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Plasma, LCDs blamed for accelerating global warming

A gas used in the making of flat screen televisions, nitrogen trifluoride (NF3), is being blamed for damaging the atmosphere and accelerating global warming.

Almost half of the televisions sold around the globe so far this year have been plasma or LCD TVs. But this boom could be coming at a huge environmental cost. The gas, widely used in the manufacture of flat screen TVs, is estimated to be 17,000 times as powerful as carbon dioxide.

Ironically, NF3 is not covered by the Kyoto protocol as it was only produced in tiny amounts when the treaty was signed in 1997. Levels of this gas in the atmosphere have not been measured, but scientists say it is a concern and are calling for it to be included in any future emissions cutting agreement.

Professor Michael Prather from the University of California has highlighted the issue in an article for the magazine New Scientist. He has told ABC's The World Today program that output of the gas needs to be measured.

"One of my titles for this paper was Going Below Kyoto's Radar. It's the kind of gas that's made in huge amounts," he said. "Not only is it not in the Kyoto Treaty but you don't even have to report it. That's the part that worries me."

He estimates 4,000 tons of NF3 will be produced in 2008 and that number is likely to double next year.

"We don't know what's emitted, but what they're producing every year dwarfs these giant coal-fired power plants that are like the biggest in the world," he said. "And it dwarfs two of the Kyoto gases. So the real question we don't know is how much is escaping and getting out."

Dr Paul Fraser is the chief research scientist at the CSIRO's marine and atmospheric research centre, and an IPCC author. He says without measuring the quantity of NF3 in the atmosphere it is unclear what impact it will have on the climate.

"We haven't observed it in the atmosphere. It's probably there in very low concentrations," he said. "The key to whether it's a problem or not is how much is released to the atmosphere."' - From ABC Online: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/07/03/2293369.htm

‘There is no time to lose.’

Friday, 13th June, 2008.

Global warming is accelerating. The Arctic summer sea ice is expected to melt entirely within the next five years, - decades earlier than predicted in the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 4th Assessment Report.

Scientists judge the risks to humanity of dangerous global warming to be high. The Great Barrier Reef faces devastation. Extreme weather events, such as storm surges adding to rising sea levels and threatening coastal cities, will become increasingly frequent.

There is a real danger that we have reached or will soon reach critical tipping points and the future will be taken out of our hands. The melting Arctic sea ice could be the first such tipping point.

Beyond 2ºC of warming, seemingly inevitable unless greenhouse gas reduction targets are tightened, we risk huge human and societal costs and perhaps even the effective end of industrial civilisation. We need to cease our assault on our own life support system, and that of millions of species. Global warming is only one of many symptoms of that assault.

Peak oil, global warming and long term sustainability pressures all require that we reduce energy needs and switch to alternative energy sources. Many credible studies show that Australia can quickly and cost-effectively reduce greenhouse gas emissions through dramatic improvements in energy efficiency and by increasing our investment in solar, wind and other renewable sources.

The need for action is extremely urgent and our window of opportunity for avoiding severe impacts is rapidly closing. Yet the obstacles to change are not technical or economic, they are political and social.

We know democratic societies have responded successfully to dire and immediate threats, as was demonstrated in World War II. This is a last call for an effective response to global warming.

[Approved by the delegates of the conference, 12th June, 2008.]

This joint statement is a ‘call to arms’ from some of the country’s leading scientists, plus several commentators and politicians. The statement describes the urgent need for an effective response to global warming. It was written following the 2008 Manning Clark House Conference on Climate Change that concluded on Thursday, June 12th, Canberra.

It has been approved by over 200 conference delegates, including:

Climate scientists:
Prof. Barry Brook, Prof. Ian Enting, Prof. Janette Lindesay, Prof. Graeme Pearman, Dr Barrie Pittock, Prof. Will Steffen;

Earth and prehistory scientists:
Dr Geoff Davies, Dr David Denham, Dr Andrew Glikson (conference convenor), Dr Simon Haberle, Prof. Malcolm McCulloch, Dr Bradley Opdyke;

Political leaders:
Senator Lyn Allison, Dr Carmen Lawrence, Senator Christine Milne, Barry Jones;

Environmental lawyer:
Phillip Toyne;

Health and population experts:
Prof. Stephen Boyden, Dr Bryan Furnass (conference co-convenor), Prof. Tony McMichael,
Dr Sue Wareham;

Humanists:
Phillip Adams, Dr Paul Collins, Tony Kevin, Dierk von Behrens;

Poet:
Mark O’Connor.
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LONDON (Reuters) - Rich nations need to cut per-capita greenhouse gas emissions to India’s current levels by mid-century to avoid devastating climate change, Britain’s former chief scientific adviser said on Wednesday.

