WASHINGTON, DC, February 6, 2009 (ENS) – In accordance with President Barack Obama’s order in January, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will reconsider its decision denying California permission to set standards controlling greenhouse gases from motor vehicles.

The waiver request was made by California on December 21, 2005, to allow the state the right to control greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles. The request was denied by then-EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson on March 6, 2008.

On January 26, less than a week after taking office, President Obama requested that EPA revisit the matter of the denial.

“EPA has now set in motion an impartial review of the California waiver decision,” said EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson. “It is imperative that we get this decision right, and base it on the best available science and a thorough understanding of the law.”

The Clean Air Act gives EPA the authority to allow California to adopt its own emission standards for motor vehicles due to the seriousness of the state’s air pollution challenges.

Tailpipe emissions contain the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. (Photo by Daniel Olinick)

The EPA must approve a waiver, however, before California’s rules may go into effect. There is a long-standing history of EPA granting waivers to the state of California.

EPA believes that there are significant issues regarding the agency’s denial of the waiver. Jackson said, “The denial was a substantial departure from EPA’s longstanding interpretation of the Clean Air Act’s waiver provisions.”

EPA received on January 21, 2009, a letter from California outlining several issues for Administrator Jackson to review and reconsider about the previous denial of the waiver.

Should the EPA grant the waiver, California, and 13 other states will begin a program to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from passenger vehicles 30 percent by 2016.

EPA will take public comment concerning the reconsideration of the waiver for a period of 60 days after publication in the Federal Register. There will also be a public hearing to be held in March in Washington, DC.

“Today’s decision is a return to sanity by an agency whose fairness and balance had been sabotaged by the partisan extremism of the Bush Administration,” said California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr.

“This is but a first step, but it signals that this EPA has a renewed commitment to sound science and to rule of law,” he said.

The regulations in question were developed under California’s 2002 vehicle greenhouse gas emissions reduction law AB 1493 authored by then-Assemblymember Fran Pavley, the first global warming law in the nation.

The California Air Resources Board adopted the Pavley regulations in 2005.

Pavley, a Democrat, was elected to the California State Senate in November 2008, where she now chairs the Natural Resources and Water Committee.

The reductions achieved by the Pavley regulations constitute an important element of the California’s plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 30 percent by 2020 enacted into law in 2006.

The Air Resources Board approved the Scoping Plan for this effort in December. It is the nation’s first comprehensive approach to address climate change that draws upon every sector of a state’s economy.

“California has led the way on global warming,” said Attorney General Brown, “and the state should be allowed to continue in its leadership role in reducing automobile emissions and addressing global warming.”

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CHICAGO, Illinois, January 20, 2009 (ENS) – While the bitter cold of President Barack Obama’s Inauguration Day in Washington may seem to contradict the idea that global warming continues, a new survey reveals consensus among scientists about the reality of climate change and its likely cause.

The survey of 3,146 earth scientists from around the world found overwhelming agreement that in the past 200 years, mean global temperatures have been rising, and that human activity is a “significant contributing factor” in changing mean global temperatures.

Peter Doran, an associate professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, along with former graduate student Maggie Kendall Zimmerman, conducted the survey late last year.

The findings appeared Monday in the journal “Eos, Transactions,” a publication of the American Geophysical Union.

“The debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely nonexistent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes,” the researchers conclude.

There are many human activities and natural processes that contribute to climate change. Burning coal, oil and gas to generate electricity or to power cars, trucks, trains, planes and ships releases greenhouse gases that blanket the planet, keeping the Sun’s heat from radiating back into space.

Cutting forests prevents the trees from absorbing the main greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide. Methane, an even more potent greenhouse gas, is given off by landfills, coal mines, oil and natural gas operations, agriculture, and melting permafrost.

Natural causes also exist. For instance, volcanoes can affect the climate because they can emit aerosols and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Greenhouse gases rise from a petrochemical refinery in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. (Photo by Wolfgang Schlegl)

To overcome criticism of earlier attempts to gauge the view of earth scientists on global warming and the human impact factor, Doran and his team sought the opinion of the most complete list of earth scientists they could find, contacting more than 10,200 experts listed in the 2007 edition of the American Geological Institute’s “Directory of Geoscience Departments.”

Experts in academia and government research centers were e-mailed invitations to participate in the on-line poll conducted by the website www.questionpro.com.

Only those invited could participate and computer IP addresses of participants were recorded and used to prevent repeat voting. Questions used were reviewed by a polling expert who checked for bias in phrasing, such as suggesting an answer by the way a question was worded. The nine-question survey was short, taking just a few minutes to complete.

The 3,146 participating scientists were asked two key questions – “Have mean global temperatures risen compared to pre-1800s levels?” and, “Has human activity been a significant factor in changing mean global temperatures?”

About 90 percent of the respondents agreed with the first question and 82 percent the second.

Doran determined that climatologists who are active in research showed the strongest consensus on the causes of global warming, with 97 percent agreeing humans play a role.

Petroleum geologists and meteorologists were among the biggest doubters, with only 47 and 64 percent, respectively, believing in human involvement.

Doran compared their responses to a recent poll showing only 58 percent of the public thinks human activity contributes to global warming.

“The petroleum geologist response is not too surprising, but the meteorologists’ is very interesting,” he said. “Most members of the public think meteorologists know climate, but most of them actually study very short-term phenomena.”

Doran was not surprised by the near-unanimous agreement by climatologists.

“They’re the ones who study and publish on climate science,” he said. “So I guess the take-home message is, the more you know about the field of climate science, the more you’re likely to believe in global warming and humankind’s contribution to it.”

The challenge now, the researchers say, is how to effectively communicate this to policy makers and to a public that continues to mistakenly perceive debate among scientists.

They can draw support from a statistical study published earlier this month by scientists in Germany and Switzerland who determined that the global increase of warmer years after 1990 is no accident.

The likelihood that the 13 warmest years since 1880 could have occurred after 1990 by accident is no more than one in 10,000, they conclude. Or, in other words, the likelihood is the same as tossing 14 heads in a row in a coin toss.

“Our study is of a purely statistical nature and cannot attribute the increase of warm years to individual factors,” said Dr. Eduardo Zorita at the GKSS Research Center in Geesthacht, Germany.

“But it is in full agreement with the results of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that the increased emission of greenhouse gases is mainly responsible for the most recent global warming,” he said.

The results of the statistical study will be published in the journal “Geophysical Research Letters.”

