

    The Chinese government has already tripled its target for wind power and will soon announce a $200bn investment in clean energy, Kerry said.

     

    He quoted first vice-premier Li Keqiang as saying “Let’s do it” with regard to bilateral cooperation in the field.

     

    Major sticking points remain over the question of which nations will pay and how much will be spent on measures to mitigate climate change and its impact. It is also far from certain that China will agree to the stringent verification process sought by the US.

     

    How far each side is willing to compromise will be largely determined in June, when the chief US negotiator Todd Stern visits Beijing, US politicians consider new legislation to cut emissions and the United Nations hosts international talks in Bonn at which the first negotiating texts will be on the table.

     

    US house speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said the possibility of a deal on the environment could transform relations between the world’s richest and most populous nations.

     

    “I do see this opportunity for climate change to be … a game-changer,” she told students at the elite Tsinghua University. “The impact of climate change is a tremendous risk to the security and wellbeing of our countries.”

     

    In a sign of shifting priorities, Pelosi has been noticeably quiet about China’s human rights record during this week’s visit. She was previously a vociferous critic of Beijing’s controls on the media, political activists, lawyers and religious groups.

     

    Many doubt the two nations are being ambitious enough. If China sticks to its current energy efficiency goals and growth rate, the consultancy McKinsey estimates that its emissions will double by 2030.

     

    “That will swamp everything that Europe and the US is willing to do,” said Charlie McElwee, a Shanghai-based environmental lawyer.

  • Assessment of CO2 Levels Hansen

    As we must have North Pole Summer Ice to have a “safe” climate system due to its ability to reflect large amounts of Sunlight, it means that “safe” levels of CO2 in the atmosphere lie somewhere between 300 and 325 ppm CO2. Unfortunately we are not sure exactly where that is, so the “safe” target / goal for CO2 concentrations is 300 ppm or below.

    “Safe” Climate = 300 ppm CO2 or below

    Now knowing this, you can see how ridiculous all the proposals to stabilise our Greenhouse gases at levels higher than today are.

    James Hansen suggests that we have only decades to return to a “safe” level of greenhouse gases or we will run the risk of passing points of “no return” for a number of critical global warming positive feedback mechanisms.

    James has proposed an interim target of 350 ppm CO2 and the closure of the coal industry, the latter of which he mentions in a recent letter to Kevin Rudd.

    “Prime Minister Rudd, we cannot avert our eyes from the basic fossil fuel facts, or the consequences for life on our planet of ignoring these fossil fuel facts. If we continue to build coal-fired power plants without carbon capture, we will lock in future climate disasters associated with passing climate tipping points. We must solve the coal problem now.”
    James Hansen letter to Kevin Rudd 27 March 2008

    Unfortunately people have already begun to misinterpret Hansen’s call for an interim target and are confusing this with a “safe” target. Please don’t do the same, as 350 ppm CO2 is as much of a death sentence for the planet as 400, 450, 550, 650 etc.

    1. http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/TargetCO2_20080407.pdf
    2. http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/RoyalCollPhyscns_Jan08.pdf

  • What James Hansen really said to Barack and Michelle

     

    The Australian government and coal industry pretend to be in love with carbon capture and storage policies and the government hands out large wacks of money to the coal industry in pursuing this pretence. Professor Hansen has a novel idea. He suggests that the power generation industry actually use carbon capture and storage technology not just talk about it. The alternative is that the use of coal for electricity generation be phased out. It would be interesting to see the faces of coal executives being told that they actually have to deploy the “clean coal” technology about which they talk so unceasingly.

    The second suggestion is that a gradually increasing carbon tax be imposed. Cap and trade emissions trading schemes of the kind proposed by the Rudd Government (and operating for some time in the EU) are rejected as generating lobbyists, special interests and non-productive millionaires at public expense with little gain for the environment. Similar criticism has been recently made of the Rudd Government’s scheme by ZeroGen, a company actually trying to operate a carbon capture and storage scheme. Professor Hansen’s proposal involves returning the revenue raised by the carbon tax to the populace on a per capita basis. Thus, small consumers of carbon will benefit and large consumers shall pay for the privilege. Products which avoid use of carbon in their production will be more competitive in the market place.

    A rising carbon tax provides certainty for industry and deployment of the new low carbon technology is modulated by the rate at which the tax increases. A carbon tax proposal is a slap in the face for the economists who promote the complexity of emissions trading schemes in the name of using the market to promote an efficient allocation of resources.

    Professor Hansen’s third policy recommendation is the allocation of large resources to the research and development of fourth generation nuclear power (with international co-operation). The suggestion that nuclear power in any form is a safe means of avoiding the danger of carbon emissions will challenge many conservationists.

    Professor Hansen anticipates some objections to this proposal. He suggests that concerns that such technology will not be available until too late do not factor in focused Presidential involvement in the process of development of the new technology.

