By Jerry Walters

Several new reports on the subject of transportation, land use and climate interactions, reach findings related to and/or directly refer to the findings of Growing Cooler- The Evidence on Urban Development and Climate Change, a 2008 ULI book co-authored by Fehr & Peers. This second of three posts will clarify the misconceptions and key differences between Growing Cooler and the most prominent of these studies:

• Last week: Moving Cooler – by Cambridge Systematics for ULI, EPA, US DOT, et al
• This week: Driving and the Built Environment – by a group of academics and national experts for TRB and the National Research Council.
• Next week: Travel Behavior, Residential Preference, and Urban Design – by the University of North Carolina

Driving and the Built Environment

This National Research Council (NRC) report finds lower VMT reduction resulting from land use strategies than did Growing Cooler and than were adopted into Moving Cooler. It estimates that the potential reductions in inter-urban passenger travel resulting from land use shifts and complementary transportation would be in the range of no greater than 8 to 11 percent by 2050, while Growing Cooler estimates the likely range to be between 12 and 18 percent.

The authors of Growing Cooler believe that the lower NRC estimate is the result of several questionable assumptions:

· The NRC study does not take into consideration the effects of more compact future commercial development and redevelopment, it only examines density increases related to residential growth,

· NRC assumes very, very slow redevelopment of residential properties, equivalent to about 500-year life-cycle for housing stock, compared to 170-year life-cycle projections that informed other studies such as Growing Cooler,

· The NRC analysis considered the effects of development density on VMT reductions but not the additional 4D effects of diversity (mixed use), design (walkability and connectively), destination accessibility (infill vs. spread sites), and development distance to core transit,

· The NRC study does not consider the synergistic effects that infill and mixed-use development has on its neighboring land uses, which can occur if it fills needs for complementary land use types. This may result from adding services and entertainment to homogeneous residential areas, or adding housing near pre-existing jobs or retail, or adding a more connected and amenable pedestrian environment to what may have previously been a gray-field or brownfield. It may also result from creating critical mass that generates additional transit investment in the area,

· Also, by working with national averages, the NRC study uses very broad averages of development form, unlikely to register on the benefits derived at a neighborhood or community scale. As reported the study works with average existing residential densities of only 1.7 to 2.9 dwelling units per acre, and then assumes that new development will only occur at densities of 1 DU per acre. As a result, their estimates of VMT reductions have little in common with the types of reductions likely to correspond with the local effects of compact, mixed use development on the vast amount of travel that takes place within neighborhoods and within communities.

In conclusion, the Growing Cooler authors believe that their own estimates represent a fully achievable estimate of VMT and GHG reduction.

______________________________________________________________________________

Coming up next…

- I will review UNC’s Travel Behavior, Residential Preference, and Urban Design: A Multi-Disciplinary National Analysis, which states: “We found that residents of neo-traditional developments make more car trips … than residents of typical suburban neighborhoods… We found no difference in vehicle mileage.”

For those who somehow missed this news item from several days ago, hundreds of email messages & other documents (some as old as 13 years) from the UK’s University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit were “leaked” to the public. Though illegally obtained (i.e., hacked), they have so far proven to be genuine. The correspondence between prominent climate change activist scientists are quite enlightening and damaging to the global warming / climate change cause.

As Paul Driessen discusses in his recent Townhall.com article, “They reveal an unprecedented, systematic conspiracy to stifle discussion and debate, conceal and manipulate data, revise temperature trends that contradict predictions of dangerous warming, skew the peer-review process, pressure scientific journals and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to publish alarmist studies and exclude dissenting analyses, and avoid compliance with Freedom of Information requests.” Serious accusations, but Driessen gives examples in his piece.

Now, no one is saying that EVERY scientist pushing the pro-global warming agenda is involved in some giant conspiracy to grab power and make fortunes while destroying jobs, ruining the world economy, etc. Many (perhaps most?) have simply been duped by fellow scientists & politicians, pressured by idealogues, and/or are guilty of sloppy science. (For example, programming their computer models with certain cause-and-effect assumptions that have not actually been firmly established, or leaving out / glossing over certain inconvenient data.) And the skeptic should, as always, take care not to overstate the impact of any particular statement or finding that seems to favor his case or discredit his opponent’s. But, anyone with a modicum of intellectual honesty must admit that these current revelations, regardless of how or when they came out, cast doubt not only on the integrity of those directly involved in these particular communications but on the validity of the whole Gore-ite argument for catastrophic, man-made global warming / climate change.

There is an excellent “companion” article from Christopher Booker at the The Telegraph. After laying out the significance of exactly who is involved in the scandal (e.g., CRU Director Phil Jones, Penn State’s Michael “Hockey-stick” Mann, etc.) and what they did, Booker concludes “Our hopelessly compromised scientific establishment cannot be allowed to get away with a whitewash of what has become the greatest scientific scandal of our age.”

If you want to read more material that is not the typical alarmist propaganda, I recommend books by people like Christopher C. Horner, Roy W. Spencer, Patrick J. Michaels, and Steven J. Milloy. They explain what the scientific evidence really says and what the consequences of following the alarmist agenda will be for America and the world if people don’t wake up and STOP it!

Stephen Harper is coming to Copenhagen. It really surprised me when the Canadian media started patting him on the back for announcing this, as if he was finally cleaning up his act and showing some leadership. Coming to a conference – and most likely only for a day or two, for a photo op – doesn’t show leadership. As I’ll explain in this post, it’s the latest in a chain of attempts by the Canadian government to look like they’re doing something about climate change, without actually doing anything at all.

Obama is only coming to Copenhagen for one day. Almost certainly a photo op. But I find this somewhat more excusable because the US is already working on their own climate change legislation, independent of Copenhagen. The US has something against international agreements, but they’re being proactive and finding ways to achieve the same ends regardless. Canada hasn’t done any such thing.

And it’s not just the Conservatives that are being difficult. Michael Ignatieff, the leader of the opposition, says that Canada has wasted four years on climate change action. Actually, we’ve wasted twenty. But Ignatieff will only say four years, because beyond that, it was his party that was the problem. The Liberals were the ones to sign Kyoto and agree to an emissions cut of 6% below 1990 levels. Instead, as of 2006, they were 22% above.

The recommended emissions target for developed nations is a 25-40% cut from 1990 levels by 2020. Most developed nations have stepped up to the plate. Norway has pledged a 40% reduction. Japan has pledged 25%. Australia has agreed to 5-24%, depending on whether there is an agreement at Copenhagen. The EU will cut 20% no matter what, and will increase this to 30% with an international agreement. Britain has increased this even further, with a 34% pledge.

The US is a little trickier. Waxman-Markey will cut 14-20%, but from 2005 levels, not 1990. Does anyone know how to convert this so we can properly compare it to other countries?

Then there’s Canada. Canada has pledged 3% from 1990 levels. Absolutely pitiful. Depending on what the US conversion turns out to be, there’s a good chance that our humble country is the worst in the world for climate change action and leadership.