However, some scientists are still climate skeptics. More than 650 dissenting scientists are listed in a report released January 14 by the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s office of the Ranking Member Republican James Inhofe of Oklahoma.

A typical comment is that of physicist Dr. Will Happer, a professor at the Department of Physics at Princeton University and former director of energy research at the U.S. Department of Energy, who is quoted in the Inhofe report as saying, “I am convinced that the current alarm over carbon dioxide is mistaken. … Fears about man-made global warming are unwarranted and are not based on good science.”

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WASHINGTON, DC, January 13, 2009 (ENS) – Ending the emission of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide by 2050 will be necessary to avoid “catastrophic disruption to the world’s climate,” according to the Worldwatch Institute in its 26th annual assessment, “State of the World 2009: Into a Warming World,” released today.

Yet, the independent research organization based in Washington, DC says opportunities abound in renewable energy and efficiency improvements, agriculture and forestry, and the resilience of societies for slowing and managing climate change.

“We’re privileged to live at a moment in history when we can still avert a climate catastrophe that would leave the planet hostile to human development and well-being,” said Worldwatch Vice President for Programs Robert Engelman, project co-director for State of the World 2009.

“But there’s not much time left,” Engelman said. “Sealing the deal to save the global climate will require mass public support and worldwide political will to shift to renewable energy, new ways of living, and a human scale that matches the atmosphere’s limits.”

The assessment holds out hope that the gridlock that has long plagued climate policy can finally be broken with the new administration of President Barack Obama and international climate negotiations in Copenhagen in December 2009 to craft a treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

Red sunset (Photo by Mads Hansen)

“We can’t afford to let the Copenhagen climate conference fail,” said Worldwatch President Christopher Flavin. “The outcome of this meeting will be written in the history books – and in the lasting composition of the world’s atmosphere.”

In his forward to the assessment, 2007 Nobel Peace Laureate Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, said, “The strongest message from State of the World 2009 is this: if the world does not take action early and in adequate measure, the impacts of climate change could prove extremely harmful and overwhelm our capacity to adapt. At the same time, the costs and feasibility of mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions are well within our reach and carry a wealth of substantial benefits for many sections of society.”

Dr. Pachauri is director general of The Energy and Resources Institute and chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the 2007 Nobel Prize with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore for raising public awareness of climate change.

He will be the keynote speaker at the 13th Annual State of the World Symposium in Washington, DC on January 15.

The Worldwatch report includes contributions from 47 authors. It is based on the latest scientific assessment of the IPCC, which organizes information from thousands of scientists from around the world.

Most scientists agree that Earth’s average temperature has already risen by more than 0.8 degrees Celsius (1.4 degrees Fahrenheit) since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the mid-18th century, with much of that increase attributed to human activities.

Nearly one degree Celsius of additional warming may already be in store, based on past emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases that have not yet made their influence felt on surface temperatures.

Half of the carbon dioxide emitted today is expected to remain in the atmosphere a century from now, and much will remain even 10,000 years in the future, scientists predict.

A chapter by climate scientist W. L. Hare concludes that in order to avoid a catastrophic climate tipping point, global greenhouse gas emissions will need to peak before 2020 and drop 85 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, with further reductions beyond that date.

Emissions of carbon dioxide would actually need to “go negative,” with more being absorbed than emitted,” during the second half of this century, Hare advises.

The Wanakbori coal-fired power plant in India’s Gujurat state. India has no greenhouse gas emissions limits under the Kyoto Protocol. (Photo courtesy Gujarat Urja Vikas Nigam Ltd)

Hare’s research shows that even a warming of two degrees Celsius poses unacceptable risks to key natural and human systems, including loss of species, major reductions in food-production capacity in developing countries, severe water stress for hundreds of millions of people, and sea-level rise and coastal flooding.

A successful climate strategy will motivate rapid reductions in emissions as well as major investments in adaptation, with both efforts necessarily financed mostly by the world’s wealthier countries and people, the book argues.

Such a strategy ultimately will also need to address the warming climate’s connection to food production, population growth, and the global economy. Economists have estimated the cost of avoiding dangerous climate change at around $1–2.5 trillion a year for decades to come; yet the costs of not doing so are expected to be far higher.

In order to assess the threat the climate crisis presents and explore innovative and practical solutions, Worldwatch enlisted more authors for this book than for any previous edition of the series, many hailing from the developing countries most vulnerable to climate change. The resulting framework offers a roadmap for a world that not only survives climate change, but emerges more stable, more just, and more prosperous.

The book’s opening chapter notes 10 key challenges that must be adopted as part of any successful path to mitigation and climate change adaptation and resilience.

Ten key challenges to avoiding catastrophic climate change

1. Thinking Long-term. At the core of the climate problem is the likelihood that future generations will pay with a deteriorating global environment for the refusal of current generations to live in balance with the atmosphere. Visionary leaders will need to marshal the public to take responsibility for the impacts of today’s behavior on the future and to act accordingly.

2. Innovation. The emissions shift will require technologies that break the carbon link to energy consumption with as little sacrifice of price and convenience as possible. A range of renewable technologies can produce electricity and meet heating and cooling needs. Such technologies include buildings that produce more energy than they consume and “smart grids” that use information technology to match renewably produced electricity precisely to demand.

3. Population. Rarely addressed in the context of climate change, future population trends could make the difference between success and failure in the long-term balance of human activities, atmosphere, and climate. The world’s population is likely to stop growing and then gradually decline for a period when women gain the full capacity to decide for themselves whether and when to have children.

4. Changing Lifestyles. The assumption that the “good life” requires ever more individual consumption, more meat-eating, ever larger homes and vehicles, and disposable everything will need to fade. A spirit of shared and equitable material sacrifice can replace it – with no loss of what really matters, such as active good health, strong communities, and time with family.

5. Healing Land. Managed for the task, the Earth’s soil and vegetation can remove billions of tons of carbon from the atmosphere. Agricultural landscapes can accomplish this while improving food and fiber production and minimizing the need for artificial fertilizer and fossil-fuel-driven tilling and raising farmer incomes.

6. Strong Institutions. As with the deteriorating global economy, the global nature of climate change demands international cooperation and sound governance. The strength and effectiveness of the United Nations, multilateral banks, and major national governments are essential to addressing global climate change. These institutions – and those emerging from the hoped-for Copenhagen climate agreement in 2009 – require strong public support for their critical work.