    Fourth generation reactors are promoted by Professor Hansen as not only much safer than previous nuclear technology. He also suggests that have the potential to solve the problems created by earlier nuclear technology including the problem of storing or disposing of nuclear waste. He states: “Existing nuclear reactors use less than 1% of the energy in uranium, leaving more than 99% in long-lived nuclear waste. 4th GNP can ‘burn’ that waste, leaving a small volume of waste with a half-life of decades rather than thousands of years.”

    Professor Hansen warns of tipping points that would take the disastrous trajectory towards an ice free earth out of human control. He indicates that an appropriate level of carbon dioxide equivalent in the atmosphere is less than 350 parts per million, down from the existing 385 parts per million.

    Finally, the Hansen letter is not complimentary of either the coal industry or the existing nuclear industry. The letter states that it is “noteworthy that, even with the presence of poorly designed nuclear power plants in the past, and in some cases demonstrably sloppy operations, the waste from coal-fired power plants has done far more damage, and even spread more radioactive material around the world than all nuclear power plants combined, including Chernobyl.”

    As usual, Professor Hansen’s courage to say what (after careful thought) he thinks outstrips any desire he may have to win friends. Hopefully, at some stage, similar courage might be displayed by Australia’s politicians and public servants.

  • Methane Hydrates

    It is perfectly feasible, therefore, that relatively small areas of land, like the west Siberian permafrost, or the deep sediments around the Gulf of Mexico, have enormous potential both for energy supply and heating the atmosphere to a level that would cause a catastrophic mass extinction of life.

    If we take the current controllable methane sources as being about 300 million tonnes (or 6400 million tonnes carbon dioxide equivalent) then the complete release of the western Siberian reservoir would be the equivalent of 233 years of current human methane emissions. It is believed, however, that the total reservoir of methane hydrates within the permafrost and under the sea could be anything between 750 and 3000 billion tonnes of methane, or up to 2000 years worth of human greenhouse gas emissions.

    Now, I’m not suggesting for a minute that all of this methane is going to pop into the atmosphere in one great Earthly gasp – there is no chance of this happening – but there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the great permafrosts of the north are no longer staying frozen during the summer months, and may be disappearing entirely. Although methane emissions have temporarily stabilised due to the drying out of wetlands, they will again begin to rise inexorably, and to these emissions will be added the methane that is coming from the hydrates that were previously safely encased in the arctic ice.

    No one can put a figure on the expected increase, but this is clearly a greenhouse effect feedback that we could do without. Even if the amount of methane was only doubled, we would see the total global warming potential increase by 20%. If, due to global warming, just the west Siberian permafrost reservoir were to be released, over a period of, say, 50 years, then within 12 years the amount of methane in the atmosphere would rapidly increase to 9000 million tonnes. The impact of this would be catastrophic.

    The current (2007) level of methane in the atmosphere is about 1.8 parts per million. This would increase by a factor of 20 to about 36 parts per million, resulting in the amount of human induced global warming increasing by a factor of 3.6. The simple outcome of this would be an increase in global temperatures of at least 3 degrees Celsius, with a dramatic increase in violent storms, desertification, flooding and, of course, the widespread inundation caused by sea level rise. The actual outcome would be far worse – the three degree increase would trigger a further set of feedbacks described by Mark Lynas thus:

    “The end of the world is nigh. A three-degree increase in global temperature would throw the carbon cycle into reverse. Instead of absorbing carbon dioxide, vegetation and soils start to release it. So much carbon pours into the atmosphere that it pumps up atmospheric concentrations by 250 parts per million by 2100, boosting global warming by another 1.5C. In other words carbon-cycle feedbacks could tip the planet into runaway global warming much earlier than anyone had expected.”

    And all this from just one piece of permafrost, in just one of the two great hydrate complexes on Earth. And we haven’t even considered carbon dioxide.

    Defusing The Timebomb

    Guess what? This doesn’t have to happen. It really doesn’t.

    There is no doubt that humanity, as a whole, has to dramatically cut the amount of carbon dioxide it produces; that is a task that has to remain the top priority for every sector of society – individuals, communities, businesses and governments. Without a dramatic reduction – some estimates put it as 80-90% – in carbon emissions in the next 30 or so years, the planet will be well on the way to the kind of tipping points so graphically described in the previous section.

    What struck me when I was researching this article, though, was how quickly the concentration of methane in the atmosphere can fall when its emissions are reduced, compared to the 50-200 years taken by carbon dioxide. Remember how the methane levels remained static at 9000 million tonnes in the west Siberia permafrost example? This stabilisation was because a methane molecule only remains in the atmosphere for an average of 12 years.