The government knows this, and they’re spending a great deal of time and energy trying to cover it up. For example, they won’t say “3% by 1990″, because it’s so obviously pitiful. Instead, they say that they’ve pledged “a 20% cut by 2020″…..from 2006 levels. What is the point of deviating from the standard baseline among countries who signed Kyoto, unless you’re deliberately trying to keep your citizens happy with you?

And that’s not all. In the summer, I wrote about how Canada was still advertising its Turning the Corner plan, even though it appeared to have abandoned it. When I went to PowerShift in October, I had the chance to talk to a lot of people who knew a lot about Canada’s climate change policies. And yes, our government has definitely abandoned Turning the Corner. But it’s still one of the first links in their sidebar. And when you click on that link, you discover that it hasn’t been updated since August 2o08, and the legislation is supposed to come into effect in January 2010. Yet another example of keeping the citizens happy without having to do anything.

Stephen Harper’s climate change website is full of talk about emissions intensity and CSS. There are pictures of him shaking hands with Obama and planting trees. But trying to get any real information out of it is next to impossible.

The government is spending so much time trying to convince Canadians that they’re taking bold action on climate change. They’re devoting so much energy to putting on sustainable masks that contradict all their talk of a transparent government. All without having to take any action at all.

What I ask is, why not spend all that time and energy actually doing something? Why not cooperate with other nations and realize that this is the way the world economy is going? Why not be proactive and prepared instead of hoping that the whole issue will just go away?

It actually makes me ashamed to be Canadian. Ashamed to be part of this country that tosses around the future of our civilization, the future of my generation, so lightly. And for what?

Taiwan's electric snake

A couple of months before the first sod was turned for the 2010 Green Point Stadium in early 2007, construction began on a similar project on the other side of the world.

Taiwan’s new 55,000-seater multipurpose venue was completed in 28 months and cost less than R1.5 billion.

Green Point, which will have a smaller capacity when the temporary seating is removed after the World Cup, is still under construction after more than 30 months, during which time the budget has soared from R1.2.billion to R4.5 billion.

But what really hurts is that Taiwan’s stadium is a flagship of green design and technology, able to produce all its own electricity when in use, and to sell its surplus to the neighbours when idle.

Not just that, but it is so breathtakingly beautiful it makes Green Point look like a chamber pot.

Designed by the visionary Japanese architect Toyo Ito after an international competition, the roof curls around the pitch like a snake, glittering with 8,844 photovoltaic scales.

According to Taiwanese officials, the stadium will generate 1.14 million kilowatt hours a year, preventing the release of 660 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere annually.

Excess power will be sold, adding more than a R1 million to the stadium’s annual income.

So why couldn’t we have one like that?

In fact, why couldn’t all five of our extravagant new super-stadia have been built to double as clean power stations?

Because nobody thought about it, that’s why. Or if they did, no-one with any authority listened to them. It was all about size and spectacle and outdoing the Germans.

Only once the designs were signed off was there a belated attempt tack on various “environmental enhancements”. Now, six months before kick off, they start talking about “green goals”.

It’s too late.

It is now estimated that the 2010 World Cup will be the dirtiest ever, contributing 2.75 million tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.

The only way to do anything about that now is to offset it. It would have helped if all our new stadia were able to generate clean, free electricity. Instead, they will add to the problem by increasing demand for the dirty stuff.

So much for a legacy.

(This article was first published by www.enviromedianews.co.za)

The proposal came from a coalition of scientists, politicians and campaigners, including the World Development Movement, the Polaris Institute in Canada and Greenpeace, just before this weekend’s Commonwealth heads of government summit in Trinidad and Tobago, at which global warming will top the agenda.

Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions are among the world’s highest, and the country will not meet the cut required under the Kyoto protocol: by 2007 its emissions were 34% above its reduction target. In a list of 185 countries, Canada is the 3rd highest CO2 culprit (18.8 tons per capita), with Australians in the first place (20.6 tons per capita annually) and the United States in the second with 19.8 tons.

Image Credit: http://improbable.com

The coalition claims Canada is contributing to droughts, floods and sea level rises in Commonwealth countries such as Bangladesh, the Maldives and Mozambique. Clare Short, the former international development secretary, said: “Countries that fail to help [tackle global warming] should be suspended from membership, as are those that breach human rights.”

The Commonwealth’s 53 members include not only developed countries like Britain, Australia and Canada, but also emerging economies like India and South Africa as well as poor developing states comprising some of the world’s most vulnerable to global warming, like the Maldives and Bangladesh. In the past, the Commonuardiwealth has suspended Pakistan, Zimbabwe, Nigeria and South Africa for electoral or human rights reasons.

Source and further information: The Guardian

Climate Changing Faster

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/sci_climate_09_post_kyoto

The recent leaked emails from East Anglia University in the UK came as no surprise to me or many others who chose to question Global Warming myths and pseudo science. I have a math/science background and possibly more importantly, I am from NC and many of us have built in BS detectors. When confronted with numbers and theories that appeared absurd, I did some real research and reported on this blog. Watch the following video from a real scientist and then visit or revisit articles presented here going back to February of 2008.
“Climategate: Dr. Tim Ball on the hacked CRU emails”

Frem a speech given by Keith O. Rattie, Chairman, President and CEO of Questar Corporation, on April 2, 2009, at the 22nd Annual UVU Symposium on Environmental Ethics, held at Utah Valley University.
Reported here, May 15, 2009
“My perspective on global warming changed when I began to understand the limitations of the computer models that scientists have built to predict future warming. If the only variable driving the earth‟s climate were manmade CO2 then there‟d be no debate – global average temperatures would increase by a harmless one degree over the next 100 years. But the earth‟s climate is what engineers call a “non-linear, dynamic system”. The models have dozens of inputs. Many are little more than the opinion of the scientist – in some cases, just a guess.”
“Another example, water vapor is a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. [The media now calls CO2 a “pollutant”. If CO2 is a “pollutant” then water vapor is also a “pollutant” – that‟s absurd, but I digress]. Some scientists believe clouds amplify human CO2 forcing, others believe precipitation acts as the earth‟s thermostat. But scientists do not agree on how to model clouds, precipitation, and evaporation, thus there‟s no consensus on this fundamental issue.”
“But the reality for American consumers is that whether you buy that the science is settled or not, the political science is settled. With the media cheering them on, Congress has promised to “do something”. CO2 regulation is coming, whether it will do any good or not. Indeed, President Obama‟s hope of shrinking the now the massive federal budget deficit depends on vast new revenues from a tax on carbon energy – so called “cap and trade”. Harry Reid has promised cap and trade legislation by August.”
Cap and trade, Global warming, Fact vs Fiction

From the Citizen Wells blog, March 10, 2008

“So, what is hampering our oil production. Environmental wackos. Let’s take Alaska for example. Of course, they always bring up environmental impact. But they also bring up animals like polar bears and whales. They use pseudo science of global warming and terms like may and could cause. They consistently use false data and science. I hear talk of polar bears becoming extinct almost every day when in fact their numbers have increased. Alleged receding ice will fundamentally have no impact on their numbers.”
Always follow the money

From the Citizen Wells blog, March 10, 2008

“Weather Channel founder John Coleman is calling global warming a fraud and says the station he founded needs to stop telling people what to think about climate change.”

