Homage to Arrhenius

Climate target is not radical enough

Via The Guardian: Climate target is not radical enough - study. Excerpt:

One of the world's leading climate scientists warns today that the EU and its international partners must urgently rethink targets for cutting carbon dioxide in the atmosphere because of fears they have grossly underestimated the scale of the problem.

In a startling reappraisal of the threat, James Hansen, head of the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, calls for a sharp reduction in C02 limits.

Hansen says the EU target of 550 parts per million of C02 - the most stringent in the world - should be slashed to 350ppm. He argues the cut is needed if "humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilisation developed". A final version of the paper Hansen co-authored with eight other climate scientists, is posted today on the Archive website. Instead of using theoretical models to estimate the sensitivity of the climate, his team turned to evidence from the Earth's history, which they say gives a much more accurate picture.

The team studied core samples taken from the bottom of the ocean, which allow C02 levels to be tracked millions of years ago. They show that when the world began to glaciate at the start of the Ice age about 35m years ago, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere stood at about 450ppm.

"If you leave us at 450ppm for long enough it will probably melt all the ice - that's a sea rise of 75 metres. What we have found is that the target we have all been aiming for is a disaster - a guaranteed disaster," Hansen told the Guardian.

At levels as high as 550ppm, the world would warm by 6C, the paper finds. Previous estimates had suggested warming would be just 3C at that point.

Hansen has long been a prominent figure in climate change science. He was one of the first to bring the crisis to the world's attention in testimony to Congress in the 1980s.

But his relationship with the Bush administration has been frosty. In 2005 he accused the White House and Nasa of trying to censor him. He has steadily revised his analysis of the scale of the global warming and was himself one of the architects of a 450ppm target. But he told the Guardian: "I realise that was too high."

The fundamental reason for his reassessment was what he calls "slow feedback" mechanisms which are only now becoming fully understood. They amplify the rise in temperature caused by increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases. Ice and snow reflect sunlight but when they melt, they leave exposed ground which absorbs more heat.

Antarctic ice sheet shrinking at faster rate

Via the Globe and Mail, a report on a new study: Antarctic ice sheet shrinking at faster rate. Excerpt:

"Over the time period of our survey, the ice sheet as a whole was certainly losing mass, and the mass loss increased by 75 per cent in 10 years," the study said.

The results of the research project, led by Dr. Eric Rignot, principal scientist for the Radar Science and Engineering Section at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory's in Pasadena, Calif., appear in the current issue of Nature Geoscience.

In an e-mail, Dr. Rignot attributed the shrinkage in the ice sheet to an upwelling of warm waters along the Antarctic coast, which is causing some glaciers to flow more rapidly into the ocean.

He suspects the trend is due to global warming, and isn't part of a normal natural fluctuation.

"I see that as the main driver for the change in ice mass. And this means that we are not in a natural cycle but in something that is related to global warming or global climate change, whichever you want to call it," he said.

The study said the continent had a net lost of about 196 billion tonnes of ice in 2006, an amount that is equal more than a third of the water in Lake Erie, up from 112 billion tonnes in 1996. The figures were calculated by deducting the amount of ice losses on the continent from the amount of snow computer models indicate it receives.

Is Gore the real villain?

George Monbiot has a long memory and a short temper, and both are on display in his latest column: Hurray! We’re Going Backwards! He blames the real failure of Kyoto on the self-serving terms that then-Vice President Al Gore established, which the US in Bali simply repeated. Excerpt:

By ensuring that the rich nations would not make real cuts, Gore also guaranteed that the poor ones scoffed when we asked them to do as we don’t. When George Bush announced, in 2001, that he would not ratify the protocol, the world cursed and stamped its feet. But his intransigence affected only the United States. Gore’s team ruined it for everyone.

The destructive power of the US delegation is not the only thing that hasn’t changed. After the Kyoto Protocol was agreed, the British environment secretary, John Prescott, announced that “this is a truly historic deal which will help curb the problems of climate change. For the first time it commits developed countries to make legally binding cuts in their emissions.”(4)

Ten years later the current environment secretary, Hilary Benn, told us that “this is an historic breakthrough and a huge step forward. For the first time ever all the world’s nations have agreed to negotiate on a deal to tackle dangerous climate change.”(5) Do these people have a chip inserted?

In both cases the United States demanded terms which appeared impossible for the other nations to accept. Before Kyoto, the other negotiators flatly rejected Gore’s proposals for emissions trading. So his team threatened to sink the talks. The other nations capitulated, but the US still held out on technicalities until the very last moment, when it suddenly appeared to concede. In 1997 and in 2007 it got the best of both worlds: it wrecked the treaty and was praised for saving it.

Hilary Benn is an idiot. Our diplomats are suckers. United States negotiators have pulled the same trick twice and for the second time our governments have fallen for it.

Gore speaks in Bali

Via The Standard in Hong Kong: Gore tells climate meet to ignore US.

Al Gore yesterday delivered a rousing call for the world to take strong action to fight climate change without the United States, accusing his country of scuttling a key UN conference in Bali.

