Defra’s chief adviser says we need strategy to adapt to potential catastrophic increase

The UK should take active steps to prepare for dangerous climate change of perhaps 4C according to one of the government’s chief scientific advisers.

In policy areas such as flood protection, agriculture and coastal erosion Professor Bob Watson said the country should plan for the effects of a 4C global average rise on pre-industrial levels. The EU is committed to limiting emissions globally so that temperatures do not rise more than 2C.

“There is no doubt that we should aim to limit changes in the global mean surface temperature to 2C above pre-industrial,” Watson, the chief scientific adviser to the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, told the Guardian. “But given this is an ambitious target, and we don’t know in detail how to limit greenhouse gas emissions to realise a 2 degree target, we should be prepared to adapt to 4C.”

Link to this audio
James Randerson: ‘Massive shifts in Earth’s systems’

Globally, a 4C temperature rise would have a catastrophic impact.

According to the government’s 2006 Stern review on the economics of climate change, between 7 million and 300 million more people would be affected by coastal flooding each year, there would be a 30-50% reduction in water availability in Southern Africa and the Mediterranean, agricultural yields would decline 15 to 35% in Africa and 20 to 50% of animal and plant species would face extinction.

In the UK, the most significant impact would be rising sea levels and inland flooding. Climate modellers also predict there would be an increase in heavy rainfall events in winter and drier summers.

Watson’s plea to prepare for the worst was backed up by the government’s former chief scientific adviser, Sir David King. He said that even with a comprehensive global deal to keep carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere at below 450 parts per million there is a 50% probability that temperatures would exceed 2C and a 20% probability they would exceed 3.5C.

“So even if we get the best possible global agreement to reduce greenhouse gasses on any rational basis you should be preparing for a 20% risk so I think Bob Watson is quite right to put up the figure of 4 degrees,” he said.

One big unknown is the stage at which dangerous tipping points would be reached that lead to further warming - for example the release of methane hydrate deposits in the Arctic. “My own feeling is that if we get to a 4 degree rise it is quite possible that we would begin to see a runaway increase,” said King.

He said a two-and-half-year analysis by the government’s Foresight programme on the implications for coastal defences had more impact in the corridors of power than any other research on the effects of climate change that he presented.

“No other single factor focussed the minds of the cabinet more than the analysis that I produced through that … We begin to have to talk about ordered retreat from some areas of Britain because it becomes impossible to defend,” he said. “There’s no choice here between adaptation and mitigation, we have to do both.”

Other experts were concerned that Watson’s comments might be seen as defeatist and an admission that emissions reductions were impossible to achieve.

“At 4 degrees we are basically into a different climate regime,” said Prof Neil Adger, an expert on adaptation to climate change at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in Norwich.

“I think that is a dangerous mindset to be in. Thinking through the implications of 4 degrees of warming shows that the impacts are so significant that the only real adaptation strategy is to avoid that at all cost because of the pain and suffering that is going to cost.

“There is no science on how we are going to adapt to 4 degrees warming. It is actually pretty alarming,” he added.

Speaking to the Guardian, Watson, who is a former science adviser to President Clinton and ex-chief scientist at the World Bank, said the UK should take a lead in research on carbon capture and storage (CCS).

Alluding to the US effort in the 1960s to put a man on the moon he advocated an “Apollo-type programme” to introduce 10 to 20 CCS pilot projects - which work by burying carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels underground - among OECD countries to develop the technology.

“This would allow coal-fired power plants that are currently being built to be modular and capable of having carbon capture retrofitted, and would show the world that we take the issue of climate change seriously, thus demonstrating real leadership. Without this technology we have a real problem.”

He also said as coal burning is cleaned up to remove harmful sulphur pollution climate change would actually get worse. The sulphur aerosols are actually preventing some warming from taking place currently.

“This offsetting effect, which is equivalent to about 100 parts per million of carbon dioxide, will largely disappear if China and India follow the lead of the US and Europe in limiting sulphur emissions, the cause of acid deposition,” he said.

© 2008 The Guardian

Time to build a boat or move to the Rockies! - LJ

There are two ways to look at it. One is to see how government can benefit from it. Additional taxes and of course connecting them with global warming for a justifiable declaration. No one would bother to check in depth although the economists would do their own pencil pushing.

