http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,611818,00.html
03/06/2009
GRIM NEW REPORT
China's Greenhouse Gas Emissions Threaten to Double
By Volker Mrasek
Can a climate catastrophe still be averted? Scientists voice pessimism in a new study, which concludes that no matter what the Western industrialized nations do, China's greenhouse emissions will be hard to stop.
It sounds like wishful thinking: The United States, under new President Barack Obama, forges an alliance with China to combat emissions. The world's two largest sources of carbon dioxide finally face the problem. The treaty crowns the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen at the end of 2009, when a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol -- which, as everyone knows, the United States never ratified -- will be adopted. Third World countries and emerging economies never had to do it, but in Copenhagen rising economic powers like China make a binding commitment to curb their emissions.
It probably is wishful thinking. It has almost nothing to do with reality.
"Many Western industrialized nations want China to commit to reducing its CO2 emissions," says Dabo Guan of the Electricity Policy Research Group at the University of Cambridge in England. "But the country will not even be capable of doing so."
PHOTO GALLERY: EMISSIONS IN CHINA
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The outcome of their analyses is unsettling. Even with substantial increases in efficiency and the broad introduction of climate-friendly energy technologies, China's CO2 emissions, they claim, will almost double in the next two decades compared with 2002 levels.
China is already the world's fourth-largest economy. It will continue to expand at a steady pace even though the financial crisis has somewhat tempered its previously booming growth. There will be more city and road construction, infrastructure and transportation projects, as well as expanding industrial production. China opened 47 new airports between 1990 and 2002, and its highway network grew by 800,000 kilometers (500,000 miles) from 1981 to 2002. By 2030, China's population is expected to have grown from 1.3 to 1.5 billion people. More and more urban households will adopt a Western lifestyle by then, complete with air-conditioning, refrigerators, television sets, computers and other appliances.
Rising Energy Needs
This will steeply drive up energy demand in China. The IEA and NBS predict that to satisfy this demand, the country's power plants will have to supply more than 8,600 terawatts of electricity in 2030 -- about three times as much as in 2006.
China does hope to reduce its share of coal, which is harmful to the climate, from a current level of 83 percent of the country's energy production. It also wants to increase the role of biomass, water, wind and nuclear power. But coal will still account for 70 percent of China's energy supply, making it by far the most important energy source in the most populous nation on earth.
Based on these numbers, Guan and his colleagues developed their own scenarios for the next two decades, including a technology scenario that is deliberately too optimistic. The scientists assumed China would immediately equip each new coal plant with so-called carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, which extracts CO2 from emissions and stores it underground. This process of CO2 sequestration is in an early test phase today. Experts don't expect it to be ready for large-scale use before 2025.
The sobering result of this utopian scenario is that even with all new coal power plants equipped with CCS, China's CO2 emissions would increase by 80 percent by 2030.
"This shows how big the challenge of emissions reduction really is," says Australian mathematician Glen Peters of the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo. In the scientists' best-case scenarios, three out of five coal power plants will still be older models without CCS technology, and those plants will be generating more and more electricity to boot. Besides, even CCS power plants emit some CO2.
"Or course, we have addressed renewable energy sources," says environmental economist Guan. For instance, if China were to commit to reducing its carbon dioxide emissions to 2000 levels by 2030, Guan says, 40 percent of its primary energy production would have to come from renewable sources like biomass, wind and hydroelectric power. "No country on earth has such a high percentage today, and China will certainly not achieve this by 2030," says Guan.
"That would be a dangerous path"
Peters points out that the industrialized countries clearly share some responsibility for China's miserable impact on the climate. In the GRL study, he and his co-authors analyze the reasons energy consumption and emissions in China rose so sharply between 2002 and 2007. They say most of the blame goes to ballooning annual growth of 26 percent in the export products industry.
Another detail worth noting is that industrial production and power generation in China "are dirtier than in many other countries," as the researchers claim. Goods that China exports are four times as harmful to the climate as those it imports, based on CO2 emissions associated with their production. According to the studies, neighboring Japan uses energy nine times as efficiently as China.
For this reason, Peters suggests that China should begin by using energy less wastefully. In China, he says, it is "completely normal for buildings to be overheated, so that people have to open the windows so that it doesn't get too hot inside." According to Peters, there are many of these "simple things" that China could change to reduce costs and CO2 emissions at the same time.
