A favorite talking point of climate change deniers has been that past CO2 concentrations swung wildly up and down by thousands of ppmV (parts per million by volume). When the concentrations were very high, greenhouse climates were found on Earth. When they were low, ice sheets were able to cover large swaths of the planet.
Like other talking points by the deniers, this one has now been proven to be false. CO2 concentrations did not, in fact, fluctuate by large amounts. It turns out that previously assumed soil CO2 concentrations during carbonate formation (which removes atmospheric CO2, albeit very slowly) were too high. Using more accurate constraints, past greenhouse climates were accompanied by concentrations similar to those projected for the end of this century.
After the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Conference, it was apparent that a number of countries had made pledges that needed backing up at home in the form of laws. The U.S. is one such example. Our House of Representatives passed a climate and energy bill back in June. Similar legislation has yet to come up for any votes at all in the Senate.
On the flip side of the coin, Brazil is an example of a country that made a pledge and now can point to a law backing up that pledge. The law requires CO2 emissions to be reduced by 39% by 2020. I haven’t found the baseline year they’re measuring against – i.e. 2005 emissions or 1990 emissions. The 1990 emissions would obviously be more restrictive, so my initial gut feeling is they’re using their 2005 emissions as a benchmark.
To be fair, Brazil isn’t the textbook case of a country which has always done things in an environmentally conscious way. But they are closer to action than we are.
I obviously haven’t posted anything about the Copenhagen Conference for a few days. Not for lack of desire, but for a lack of time. So before more time slips away and I lose track of what happened in Copenhagen, here are where things stand, as best as I can determine.
The Copenhagen Climate Conference of 2009 wasn’t an abject failure, as too many people continue to profess. Did the Conference result in the most aggressive actions by every country that the most optimistic could have hoped for? Of course not. Anybody who thought that would happen set themselves up for severe disappointment. Is it the final step in climate action internationally? Again, of course it isn’t. What I think happened is a solid step in the general right direction was taken. The results were actually better than the total gridlock that appeared 1-3 days days prior to the end led observers to believe they would be. The agent who made the recorded progress available? The Obama administration.
The first official draft on a climate deal has been written and issued. The expectation is the details won’t be worked out for another 6 months or so, which was what a lot of people were thinking going into this Summit. Keep in mind that George Bush’s crew did everything they could for 8 years to make sure the climate crisis was worse when they left than when they took power. President Obama’s administration has had only 10 months so far to undo those 8 years of damage. That little fact will be very handy when the Cons start screaming that the Summit and the U.S. President are failures. Gotta love those patriots! Back to the draft:
A key working group under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) came up with a six-page text Friday. The draft may form the core of a new global agreement to combat climate change beyond 2012, when the present framework, the Kyoto Protocol, expires. However, most figures in the text are shown in brackets – meaning that there is not yet agreement on these specifics. Most importantly, the draft states that emissions should be halved worldwide by 2050 compared to 1990 levels, but it also suggests 80 percent and 95 percent reductions by that year as possible alternative options.
Those two emphasized statements are at the root of a lot of disagreement between parties, as I cover below.
There was an important development at yesterday’s Climate Summit in Copenhagen that should have gotten more attention in the media. There was also a data update that provides additional context for the importance of that development.
The island nation of Tuvalu wanted legally binding language to be written establishing limits in global atmospheric CO2 concentrations to 350 parts per million and global temperature rise to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. For clarity, our current global CO2 concentrations, according to observations, is 387ppm. So we’re already above the limit that scientists have identified as being a threshold we should not be above if we don’t want global temperatures much higher than they are today. Tuvalu was asking, therefore, for nations to agree to reduce emissions drastically so that the atmospheric concentrations begin decreasing. Why would they want legally binding language for such an audacious goal? Because Tuvalu is a set of four reef islands and five atolls whose maximum elevation is 15ft. They are extremely susceptible to any future potential sea level rise. Larger, richer countries (like Saudi Arabia and China) would hear none of it. They want to keep burning dirty fossil fuels and expand their economies like other developed nations did for the past 150 years. Tuvalu and a group consisting of other island countries and poorer nations can’t afford to wait until China decides they’re ready to switch to 100% renewable energy at some point in the future. They’re at risk today from climate change that is already occurring. The issue was suspended for the time being. Expect it to arise again before the end of next week (not that a solution will be found in that time frame, unfortunately).
Which brings me to the bad news of the day. I’ve written for months now that the 2007 IPCC AR4 report was good for its time, but it left significant questions unanswered (I haven’t been the only one). It was good, but didn’t go far enough. Major drawbacks resulting from a far too conservative approach, an approach that didn’t examine extremes as likely enough to spend much time on. Since the collection of papers for the 2007 AR4 release, scientists across the world have worked very hard to try to begin finding answers for the toughest questions remaining. How sensitive is the climate to GHG emissions? How responsive are temperatures to those emissions? When will glaciers and ice sheets melt? What kind of sea level rise can be expected? Another paper was put together to try to answer that last question. As with other facets of the research effort, conditions could very well be much worse than what the 2007 Report may have led people to think:
Sea level rise could occur 3 times faster than previously estimated. Everybody should be able to click on the link and look at the pdf if they want. Here’s the high-level message: based on our current emissions profile, which is as high as the worst-case scenario the IPCC examined, sea levels could rise by 6 feet (~2m) by 2100. The rate at which sea levels have been rising has increased in the past 20 and 10 years. Scientists’ predictions of sea level rise have been too low, contrary to the denialists’ hopes otherwise. Natural causes alone have not and cannot explain the rise observed. Like I wrote above, Tuvalu and many other countries are under immediate threat. They have no more time to wait while rich countries throw tantrums like spoiled children. This situation is likely to get worse before it gets better.
Lots of activity in Copenhagen happened during the past two days. As expected, results in the form of agreements or pacts haven’t come yet – that will happen next week. So here are some more climate-related news items to digest while negotiators do their job. I’ll add them throughout the day as they come out.
The 2000′s will be the hottest decade on record. Read that again: the 2000′s will be the hottest decade on record. Both the World Meteorological Organization and NOAA have come out with separate but agreeing analyses on this topic. Expect NASA to say the same thing when they release their update in the next week. We’ll have to wait until a little while into 2010 to get additional confirmation, but climate change is occurring today, period, end of story. What’s left to debate and decide? How fast and how much we act in the next 5 years. After that, it becomes how do we react, because a great deal of change will have been locked into the climate system.