The other is of course the hands-off policy to which the government will wait for everything to settle and then make its move. Either way, the government will benefit while also taking credit from it once the worst is over for these two dilemmas besetting us today.

Our government is jumping aboard the global warming bandwagon in a big way. Ignoring any facts to the contrary, they continue to fuel a juggernaut that will result in more government, more taxes, more ‘crises’ and more useful idiots. Even Republicans are on board, with John McCain turning green with a twist guaranteed to garner liberal votes. He’s proposed a ‘cap and trade’ system (called redistribution of wealth) to help battle climate change. It used to be only liberals who had the hubris to think man can control climate.

77 degrees 45 minutes N. latitude,

51 degrees 6 minutes W. longitude

Since he is a well known writer of books about the global economy, Friedman gets invited to unique places in the world. After visiting a unique research project involving extracting ice cores of much earlier times on earth, he wrote these words to end his column in today's NY Times:

In an article just published in the journal Science Express, Dahl-Jensen’s team wrote about how it had discovered from the ice cores that the atmospheric circulation in the Northern Hemisphere over Greenland “changed abruptly” just as the last ice age ended around 11,700 years ago.

It seems to have been driven by a sudden change in monsoons in the tropics. The change was so abrupt that it warmed the Northern Hemisphere over Greenland by 10 degrees Celsius in just 50 years — a dramatic increase.

“It shows that our climate system has the ability to make very abrupt changes all by itself,” said Dahl-Jensen.

Some climate-change deniers would say that this proves that mankind is not important in changing the climate. Climate change experts, like Dahl-Jensen, say it’s not so simple: The climate is always changing, sometimes very abruptly, so the last thing that mankind should be doing is adding its own forcing actions — like pumping unprecedented amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Because you never know — you never know — what will tip the balance and send us hurdling into another abrupt change ... and into another era.

Are you still unwilling to change your carbon footprint?

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Used in ground water analyses , SF₅CF₃ has a dating range from 1975 to modern; the atmospheric concentration in North American air has increased from the detection limit of 0.005 parts per trillion by volume (pptv) to the 2006 concentration of about 0.16 pptv. No evidence has been found for degradation of SF₅CF₃ in laboratory anaerobic systems, or of a terrigenic source.

It has been found in air compressed under layers of Antarctic snow, and speculation remains open on whether it is a breakdown product of a gas used to insulate high voltage equipment.

(Sturges et al. (2000) as cited at "found" link, speculate that the former may originate as a breakdown product of the latter in high-voltage equipment. While the current radiative forcing of SF5CF3 may be minor, the high growth rate and long atmospheric residence time suggest that the greenhouse significance of this gas could increase markedly in the future. Conversely, SF5CF3 appears not to have any natural sources, so control might be feasible, once the sources are identified.)

NY Times is full of all kinds of news. In fact, it claims to "print all the news that is fit to print".

In its Science section NYT publishes the writings of that once wannabe scientist John Tierney. In his latest (7/29) he offers positive information about 10 things you might worry about, whether on vacation or not.

1. Killer hot dogs.

Given the latest results about the positive results of saturated fat diets "If you must worry, focus on the carbs in the bun. But when it comes to the fatty frank — or the fatty anything else on vacation — I’d relax."

2. Your car’s planet-destroying A/C.

"After doing tests at 65 miles per hour, the mileage experts at edmunds.com report that the aerodynamic drag from opening the windows cancels out any fuel savings from turning off the air-conditioner."

3. Forbidden fruits from afar.

"Food from other countries is often produced and shipped much more efficiently than domestic food, particularly if the local producers are hauling their wares around in small trucks. One study showed that apples shipped from New Zealand to Britain had a smaller carbon footprint than apples grown and sold in Britain."

4. Carcinogenic cellphones.

"As my colleague Tara Parker-Pope has noted, there is no known biological mechanism for the phones’ non-ionizing radiation to cause cancer, and epidemiological studies have failed to find consistent links between cancer and cellphones."