7. The Equity Imperative. No climate agreement will succeed without support from those countries that have so far contributed little to human-induced climate change, have low per-capita emissions, and stand to face the biggest challenges in adapting to the coming changes. A pact that is fair to developing and industrialized countries alike is essential.

8. Economic Stability. With the world now fixated on the sputtering global economy, addressing climate change will demand attention to costs and the promise of improving rather than undermining long-term economic prospects. A climate agreement will have to operate effectively during anemic as well as booming economic periods, facing squarely the challenges of poverty and unemployment while continually reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

9. Political Stability. A world beset by conflict and terrorism is far less likely to prevent dangerous climate disruption than one at peace. Security and climate must be addressed simultaneously. On the positive side, negotiating an effective and fair climate agreement offers countries a needed opportunity to practice peace and re-frame international relations along cooperative rather than competitive lines.

10. Mobilizing for Change. The way to deal with climate change we ourselves are causing is to see the opportunity for a new global economy and new ways of living in the effort to bring net greenhouse gas emissions to an end. There’s no guarantee such a transition will be easy – or even possible. But a global movement to make the effort is needed now, and could yield new jobs, new opportunities for peace, and global cooperation beyond what humanity has ever achieved.

Worldwatch states in its report, “Simultaneously addressing these interlinked and challenging issues could lay the groundwork for a world that will not merely bounce back from both the economic and climate crises, but surge forward.”

Find “State of the World 2009: Into a Warming World,” at: www.worldwatch.org

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LONDON, UK, December 8, 2008 (ENS) – Protesters from the climate action group Plane Stupid this morning shut down Britain’s third largest airport by cutting through the perimeter fence and camping on the runway, surrounding themselves with fortified security fencing.

The protest at Stansted Airport just north of London began at 3:15 this morning while airport’s only runway was temporarily closed for maintenance work. Plane Stupid aimed to prevent the scheduled reopening of the runway at 5 am.

The group said its goal was to maintain its blockade for as long as possible, “preventing the release of thousands of tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere.”

Plane Stupid protesters on the tarmac at
Stansted Airport (Photo courtesy Plane Stupid)

A protester who identified herself only as Lily, said, “We’re here because our parents’ generation has failed us and its now down to young people to stop climate change by whatever peaceful means we have left. We’re afraid of what the police might do to us, we’re afraid of going to jail but nothing scares us as much as the threat of runaway climate change.”

“We’ve thought through the consequences of what we’re doing here but we’re determined to stop as many tonnes of CO2 as we can,” she said.

The average flight out of Stansted has a climate impact equivalent to 41.58 tonnes of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, the group said in a statement, adding that the airport emits around four tonnes of carbon dioxide every minute.

Protesters said security staff from airport operator BAA rammed them with a snowplough.

Protester Richard Claxton, who was locked to the fencing at the time, said, “I was terrified. You don’t expect to be attacked with a snowplough on a peaceful protest.”

Essex Police brought in specialist equipment to remove the protesters and arrested 57 people.

The runway was re-opened just after 08:00.

Due to the disruption, Ryanair cancelled 52 inbound and outbound flights from Stansted.

“We are dealing with a security breach, which has caused the runway to be closed and flights canceled, but at no time were any passengers or planes in danger,” said Nick Barton, the BAA commercial director at Stansted.

Ryanair, Stansted’s largest airline, today called on BAA Stansted to explain why protestors were able to breach Stansted security at 3 am, and why it took Stansted over five hours to remove them from the taxi-way.

Today’s security failure at Stansted joins a long list of management failures at the airport, including lengthy queues at security and at passport control, Ryanair said in a statement.

Ryanair’s Stephen McNamara said, “The security at BAA Stansted airport has once again failed. We need to know what measures the BAA is putting in place to prevent these repeated security failures. BAA Stansted is not fit for purpose.”

Stansted Airport north of London, England
(Photo by Barrington Russell)

Ryanair renewed its call today for the break-up of the BAA monopoly control of all British airports and the sale of Stansted in order to improve customer services.

“We need to break up the BAA monopoly as soon as possible to improve customer services and end these BAA cock-ups,” said McNamara.

BAA owns seven UK airports, including Heathrow, has a 65 percent stake in Italy’s Naples Airport and retail management contracts at three U.S. airports – Baltimore-Washington, Boston-Logan, and Pittsburgh.

Stansted is Britain’s third-busiest airport, offering flights to more than 160 destinations in over 30 countries. It serves nearly 23 million passengers and 184,000 air transport movements a year.

A Plane Stupid protester who calls herself Tilly, said, “We all grew up listening to Blair and Brown talking about the urgent need to slash emissions, but nothing ever happened. Even now politicians from our parents’ generation are in Poland holding talks about talks, but still nobody’s actually doing anything.”

“The scientists tell us we’ve got about seven years to make emissions peak then drop, and if we fail it will be the people on this runway, and our children, who’ll live with the consequences,” she said. “That’s why I’m doing this.”

The campaigners chose to close Stansted after the government approved the expansion of capacity at the airport by ten million passengers a year. The note that aviation is Britain’s fastest growing source of emissions, already amounting to at least 13 percent of the country’s climate impact.

With plans for new runways across the UK, including at Heathrow and Stansted, experts from the Tyndall Centre for climate research say the Labour Party’s aviation policy alone “will scupper any chance the UK has of hitting its climate targets.”

Plane Stupid says there will be more protests if a third runway at Heathrow is approved. A decision is expected shortly.

Protester Daniel said, “We fully appreciate the scale of what we’ve done here today and we know many people will struggle to understand why we’ve done it, but the Arctic ice cap is disappearing, the seas are rising and our last chance to save our future is vanishing. With people taking more flights in Britain than anywhere else on Earth, we have a unique responsibility to tackle emissions from flying.”

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POZNAN, Poland, December 5, 2008 (ENS) – For the first time, a solar-powered car has traveled around the world, arriving at the UN climate conference in Poznan Thursday with the United Nations’ top climate official Yvo de Boer onboard for the last few meters to mark the historic moment.

The solar taxi pulls up in front of the
Poznan conference hall. December 4, 2008
(Photo courtesy Louis Palmer)

Owner and driver Louis Palmer, a Swiss schoolteacher, will keep his “solar taxi” at the conference until it closes on December 12, offering rides to delegates, ministers and the press, before he heads back to Switzerland.