...
“If you (don’t want) run-away climate change, you need to be at about 350 parts per million (ppm) of CO2 ... We’re currently at 387 ppm CO2, going up at 2 per annum,” said King, director at Oxford University’s Smith School of Enterprise and Environment.
...
King said that maintaining atmospheric CO2 levels at 450 ppm risked a 20 percent chance of global temperatures rising nearly 4 degrees Celsius.

“If you include all greenhouse gases, we’re at around 420 ppm CO2e,” he said, speaking at a climate change workshop hosted by Thomson Reuters in London.

He said Europe needed to reduce its annual per-capita emissions by 80 percent, or from 11 tons of CO2e, to India’s current level of 2.2 tons per person by 2050.

The United States, emitting an average of 27 tons of CO2e per person every year, also needs to fall to these levels if the world is to avoid a dramatic rise in temperatures, he said.

“I think that encapsulates the challenge, to move from where we are now to where the Indians are today, while growing the global economy at the same time,” said King.
Full story at:
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSL2829094420080528?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0&sp=true

April 23, 2008

Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane — potent greenhouse gases — rose sharply in 2007, according to NOAA.

The U.S. weather agency said that global levels of carbon dioxide, the primary driver of global climate change, climbed by 0.6 percent, or 19 billion tons in 2007. Methane levels increased by 27 million tons after nearly a decade with little or no increase.

NOAA said that atmospheric CO2 levels currently stand at 385 parts-per-million, or about 38 percent higher than pre-industrial levels. It noted that the rise in CO2 concentrations has been accelerating since the 1980s when annual increases were around 1.5 ppm per year. Last year the increase was 2.4 ppm.

On the other hand, the increase in methane levels is a relatively new trend. Emissions had been flat since 1998. NOAA attributed the rise in methane emissions to rapid industrialization in Asia and higher emissions from peatlands in the Arctic and the tropics.

Methane is produced by both human activities and natural causes. About one-third of methane emissions come from oceans, wetlands, wildfires, and termites, while two-thirds from the production of oil and natural gas, mining, sewage and decomposition of garbage, changes in land use and deforestation, and livestock.

Billions of tons of methane are locked up in Arctic tundra and as frozen hydrate deposits in the deep oceans. Researchers are concerned that as the planet warms, these deposits could destabilize, releasing large methane emissions.

"We're on the lookout for the first sign of a methane release from thawing Arctic permafrost," said Ed Dlugokencky, a scientists with NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory. "It's too soon to tell whether last year's spike in emissions includes the start of such a trend."'- Full story at: http://news.mongabay.com/2008/0423-ghg.html

Visit http://www.350.org/4/ (this is the beta version - the real website will be up and running next month, Jon)

A CSIRO study has found that a lower autumn rainfall pattern in south-east Australia is having dire consequences for the Murray-Darling Basin. It examined rainfall across the region and found that autumn rain had declined dramatically since the 1950s.

In Victoria, there has been a 40 per cent decline in autumn rain since the middle of last century. In South Australia, autumn rainfall is down by 35 per cent and winter rainfall by more than 10 per cent. Co-author Dr Wenju Cai says that is due to climate change reducing the number of La Nina events for the south-east region. He says autumn rainfall is often crucial to the health of the Murray-Darling Basin.

"If you think of autumn rainfall as preparing the Basin or the ground so it could wet the ground, it could soak the soil, so that when winter rains come about we could have some inflow, some run-off," he said. "If we have less rain in autumn then, even when winter rainfall comes, it won't be able to convert efficiently into inflow." Dr Cai says the rainfall pattern is likely to keep worsening.
From: ABC News Online, 23rd May 08; http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/05/23/2253652.htm

Think about forestry and land clearing…

Soils Contain Huge Amounts Of Ancient Carbon: When Does This Carbon Enter The Atmosphere?

‘ScienceDaily (May 15, 2008) — Knowing that soils are a potential climate change time-bomb is nothing new — but now, for the first time, a group of international scientists have found a way to distinguish just how much of these ancient carbon stores are being lost to the atmosphere as CO2. This means that in the future they may be able to accurately forecast how loss of soil carbon will impact on climate change.

Project leader Professor Pete Millard of Aberdeen’s Macaulay Institute explains: “Globally, soils contain over 300 times the amount of carbon released each year due to the burning of fossil fuels, and this carbon has until now, been safely locked up below ground."

“As the planet is warming up, this carbon is being released from the soil into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, but there are in fact two types of carbon —‘new’ carbon, which has recently entered the soil through vegetation, and ‘old’ carbon, which has been locked up in the soil for years."