“One of it’s meteorologists suggested two years ago that weathercasters who have doubts about global warming should lose their certification. Coleman advocates suing people who sell carbon credits — including Al Gore — because the attention in the courts could, in his words, “put some light on the fraud of global warming.””
 John Coleman on Al Gore Global Warming lies

From the Citizen Wells blog, February 28, 2008
“Global warming is not equivalent to climate change. Significant, societally important climate change, due to both natural- and human- climate forcings, can occur without any global warming or cooling.”
“In terms of climate change and variability on the regional and local scale, the IPCC Reports, the CCSP Report on surface and tropospheric temperature trends, and the U.S. National Assessment have overstated the role of the radiative effect of the anthropogenic increase of CO2 relative to the role of the diversity of other human climate climate forcing on global warming, and more generally, on climate variability and change.”
“Global and regional climate models have not demonstrated skill at predicting regional and local climate change and variability on multi-decadal time scales.”
R.A. Pielke Sr. provides a balanced view of climate science
 

Common sense goes a long way where I come from and the numbers and peudo science from the likes of Al Gore never made sense. I also checked some real data from time to time like summer temperatures in Antarctica.
Here is one of the better sources for information on climate change and earth facts.
http://wattsupwiththat.com

Watching David McWilliams recent Addicted to Money programmes recently brought up an interesting fact on consumption of beef and its impact on the environment.

Did you know that producing 1kg of beef results in more CO2 emissions than going for a three hour drive while leaving all the lights on at home (36.4kg or CO2) according to scientists.

A Swedish study conducted in 2003 claimed that raising organic beef on grass rather than feed, reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 40% and consumed 85% less energy.

Now what if everyone in China started to eat meat in earnest?

Information courtesy of The Guardian.

The big story of the day is not the hacked emails from UEA, but the news from the UN World Meteorological Organisation, that greenhouse gases, the major cause of global warming, are at the highest levels ever recorded, and are still climbing.

Michel Jarraud, head of WMO, said that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere was 385.2 ppm in 2008, up 2 ppm in a year, which is slightly faster than the average increase for the past decade of 1.9ppm pa.  This trend, he says, could be pushing the world towards the most pessimistic assessments of the rise in temperatures expected in coming decades, and that this underlined the need for urgent action.  Jarraud said that the fact that greenhouse gases are still increasing steadily shows that the reductions agreed in the Kyoto Protocol were insufficient.  “We are looking to Copenhagen to come up with a strong decision on greenhouse gases.  The more we delay, the bigger the impact will be.”

So…One more good reason to be in London on 5th December to join The Wave!

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in Geneva has come out with the latest data on Greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere since 1750: carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane are up 0.5% in 2008 to the previous year. These are the highest absolute levels since 1750 and 1750 is considered to be pre-industrial. Discounting for the fact that early measurement records may not have had the accuracy of modern day measuring systems, we do realize that we are playing an active role in the increase.

The Climate Conference must ensure that emissions are reduced and the receding chlorofluorocarbons levels show that the ban on CFCs has helped within the past ten years.

The main polluters must decide on promoting Green energy. But will they do it? Pointing the finger at polluters with high absolute emission values, but low per capita levels reminds me of the harping on protectionist policies in the agricultural field, by those very same countries.

We can still afford to make a change now and set an example for the rest. Very few governments are keen to be the avant garde in this respect- They see very little or no net profit for their respective economies.

More than anything else, the new polluters (emerging economies) can set a trend that can not only put many other nations to shame, but also provide them with a head start in the field of Green energy. They have the option of taking the short cut without having to cope with the after effects of pollution and its myriad other harmful effects.

For years California has courted a reputation as an eco-friendly, green-minded leader, but the state now finds its most basic program of recycling beverage bottles and cans mired in debt and litigation.

Dozens of supermarket recycling sites have shut down recently as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state legislators spar over how to close a massive gap in the program’s budget.   California’s 23-year-old recycling program, managed by the Department of Conservation through fees charged to beverage buyers, has been hurt this year by recession, rising redemption rates and raids of its coffers to help ease the state’s budget woes.

Schwarzenegger and the Democratic-controlled Legislature concede that the program, which collected more than 16 billion beverage containers last year, is in fiscal distress – but each has rejected the other’s solution.  “This is an important program for California and we are currently looking at ways to improve funding in this down economy,” said Schwarzenegger spokeswoman Rachel Arrezola.

Mark Murray of Californians Against Waste, a nonprofit advocacy group, said consumers are going to find it increasingly difficult to recycle their beverage containers.  “The net result is likely to be a drop in the recycling rate,” he said.  Shoppers remain entitled to their nickel or dime deposits for returning glass, plastic or aluminum beverage containers, but many consumers could be forced to drive farther, wait longer or comply with shorter center operating hours.

The number of supermarket parking-lot recyclers has grown gradually in recent years to about 2,100. But two of the largest operators, Tomra Pacific and NexCycle, announced the shutdown of about 90 centers recently, laying off more than 100 workers.  Tomra, which projects losses of $9 million this year, has joined with two other firms to sue the state, seeking to “stop the dismantling” of the program. Exacerbating problems, the scrap value of aluminum cans has plummeted in the past year, and the market for other containers has struggled.

“If consumers can no longer find convenient outlets for recycling used bottles and cans, they are more likely to go back to their old ways of discarding them in landfills – or worse, on streets, beaches and other property,” the lawsuit said.  “This will essentially end the Recycling Program as we have known it,” the suit said.

By law, supermarkets not served by parking-lot recyclers are supposed to either pay the state $100 a day – only one store is doing so – or redeem the containers themselves, but many do not.  In a telephone check of 15 such supermarkets Friday, only six accept empty cans and bottles. 

Many supermarkets are not prepared to pick up the slack from closures of parking-lot recyclers because of the time it would take to count bags of containers and the health and safety implications of doing so where food is sold, said Dave Heylen of the California Grocers Association.

“It’s something that would be quite a hardship,” he said.

Department of Conservation officials declined to discuss Tomra’s lawsuit or allegations of harm. But state officials clearly are not trying to kill the program because both Schwarzenegger and the Democratic-controlled Legislature have tried to intervene, thus far unsuccessfully.

In May, state finance officials projected a $162 million deficit for the program by July 2010, which sparked across-the-board cuts that affected subsidies paid to collection centers but not to consumers who redeem beverages.

Schwarzenegger’s relief proposal focused on targeted cuts and on compressing subsidiary efforts, such as for public education and recycling incentives, into a new program of competitive grants.

The Legislature rejected Schwarzenegger’s plan during budget talks and crafted its own proposal, Senate Bill 402, which would have relied on expansion rather than contraction to bolster the program.