The solar taxi has been on the road for almost 18 months and has covered around 54,000 kilometers (33,550 miles) through 38 countries to claim a world record. Palmer undertook the trip to demonstrate that clean technologies are available now to curb global warming.

Inside the conference hall, countries, UN agencies and nongovernmental organizations are making commitments and launching publications in an effort to limit climate change.

Earlier this week, Brazil set an ambitious target of reducing its deforestation rate by 70 percent over the next 10 years. Brazil is the world’s fourth largest emitter of global warming pollution, and about 80 percent of Brazil’s global warming emissions come from clearing of the Amazon rainforest and the Atlantic coastal forest.

At Poznan today, the World Resources Institute and the Environmental Investigation Agency launched a partnership to combat illegal logging worldwide and clean up timber supply chains. These efforts are intended to limit climate change, which is linked to deforestation because trees absorb the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.

The partnership focuses on a 100 year old U.S. wildlife trafficking law known as the Lacey Act, which was just amended to include plant products, including timber and wood.

“The Lacey Act, if enforced, has the potential to send a powerful signal around the world that the U.S. is serious about curtailing illegal logging. Increasingly, illegal logging and deforestation contribute to climate change,” said Jonathan Lash, president of World Resources Institute, a Washington, DC based research and advocacy organization.

Said Alexander von Bismarck, executive director at Environmental Investigation Agency, based in Washington and London, “The bill marks the first time that a major consuming country has made the trade in illegally logged wood a crime. It provides a precedent-setting tool to change the face of a $1 trillion industry, reduce deforestation, and improve forestry governance.”

A side event organized by Friends of the
Earth presents a critical analysis of REDD:
international finance, human rights and
false promises of carbon markets. (Photo
courtesy Earth Negotiations Bulletin)

December 6 is the official Forest Day for delegates at the UN climate conference, where both organizations will be holding events to explain the links between deforestation and climate change.

Close to 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions are a result of deforestation, climate experts calculate. At Poznan, negotiators are seeking to advance plans to fund a mechanism called Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, REDD, as part of the post-2012 climate deal that is the object of this UN conference.

Today at Poznan, the UN Environment Programme, UNEP, released the first atlas with maps pinpointing overlaps of high carbon emissions and high biodiversity.

The research gives preliminary indications of where investments to cut emissions from deforestation can aid in combating climate change and also help the conservation of biodiversity, from amphibians and birds to primates.

UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said, “At a time of scarce financial resources and economic concerns, every dollar, Euro or rupee needs to deliver double, even triple dividends. Intelligent investment in forests is a key example where climate benefits and ecosystem benefits can be achieved in one transaction.”

Steiner said a successful REDD mechanism must ensure that local and indigenous people can benefit.

The Great Apes Survival Partnership is set to launch pilot activities to test the potential of achieving these “multiple benefits” from REDD in Central Africa and Southeast Asia, said Steiner.

Experts are examining how investments in conserving carbon-absorbing forests on the Nigeria-Cameroon border may also conserve the habitat of the critically endangered Cross River gorilla. Only 250-300 animals remain.

Delegates at Poznan (Photo courtesy ENB)

And in Indonesia, national and local authorities, communities and the oil palm sector will be engaged to reduce emissions that result from clearing the carbon-rich peat-swamp forest, where endangered orangutans cling to survival.

Electronic copies of the atlas are online at www.unep.org/pdf/carbon_biodiversity.pdf and at www.unep-wcmc.org. A more detailed atlas is expected in 2009 ahead of the UN climate meeting in December in Copenhagen where the final post-Kyoto climate agreement is expected to be finalized.

Agreement on a post-Kyoto climate regime will require the support of the business community, which issued encouraging signals today.

Environment Business Australia issued a statement saying that the organization believes cuts in greenhouse gas emissions of 40 percent against today’s baseline are possible. “We would support the Government beginning with a soft start of 25 percent cuts by 2020 but anything below that would be squelchy rather than soft,” said the business group.

“Without immediate and meaningful action to tackle climate change, the biggest economic and security threat that has ever faced humanity will likely evolve to irreversible levels,” said Environment Business Australia.

Not all is serious at Poznan. Delegates bring
a smile to the face of UNFCC chief Yvo
de Boer, right. (Photo courtesy ENB)

EBA suggests commercially viable approaches that will help build new markets, new industry sectors and new employment such as, “Increasing energy efficiency across all sectors of the economy; scaling up sources of renewable energy to supply baseload energy – potentially making Australia a regional hub by 2030 for minerals processing and manufacturing fueled by mega-clean energy parks; making buildings and cities carbon neutral; improving public transport and taking car tailpipes off the road with electric or hydrogen vehicles; recycling materials.”

Yet, despite encouraging signals, there are also obstacles to progress at Poznan – most related to the global financial crisis.

Friends of the Earth International Climate and Energy Campaigner Stephanie Long said industrialized countries are “dodging the issue of funding poorer countries’ adaptation to climate change.”

“Poorer countries face an increase in storms, floods, famines and droughts due to climate change, yet the pot of money that rich countries have put aside to deal with this is almost empty,” she said.

“The Adaptation Fund was finally agreed and established one year ago. Yet to date, developed countries have pledged less than US $300 million to it, a tiny fraction of the US $86 billion the UN says is needed,” said Long.

At the same time that funds are drying up, the situation of small island states is becoming desperate. At least six Caribbean islands – Haiti, Dominican Republic, Dominica, Jamaica, Martinique and Saint Lucia – were on Thursday ranked in the top 40 countries experiencing extreme weather impacts by the 2009 Germanwatch Global Climate Risk Index.

Germanwatch is an independent nongovernmental organization that monitors trade, environment and the relationship between developed and developing countries.

Delegates at Poznan (Photo courtesy ENB)

According to Germanwatch climate modeler Stefan Rahmstorff, Caribbean countries needed to push industrialized countries to address their emissions as the small islands would face the effects of inaction.

“Fundamentally, small countries which don’t contribute to the problem should press those developed countries to help them with their adaptation measures. Those causing the emissions should be the ones that help to deal with issues,” he said after presenting a paper on the effects of rising sea levels due to climate change recorded since 2007.

This week in Poznan, delegates continued their discussions to develop a shared vision of a future climate change agreement. Finding adequate financial resources, technology transfer, and prioritizing adaptation wer emphasized.

South Africa, speaking for the African Group of countries, said a shared vision should address all elements of the Bali Action Plan reached at last year’s UN climate conference in Indonesia.