5. Evil plastic bags.

"Take it from the Environmental Protection Agency : paper bags are not better for the environment than plastic bags. If anything, the evidence from life-cycle analyses favors plastic bags. They require much less energy — and greenhouse emissions — to manufacture, ship and recycle. They generate less air and water pollution. And they take up much less space in landfills."

If you want to know about the other 5 items click here!

I guess it's as true as ever that getting better information is a good antidote to panicking about negative reports from wherever, MSM, the Internet, your favorite radio voice . . .

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According to Britanica, up to 10% of your farts are methane (not mentioned if by weight or by volume, I'm assuming volume), which makes .15 liters of methane per day.

Which means at 717 gram/liter, you fart up to 110 grams of methane per day.

According to the Intergovenmental Panel on Climate change, methane is about 23 times as potent a greenhouse gas as compared to carbon dioxide.

That brings us to the carbon equivalent of almost 2.5 kilos of CO2 per day just from farting.

Now, being that the CO2 emissions of a Prius are 104 gram/kilometer, that means that just by sequestering your farts, you would reduce your greenhouse footprint enough to offset driving 20 kilometers in a Prius per day.

And now you know.

Water Vapor Rules the Greenhouse System

Just how much of the "Greenhouse Effect" is caused by human activity?

It is about 0.28%, if water vapor is taken into account-- about 5.53%, if not.

This point is so crucial to the debate over global warming that how water vapor is or isn't factored into an analysis of Earth's greenhouse gases makes the difference between describing a significant human contribution to the greenhouse effect, or a negligible one.

Water vapor constitutes Earth's most significant greenhouse gas, accounting for about 95% of Earth's greenhouse effect (4). Interestingly, many "facts and figures' regarding global warming completely ignore the powerful effects of water vapor in the greenhouse system, carelessly (perhaps, deliberately) overstating human impacts as much as 20-fold.

Water vapor is 99.999% of natural origin. Other atmospheric greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), and miscellaneous other gases (CFC's, etc.), are also mostly of natural origin (except for the latter, which is mostly anthropogenic).

Human activites contribute slightly to greenhouse gas concentrations through farming, manufacturing, power generation, and transportation. However, these emissions are so dwarfed in comparison to emissions from natural sources we can do nothing about, that even the most costly efforts to limit human emissions would have a very small-- perhaps undetectable-- effect on global climate.

For those interested in more details a series of data sets and charts have been assembled below in a 5-step statistical synopsis.

Note that the first two steps ignore water vapor.

1. Greenhouse gas concentrations

2. Converting concentrations to contribution

3. Factoring in water vapor

4. Distinguishing natural vs man-made greenhouse gases

5. Putting it all together

Note: Calculations are expressed to 3 significant digits to reduce rounding errors, not necessarily to indicate statistical precision of the data. All charts were plotted using Lotus 1-2-3.

Caveat: This analysis is intended to provide a simplified comparison of the various man-made and natural greenhouse gases on an equal basis with each other. It does not take into account all of the complicated interactions between atmosphere, ocean, and terrestrial systems, a feat which can only be accomplished by better computer models than are currently in use.

1. The following table was constructed from data published by the U.S. Department of Energy (1) and other sources, summarizing concentrations of the various atmospheric greenhouse gases. Because some of the concentrations are very small the numbers are stated in parts per billion. DOE chose to NOT show water vapor as a greenhouse gas!

2.12 Gt C = ~7.8 Gt CO2 = 1ppmv CO2

TABLE 1. 

The Important Greenhouse Gases (except water vapor)
U.S. Department of Energy, (October, 2000) (1)

The chart at left summarizes the % of greenhouse gas concentrations in Earth's atmosphere from Table 1. This is not a very meaningful view though because 1) the data has not been corrected for the actual Global Warming Potential (GWP) of each gas, and 2) water vapor is ignored.

But these are the numbers one would use if the goal is to exaggerate human greenhouse contributions:

Man-made and natural carbon dioxide (CO2) comprises 99.44% of all greenhouse gas concentrations (368,400 / 370,484 )--(ignoring water vapor).

Also, from Table 1 (but not shown on graph):

Anthropogenic (man-made) CO2 additions comprise (11,880 / 370,484) or 3.207% of all greenhouse gas concentrations, (ignoring water vapor).