Guan, for his part, urges his native China not to imitate the West's energy-intensive lifestyle on a broad scale. "That," he says, "would be a dangerous path."
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/mar/08/climate-change-flooding
Scientists to issue stark warning over dramatic new sea level figures
Rising sea levels pose a far bigger eco threat than previously thought. This week's climate change conference in Copenhagen will sound an alarm over new floodings - enough to swamp Bangladesh, Florida, the Norfolk Broads and the Thames estuary
- The Observer, Sunday 8 March 2009
- Article history
With much of the country already below sea level, even a small rise would be devastating for the Dutch. Photograph: Peter Dejong/AP
Scientists will warn this week that rising sea levels, triggered by global warming, pose a far greater danger to the planet than previously estimated. There is now a major risk that many coastal areas around the world will be inundated by the end of the century because Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are melting faster than previously estimated.
Low-lying areas including Bangladesh, Florida, the Maldives and the Netherlands face catastrophic flooding, while, in Britain, large areas of the Norfolk Broads and the Thames estuary are likely to disappear by 2100. In addition, cities including London, Hull and Portsmouth will need new flood defences.
"It is now clear that there are going to be massive flooding disasters around the globe," said Dr David Vaughan, of the British Antarctic Survey. "Populations are shifting to the coast, which means that more and more people are going to be threatened by sea-level rises."
The issue is set to dominate the opening sessions of the international climate change conference in Copenhagen this week, when scientists will outline their latest findings on a host of issues concerning global warming. The meeting has been organised to set the agenda for this December's international climate talks (also to be held in Copenhagen), which will draw up a treaty to replace the current Kyoto protocol for limiting carbon dioxide emissions.
And key to these deliberations will be the issue of ice-sheet melting. The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - when it presented its most up-to-date report on the likely impact of global warming in 2007 - concluded that sea-level rises of between 20 and 60 centimetres would occur by 2100. These figures were derived from estimates of how much the sea will increase in volume as it heats up, a process called thermal expansion, and from projected increases in run-off water from melting glaciers in the Himalayas and other mountain ranges.
But the report contained an important caveat: that its sea-level rise estimate contained very little input from melting ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland. The IPCC forecast therefore tended to underestimate forthcoming changes.
"The IPCC felt the whole dynamics of polar ice-sheet melting were too poorly understood," added Vaughan. "However, we are now getting a much better idea of what is going on in Greenland and Antarctica and can make much more accurate forecasts about ice-sheet melting and its contribution to sea-level rises."
From studying satellite images, scientists have watched the sea ice that hugs the Greenland and Antarctic shores dwindle and disappear. Sea-ice melting on its own does not cause ocean levels to rise, but its disappearance has a major impact on land ice sheets. Without sea ice to prop them up, the land sheets tip into the water and disintegrate at increasing rates, a phenomenon that is now being studied in detail by researchers.
"It is becoming increasingly apparent from our studies of Greenland and Antarctica that changes to sea ice are being transmitted into the hearts of the land-ice sheets in a remarkably short time," added Vaughan. As a result, those land sheets are breaking up faster and far more melt water is being added to the oceans than was previously expected.
These revisions suggest sea-level rises could easily top a metre by 2100 - a figure that is backed by the US Geological Survey, which this year warned that they could reach as much as 1.5 metres.
In addition, in September, a team led by Tad Pfeffer at the University of Colorado at Boulder published calculations using conservative, medium and extreme glaciological assumptions for sea-level rise expected from Greenland, Antarctica and the world's smaller glaciers and ice caps. They concluded that the most plausible scenario, when factoring in thermal expansion due to warming waters, will lead to a total sea level rise of one to two metres by 2100.
Similarly, a commission of 20 international experts, called on by the Dutch government to help plan its coastal defences, recently gave a range of 55cm to 1.1 metres for sea-level rises by 2100. "Equally important, this commission has highlighted the fact that sea-level rise will not stop in the year 2100," said Professor Stefan Rahmstorf of Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. "By 2200, they estimate a rise of 1.5 to 3.5m unless we stop the warming. This would spell the end of many of our coastal cities."