The European Union said a shared vision requires efforts by all parties. The United States said a shared vision should be optimistic, pragmatic and reflect evolving scientific and economic realities.

The Philippines, speaking for the G-77/China Group, said a shared vision must meet all the commitments that parties have agreed to under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, left, and UNFCCC Executive

Secretary Yvo de Boer at Poznan
(Photo courtesy ENB)

Representatives of the Climate Action Network, a worldwide network of 430 nongovernmental organizations, told Poznan delegates that global emissions must peak and begin declining within 10 years to avoid the worst effects of global warming.

Close to 11,000 participants, including government delegates from 186 Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and representatives from business and industry, environmental organizations and research institutions, are attending the two-week gathering.

Opening the meeting on Monday, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk pointed to the urgent need for progress at Poznan. “Scientists share the view that warming in excess of two degrees Celsius will result in irreversible changes to nearly all ecosystems and the human communities,” he said.

“We shoulder the responsibility to prevent changes that could lastingly disturb the symbiosis between humankind and nature.”

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SARASOTA, Florida, December 3, 2008 (ENS) – A new analysis of economic activity generated by Florida’s coral reefs finds that some 70,000 jobs and more than $5.5 billion in business in the state could disappear if climate change destroys the reefs.

“A business-as-usual approach to climate change could mean a lot less business for Florida,” said Jerry Karnas, Florida project director at Environmental Defense Fund, which commissioned the report, “Corals and Climate Change: Florida’s Natural Treasures at Risk.” [www.edf.org]

Florida encompasses the only shallow water coral reefs in the continental United States. Like coral reefs worldwide, Florida’s reefs are besieged by environmental problems.

For instance, a federal government study released in November confirms significant ocean acidification across much of the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. As oceans absorb the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, they become more acidic, reducing the ability of corals to produce their calcium carbonate skeletons.

This affects individual corals and the ability of the reef to maintain a positive balance between reef building and reef erosion.

The government study supports other findings that ocean acidification is likely to reduce coral reef growth to critical levels before the end of this century unless humans slash carbon dioxide emissions. While ocean chemistry across the region is currently deemed adequate to support coral reefs, it is rapidly changing as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels rise.

“The study demonstrates a strong natural seasonal variability in ocean chemistry in waters around the Florida Keys that could have important consequences for how these reefs respond to future ocean acidification,” says NOAA’s Dwight Gledhill, PhD, lead author of the study.

Diver finds a small turtle on a reef
in the Florida Keys. (Photo by Roland)

Research by Professor Andrew Langdon of the University of Miami, who contributed to the Environmental Defense report, also shows that as oceans absorb CO2 from the atmosphere, they become more acidic, which stunts coral growth and impairs reproduction.

The groupers, snappers, jacks, angelfish, and spiny lobsters that thrive on coral reefs make Florida a destination for millions of fishermen every year – and back up Florida’s claim to be the Fishing Capital of the World. On the commercial side, catches of reef-associated species in South Florida account for $158 million in annual sales.

Terry Gibson, the fishing editor of “Outdoor Life” magazine and a co-author of the Environmental Defense climate change report with University of Miami Professor Hal Wanless, says that “from scuba diving in the Keys to charter fishing boats in Miami-Dade to commercial fishing in Martin County, reef-related sales amount to more than $5.5 billion each year.”

But climate change driven by unchecked greenhouse gas emissions is stressing coral reefs and putting the Florida economy at risk.

Wanless says, “a central culprit in the decline of coral reefs is unchecked emission of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, largely from burning fossil fuels like coal and oil.”

Research by Florida scientists is providing new insights into how CO2 and other greenhouse gases hurt coral reefs. First, global warming leads to warmer oceans – which cause harmful coral “bleaching” and make corals more vulnerable to diseases now visible on many of Florida’s coral reefs.

As the report describes, innovative research by Dr. Kimberly Ritchie of the MOTE Marine Lab in Sarasota helps explain why – during times of warmer ocean water, corals lose their ability to use natural antibiotics to protect themselves from disease.

EDF’s Karnas said quick federal action to limit greenhouse gas emissions can help protect Florida’s reefs and the state’s economy. “We need Congress to cap global warming pollution. This report shows that doing nothing is the worst option for Florida’s economy.”

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DOHA, Qatar, November 20, 2008 (ENS) – Military experts from Australia, the Netherlands and the United States will help save the ozone layer and fight global warming under a unique partnership between the United Nations, national governments and the armed services.

Spearheaded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Defense, the new program will make use of technical experts in the military already on the ground.

The initiative was announced to delegates from more than 150 governments who are concluding a five-day meeting in Doha of Parties to the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer.

Marco Gonzalez, executive secretary of the UN Environment Programme’s Ozone Secretariat, said, “The military in many countries have been at the forefront of efforts to phase out ozone depleting substances, ODS. Their experience can be invaluable for developing countries facing similar challenges.”

More than 90 percent of the chemicals that damage the ozone – the thin, high layer of gas that filters out the Sun’s harmful ultra-violet rays – have been phased out since the Montreal Protocol took effect in 1987. But the chemicals are stockpiled in old equipment that will soon come to the end of life.

Cylinders containing halon, a ozone depleter
used to fight fires (Photo courtesy IAEA)

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Delegates at Doha learned that releases from these sources could add to ozone depletion as well as climate change because many of these substances are also potent greenhouse gases.

Without action to safely remove and destroy these chemicals, experts fear that by 2015 releases equivalent to several billion metric tonnes of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide could occur.

The military experts are offering to assist countries in the safe collection of stockpiles and banks of unwanted, ozone-damaging substances. They will give support and advice on the shipping, labeling and other procedures needed to fast-track the chemicals to disposal centers around the world.

The partnership could dramatically cut the costs of the disposal of ozone-depleting chemicals such as halons, hydrofluorocarbons and chlorofluorocarbons to a third or less of the current market cost. These and other chemicals containing chlorine and bromine were once used as refrigerants, for cleaning circuit boards, in aerosol sprays and to fight fires until they were phased out under the Montreal Protocol.

“The United States is committed to actions under the Montreal Protocol for the benefit of the global climate system and fragile ozone layer,” said James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. “Experts who responsibly manage military ozone-depleting substances can transfer that know-how throughout the world to recover and destroy a significant portion of unwanted or unusable ozone-depleting substances.”

Argentina will be one of the first countries to take advantage of this opportunity to safely dispose of the obsolete chemicals.