Total combined anthropogenic greenhouse gases comprise (12,217 / 370,484) or 3.298% of all greenhouse gas concentrations, (ignoring water vapor).

The various greenhouse gases are not equal in their heat-retention properties though, so to remain statistically relevant % concentrations must be changed to % contribution relative to CO2. This is done in Table 2, below, through the use of GWP multipliers for each gas, derived by various researchers.

---

Converting greenhouse gas concentrations
to greenhouse effect contribution
(using global warming potential )

2. Using appropriate corrections for the Global Warming Potential of the respective gases provides the following more meaningful comparison of greenhouse gases, based on the conversion:

( concentration ) X ( the appropriate GWP multiplier (2) (3) of each gas relative to CO2 ) = greenhouse contribution.: 

TABLE 2. 

Atmospheric Greenhouse Gases (except water vapor)
adjusted for heat retention characteristics, relative to CO2 

NOTE: GWP (Global Warming Potential) is used to contrast different greenhouse gases relative to CO2.

Compared to the concentration statistics in Table 1, the GWP comparison in Table 2 illustrates, among other things:

Total carbon dioxide (CO2) contributions are reduced to 72.37% of all greenhouse gases (368,400 / 509,056)-- (ignoring water vapor).

Also, from Table 2 (but not shown on graph):

Anthropogenic (man-made) CO2 contributions drop to (11,880 / 509,056) or 2.33% of total of all greenhouse gases, (ignoring water vapor).

Total combined anthropogenic greenhouse gases becomes (28,162 / 509,056) or 5.53% of all greenhouse gas contributions, (ignoring water vapor).

Relative to carbon dioxide the other greenhouse gases together comprise about 27.63% of the greenhouse effect (ignoring water vapor) but only about 0.56% of total greenhouse gas concentrations. Put another way, as a group methane, nitrous oxide (N2O), and CFC's and other miscellaneous gases are about 50 times more potent than CO2 as greenhouse gases.

To properly represent the total relative impacts of Earth's greenhouse gases Table 3 (below) factors in the effect of water vapor on the system.

---

Water vapor overwhelms
all other natural and man-made
greenhouse contributions.

3. Table 3, shows what happens when the effect of water vapor is factored in, and together with all other greenhouse gases expressed as a relative % of the total greenhouse effect.

TABLE 3. 

Role of Atmospheric Greenhouse Gases
(man-made and natural) as a % of Relative
Contribution to the "Greenhouse Effect" 

As illustrated in this chart of the data in Table 3, the combined greenhouse contributions of CO2, methane, N2O and misc. gases are small compared to water vapor!

Total atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) -- both man-made and natural-- is only about 3.62% of the overall greenhouse effect-- a big difference from the 72.37% figure in Table 2, which ignored water!

Water vapor, the most significant greenhouse gas, comes from natural sources and is responsible for roughly 95% of the greenhouse effect (4). Among climatologists this is common knowledge but among special interests, certain governmental groups, and news reporters this fact is under-emphasized or just ignored altogether.

Conceding that it might be "a little misleading" to leave water vapor out, they nonetheless defend the practice by stating that it is "customary" to do so!

---

Comparing natural vs man-made concentrations
of greenhouse gases

4. Of course, even among the remaining 5% of non-water vapor greenhouse gases, humans contribute only a very small part (and human contributions to water vapor are negligible).

Constructed from data in Table 1, the charts (below) illustrate graphically how much of each greenhouse gas is natural vs how much is man-made. These allocations are used for the next and final step in this analysis-- total man-made contributions to the greenhouse effect. Units are expressed to 3 significant digits in order to reduce rounding errors for those who wish to walk through the calculations, not to imply numerical precision as there is some variation among various researchers.

---

 Putting it all together:
total human greenhouse gas contributions
add up to about 0.28% of the greenhouse effect.5. To finish with the math, by calculating the product of the adjusted CO2 contribution to greenhouse gases (3.618%) and % of CO2 concentration from anthropogenic (man-made) sources (3.225%), we see that only (0.03618 X 0.03225) or 0.117% of the greenhouse effect is due to atmospheric CO2 from human activity. The other greenhouse gases are similarly calculated and are summarized below.