In vetoing SB 402, Schwarzenegger said that consumers would have been hurt by provisions to double the fee on 20-ounce sodas, from 5 to 10 cents, and to expand the kinds of beverages and types of containers accepted.

“I recognize that without this bill there is an immediate hardship,” his veto message said, but “the lasting effects of this bill are far worse.”

As a stopgap, Schwarzenegger said he would order emergency regulations to require beverage distributors to submit payments to the state every two months, not three, which is expected to generate a one-time infusion of about $100 million.

California’s recycling program partly has been a victim of its own success, because each redeemed container takes a nickel or dime from funds for subsidies, outreach or operational funds.

Redemption rates have risen from 67 percent in 2007 to 74 percent in 2008, and to 85 percent for the first six months of 2009.

Meanwhile, beverage sales from January to June were 325 million containers less – about 3 percent – than for the same time span in 2008.

Bottom line? Projected revenue has dropped by about $74 million the past year, from $1.15 billion to a projected $1.086 billion.

But Chuck Riegle of Tomra said the most painful blow was self-inflicted by the state: Politicians have raided recycling coffers, through loans, to help balance the state budget.

Tomra’s suit seeks to force repayment of about $415 million that otherwise would have been used for recycling.

Four times this decade, the state has borrowed beverage funds, most recently during the current fiscal year when more than $99 million was diverted to the state’s general fund.

The deadline for paying back $286 million borrowed in 2002 and 2003 initially was June 2009, but it was extended three years ago to 2013. Only $30 million has been repaid, records show.

In borrowing fee revenue, the state requires that no harm be done to the affected program, yet more than half of this year’s projected $162 million deficit consisted of the $99 million loan to bolster the state’s general fund.

Jon Coupal of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association said the multiple raids on recycling funds, the lack of timely repayment and the harm caused to collection centers raise questions about whether fees were spent illegally.

“It changes what otherwise might be characterized as a legitimate fee into a tax of questionable legality,” Coupal said.

State finance spokesman H.D. Palmer disagreed, saying that the program was projected to have an $81 million balance when legislation was signed in February to borrow for the next fiscal year. Changing market conditions made the deficit evident months later, in a May budget revision, Palmer said.

“This is just one example of the dramatic fluctuations we’ve seen in the state’s fiscal picture as a result of the recession,” he said.

Schwarzenegger’s veto message for SB 402 said he supports repaying past loans and banning any future loans from recycling coffers to the state’s general fund.

Sources: Fresno Bee and WIH Resource Group

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By Carlo Cottarelli

As world leaders gather in Copenhagen (or, maybe, as they don’t), climate change is again in the headlines. The science of the issue can get pretty incomprehensible pretty quickly. And the politics are clearly very ugly. Let’s not forget, however, that much of the economics is simple.

It’s an externality, stupid—so price it

Climate change is an “externality” problem. Individuals, firms, and, yes, governments, do not take full account of the harm that others suffer when they emit greenhouse gases. So they emit too much. And the best way to stop them doing this is to charge them a price for the carbon content of what they emit: a “carbon price.”

Admittedly, climate change is a particularly complicated externality. Since the damage will fall largely on future generations, the proper price depends very much on how we value their well-being relative to ours. The importance of such long-lived investments as power-stations, and the heavy sunk costs of investing in new technologies, mean that the carbon prices people expect in the future are even more important than the price now. And the fact that the world’s supply of fossil fuels is ultimately fixed means that the effect of carbon prices on total emissions is not as clear cut as it may seem.

Emission reductions solely by those countries historically responsible for the accumulated stock of emissions will not come close to solving the climate problem (photo: Newscom)

But the basic principle remains—polluters should pay (these and other points made here are elaborated on in an IMF paper on the fiscal implications of climate change).

How much? How? Who?

Not surprisingly, views on the best path of carbon prices differ. But the numbers are often strikingly moderate. Even $60 per ton of carbon—somewhat higher than current prices in the EU emissions trading market,and a fairly realistic starting value for proposed schemes in the United States—would mean only $8 per barrel of oil, hardly noticeable relative to the swings we’ve become used to.

Of course, the point is that this would not be just another swing. It would be permanent. The carbon price would also increase over time, and apply not only to oil but also (importantly) to coal and (ideally) to emissions from deforestation and agriculture. What is underappreciated in the public debate is that the initial steps need not be very scary. Moreover, many countries continue to underprice or even subsidize gasoline, which is almost always found to be a hugely expensive handout to the relatively affluent.

There are several ways to implement a carbon price—tax carbon emissions, issue a fixed quantity of emission rights that can be bought and sold (“cap and trade”) or a bit of both. There are pros and cons of each. For example, rights are all too often given away for free (“grandfathered”) dissipating a source of revenue that could help address the alarming fiscal challenges ahead. What matters most for the climate is that something effective is actually done.

Another key piece of the economics is that the collective costs of reducing emissions are much lower when more countries participate. Here we run up against perhaps the most inconvenient truth of all—emission reductions solely by those countries historically responsible for the accumulated stock of emissions will not come close to solving the climate problem. But the basic economics of externalities tells us that we should be able to find a way of dealing with them such that everyone benefits—by, for instance, a clever allocation of emissions rights across countries.

Balancing the fiscal

There are certainly important developments under way toward carbon pricing. What worries me is the lack of serious debate on such key issues as their proper level, how to compensate those who might genuinely suffer from their imposition, how to ensure efficient linkages between national schemes, and (though I hope my views on this one are clear!) the pros and cons of grandfathering.

No doubt there’s reluctance to talk about raising energy prices at the present time of macroeconomic weakness. But the need for a clear, credible, and broad-based carbon pricing strategy is urgent. There is a risk that, in addressing climate change, we get the balance between tax and spending measures seriously wrong, playing down the role of taxation. Our fiscal problems will become even worse if we use spending measures to make up for failures to properly price carbon. 

I don’t want to get into the whole “global warming / climate change” topic TOO much now, because I am still planning a series of posts about it. But, I thought this article in Germany’s Der Spiegel was worth bringing up.

According to studies by the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in Great Britain (known for being strongly pro-global warming), “the world grew warmer by 0.07 degrees Celsius from 1999 to 2008 and not by the 0.2 degrees Celsius assumed” by UN studies. After adjustments for “El Niño and La Niña, the resulting temperature trend is reduced to 0.0 degrees Celsius — in other words, a standstill.” How embarrassing! And somewhat ironic that these findings have been published so close to December’s UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.

One very interesting concession is that “Even though the temperature standstill probably has no effect on the long-term warming trend, it does raise doubts about the predictive value of climate models….” For one thing, the validity of the whole “global average temperature” concept is questionable, given that the weather/climate system of the planet is so complex. Although there are over 500 weather stations in the global temperature-monitoring network (mostly erected in the past couple decades, as I recall), there are still blind-spots like the “Arctic hole”. So, our readings are, at best, incomplete.