“Argentina is proud to be one of the leaders promoting the climate benefits of the Montreal Protocol, and we welcome the opportunity to work with the technical logistics experts from the militaries of the world to continue these efforts to realize benefits for both the climate system and the ozone layer,” said Romina Picolotti, secretary of environment for Argentina.

“The Netherlands is proud of our national leadership in combined ODS banking for both industry and the military and pleased to share everything we know that can protect the global environment,” said Anton Janssen, who heads the Knowledge Centre for Occupational Safety and Health and Environment within the Netherlands Ministry of Defence.

“Technical cooperation on ODS application and replacement avoids costly duplication of effort and builds trust and networks so experts can work together for the good of human society,” said Janssen.

Many armed forces have existing, competitively priced contracts already in place for destroying ozone-damaging chemicals found as gases and foams in old military air-conditioning units and other kinds of army, navy and air force equipment.

The partners hope that by joining forces, civilian destruction programs will be able to benefit from these low-cost contracts, making them cheaper and more attractive to undertake.

Delegates at the opening of the high-level
segment of the Montreal Protocol meeting
in Doha. Laptops were everywhere at this
paperless conference. November 19, 2008
(Photo courtesy Earth Negotiations Bulletin)

The UNEP Ozone Secretariat will act as coordinator with the Secretariat of the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal and other conventions to ensure the transport of unwanted ozone-depleting substances to countries with destruction facilities is correctly permitted.

Officials say this coordination will streamline the shipments of chemicals to proper destruction facilities.

“It is an honor for military logistics experts to use their considerable talent and experience to help the world protect the stratospheric ozone and climate,” said Robert Thien, U.S. Department of Defense ODS Program Manager.

“I am confident that the United States Department of Defense and our partners can provide guidance to developing nations concerning collecting, storing and banking and someday destroying CFCs, HCFCs and other ozone-depleting substances that also threaten climate,” said Thien.

“The military’s leadership shown by these partners will earn the praise of environmentalists and compliance officials from around the world,” said Durwood Zaelke, president of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development, and director of the International Network for Environmental Compliance and Enforcement, a network of 4,000 environmental authorities in more than 150 countries.

Zaelke said, “Protecting the Earth against climate change is an environmental security campaign that we all support.”

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NEW YORK, New York, September 27, 2008 (ENS) – “I believe we’ve reached the stage where it is time for civil disobedience to prevent the construction [applause] of new coal plants that do not have carbon capture and sequestration,” Al Gore declared at the opening session of the Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting this week at the Sheraton New York.

Coal-fired power plants emit the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide that is joining other heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere, blanketing the planet and raising the global temperature. Carbon capture and sequestration are methods of keeping the greenhouse gas out of the atmosphere, but the technology is in its infancy, and the only U.S. demonstration project, FutureGen, was halted by the federal government earlier this year.

The former U.S. Vice President and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate who woke the world up to the dangers of global warming with his film “An Inconvenient Truth,” stepped up his warnings about the dire state of the global climate because he believes humans are losing the fight against global warming.

Former Vice President Al Gore at the Clinton
Global Initiative (Photo by David Lam)

He drew a parallel between the economic crisis that the Bush administration and Congress are now trying to resolve, and the climate crisis – but he says the climate crisis will be much more disastrous if it is not prevented – and time is growing short.

“Now, in the midst of this frenetic effort to find a bailout, many are saying we should have prevented this. We should have realized that the short-term greed was overcoming a clear vision of what the risk was,” said Gore.

“Well, now is the time to prevent a much worse catastrophe because the world has several trillion dollars in sub-prime carbon assets, based on the assumption that it is perfectly alright to put 70 million tons of global warming pollution into the atmosphere every 24 hours. Since we met here last year, the world has lost ground to the climate crisis. This is a rout,” he warned. “We are losing badly.”

“The strength of the storms, the depth of the drought, the movement of tropical diseases into areas that never experienced them before, this is the result of a dysfunctional, insane global system pattern that we have to change,” Gore said.

For the first time in all of human history, we as a species, have to make a decision,” he said, asking rhetorically, “What should we do?”

“We should stop burning coal [applause] without sequestering the CO2,” said Gore, blaming the coal and oil companies for the climate crisis.

“The coal and oil companies have spent, in the United States alone, a half a billion dollars in the first eight months of this year promoting a lie that there is such a thing as clean coal,” he said.

Coal-fired Tanners Creek power plant
in Indiana (Photo by AEP)

“Clean coal is like healthy cigarettes [laughter]. It does not exist. It could theoretically exist. The only demonstration plant was cancelled. How many such plants are there? Zero. How many blueprints? Zero.”

“What we should do is make a one-off investment to switch our energy infrastructure from one that depends on fuel that is dirty, dangerous, destroying the habitability of this planet and rising in price to a new global energy infrastructure that is based on fuel that is free forever: the sun [applause] and the wind and geothermal.”

“There is a myth that the technology is not available. It is available,” Gore said.

Gore said within 10 years the United States should have a good start on what he calls the Electronet, a unified, national “smart” power transmission grid “with long-distance, low-loss transmission capacity to take the energy from the places where the sun falls and the wind blows to the places where the people live.”

“And we need it globally,” he said, “in Europe, in Africa, Northern Africa particularly.”

Gore’s solution for the climate and energy crisis may help resolve the humanitarian crisis in Darfur, Sudan as well.

“Let’s start with Darfur,” he proposed. “Darfur has more sunlight falling on it reliably than almost any other place. There’s a belt across that part of Africa into the Middle East. We ought to build solar, electric plants there and connect them with a super grid that goes across the straits of Gibraltar and up through the Balkans and across the Mediterranean and replaces coal and oil.”

But instead of working to bring about solutions like that, Gore denounced the “utter insanity” of the course that the U.S. Congress is taking.

Former President Bill Clinton addresses the 2008
Clinton Global Initiative (Photo by David Lam)

“Today,” he said, “the U.S. Congress is dealing with energy as well. They are, without debate and without a single hearing, preparing to lift the moratorium on the development of oil shale, which would vastly multiply the amount of CO2 from every gallon of gasoline. This is utter insanity and it demonstrates that the wealth and power and influence of the entrenched carbon lobby to twist policy and to put out illusory impressions about this that is overwhelming free debate.”

An extension of the ban on oil shale production on federal lands in the West failed to pass the Senate on Friday. Unless Congress extends the moratorium, it expires at the end of September with the end of the current fiscal year.