TABLE 4a. 

Anthropogenic (man-made) Contribution to the "Greenhouse
Effect," expressed as % of Total (water vapor INCLUDED)

Based on concentrations (ppb) adjusted for heat retention characteristics	% of All Greenhouse Gases	% Natural	% Man-made
Water vapor	95.000%	94.999%	0.001%
Carbon Dioxide (CO2)	3.618%	3.502%	0.117%
Methane (CH4)	0.360%	0.294%	0.066%
Nitrous Oxide (N2O)	0.950%	0.903%	0.047%
Misc. gases ( CFC's, etc.)	0.072%	0.025%	0.047%
Total	100.00%	99.72	0.28%

 

This is the statistically correct way to represent relative human contributions to the greenhouse effect.

From Table 4a, both natural and man-made greenhouse contributions are illustrated in this chart, in gray and green, respectively. For clarity only the man-made (anthropogenic) contributions are labeled on the chart.

Water vapor, responsible for 95% of Earth's greenhouse effect, is 99.999% natural (some argue, 100%). Even if we wanted to we can do nothing to change this.

Anthropogenic (man-made) CO2 contributions cause only about 0.117% of Earth's greenhouse effect, (factoring in water vapor). This is insignificant!

Adding up all anthropogenic greenhouse sources, the total human contribution to the greenhouse effect is around 0.28% (factoring in water vapor).

The Kyoto Protocol calls for mandatory carbon dioxide reductions of 30% from developed countries like the U.S. Reducing man-made CO2 emissions this much would have an undetectable effect on climate while having a devastating effect on the U.S. economy. Can you drive your car 30% less, reduce your winter heating 30%? Pay 20-50% more for everything from automobiles to zippers? And that is just a down payment, with more sacrifices to come later.

Such drastic measures, even if imposed equally on all countries around the world, would reduce total human greenhouse contributions from CO2 by about 0.035%.

This is much less than the natural variability of Earth's climate system!

While the greenhouse reductions would exact a high human price, in terms of sacrifices to our standard of living, they would yield statistically negligible results in terms of measurable impacts to climate change. There is no expectation that any statistically significant global warming reductions would come from the Kyoto Protocol.

---

" There is no dispute at all about the fact that even if punctiliously observed, (the Kyoto Protocol) would have an imperceptible effect on future temperatures -- one-twentieth of a degree by 2050. "
Dr. S. Fred Singer, atmospheric physicist
Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia,
and former director of the US Weather Satellite Service;
in a Sept. 10, 2001 Letter to Editor, Wall Street Journal

---

Research to Watch

Scientists are increasingly recognizing the importance of water vapor in the climate system. Some, like Wallace Broecker, a geochemist at Columbia's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, suggest that it is such an important factor that much of the global warming in the last 10,000 years may be due to the increasing water vapor concentrations in Earth's atmosphere.

His research indicates that air reaching glaciers during the last Ice Age had less than half the water vapor content of today. Such increases in atmospheric moisture during our current interglacial period would have played a far greater role in global warming than carbon dioxide or other minor gases.

---

" I can only see one element of the climate system capable of generating these fast, global changes, that is, changes in the tropical atmosphere leading to changes in the inventory of the earth's most powerful greenhouse gas-- water vapor. "  

Dr. Wallace Broecker

, a leading world authority on climate
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University,
lecture presented at R. A. Daly Lecture at the American Geophysical Union's
spring meeting in Baltimore, Md., May 1996.

---

Known causes of global climate change, like cyclical eccentricities in Earth's rotation and orbit, as well as variations in the sun's energy output, are the primary causes of climate cycles measured over the last half million years. However, secondary greenhouse effects stemming from changes in the ability of a warming atmosphere to support greater concentrations of gases like water vapor and carbon dioxide also appear to play a significant role. As demonstrated in the data above, of all Earth's greenhouse gases, water vapor is by far the dominant player.