As meteorologist Mojib Latif of the Leibniz Institute (and others) points out, “We have to explain to the public that greenhouse gases will not cause temperatures to keep rising from one record temperature to the next, but that they are still subject to natural fluctuations.” There are many natural factors — e.g., cyclic ocean currents, volcanic eruptions, solar activity, etc. — and scientists like Latif differ in opinion as to which has had the biggest affect on the recent stagnation. But, perhaps such candor is a sign of a corner being turned in the global warming / climate change debate?…

To all of our new readers, thanks to CBC and StumbleUpon, this is for you!

Most of us don’t read scientific journals. We read the newspaper instead. We read our news feeds. We watch CNN.

These sources, as we know, are fairly low on the credibility spectrum. But how are people like you and I supposed to understand the more credible sources? Scientists don’t seem to speak plain English. And you can’t even read most of their studies without a subscription.

Usually this isn’t much of a problem, because the popular press and the scientific journals say basically the same things – that there’s going to be a lunar eclipse on a certain date, that red meat increases your risk of a heart attack, that a new kind of dinosaur was just discovered.

However, when you start reading about climate change, the newspapers start going crazy.

The world is warming. The warming is caused from the world coming out of an ice age. The warming stopped in 1998. Glaciers are melting. The warming is caused by human activity. The warming is caused by sunspots. The warming is inconsequential. The warming is catastrophic and is going to kill us all. New York is going to be underwater. Scientists faked the whole thing.

As someone who keeps up-to-date with the scientific literature – that is, sources from the top few tiers of the credibility spectrum – I can tell you that it is not under the same confusion as the mass media. There are a lot of myths about climate change that go around the newspapers and the Internet, but were never in any sort of legitimate scientific study. I cannot stress this point enough.

For example, have you heard the one about NASA getting the Y2K bug, and later discovering that the warmest year on record wasn’t 1998, but in fact – whoops – 1934? Global warming must be fake!

Actually, that’s not correct at all. NASA discovered that 1934 was the warmest year on record in the United States. And that “United States” part got dropped in translation somewhere in the blogosphere. Contrary to what American media would have you believe, the United States is not the whole world. It makes up less than 2% of the Earth’s surface. And the warmest year on record globally is either 1998 or 2005, depending on how you measure the Arctic temperatures.

There are dozens of stories like that. So many of the explanations you hear for global warming being natural/nonexistent/a global conspiracy are based on misconceptions, miscommunications, discredited data, or flat-out lies. They were never in the scientific literature. They are not endorsed by the sources at the top of our credibility spectrum. They are, shall we say, urban myths.

But how are we, humble non-scientists, scanning through the newspaper on the way to work each morning, supposed to know that? We need some kind of a link between the scientists and the public. Some journalist who actually knows what they’re talking about, and cites all of their claims with credible sources. Some sort of encyclopedia that will dispel all the myths about climate change.

Luckily, there are many of these encyclopedias. There are a lot of people out there trying to fulfill this very purpose.

One of my favourites is Peter Sinclair’s Climate Denial Crock of the Week video series on YouTube. He debunks common claims like “global warming stopped in 1998″, “global warming is caused by the sun”, and “temperature leads CO2 in the ice cores”. Sinclair is a professional journalist, so all of the videos are well explained, easy to understand, and fun to watch.

Another great source is Coby Beck’s How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic series. These articles cover just about every objection out there. Equally comprehensive is Skeptical Science. They’ve even compressed their explanations into “sound bites”, so you can answer your uncle’s objections in just a few sentences over Thanksgiving dinner.

Some of the sources from the top of our credibility spectrum have also chimed in. Environment Canada has created a fantastic FAQ document about climate change. It covers everything you need to know to wade through YouTube comments or online debates, along with citations you can actually trust.

Finally, Scott Mandia, a regular reader here at ClimateSight and a meteorology professor in New York, has just posted a copy of his presentation to the public about climate change. What I like about this document is that it’s very up-to-date. All of the graphs are the most recent of their kind. It also provides some philosophical perspectives to really sink your teeth into, like an analogy about medical advice, and some memorable quotes at the end.

We shouldn’t have to double-check everything the newspaper says about climate change. But the objections to anthropogenic global warming have such an awful track record that we really should, at least before we go and spread them around. These sources will cover just about everything you need to know.

Is Barack Obama a hater?

I found myself pondering this question as I read an opinion piece in today’s Washington Post comparing the leadership of our President with that of Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives. Of the two, who is offering the world true leadership on Climate Change?

One, Nasheed, is leading the fight. The other, as we saw last weekend when he announced that there would be no new treaty anytime soon, is only half in the battle. They both may go to the U.N.-sponsored climate conference in Copenhagen next month, but Nasheed will be there to say: Seize the moment. And if Obama makes it, he will be there to spin, to say, no doubt elegantly: Chill.

The author of the op-ed, Bill McKibben, comes from my hometown of Lexington, Mass, so I view him fondly as a leader in the Warming Movement. His organization, 350.org, refers to lower levels of atmospheric gases that are now favored as a target by the Climate Crowd, as opposed to the 450 ppm that was previously the vogue. He writes that Nasheed has moved with great energy on putting his nation on the responsible track.

Contrast that with Obama. He too has acted; in fact, he’s done more than his three predecessors combined. He’s taken admirable steps on automobile fuel economy, put stimulus money into green job plans and surrounded himself with an excellent cast of scientific advisers. But doing more than George W. Bush on global warming is like doing more than George Wallace on racial healing. It gives you political cover, but the melting arctic ice is unimpressed.

Ouch. My hometownmate is comparing Barack to George Wallace. Is this fair? Obama is treating the death of the planet with the same calm he brings to all fights. Slow and steady on the critical things (socialized medicine), cave to political realities – while making nice statements – for everything else. Climate Change falls into the latter group. I guess Bill is right – if you don’t love life enough to put the planet first, that would make you a first class hater.

So it’s not good news that, internationally, Obama’s spokesmen have stuck to the 450 ppm/2 degree target, calling it consensus science when it no longer is. And it’s not good news domestically that Obama turned climate legislation over to Congress to produce, slotting it behind health care on his list of priorities.

Why would Obama be holding back on switching over to the tougher Save the Planet Threshold?

Obama’s excuse is that the Senate won’t sign tough climate legislation, so there’s no use pushing for it. But that’s conceding the game without taking a shot — he hasn’t done any of the things Nasheed has tried to rally his nation and other nations.

Making matters worse is that fact that Obama has depleted his resources on the Public Option – his cupboard of political capital is looking bare before he’s even started job one – saving the planet!

A mediocre health-care bill is one thing; you can probably come back in a generation and make it stronger. People may suffer in the meantime, but the problem won’t become logarithmically worse. The climate, on the other hand, is full of traps and tipping points — let it get warm enough to melt the permafrost that locks away vast supplies of methane, and no future president will be able to control the heating.