This point was backed by Dr Jason Lowe of the Hadley Centre, the UK's foremost climate change research centre. "It is still not clear exactly how much the sea will rise by the end of this century, but it is certain that rises will continue for hundreds of years beyond that - even if we do manage to stabilise carbon dioxide emissions and halt the rise in atmospheric temperature. The sea will continue to heat up and expand. In addition, the Greenland ice sheets will continue to melt," he said.
This latter effect could, ultimately, have a particularly destructive impact. Scientists have calculated that if industrial emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases eventually produce a global temperature increase of around 4C, there is a risk that Greenland's ice covering could melt completely. This could take several hundred years or it might require a couple of thousand. The end result is not in doubt, however. It would add around seven metres to the planet's sea levels. The consequence would be utter devastation.
Such a scenario is distant, but real, scientists insist. However, at present, the most important issue, they argue, is that of short-term sea-level rises: probably around one metre by 2100. When that occurs, the Maldives will be submerged, along with islands like the Sunderbans in the Bay of Bengal, and Kiribati and Tuvalu in the Pacific. The US - which has roughly 12,400 miles of coastline and more than 19,900 square miles of coastal wetlands - would face a bill of around $156bn to protect this land. Cities such as London would require massive investments to provide defences against the rising waters. Others, such as Alexandria, in Egypt, would simply be inundated.
Rising oceans will also contaminate both surface and underground fresh water supplies, worsening the world's existing fresh-water shortage. Underground water sources in Thailand, Israel, China and Vietnam are already experiencing salt-water contamination.
Coastal farmland will be wiped out, triggering massive displacements of men, women and children. It is estimated that a one-metre sea-level rise could flood 17% of Bangladesh, one of the world's poorest countries, reducing its rice-farming land by 50% and leaving tens of millions without homes.
Such destruction would not be caused merely by rising sea levels, however. Other effects of global warming will also worsen the mayhem that lies ahead: in particular, the increase in major storms. "When we talk about the dangers of future sea-level rises, we are not talking about a problem akin to pouring water into a bath," added Dr Colin Brown, director of engineering at the Institution of Mechanical Engineering. "Climate-change research shows there will be significant increases in storms as global temperatures rise. These will produce more intense gales and hurricanes and these, in turn, will produce massive storm surges as they pass over the sea."
The result will be the appearance of the super-surge, a climatic double whammy that will savage low-lying regions that include Britain's south-eastern coastline, in particular East Anglia and the Thames Estuary, along with cities such as London, Portsmouth and Hull, which are rated as being particularly vulnerable to sea-level rise.
In addition to these hotspots, the country will also face massive disruption to its transport and energy systems unless it acts swiftly, according to a report - Climate Change, Adapting to the Inevitable - published last month by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. Many rail lines run along river valleys that will be flooded with increased regularity while bridges carrying trains and lorries often cross shipping lanes and may have to be redesigned to accommodate rising water levels.
"Power supplies will also be affected," added Brown. "The Sizewell B nuclear plant has been built on the Suffolk coast, a site that has been earmarked for the construction of several more nuclear plants. However, Sizewell will certainly be affected by rising sea levels. Engineers say they can build concrete walls that will keep out the water throughout the working lives of these new plants. But that is not enough. Nuclear plants may operate for 50 years, but it could take hundreds of years to decommission them. By that time, who knows what sea-level rises and what kinds of inundations the country will be experiencing?"
Most scientists believe Britain remains relatively well placed to combat sea-level rises. "The government has been fairly far-sighted over this issue, with projects such as Thames Estuary 2100 being set up to prepare flooding defence projects," said Professor Robert Nicholls, of Southampton University.
This does not stop the controversy, however. In its report, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers warned that many areas would have to be abandoned because they are simply too expensive to protect. In particular, large areas of the Norfolk coastline would be left to be inundated, a massive loss of human habitat.
But this approach represents an abrogation of national duty to many people - particularly those whose homes will be destroyed, individuals such as Martin George, former chairman of the Broads Society. "A country that has the technological know-how to extract oil and coal from below the North Sea should surely be capable of finding a way to protect a concrete sea wall against the effects of climate change. We should do our damnedest to safeguard our heritage," he said.
• Additional research by Lisa Kjellsson
10 March 2009
Carbon emissions creating acidic oceans not seen since dinosaurs
Chemical change placing 'unprecedented' pressure on marine life and could cause widespread extinctions, warn scientists.