The ability of humans to influence greenhouse water vapor is negligible. As such, individuals and groups whose agenda it is to require that human beings are the cause of global warming must discount or ignore the effects of water vapor to preserve their arguments, citing numbers similar to those in Table 4b . If political correctness and staying out of trouble aren't high priorities for you, go ahead and ask them how water vapor was handled in their models or statistics. Chances are, it wasn't!

---

|| Global Warming || Table of Contents || 

References:

1) Current Greenhouse Gas Concentrations (updated October, 2000)
Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center
(the primary global-change data and information analysis center of the U.S. Department of Energy)
Oak Ridge, Tennessee

Greenhouse Gases and Climate Change (data now available only to "members")
IEA Greenhouse Gas R&D Programme,
Stoke Orchard, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, GL52 7RZ, United Kingdom.

2) Greenhouse Gases and Global Warming Potentials (updated April, 2002)
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

3) Warming Potentials of Halocarbons and Greenhouses Gases
Chemical formulae and global warming potentials from Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change 1995: The Science of Climate Change (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 119 and 121. Production and sales of CFC's and other chemicals from International Trade Commission, Synthetic Organic Chemicals: United States Production and Sales, 1994 (Washington, DC, 1995). TRI emissions from U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 1994 Toxics Release Inventory: Public Data Release, EPA-745-R-94-001 (Washington, DC, June 1996), p. 73. Estimated 1994 U.S. emissions from U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks, 1990-1994, EPA-230-R-96-006 (Washington, DC, November 1995), pp. 37-40.

4) References to 95% contribution of water vapor:

a. S.M. Freidenreich and V. Ramaswamy, “Solar Radiation Absorption by Carbon Dioxide, Overlap with Water, and a Parameterization for General Circulation Models,” Journal of Geophysical Research 98 (1993):7255-7264

b. Global Deception: The Exaggeration of the Global Warming Threat
by Dr. Patrick J. Michaels, June 1998
Virginia State Climatologist and Professor of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia

c. Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Appendix D, Greenhouse Gas Spectral Overlaps and Their Significance
Energy Information Administration; Official Energy Statistics from the U.S. Government

d. Personal Communication-- Dr. Richard S. Lindzen
Alfred P. Slone Professor of Meteorology, MIT

e. The Geologic Record and Climate Change
by Dr. Tim Patterson, January 2005
Professor of Geology-- Carleton University
Ottawa, Canada
Alternate link:
f. EPA Seeks To Have Water Vapor Classified As A Pollutant
by the ecoEnquirer, 2006
Alternate link:

g. Air and Water Issues
by Freedom 21.org, 2005
Citation: Bjorn Lomborg, p. 259. Also: Patrick Michaels and Robert Balling, Jr. The Satanic Gases, Clearing the Air About Global Warming (Washington, DC: CATO Institute, 2000), p. 25.

h. Does CO2 Really Drive Global Warming?
by Dr. Robert Essenhigh, May 2001
Alternate link:

i. Solar Cycles, Not CO2, Determine Climate
by Zbigniew Jaworowski, M.D., Ph.D., D.Sc., 21st Century Science and Technology, Winter 2003-2004, pp. 52-65
Link:

5) Global Climate Change Student Guide
Department of Environmental and Geographical Sciences
Manchester Metropolitan University
Chester Street
Manchester
M1 5GD
United Kingdom

6) Global Budgets for Atmospheric Nitrous Oxide - Anthropogenic Contributions
William C. Trogler, Eric Bruner, Glenn Westwood, Barbara Sawrey, and Patrick Neill
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, California

7) Methane record and budget
Robert Grumbine

Useful conversions:

1 Gt = 1 billion tons = 1 cu. km. H20

1 Gt Carbon(C) = ~3.67 Gt Carbon Dioxide(CO2)

The challenges of international climate equity are well taken up by Yongsheng Zhang in this post. He suggests that emissions rights may be allocated on an equal per capita basis. Indeed equal per capita seems the one simple principle that could cut work, because it could be acceptable to the majority of developing countries. A gradual transition from current levels to equal per capita levels would be necessary to strike the balance with interests of high-emitting countries. It's called 'contraction and convergence', because the global emissions budget contracts over time, and countries' per capita allocations converge.