It’s not reasonable to suggest that the president is a skeptic, is it? Wouldn’t that would be like saying, two years ago, that Obama wasn’t serious when he promised he’d systematically remove all of our troops from Iraq, one to two brigades a month upon taking office, without regard for circumstances on the ground. On the other hand, the president also made promises about Climate Change.

“Once I take office, you can be sure that the United States will once again engage vigorously in these negotiations and help lead the world toward a new era of global cooperation on climate change. Now is the time to confront this challenge once and for all. Delay is no longer an option. Denial is no longer an acceptable response. The stakes are too high.”

Delay is not an option, but Obama is blowing off Copenhagen. If he’s not a skeptic, then he must be… a hater.

November 22, 2009 – Science Daily

A new study from Norwegian and New Zealand scientists provides updated numbers for CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels. While the global financial crisis may have slowed down the emission growth, it has not been sufficient to stop it: From 2007 to 2008 global emissions from fossil fuels increased by 2.2 percent. From 2003 to 2007, the average fossil emissions increased by 3.7 percent a year.

“The financial crisis started in the latter part of 2008, so the full effect of the financial crisis of CO₂ emissions will most likely be on the emissions in 2009,” scientist Gunnar Myhre at CICERO Center for International Climate and Environmental Research, Oslo, said.

Coal most important

According to the study published in Environmental Research Letters, coal in 2006 bypassed oil as the largest source of CO₂ emissions. Emissions from gas and oil have had a rather constant growth since 1990. For coal however, the picture is different.

“Emissions from coal have had a strong increase since 2000 and coal is now the driver of the strong fossil fuel CO₂ emission growth. The main reason is increased use of coal in China, largely due to export production,” Myhre said.

India coming up

For the first time, India’s emissions now increase faster than the Chinese emissions.

“The growth rate of the emissions has been slightly higher in India the last two years. Still, China is by far the leading world polluter, but we can expect Indian emissions to play an increasingly important role in the future,” Myhre said.

Fossil energy’s role

According to the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a large reduction of emissions from fossil sources is needed to reduce global warming. The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased from 280 ppm in 1750 to 383 ppm in 2007. Around 75 percent of the increase until now is due to CO₂ emissions from fossil energy. 25 percent is due to changes in land use.

Whereas the trend in CO2 emissions from land use over the last few decades has been relatively constant, an increasing trend in fossil fuel CO₂ emissions has been reported. This increasing trend is driven by enhanced economic growth and also an increase in carbon intensity.

All main IPCC scenarios of fossil fuel CO₂ emissions show an increase over the next few decades with a large spread in emissions estimates up to 2100. Future atmospheric CO₂ concentrations not only depend on the emissions, but also on the net uptake of CO₂ by land and ocean.

The study was conducted by Gunnar Myhre and Kari Alterskjær at Center for International Climate and Environmental Research — Oslo (CICERO) and Dave Lowe at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research in New Zealand.

Story Source:

Adapted from materials provided by Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research (CICERO), via AlphaGalileo.

1. Myhre et al. A fast method for updating global fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions. Environmental Research Letters, 2009; 4 (3): 034012 DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/4/3/034012

The U.S. Senate will postpone until next year its debate on energy and climate legislation, along with its controversial plan to cap greenhouse gas emissions.

Key Senators, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), said that the climate and energy bill will have to wait while the Senate tackles bills aimed at reforming the nation’s health insurance system and financial market regulation. The delay follows the harshly criticized, recent pact between Washington and Beijing for a non-binding agreement at the United Nations Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen.

The proposed cap-and-trade legislation has drawn harsh opposition from Republican lawmakers and industry groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute on the ground that it will increase energy costs and harm the economy.

In June, the House passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act, which includes a cap-and-trade system aimed at cutting the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent by 2020.

A corresponding Senate bill from John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), which would seek to cut those emissions by 20 percent by 2020, was passed by the Senate environment panel earlier this month.

Republicans have asked for more support for nuclear power and offshore oil drilling in any legislation. Earlier this week, Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Jim Webb (D-Va.) proposed a bill, the Clean Energy Act of 2009, that would offer about $20 billion over the next decades, much of it to support nuclear power.

News of a delay until next year leaves the Obama Administration bereft of legislation it hoped to present in December at a United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen to craft an agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol.

The Environmental Protection Agency has moved on its own to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act, but has yet to formulate standards for enforcement. The EPA program is expected to cover 70 percent of the nation’s total emissions, including power plants, refineries, and cement production facilities that emit at least 25,000 tons of greenhouse gases a year.

But the EPA may well face years of legal battles over regulating greenhouse gases, which could lead the agency to look to Congress to pass a bill, Eric Olbeter, analyst with Pacific Crest Securities, said in a Tuesday note.

In the meantime, questions remain over the competing renewable electricity standards contained in the House and Senate energy and climate bills, Olbeter said. The Senate bill would require 9 percent of the nation’s power to come from renewable resources and 6 percent from efficiency gains by 2021.

But Olbeter said it’s likely the Senate will move to adopt the more aggressive measures in the House bill, which calls for 12 percent of the nation’s power to come from renewables and 8 percent from efficiency by 2020.

These renewable energy mandates, as well as provisions in the House energy and climate bill to give new federal authority to site transmission lines, could be taken up separately from cap-and-trade rules, some observers have noted (see Green Light post).

Olbeter predicted that an energy bill without cap-and-trade could pass by May 2010, but questioned the likelihood of greenhouse gas limits being put into law during an election year.

Any energy efficiency provisions passed into law could well benefit energy services companies such as Honeywell and Johnson Controls, Olbeter said.

But he said solar and wind power “are likely to be left empty handed by a hollow renewable electricity standard.”

Market solutions in the form of emissions trading do the opposite of the environmental principle that the polluter should pay. Through emissions, trading private polluters are getting more rights and more control over the atmosphere which rightfully belongs to all life on the planet. Indeed, emissions trading “solutions” actually pay the polluter, argues Vandana Shiva

The Unite Nations climate change conference at Copenhagen next month is meant to further the goals of a global environmental treaty — the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). In 1988, a resolution of the UN General Assembly considered the climate change matter as a “common concern for mankind”, and the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change was created. On May 9, 1992, the UNFCCC was adopted in New York and opened for signing in June 1992 at the Earth Summit in Rio. It came into effect on March 21, 1994.

The goal of the Convention, according to Article 2, is to “stabilise the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at a level that prevents all dangerous anthropogenic disturbance of the climate system”. Since the historic polluters were the rich, industrialised countries, the Convention required that by 2000 they stabilise their greenhouse gas emissions at their 1990 level.

Under the Convention, the Kyoto Protocol was adopted in Kyoto on December 11, 1997. The Kyoto Protocol set binding targets on industrialised countries for reducing their greenhouse gas emissions to an average of five per cent against the 1990 levels over a five year period, 2008 to 2012.

However, in 2007, America’s greenhouse gas levels were 16 per cent higher than their 1990 levels. The much-announced Waxman Markey “American Clean Energy and Security Act” commits the US to 17 per cent emissions reduction below 2005 levels by 2020. However, this is a mere four per cent below their 1990 levels.