“It is the amount of this old carbon being lost as CO2 that has the biggest climate change effect,” he added, “as it signifies the soil changing from being a carbon-store to a source of carbon — a carbon-emitter."

"The implications of knowing this are very important and it will enable us to determine for the first time what the consequences of changes in land use might be for climate change," said Professor Millard. "As more CO2 is released from the soil, the temperature is going to increase further — it could almost be a runway reaction.”’
Full story at: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080514090558.htm

Earlier work indicates that soil carbon may become a major carbon emission source but as this work was done in 2005 it may not have been included in last years IPCC report as they reportedly had a cut-off date for research results set at 2005…

New Research Suggests That Climate Warming May Be Occurring Even Faster Than Previously Recognized

‘ScienceDaily (Jan. 25, 2005) — A long standing puzzle that has haunted climate researchers looking at the fate of carbon stored in the world's soils, has now been resolved. The research suggests that climate warming may be occurring even faster than previously recognised.

The international team of researchers, led by Bristol University and reporting in Nature [20 January 2005], show that an apparent biological adaptation of micro-organisms that break down carbon in soils, thereby releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, can in fact be explained by the widely contrasting properties of those organic carbons.

Recent reports of laboratory experiments have stated that the micro-organisms responsible for soil carbon decomposition gradually acclimatise to an increase in heat and adjust the rate at which carbon is released into the atmosphere, such that it is effectively released at a steady rate. However, this does not agree with long-established rules of physical chemistry that predict that as the climate warms these reactions should speed up, resulting in an increase in the amount of carbon dioxide released.

The new results predict that since the micro-organisms are not keeping the release of carbon dioxide from the soil at a steady state, as previously thought, an increase in climate temperatures will result in an increase in the rate at which the stable components decompose. This will lead to even more carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere and more rapid climate change.'
Full Story at: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/01/050124005755.htm

Melting glaciers, disappearing ice sheets and warming water could lift sea levels by as much as 1.5 metres by the end of this century, displacing tens of millions of people. That's the conclusion of a new prediction of sea level rises that for the first time takes into account ice dynamics.

"If [the sea level] rises by one metre, 72 million Chinese people will be displaced, and 10 percent of the Vietnamese population," said Jevrejeva.
From: New Scientist online, 16th April, 2008; http://environment.newscientist.com/article/dn13721-sea-levels-will-rise-15-metres-by-2100.html

and about melting icesheets...
A team of scientists has spent the past four weeks on the Aurora Australis, measuring ocean currents between Australia and Antarctica.

Chief scientist, Steve Rintoul says the research shows there has been a drop in ocean salinity, suggesting ice around Antarctica is melting more rapidly.
From: ABC Online 17th April; http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/04/17/2219659.htm

‘Industry and green groups estimate that air travel accounts for between 2 and 4 per cent [more like 3.5%] of the world's emissions of greenhouses gases such as carbon dioxide, which trap the sun's heat and cause temperatures to rise.

Emissions from the sector look set to rise, however, with the number of global travellers predicted to double by 2020.

International aviation and shipping were excluded from greenhouse gas emissions reductions targets laid out in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the current global treaty addressing climate change.

Under the Kyoto agreement, UN organisations the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) and the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) were tasked with coming up with a solution to the industry's climate footprint.

"The bottom line is they haven't done anything," [Greenpeace climate policy director] Mr Hare said.’
From: ABC News online, 3rd April,2008: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/04/03/2207378.htm

Hmm, the future of Tasmanian tourism...

'Shell is gearing up for a huge expansion of its carbon-intensive tar sands operation in Canada at a time when it has been struggling to replace conventional reserves.

The Anglo-Dutch oil group is producing 155,000 barrels a day from tar sands, had plans to raise this to 500,000 barrels and has just formally applied for a licence to enable it to raise that figure to 770,000.

The exploitation of tar sands is controversial because the methods used can be highly water and power intensive as well as being far more carbon intensive, but Shell said it had halved the energy intensity of its tar sands operation in four years.

The Canadian venture is not only opposed by green groups but also not recognised by the Wall Street financial watchdog, the US Securities & Exchange Commission, as genuine reserves. [Shell's chief executive, Jeroen] Van der Veer repeatedly talked yesterday about Shell's "resources" rather than "reserves".

The reserves issue is sensitive for Shell, which shocked investors and sacked its chairman, Sir Philip Watts, in 2004 after it had been found by the SEC to have exaggerated its [oil] reserves by about a third.'