The oil shale of the Green River geological formation in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming contains 800 billion to 1.8 trillion barrels of the equivalent of oil – roughly three times the size of Saudi Arabia’s oil reserves.

But the adverse land and ecological impacts of oil shale production are well known from production in Alberta, Canada.

Production of oil from shale will result in airborne pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions so worrisome that the U.S. Council of Mayors earlier this year passed a resolution against the purchase of petroleum products produced from shale.

Because the entire Green River formation lies in the Colorado River drainage basin, water quality is an important issue, and 2005 study by the RAND corporation warns that “not enough is known about how to prevent water contamination from surface and in-situ operations.”

The power demand associated with shale, whether from coal or natural gas-fired power plants, also represents an enormous demand for water. One estimate from a Los Alamos National Lab scientists warns that each barrel of oil from shale could require one to three barrels of water to produce.

As for clean coal, the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, an industry association, points out that coal provides half of America’s electricity generation.

“Over the last 30 years,” the coalition says, “America’s coal-based electricity providers have invested over $50 billion in technologies to reduce emissions – while at the same time providing affordable, reliable electricity to meet growing energy needs.”

“As a result of that commitment, today’s coal-based generating fleet is 70 percent cleaner on the basis of regulated emissions per unit of energy produced,” the coalition says, calling it “a great start.”

But the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide is not a regulated emission, and the Bush administration has resisted all attempts by the states, business and environmental groups to regulate CO2.

In Gore’s view, he explained to the high-powered audience at the Clinton Global Initiative, renewable and carbon-free sources of energy, conservation and efficiency are the only way the world can extricate itself from the climate crisis.

“The single most important thing we could do is to put a price on the CO2 in our economy today,” said Gore. “As you know, I’ve long argued to reduce the payroll tax on working people and make it up with a tax on CO2. Tax what we burn, not what we earn.”

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SACRAMENTO, California, September 23, 2008 (ENS) – California scientists have devised a formula to calculate how much of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide can be offset by increasing the reflectivity of urban surfaces like rooftops. They say that by making roofs reflective, homeowners will save money on cooling and white roofs installed on a global scale could cool the planet.

“White roofs can cut a building’s energy use by 20 percent and save consumers money,” says California Energy Commissioner Art Rosenfeld. “The potential energy savings in the U.S. is in excess of $1 billion annually. Additionally, by conserving electricity we are emitting less CO2 from power plants,” Rosenfeld added.

Together with Rosenfeld, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory scientists Hashem Akbari and Surabi Menon have quantified the effects of white roofs in populated settings in terms of how much carbon dioxide they offset.

Replacing nonreflective, dark roofing materials with white ones on an average house with 1,000 square feet of roof would result in an equivalent CO2 offset of 10 metric tons annually, the scientists estimate.

With an offset value of $25 per metric ton, that could be worth $250, according to European CO2 markets.

Their study is to be published in the scientific journal “Climatic Change.”

This new California home will keep its
occupants cooler with a white roof.
(Photo credit LBL)

Scientists have known for centuries that putting white roofs on homes and buildings is a simple and effective way to reflect the Sun’s rays. Similarly, cool-colored pavements aid in the reduction of “urban heat islands.”

When rooftops and pavements are more reflective, global warming can be reduced.

Since 2005, commercial buildings with flat roofs in California have been required to have white roofs.

Residential sloped roofs are also becoming more efficient. Beginning in 2009, new residential roofs and retrofit constructions in California will be required to have “cool-colored” roofs which reflect a higher fraction of the sun’s rays than current roofing materials of the same color.

Cool roofs reduce the roof surface temperature by up to 100 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the California Energy Commission, reducing the heat transferred into the building below. This helps to reduce energy costs by keeping attics and ducts cooler, improve occupant comfort, cut maintenance costs, and increase the life cycle of the roof.

There is so much recent interest in white roofs, that the Roof Coatings Manufacturers Association has established a White Coatings Council composed of 23 companies, including some of the largest such as Johns-Manville and Firestone.

“The technological advances and energy savings of today’s reflective roof coatings present RCMA with an exceptional opportunity to increase the use of white coatings in the rapidly escalating market for energy-efficient roofing,” said Anthony Ruffine, director of specialty products with GAF Materials Corporation, a member of the council.

Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium installed a white
roof made of soy oil polymer in 2004.
(Photo credit unknown)

Naturally, the council’s purpose is to sell roof coatings. “The White Coatings Council focuses on describing and promoting the benefits of white roof coatings,” Ruffine said, “in terms that directly impact and positively motivate targeted end-users through a promotion plan to increase awareness and product promotion.”

White roofs can not only improve the bottom line, they can fight global warming.

Because white roofs act as a geo-engineering technique to cool the Earth on a global scale, Akbari, Menon, and Rosenfeld propose an international campaign to organize 100 of the world’s largest cities in tropical and temperate zones to develop programs to require white roofs and cool pavementswhen roofs are first constructed and pavements installed.

The projected estimate for worldwide CO2 emissions in 2025 is 37 billion metric tons.

The proposed global CO2 offset would be 44 billion metric tons, valued at $1,100 billion, and enough to offset more than one year of the total global CO2 emissions.

“This idea of a cool cities campaign could lead to significant energy savings, improved air quality, reduce the heat island effect in summer, and more importantly, cool the globe,” says Akbari.

“This simple and effective idea can organize the world into taking measured steps to mitigate global warming,” he said. “Our findings will help city leaders and urban planners quantify the amount of CO2 they can offset using white roofs and cool pavements.”

California scientists have devised a formula to calculate how much of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide can be offset by increasing the reflectivity of urban surfaces like rooftops. They say that by making roofs reflective, homeowners will save money on cooling and white roofs installed on a global scale could cool the planet.

“White roofs can cut a building’s energy use by 20 percent and save consumers money,” says California Energy Commissioner Art Rosenfeld. “The potential energy savings in the U.S. is in excess of $1 billion annually. Additionally, by conserving electricity we are emitting less CO2 from power plants,” Rosenfeld added.

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BRUSSELS, Belgium, September 16, 2008 (ENS) – After poverty, climate change is the most serious problem Europe faces according to a Eurobarometer survey presented in the European Parliament on September 11.

The poll found that 61 percent of respondents have taken some personal action to cut emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. A quarter of those said they had changed their buying habits and used the car less to help the environment.

At the same time, the poll found that a majority believe that the people, governments, industry or the European Union are not doing enough about the warming climate.