    According to the IPCC, if we can reduce our emissions of methane by just 50% – which seems perfectly reasonable given the incredibly wasteful lives we currently lead – then within 12 years, atmospheric methane levels will have fallen to 70% of their current level. This is equivalent to a 5.4% reduction in total radiative forcing (the measure of how much extra we are warming the atmosphere) – something that with carbon dioxide would take around a hundred years even if emissions were massively, and rapidly reduced.

    So there you have it. A greenhouse gas that could potentially make this planet uninhabitable in a very short time is also a gas that – because we are currently producing it at pointlessly high levels – could easily be reduced with a few simple, if significant, changes, and buy us valuable time in which to fix the problem we have created.

  • Stimulus went to 16.000 dead people

     

    The tax office admits it does not know where the payments to dead people ultimately finish up.

    “It is the role of the executor in administering the proceeds of the deceased estate to determine how the tax bonus payment will be distributed to beneficiaries,” the ATO said.

    More than $11 million was spent on “marketing” the stimulus package.

    About $8 billion has been paid to 8.7 million people so far.

    The government is also sending about $25 million in payments to people living overseas, with non-Australians who have worked in the country for at least six months receiving the funds.

    New Zealand and British economies will benefit the most, with 40 per cent of the overseas payments going to expatriates in those countries.

    A total of 7305 people will receive the payment to an overseas address and 18,000 will receive the payment via their bank account.

    The tax office was unable to determine how many prisoners had received the payment.

  • Cape York row threatens Rudd’s $60m UN bid

     

    Various estimates have put the cost of such a bid at between $40 and $60 million and the Government has already raised eyebrows by enlisting Governor-General Quentin Bryce to lobby African leaders for votes.

    Professor Wiltshire, who spent six years as Australia’s representative on the executive board of the United Nations’ Educational and Scientific Organisation (UNESCO), says the Government does not know how difficult the bid will be.

    And he says Mr Garrett’s recent decision to support the World Heritage plan has made the task almost impossible.

    Last Friday Mr Garrett and his state counterparts agreed to put the peninsula forward for listing, but the move has angered some Indigenous groups who argue it will stop them entering the real economy.

    The Government stands accused of putting environmental concerns before the very real social and economic problems among the Cape’s Indigenous population.

    “The World Heritage process now requires full consultation, particularly with Indigenous people,” Professor Wiltshire told the ABC.

    “If the Australian Government is seen not to have properly abided by the spirit and the letter of those arrangements, it means Australia could be seen as acting contrary to the spirit of UNESCO.

    “These are the sorts of things that affect a country’s reputation and if you are going for a seat on the UN Security Council you have to show that you are totally committed to United Nations principles.”

    Mr Garrett’s office was at pains to point out the heritage proposal was a first step in what could be up to a 10-year consultation process.

    “The development of the tentative list is the first stage in what will be a long and detailed consultation over the coming decade, helping ensure that we submit World Heritage nominations that have the best chance of success,” a spokesperson said.

    “The Rudd Government is committed to World Heritage and the safekeeping of the values of our region’s extraordinary World Heritage places and we have previously indicated our support for the listing of appropriate areas [of] Cape York in consultation with the Queensland Government, traditional owners and other stakeholders.”

    But Professor Wiltshire, the inaugural chairman of the World Heritage Wet Tropics Authority, says the talk is not being backed up by action.

    He says the UN is extremely unlikely to approve the listing of an area without proper consultation with the Indigenous population, and the Government needs to produce more than just symbolic gestures.

    “To get a seat it’s not enough to go around lobbying the world and doing deals and all these sorts of things, you’ve got to show that total commitment to UN principles,” he said.

    “There is a danger that this (World Heritage proposal) could be interpreted that Australia is not abiding by its true role as a member of the UN.”

    Much is at stake.

    The quality of life of thousands of Australia’s most vulnerable people relies on being able to properly engage in the economy of Cape York.

    The health of a potentially fragile ecosystem relies on sensible and sustainable management.

    But a UN Security Council seat and the prestige of a World Heritage listing could push those concerns to the side.

    Mr Garrett’s office says the Government’s aim is to balance the competing desires of development and conservation.

    “World Heritage listing can be a huge opportunity for economic development on the Cape”, a statement from Mr Garrett’s office said.

    “Australia’s 17 World Heritage properties generate $12 billion annually and support over 120,000 jobs across the country.”

    Professor Wiltshire sees the danger in stumbling blindly into an environmental, political and economic quagmire.

    “If they haven’t properly consulted with the Indigenous people and taken account of their values and wishes and needs there’d be no prospect and the nomination would be stalled,” he said.

    “The World Heritage proposal is doomed if Australia still tries to gun it through. Australia will have a very bad reputation on the international stage.

    “I don’t think Australia has properly thought through what’s involved in this bid.”

    The ABC sent a series of detailed questions to the Prime Minister’s office but a spokesperson would only say that the Government was committed to the Security Council bid.