In that model, China's per capita emissions are close to the global average and rising fast. Consequently, China's emissions rights would rise only for a short time until they hit the global average and then would need to decline along with the global average. That may not be acceptable to China and some other fast-growing countries. For them, some headroom may be needed, perhaps in the form of linking the growth in emissions allocations to GDP growth, as suggested by the Garnaut Climate Change Review (chapter 12 of the draft report). That can conveniently gel with China's energy intensity target, mentioned in the post.

Whatever form a greenhouse gas commitment by China takes, it will have to result in comprehensive action, and it will likely need to be binding not voluntary to be successful. The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) may have been a useful first step, but it is quite unsuitable to deliver the kind of reductions needed. Just how crucial China is for the global effort to limit climate change, and how urgent the challenge, is explained in several chapters in the China Update 2008 book.

This and other adverse impacts have prompted industry groups to call for more time to voice their concerns about the ETS amid widespread fears it will crush competitiveness for no environmental benefit.

There is absolutely no point in imposing costs on primary industry, or any other sector, if there is not going to be a measurable environmental benefit.

The cost of emissions per hectare would equate to $185 for dairy and $84 for sheep and beef. Dairy also has a higher GHG cost per stock unit at $74, compared with $8.40 for sheep and beef.

MWNZ was one of 14 industry groups calling for the chance to provide further submissions to the Climate Change Bill recently amended by the Finance and Expenditure Select Committee.

Petersen is concerned the ETS goes beyond meeting the nation’s international obligations, and warns carbon neutrality is not a sustainable long-term goal for New Zealand’s sheep and beef industry.

Another worry is ‘trade-offs’ being made in Parliament to pass the bill before the election, says Petersen.

Keeping Stock wonders if Helen Clark's support of Winston Peters this week is because she needs his support fot the bill.

These Youtube Videos should shed light on the coolness. As you can see from these two ridiculously cute little mad scientists in the aluminum-boat-floating-on-invisible-water video, it is 5x heavier than air. As you can see from the multiple “I-inhaled-sodium-hexaflouride-and-it-made-my-voice-deep” videos, it doesn’t cause any immediate health problems for human consumption.

So what’s not to love? Well, it’s the strongest GHG there is, with a global warming potential 23,900 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. It stays around in the atmosphere for 3200 years. And atmospheric concentrations are rising noticeably, from 4 parts per trillion in the late 1990s to 6.5 parts per trillion this decade. That’s a few orders of magnitude away from CO2’s 380PPM, but it’s important to note that SF6 is significantly more powerful than CO2. One pound of the stuff carries the same climate-changing effects of eleven tons of CO2. To put it another way, one pound of SF6 is equivalent to the yearly carbon footprint of your average British person.

Further, there is no way to cleanse the air of SF6, unlike CO2's very natural carbon sinks like trees and the ocean.  It's just going to sit up there in the sky like a pickup truck on cinder blocks in the front yard until it degrades in 3200 years.

It’s primarily used as a gaseous insulator for electrical switchgear, accounting for 80% of usage worldwide. Other uses include particle accelerators, electron microscopes, medical devices, Navy torpedoes, and magnesium casting. So not only is SF6 fun, it’s brainy.

At least climate change regulators are aware of it, unlike nitrogen triflouride. SF6 is covered by the Kyoto protocol. The EPA runs a voluntary emissions reduction program for power providers to limit leakage into the atmosphere. Of course, the EPA program is a perfect example of the kinds of environmental “regulation” favored by old line business interests – we’re talking about measuring and limiting leaks, not using high taxes to make alternatives more attractive.

Of course I have a great place for the world to start eliminating SF6 emissions. Let’s take it out of the hands of budding magicians, Jay Leno, and Swedish radio hosts. In the future we'll watch these videos with a mix of horror and pity, like a planetary funniest home videos.  When presented with a died-in-the-wool killer, we created "voluntary reduction partnerships" and let our kids do magic tricks.

If we weren't so busy laughing, we'd be crying.

]]> http://seattledirt.wordpress.com/?p=401 Wed, 23 Jul 2008 16:41:33 +0000 brandibratrude http://seattledirt.wordpress.com/?p=401

photo credit

Sightline Daily | Northwest News That Matters

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