The survey of over 30,000 people in 30 European countries found that 31 percent had not taken any action to change their behavior on account of the climate. Of those, almost half said they believe that government and industry should take action, while just over a third did not know what they should do.

The survey was conducted in all 27 EU member states as well as in the three candidate countries – Turkey, Croatia and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

Those who have taken action said they believe it would make a difference, that they had a duty to protect the environment or were concerned about what they would leave for future generations.

Eurostar and Thalys high speed trains await
passengers at Paris Gare du Nord. (Photo
credit unknown)

Across Europe, 28 percent of respondents said they use greener transport and 27 percent buy seasonal and local products that reduce CO2 emissions.

The results were presented at a press conference in the European Parliament by Italian MEP Guido Sacconi, who chairs the parliament’s Temporary Committee on Climate Change.

“The fact that many Europeans say that they do not have enough information, in particular on the actions that citizens could take, clearly indicates that we have to think about initiatives and measures to spread this knowledge more widely, especially among the most vulnerable groups of our population,” said Sacconi. “The role of regional and local authorities in this task will be crucial.”

Sacconi noted differences in attitudes in different countries, saying he thought the responses of those polled depended on whether or not the country had experienced an ecological disaster.

He cited forest fires and droughts in Greece and Cyprus as two examples of countries where people’s ecological awareness had been raised by natural disasters.

Sweden is the country where most people have taken personal action to help reduce their C02 emissions, with 87 percent of respondents saying they have done something.

By comparison, 60 percent of people in Latvia and Lithuania said they have taken no action.

Royd Moor Wind Farm near Penistone,
South Yorkshire, England (Photo by Ian
Britton courtesy FreeFoto.com)

At the press conference, Europe’s Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas pointed to the stimulating effect that green industry could have on Europe’s economy. He noted that 56 percent of those polled believe that climate change can help the economy.

“Saving energy means saving money, so there is a common logic that citizens consider it to be beneficial for economy,” Dimas said.

He went on to say that “citizens have role to play both as consumers, by choosing to buy the right products, and as voters.”

By the end of this year, Europe’s Environment Ministers meeting in the Council along with elected MEPs should reach an agreement on a package of Europe-wide legislation that will help mitigate climate change.

Dimas called on MEPs and the Council of Ministers not to “dilute” the proposed measures.

Margot Wallstrom, vice-president of the European Commission and a former environment commissioner, said, “Surveys of this kind are important components in our policy-making. It is striking to see that European citizens take the issue of climate change so seriously and it confirms our belief that continued, coherent EU action in this area is imperative.”

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NEW YORK, New York, September 12, 2008 (ENS) – An ongoing rise in atmospheric levels of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide emitted by burning fossil fuels might be kept below harmful levels if emissions from coal are phased out within the next few decades, says Dr. James Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, a member of Columbia University’s Earth Institute.

Fossil fuel combustion accounts for about 80 percent of the rise of atmospheric CO2 since the pre-industrial era, to its current level of 385 parts per million.

While there are huge amounts of coal left, predictions about when and how oil and gas production might start running out have proved controversial, and this has made it difficult to anticipate future emissions, says Hansen.

Less plentiful oil and gas should be used sparingly as well, but based on their newly published research paper, Hansen and his team say that far greater supplies of coal mean that it must be the main target of emissions reductions.

To better understand how the emissions might change in the future, Hansen and climatologist Pushker Kharecha devised five emissions scenarios spanning the years 1850 to 2100.

Satellite imagery shows where carbon
dioxide is being emitted or absorbed,
measured here in 2003. Reds show
sources; blues, absorption. (Image
courtesy NASA)

Each reflects a different estimate for the global production peak of fossil fuels, the timing of which depends on reserve size, recoverability and available technology.

“This is the first paper that explicitly melds the two vital issues of global peak oil production and human-induced climate change,” Kharecha said. “We found that because coal is much more plentiful than oil or gas, reducing coal emissions is absolutely essential to avoid dangerous climate change.”

The first scenario estimates CO2 levels if emissions from fossil fuels follow “business as usual,” growing two percent annually until half the existing reserve of each fuel has been recovered. After this, emissions begin to decline by two percent annually.

In the second scenario, emissions from coal are reduced, first by developed countries starting in 2013, and then by developing countries a decade later, leading to a global phaseout of emissions by 2050. The phaseout could come either from reducing coal consumption or by capturing and trapping CO2 from coal burning before it reaches the air.

The remaining three scenarios include the phaseout of coal, but consider different scenarios for oil use and supply. One case considers a delay in the oil peak by about 21 years to 2037.

Another considers fewer than expected additions to currently proven reserves, or taxes on emissions that makes fuels too expensive to extract.

The final scenario looks at emissions from oil fields that peak at different times, extending the peak into a plateau that lasts from 2020-2040.

CO2, which accounts for about half of the human-caused greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, concerns scientists because it can remain for centuries.

Greenhouse gas emissions rise from the coal-fired
Conemaugh power plant in Pennsylvania.
(Photo by Stefan Schlöhmer)

Hansen’s previous research suggests that a dangerous level of global warming may occur if CO2 exceeds a concentration of about 450 parts per million.

That is a 61 percent increase from the pre-industrial level of 280 parts per million, but only 17 percent more than the current level.

Hansen says the danger level would bring a rise of about 1.8 degrees F above the global temperature in the year 2000.

At or beyond this point, disintegration of the West Antarctic ice sheet and Arctic sea ice could reach tipping points, and set in motion feedback mechanisms that would lead to further, accelerated melting.

“Even if we assume high-end estimates and unconstrained emissions from conventional oil and gas, we find that these fuels alone are not abundant enough to take carbon dioxide above 450 parts per million,” Kharecha said.

This would apply also to “unconventional” fuels not yet in mainstream use, such as methane hydrates and tar sands, say Hansen and Kharecha. These contain far more fossil carbon than conventional oil and gas, and so could potentially be major contributors to emissions.

“We’re illustrating the types of action needed to get to target carbon dioxide levels,” Kharecha said. “The most important mitigation strategy we recommend – a phase-out of carbon dioxide emissions from coal within the next few decades – is feasible using current or near-term technologies.”

The paper, “Implications of ‘peak oil’ for atmospheric CO2 and climate” is published in the journal “Global Biogeochemical Cycles.” at: www.agu.org

Kharecha is also author of a related article, “How Will the End of Cheap Oil Affect Future Global Climate?”

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