Further, the emissions trading or offsets, in fact, are a mechanism to not reduce emissions at all. As the Breakthrough Institute in United States, “a small think tank with big ideas”, states “If fully utilised, the emissions ‘offset’ in the American Clean Energy and Security Act would allow continued business as usual growth in the US greenhouse gas emissions until 2030, leading one to wonder: where’s the ‘cap’ in the ‘cap and trade’.”

The Kyoto Protocol allows industrialised countries to trade their allocation of carbon emissions among themselves (Article 17). It also allows an investor in an industrialised country (industry or government) to invest in an eligible carbon mitigation project in a developing country and be credited with Certified Emission Reduction Units that can be used by investors to meet their obligation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This is referred to as the Clean Development Mechanism under Article 12 of the Kyoto Protocol.

The Kyoto Protocol gave 38 industrialised countries, that were the worst historical polluters, emissions rights. The European Union Emissions Trading Scheme rewarded 11,428 industrial installations with carbon dioxide emissions rights.

Through emissions trading, Larry Lohmann, the co-author of Carbon Trading: A Critical Conversation on Climate Change, Privatisation and Power, observes, “Rights to the earth’s carbon cycling capacity are gravitating into the hands of those who have the most power to appropriate them and the most financial interest to do so.”

That such schemes are more about privatising the atmosphere than preventing climate change is made clear by the fact that emissions rights given away in the Kyoto Protocol were several times higher than the levels needed to prevent a two-degree-Celsius rise in global temperatures.

Just as patents generate super profits for pharmaceutical and seed corporations, emissions rights generate super profits for polluters. The Emissions Trading Scheme granted allowances of 10 per cent more than 2005 emission levels; this translated to 150 million tonnes of surplus carbon credits which, with the 2005 average price of $7.23 per ton, translates to over $1 billion of free money.

The UK’s allocations for the British industry added up to 736 million tonnes of carbon dioxide over three years, which implied no reduction commitments. Since no restrictions are being put on northern industrial polluters, they will continue to pollute and there will be no reduction in CO2 emissions.

Market solutions in the form of emissions trading are thus doing the opposite of the environmental principle that the polluter should pay. Through emissions, trading private polluters are getting more rights and more control over the atmosphere which rightfully belongs to all life on the planet. Emissions trading “solutions” pay the polluter.

Carbon trading is based on inequality because it privatised the commons. It is also based on inequality because it uses the resources of poorer people and poorer regions as “offsets”. It is considered to be 50 to 200 times cheaper to plant trees in poorer countries to absorb CO2 than reducing it at source. The Stern Review states, “Emissions trading schemes can deliver least cost emissions reductions by allowing reductions to occur wherever they are cheapest.”

In other words, the burden of “clean up” falls on the poor. In a market calculus, this might appear efficient. In an ecological calculus, it would be far more effective to reduce emissions at source. And in an energy justice perspective, it is perverse to burden the poor twice — first with the externality of impacts of CO2 pollution in the form of climate disasters and then with the burden of remediating the pollution of the rich and powerful.

It is because of this failure of the rich countries to cut back on emissions that the global climate negotiations are not moving forward. When secretary of state Hillary Clinton visited India in April 2009 and tried to apply pressure on India to cut back on emissions, Indian environment minister Jairam Ramesh responded: “Even with eight-nine per cent GDP annual growth for the next decade or two, our per capita emissions will be well below developed country averages. There is simply no case for the pressure we face to reduce emissions.”

When Clinton stated that the per capital argument “loses force as developing countries rapidly become the biggest emitters”, Mr Ramesh replied that India’s position on per capita emissions is “not a debating strategy” because it is enshrined in international agreements. “We look upon you suspiciously because you have not fulfilled what developed countries pledged to fulfilled”, he said candidly. The failure of the rich countries to fulfil their climate obligations has created a “crisis of credibility”.

The US is leading the dismantling of the UNFCCC. At the Bangkok negotiations, the lead negotiator of the US said: “We are not going to be part of an agreement that we cannot meet. We say a new agreement has to be signed by all countries. We cannot be stuck with an agreement that is 20 years old. We want action from all countries.”

The proposal of the US is to get out of the legally-binding UNFCC, to set targets nationally which could be noted down in a new international agreement, without it being legally binding internationally and without a people compliance mechanism.

Copenhagen is supposed to evolve new commitments for Annexure I countries for the post-Kyoto period. The science of climate change tells us the five per cent reduction commitments of Kyoto are too small, 80 to 90 per cent reduction is needed to keep air pollution at 350ppm and temperature increase within 2°C to avoid catastrophic climate change. Instead of taking on their legally-binding commitments and deepening cuts, the rich countries want to abandon UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol.

The press release of October 9, 2009, from the G-77 and China categorically stated: “This is simply unacceptable. It would betray the trust of the world public that is demanding a major step forward and not a major step backwards, in developed countries commitments and actions. We will also consider the Copenhagen COP meeting to be a disastrous failure if there is no outcome for the commitments period of the Kyoto Protocol”.

The UNFCCC is the only international agreement we have in the context of climate change. The challenge at Copenhagen is to prevent its dismantling. The global environmental movement needs to throw its weight behind the countries of the South who are trying their best to uphold the climate treaty.

Courtesy: The Asian Age

The European Union and Russia have agreed to increased levels of cooperation and collaboration on climate and energy projects after a one day summit on Wednesday. Both groups plan to work together to further reduce emissions and the environmental impact of the member countries.

The increased commitment from Russia was welcomed, as the country is one of the largest emissions producers in the world. Both the European Union and Russia have agreed that increased cooperation in energy is necessary, and discussions continue over collaboration ideas in related areas.

article sourced from Xinhua News Agency

Xinhua News Article- EU and Russia Cooperate on Climate

Note: The Xinhua News Agency is the state-owned media company of the People’s Republic of China.

Ever wonder what international politics could sound like if it were written up like a celebrity blog?

Voyage á Trois!

There’s a lot of talk about how some black guy went to China this week, but the conversation seems really muddled from my stand point.

From within the US: Human Rights, Protectionism, Green House Gases and- ooooh is that the Great Wall? Like THEEEE Great Wall???

From non-US news sources: Dude! Obama totally tried to get China in on some bi-lateral cahoots, proposing ‘co-World-Superpowers’ like “imagine how awesome it would be if all yr peops and all my peops formed a pact of global domination”, and China was all like “nah, I don’t think so”. Ooooh, diss!

I think the BBC called it Hu’s refusal for a “G-2″ status. Hu Jintao (the Prez) and Wen Jiabao (the Chinese Primier), checked the megalomania of Obama and his north Americans by stating (paraphrasing, of course), that ‘yo, if you wanna do global work and stuff, we need to have global, multi-lateral talks, and include other homies. Srsly, thats busted that you even asked and tried to be all secretive about it. I’m totally telling…”

Global Community: ooh, diss

North Americans: Great Wall- Great Wall!

un-hyphenated-Africans: Shazam! At least we do hella buisiness with China.

