Global Climate Change - Science and Policy

A pair of recent NYT articles talk about the oil supply issues that have been rearing their ugly heads lately. While the articles are factually truthful, I felt this conscious lack of candor about the big elephant in the room: it’s highly doubtful that we can satisfy the business-as-usual projections for the consumption of oil.

The Future of Oil

Oil Price Rise Fails to Open Tap

This is the first in what promises to be an excellent series of articles on the price China is paying for its economic growth. The shear magnitude of the numbers quoted boggle the mind.

For example:

• Only 1 percent of the country’s 560 million city dwellers breathe air considered safe by the European Union.
• Last year, China burned the energy equivalent of 2.7 billion tons of coal, three-quarters of what the experts had said would be the maximum required in 2020. To put it another way, China now seems likely to need as much energy in 2010 as it thought it would need in 2020 under the most pessimistic assumptions.
• In 1996, China and the United States each accounted for 13 percent of global steel production. By 2005, the United States share had dropped to 8 percent, while China’s share had risen to 35 percent, according to a study by Daniel H. Rosen and Trevor Houser of China Strategic Advisory, a group that analyzes the Chinese economy.

China’s ability to curtail carbon emissions are crucial in the fight to avoid catastropic climate change.

Source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/world/asia/…

One of the first studies I’ve seen that explicitly links increased hurricane activity with climate change.

“The number of Atlantic hurricanes in an average season has doubled in the last century due in part to warmer seas and changing wind patterns caused by global warming, according to a study released on Sunday.”

Press:
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN2932962720070730

Source:
http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/media/philtrans_a/
Holland%20and%20Webster%201.pdf

The very first UN session on climate change is being held at the UN headquarters in NYC today and tomorrow. Participants are sending a message that the rich countries need to foot a substantial portion of the costs of mitigation. This reflects the views of other posts on this blog. The targets mentioned by Nicholas Stern are still low, however.

The U.S. remains the spoiler, with its latest non-action at the G8 conference this spring (see http://tenaya.com/climatechange/archives/23) and no comment so far (don’t hold your breath) at the climate change session.

At least we’re making some progress with the rhetoric, and the carbon footprint of the conference is being offset by a biomass fuel project in Kenya.

What we need now is more action!

Source:
http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSN3124057820070731

Yesterday Terry Gross of NPR’s Fresh Air interviewed author Jeff Goodell.  His book Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America’s Energy Future, now out in paperback, argues that the U.S. is more dependent than ever on coal.

This interview will be eye-opening for many and exposes the severe challenges associated with getting the coal industry to address climate change.  Can the coal industry even continue to exist in the future?

Source:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11254947

The latest issue of Worldwatch magazine (published bimonthly by the Worldwatch Institute) contains a letter written by Dr. Luc Gagnon, a senior advisor on climate change for Hydro-Quebec, that is a concise summary of many of the disadvantages of pursuing “clean coal”. Actually achieving “clean coal” would require sequestering the CO2 generated by the combustion of coal in deep geological formations, and reducing or eliminating the many other harmful combustion byproducts. Dr. Gagnon believes that it’s unlikely that carbon capture technology will be implemented at the global level.

Source:
Unrealistic expectations about “clean coal”

A paper published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (May 21-25) by Raupach et al. finds that between 2000 and 2004, worldwide CO₂ emissions increased at a rate that is over three times the rate during the 1990s.

“Despite the scientific consensus that carbon emissions are affecting the world’s climate, we are not seeing evidence of progress in managing those emissions in either the developed or developing countries. In many parts of the world, we are going backwards,” remarked co-author of the study Chris Field, director of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology.

Summary:
http://carnegieinstitution.org/news_releases/news_2007_0521a.html

Paper:
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/0700609104v1

The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) recently published a paper by Dr Paul Baer and Dr Michael Mastrandrea entitled “High Stakes: Designing emissions pathways to reduce the risk of dangerous climate change”. The paper estimates emissions pathways that have a high likelihood of constraining the rise in global average temperature to 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels.

“The results of this modelling are explosive, blowing away the dominant view about the scale and speed of action necessary”, says Simon Retallack of IPPR.

The paper asserts that global CO2 emissions need to peak with the next 3-5 years and fall by 4 to 5 percent per year to about 70 to 80 percent below 1990 levels by mid-century.

These results are part of trend in recent papers and reports that point to the need for greatly reduced emissions scenarios in the next 50 years to avoid dangerous climate change.

Source:
High Stakes
<or>
http://www.ippr.org/publicationsandreports/publication.asp?id=501

The IPCC 4th Assessment Report (AR4) consists of four volumes that will be released in the course of 2007.  The third volume, “Mitigation of Climate Change”, was released on 4-May in Bangkok.

The summary mentions the usual mitigation topics and reiterates the need to begin immediately (if not sooner!).  I was disappointed to see the lack of a strong recommendation with respect to the timing and reductions necessary to avoid catastrophic climate change, which many observers and organizations have tied to staying below a 2 degree C  rise from pre-industrial temperatures.   The scenarios also appear to focus on stabilization of CO2 concentrations rather than peaking and subsequent reduction.   Eventual reductions of CO2 concentrations will lower the peak of the net temperature increase.

Source: Policy summary of “Mitigation of Climate Change”
http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM040507.pdf

A new study published in Geophysical Research Letters projects that the Arctic may warm even faster than indicated by the research reviewed by the latest IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report.

“There are huge changes going on,” said Julienne Stroeve, a lead author of the new study and a researcher at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo. “Just with warm waters entering the Arctic, combined with warming air temperatures, this is wreaking havoc on the sea ice, really.”

Source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/01/us/01climate.html

http://www.agu.org/journals/scripts/highlight.php?pid=2007GL029703