With exhausted negotiators fighting against the clock over a draft text, the former US vice president who was awarded the Nobel peace prize this week for his environmental activism urged tough commitments to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

Gore, who narrowly lost to President George W Bush in 2000, told a packed conference room on the Indonesian island that he was no longer in office and "not bound by diplomatic niceties."

"So I am going to speak an inconvenient truth," said Gore, referring to the climate film that won him an Oscar.

"My own country, the United States, is principally responsible for obstructing progress here in Bali. We all know that," he said to loud applause.

"But my country is not the only one that can take steps to ensure that we move forward from Bali with progress and with hope."

Environment ministers or their stand-ins from more than 180 countries have until today to agree a framework for tackling global warming past 2012, when pledges under the Kyoto Protocol expire.

Hailing growing local efforts in the United States to fight global warming, Gore urged the conference to be hopeful that the next president who succeeds Bush in 2009 will take action.

In a nearly hour-long address, Gore likened the Earth to a planet with a fever and urged the delegates not to be remembered as the generation that let the North Pole melt.

The European Union, angered by what it sees as US-led efforts to water down the final text, warned it would snub climate talks called by Bush next month in Hawaii if the Bali meeting collapsed.

Rich, poor countries at odds over Bali climate deal

I've been too busy to pay much attention to Bali, but now it's time to catch up. For starters, a story in today's Globe and Mail: Rich, poor countries at odds over Bali climate deal. Excerpt:

Deep divisions between wealthy countries and developing countries are threatening to scuttle an agreement at the Bali climate conference, with only two days remaining to bridge the gap.

Negotiations on one key issue — the question of how to transfer clean technology from the rich countries to the developing world — broke down and collapsed in an acrimonious dispute in the early hours of this morning.

“Our partners don't seem to live up to their rhetoric about their desire for a maximum Bali outcome,” a leader of the G77 group of developing countries complained today.

An equally stubborn stalemate was continuing over whether the Bali conference should produce a “road map” with ambitious guidelines to shape a final agreement to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by wealthy countries 25 to 40 per cent by 2020.

Canada and the United States are leading the opposition to the European proposal, arguing that it would “prejudge” the results of future negotiations.

United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon said it might be “too ambitious” to put the European proposal into the Bali road map. “Practically speaking, this will have to be negotiated down the road,” he told reporters today.

But European leaders said they are still fighting to keep alive their proposal. And negotiators were trying a last-ditch rescue effort, creating an inner group of ministers from 40 countries to tackle the deadlocks over emission targets and technology transfer.

The technology dispute could be crucial to the fate of the Bali talks. The developing countries are unlikely to agree to cut their emissions if they don't receive any concrete promises from the wealthy nations on technology transfer.

It's embarrassing that our government is behaving so badly at the conference. But we probably have an election coming in the spring, and with any luck the Conservatives will be out and the next government will have a more sensible attitude.

UN kicks off global warming conference in Bali

Via the Toronto Star, an AP story: UN kicks off global warming conference in Bali. Excerpt:

Delegates and scientists from around the world opened the biggest-ever climate conference Monday, aiming to build a new international pact by 2009 to combat global warming – or risk economic and environmental disaster.

Some 10,000 conferees, activists and journalists from nearly 190 countries gathered on the resort island of Bali for two weeks of United Nations-led talks that follow a series of scientific reports this year concluding that the world has the technology to slow global warming, but must act immediately.

The Bali meeting will be the first major conference on climate change since former U.S. vice-president Al Gore – due in Bali next week – and a UN scientific council won the Nobel Peace Prize in October for their environmental work, feeding the growing sense of urgency as ice caps melt, oceans rise and extreme weather increases.

"You have on one side a very clear signal from the scientific community telling us what needs to be done, and telling us that it needs to be done now," said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the conference. "My question for the ministers that will be arriving here ... will be, `What is going to be your answer?"'

The immediate aim of the Bali conference will be to launch negotiations toward a pact to replace the Kyoto Protocol on global warming when it expires at the end of 2012, and set an agenda for the talks and a deadline.

The UN says such an agreement should be concluded by 2009 in order to have a system in place in time. A main thrust of the conference will be to draw the United States, the world's worst emitter of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, into the process. Washington did not ratify the Kyoto Protocol, arguing that mandatory cuts in emissions would harm the economy and calling into question the veracity of global-warming science.

Confronted with the scientific reports of the past year, however, the administration of President George W. Bush has signalled a willingness to play a larger role in the negotiations, and UN officials agree that they must craft a post-Kyoto framework that Washington will go along with.

Among the most contentious issues ahead will be whether emission cuts should be mandatory or voluntary, as the U.S. favours.

Also on the agenda will be to what extent up-and-coming economies like China and India will have to rein in their skyrocketing emissions, and how to help the world's poorest countries adapt to a worsening climate.

Expanding tropics 'a threat to millions'

Via The Independent: Expanding tropics 'a threat to millions.' Excerpt:

The tropical belt that girdles the Earth is expanding north and south, which could have dire consequences for large regions of the world where the climate is likely to become more arid or more stormy, scientists have warned in a seminal study published today.