From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/mar/18/royaldutchshell.oil

Bill McKibben is an interesting author/researcher and author of the influential book, The End of Nature, and co-founder of the 2007 StepItUp campaign. He has just published this essay: If We Want to Survive the Climate Crisis We Must Change (15th March, 2008), which is worth a read although you have to translate the American focus into an Australian context - but the end message is the same.

'Either we build real community, of the kind that lets us embrace mass transit and local food and co-housing and you name it, or we will go down clinging to the wreckage of our privatized society. Which leaves us with the one piece of undeniably good news: we were built for community. Everything we know about human beings, from the state of our immune systems to the state of our psyches, testifies to our desire for real connection of just the kind that an advanced consumer society makes so difficult.

We need that kind of community to slow down the environmental changes coming at us, and we need that kind of community to survive the changes we can't prevent. And we need that kind of community because it's what makes us fully human.This is our final exam, and so far we're failing.'

The essay is available at:
http://www.alternet.org/environment/78498/?page=1

Information about The End of Nature is available at:
http://www.billmckibben.com/end-of-nature.html

'This impassioned plea for radical and life-renewing change is today still considered a groundbreaking work in environmental studies. More than simply a handbook for survival or a doomsday catalog of scientific prediction, this classic, soulful lament on Nature is required reading for nature enthusiasts, activists, and concerned citizens alike.'

'Within two years, Chinese emissions of greenhouse gases will have vastly outstripped the reductions achieved by all the countries that have signed up to the Kyoto protocol combined.

Using data provided by the Chinese government, researchers at the University of California have calculated that China's emissions by 2010 will be at least 600 million metric tonnes greater than they were in 2000. But the most likely outcome, according to the computer models, will be emissions of twice that figure.

Even the minimum figure is five times as large as the 115.90 million metric tonnes in reductions which the US Energy Information Agency estimates will have been achieved by signatories of the Kyoto protocol by 2010.

"The emissions growth rate is surpassing our worst expectations, and that means the goal of stabilizing atmospheric CO2 is going to be much, much harder to achieve," says Maximillian Auffhammer of the University of California, Berkeley.'

From: New Scientist, 11th March, 2008:
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn13447-china-emissions-to-swamp
-kyoto-reductions-by-2010.html

Two papers published last month indicate global warming will be between four and 7.6 degrees by the end of the century, compared to the IPCC estimate of 2.4 degrees to six degrees. This is closer to other work that indicates 3.4 degrees as a minimum. It is relevant to recall that the last IPCC assessment used research that only went as far as 2005, which caused conniptions in the global warming research community as there has been a large increase in research results and validity in modelling between 2005-07. There were comments that the IPCC was out-of-date and too conservative in their assessment, an assessment that is used as the basis of the current political wrangling over two degrees, 2060, and economic ‘progress’.

It is also relevant to recognise that these are two recent papers and even though the authors say that the results are validated against known changes on the 50- and 150-year dataset, these results still have to be tested and accepted by peers.

In other news:
Despite the friendly talkfest held last week in Japan, there are signs that the international community is fracturing over the economy vs global warming issue. Last week the EU warned that they may raise trade sanctions against China and the USA in order to protect their economy.

According to the Associated Press, this is because:

‘The warning came as the economic downturn focused European leaders on the impact on industry of their groundbreaking agreement last year to cut carbon emissions by 20 percent from 1990 levels by 2020.
…
For the first time, the leaders also looked at the security implications of global warming, calling it a "threat multiplier" bound to worsen tensions and instability through loss of arable land, water shortages, diminishing food and fish stocks, more frequent flooding, prolonged droughts and scarcer energy resources. An EU report says climate change will trigger humanitarian crises, border disputes and "environmentally induced" migration of millions of people from Africa and the Middle East to Europe.’
From: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g6OzQY4bQiOy1D5V7aRzGq12Hc0AD8VDAMGO0

The next five years will be interesting…

'A thaw of the world's glaciers has accelerated to a new record, with some of the biggest losses within Europe in a worrying sign of climate change, the UN Environment Program (UNEP) said.

"Meltdown in the mountains," UNEP said in a statement, saying that a retreat of glaciers from the Andes to the Arctic should add urgency to UN negotiations on working out a new treaty by the end of 2009 to combat global warming.

"Data from close to 30 reference glaciers in nine mountain ranges indicate that between the years 2004-2005 and 2005-2006, the average rate of melting and thinning more than doubled," it said.

Some of the biggest losses were in Europe - in the Alps, the Pyrenees and the Nordic region - according to the UNEP-backed World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS) at the University of Zurich in Switzerland.

"The latest figures are part of what appears to be an accelerating trend with no apparent end in sight," WGMS director Wilfried Haeberli said in a statement.'

From: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/03/16/2190744.htm