Black Maps: toats! I wonder if anyone has made a map of China’s trade with African nations?

Shazam:

word. but China’s real jonesing addict, remains ever truly, the US:

The US has built up a massive trade deficit with China. The US argues that this is partly because China has kept its currency artificially weak, which makes its products cheaper overseas.

Sunshine Superboy

China! where the fun never ends!

Created in association with Climate Change Connection, with special guest Dr Danny Blair, music by Kevin Not10. Read the citations here. Enjoy!

November 18, 2009 – The Independent, UK

Fast-rising carbon emissions mean that worst-case predictions for climate change are coming true

The world is now firmly on course for the worst-case scenario in terms of climate change, with average global temperatures rising by up to 6C by the end of the century, leading scientists said yesterday. Such a rise – which would be much higher nearer the poles – would have cataclysmic and irreversible consequences for the Earth, making large parts of the planet uninhabitable and threatening the basis of human civilisation.

We are headed for it, the scientists said, because the carbon dioxide emissions from industry, transport and deforestation which are responsible for warming the atmosphere have increased dramatically since 2002, in a way which no one anticipated, and are now running at treble the annual rate of the 1990s.

This means that the most extreme scenario envisaged in the last report from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, published in 2007, is now the one for which society is set, according to the 31 researchers from seven countries involved in the Global Carbon Project.

Although the 6C rise and its potential disastrous effects have been speculated upon before, this is the first time that scientists have said that society is now on a path to meet it.

Their chilling and remarkable prediction throws into sharp relief the importance of next month’s UN climate conference in Copenhagen, where the world community will come together to try to construct a new agreement to bring the warming under control.

For the past month there has been a lowering of expectations about the conference, not least because the US may not be ready to commit itself to cuts in its emissions. But yesterday President Barack Obama and President Hu Jintao of China issued a joint communiqué after a meeting in Beijing, which reignited hopes that a serious deal might be possible after all.

It cannot come too soon, to judge by the results of the Global Carbon Project study, led by Professor Corinne Le Quéré, of the University of East Anglia and the British Antarctic Survey, which found that there has been a 29 per cent increase in global CO2 emissions from fossil fuel between 2000 and 2008, the last year for which figures are available.

On average, the researchers found, there was an annual increase in emissions of just over 3 per cent during the period, compared with an annual increase of 1 per cent between 1990 and 2000. Almost all of the increase this decade occurred after 2000 and resulted from the boom in the Chinese economy. The researchers predict a small decrease this year due to the recession, but further increases from 2010.

In total, CO2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels have increased by 41 per cent between 1990 and 2008, yet global emissions in 1990 are the reference level set by the Kyoto Protocol, which countries are trying to fall below in terms of their own emissions.

The 6C rise now being anticipated is in stark contrast to the C rise at which all international climate policy, including that of Britain and the EU, hopes to stabilise the warming – two degrees being seen as the threshold of climate change which is dangerous for society and the natural world.

The study by Professor Le Quéré and her team, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, envisages a far higher figure. “We’re at the top end of the IPCC scenario,” she said.

Professor Le Quéré said that Copenhagen was the last chance of coming to a global agreement that would curb carbon-dioxide emissions on a time-course that would hopefully stabilise temperature rises to within the danger threshold. “The Copenhagen conference next month is in my opinion the last chance to stabilise climate at C above pre-industrial levels in a smooth and organised way,” she said.

“If the agreement is too weak, or the commitments not respected, it is not 2.5C or 3C we will get: it’s 5C or 6C – that is the path we’re on. The timescales here are extremely tight for what is needed to stabilise the climate at C,” she said.

Meanwhile, the scientists have for the first time detected a failure of the Earth’s natural ability to absorb man-made carbon dioxide released into the air.

They found significant evidence that more man-made CO2 is staying in the atmosphere to exacerbate the greenhouse effect because the natural “carbon sinks” that have absorbed it over previous decades on land and sea are beginning to fail, possibly as a result of rising global temperatures.

The amount of CO2 that has remained in the atmosphere as a result has increased from about 40 per cent in 1990 to 45 per cent in 2008. This suggests that the sinks are beginning to fail, they said.

Professor Le Quéré emphasised that there are still many uncertainties over carbon sinks, such as the ability of the oceans to absorb dissolved CO2, but all the evidence suggests that there is now a cycle of “positive feedbacks”, whereby rising carbon dioxide emissions are leading to rising temperatures and a corresponding rise in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

“Our understanding at the moment in the computer models we have used – and they are state of the art – suggests that carbon-cycle climate feedback has already kicked in,” she said.

“These models, if you project them on into the century, show quite large feedbacks, with climate amplifying global warming by between 5 per cent and 30 per cent. There are still large uncertainties, but this is carbon-cycle climate feedback that has already started,” she said.

The study also found that, for the first time since the 1960s, the burning of coal has overtaken the burning of oil as the major source of carbon-dioxide emissions produced by fossil fuels.

Much of this coal was burned by China in producing goods sold to the West – the scientists estimate that 45 per cent of Chinese emissions resulted from making products traded overseas.

It is clear that China, having overtaken the US as the world’s biggest carbon emitter, must be central to any new climate deal, and so the communiqué from the Chinese and US leaders issued yesterday was widely seized on as a sign that progress may be possible in the Danish capital next month.

Presidents Hu and Obama specifically said an accord should include emission-reduction targets for rich nations, and a declaration of action plans to ease greenhouse-gas emissions in developing countries – key elements in any deal.

6C rise: The consequences

If two degrees is generally accepted as the threshold of dangerous climate change, it is clear that a rise of six degrees in global average temperatures must be very dangerous indeed, writes Michael McCarthy. Just how dangerous was signalled in 2007 by the science writer Mark Lynas, who combed all the available scientific research to construct a picture of a world with temperatures three times higher than the danger limit.

His verdict was that a rise in temperatures of this magnitude “would catapult the planet into an extreme greenhouse state not seen for nearly 100 million years, when dinosaurs grazed on polar rainforests and deserts reached into the heart of Europe”.

He said: “It would cause a mass extinction of almost all life and probably reduce humanity to a few struggling groups of embattled survivors clinging to life near the poles.”

Very few species could adapt in time to the abruptness of the transition, he suggested. “With the tropics too hot to grow crops, and the sub-tropics too dry, billions of people would find themselves in areas of the planet which are essentially uninhabitable. This would probably even include southern Europe, as the Sahara desert crosses the Mediterranean.

“As the ice-caps melt, hundreds of millions will also be forced to move inland due to rapidly-rising seas. As world food supplies crash, the higher mid-latitude and sub-polar regions would become fiercely-contested refuges.

“The British Isles, indeed, might become one of the most desirable pieces of real estate on the planet. But, with a couple of billion people knocking on our door, things might quickly turn rather ugly.”