Climate change is having a dramatic impact on the tropics by pushing their boundaries towards the poles at an unprecedented rate not foreseen by computer models, which had predicted this sort of poleward movement only by the end of the century.

The report comes as representatives from 191 countries around the world assemble on the island of Bali in Indonesia, to negotiate a new international treaty to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions.

Scientists have found that, during the past 25 years the equatorial region classified as climatologically tropical has expanded polewards by about 172 miles which has meant that a further 8.5 million sq miles of the Earth are now experiencing a tropical climate, compared to 1980.

The scientists warned there are grave implications for the many millions of people living in dry, subtropical regions bordering the tropics, which are at risk of becoming even more arid because of changes to rainfall patterns and wind directions.

"Several lines of evidence show that, during the past few decades, the tropical belt has expanded. This expansion has potentially important implications for subtropical societies and may lead to profound changes to the global climate system," the scientists say in their study published online in the journal Nature Geoscience.

"Most importantly, poleward movement of large-scale atmospheric circulation systems, such as jet streams and storm tracks, could result in shifts in precipitation patterns affecting natural ecosystems, agriculture and water resources," they say.

They are particularly concerned about the poleward movement of subtropical dry belts that could affect water supplies and agriculture over vast areas of the Mediterranean, the south-western United States, northern Mexico, southern Australia, southern Africa and parts of South America.

The full article is available only to subscribers. But here's the abstract of the Nature Geoscience article, re-paragraphed:

Some of the earliest unequivocal signs of climate change have been the warming of the air and ocean, thawing of land and melting of ice in the Arctic. But recent studies are showing that the tropics are also changing.

Several lines of evidence show that over the past few decades the tropical belt has expanded. This expansion has potentially important implications for subtropical societies and may lead to profound changes in the global climate system.

Most importantly, poleward movement of large-scale atmospheric circulation systems, such as jet streams and storm tracks, could result in shifts in precipitation patterns affecting natural ecosystems, agriculture, and water resources. The implications of the expansion for stratospheric circulation and the distribution of ozone in the atmosphere are as yet poorly understood.

The observed recent rate of expansion is greater than climate model projections of expansion over the twenty-first century, which suggests that there is still much to be learned about this aspect of global climate change.

That last sentence deserves great attention and sober thought.

Evidence of climate change 'unequivocal': UN report

Via CBC.ca: Evidence of climate change 'unequivocal': UN report. Excerpt:

Climate change could have far-reaching and "irreversible" consequences if more action is not taken to cut greenhouse gas emissions, a UN scientific panel warned in a report released Saturday.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in its report that evidence of climate change is "unequivocal."

It said the trend could lead to "abrupt" changes to the planet, cause human suffering and threaten some species with extinction.

"Slowing and reversing these threats is the defining challenge of our age,'' UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said as he unveiled the report in Valencia, Spain.

The Summary for Policymakers, and a longer version called the Synthesis Report, were written from thousands of pages of data and computer models based on six years of research compiled by the IPCC.

The 23-page summary said climate systems unquestionably have already begun to change and that human activities since the start of the industrial age have contributed to the warming.

You can download the Synthesis Report from the IPCC website.

Climate wars threaten billions

Via the Guardian Unlimited, an Observer report: Climate wars threaten billions. Excerpt:

A total of 46 nations and 2.7 billion people are now at high risk of being overwhelmed by armed conflict and war because of climate change. A further 56 countries face political destabilisation, affecting another 1.2 billion individuals.

This stark warning will be outlined by the peace group International Alert in a report, A Climate of Conflict, this week. Much of Africa, Asia and South America will suffer outbreaks of war and social disruption as climate change erodes land, raises seas, melts glaciers and increases storms, it concludes. Even Europe is at risk.

'Climate change will compound the propensity for violent conflict, which in turn will leave communities poorer and less able to cope with the consequences of climate change,' the report states.

The worst threats involve nations lacking resources and stability to deal with global warming, added the agency's secretary-general, Dan Smith. 'Holland will be affected by rising sea levels, but no one expects war or strife,' he told The Observer. 'It has the resources and political structure to act effectively. But other countries that suffer loss of land and water and be buffeted by increasingly fierce storms will have no effective government to ensure corrective measures are taken. People will form defensive groups and battles will break out.'

Consider Peru, said Smith. Its fresh water comes mostly from glacier meltwater. But by 2015 nearly all Peru's glaciers will have been removed by global warming and its 27 million people will nearly all lack fresh water. If Peru took action now, it could offset the impending crisis, he added. But the country has little experience of effective democracy, suffers occasional outbreaks of insurgency, and has border disputes with Chile and Ecuador. The result is likely to be 'chaos, conflict and mass migration'.

A different situation affects Bangladesh. Here climate-linked migration is already triggering violent conflict, says International Alert. Droughts in summer combined with worsening flooding in coastal zones, triggered by increasingly severe cyclones, are destroying farmland. Millions have already migrated to India, causing increasingly serious conflicts that are destined to worsen.

Zoe Cormier starts a regular column

I was happy to see that science writer Zoe Cormier has started a twice-monthly column in the Globe and Mail. The first one appeared today with the headline Planet, heal thyself.

It's not all global warming, but it's all interesting.