Sea acidification conditions growing to worst since age of dinosaurs, extinction
A gray whale (Eschrichtius robustus) at the Ojo de Liebre in the Baja California peninsula Photograph: ALEJANDRO ZEPEDA/EPA
Human pollution is turning the seas into acid so quickly that the coming decades will recreate conditions not seen on Earth since the time of the dinosaurs, scientists will warn today.
Scientists from Bristol University presenting at a three-day climate summit in Copenhagen have found the intensifying acidification of the world's seas are creating conditions not seen since the age of the dinosaurs -- and introducing huge new stresses on marine populations. Scientists liken the current acidification -- which is being provoked by global carbon emissions -- to a prehistoric release of greenhouse gases that led to acidification so severe it prompted widespread extinction of deep-water species. The report finds the current future rate of surface ocean acidification to be unprecedented for nearly 65 million years, with conditions even worse for the deep sea. The Guardian (London)
CLIMATE CHANGE: Acid Oceans Altering Marine Life
By Stephen Leahy
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46055
MONTREAL, Canada, Mar 10 (IPS) - Some of the first species impacted by increasingly acidic oceans have been identified just as scientists meet in Copenhagen this week to present new data showing that climate change is far more urgent and serious than current economic problems.One affected species, foraminifera, a sand grain-sized plankton, is responsible for the sequestration of 25 to 50 percent of the carbon the oceans absorb and thus plays a major role in keeping atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations at much lower levels than they would be otherwise. Now scientists have learned that foraminifera (forams) shells are much thinner in oceans made more acidic by the enormous volumes of CO2 released in the burning of fossil fuels. It was only a few years ago that researchers realised that human emissions of CO2 were making the surface waters of oceans more acidic. That prompted a rush of new research to determine what the impacts might be. It turns out that forams, other shell forming species like mussels, as well as corals and fish are casualties in humanity's giant, uncontrolled experiment that involves injecting huge quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere. "We think we are the first to document effects in the field as opposed to in a laboratory experiment," said William Howard of the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. The shells of one species of foraminifera (Globigerina bulloides) in the Southern Ocean are 30 to 35 percent thinner than shells than those shells formed prior to the industrial period, Howard and colleagues wrote in a paper published in Nature Geoscience Mar. 8. Howard told IPS that forams live in the surface waters and when they die they fall to the ocean bottom. As they fell through the water column researchers collected them and compared their shell weights with forams in the sediments. Forams are widespread, numerous and have a 200-million-year-old ancestry. Their hard calcite shells are well preserved, providing a detailed fossil record of their time on Earth. Using a combination of radiocarbon dating and stable oxygen isotopes researchers determined the ages of the shells on the ocean bottom surface and those buried deep in the bottom sediments. They found a linear relationship between shell weight and atmospheric CO2 concentration over the past 50,000 years. The more CO2 in the atmosphere, the thinner the shells, and vice versa, their studies reveal. The current CO2 level of 380 ppm is the highest concentration in several million years. Projections are that ocean acidification in the coming decades will reach levels unseen since the era of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago when the oceans were very different, experts from the University of Bristol in Britain will announce at the International Scientific Congress on Climate Change in Copenhagen this week, according to news reports. There is absolutely no controversy about the basic chemistry of additional CO2 increasing ocean acidity. The oceans naturally absorb carbon from the atmosphere and have now absorbed about a third of the total amount of human emissions. This additional carbon has altered the oceans' chemistry, making them 25 to 30 percent more acidic because the extra CO2 combines with carbonate ions in seawater, forming carbonic acid. Shell-forming creatures - mussels, corals, hard planktons, shrimps and many more - all need those carbonate ions to build their shells. Research on the effects of acidification on marine species in the open ocean is just getting started. Lab experiments had previously shown that the ocean's shell-forming creatures produce thinner shells in more acidic ocean waters, so William Howard is unlikely to surprise the 2,000 attendees in Copenhagen when he presents his findings. And no one knows at this point if the thinner shells are harming or affecting the forams. However, scientists and policy makers ought to be alarmed to learn that Howard's planktonic forams play a crucial role in the sequestration, or storage, of carbon in the deep ocean, accounting for between 25 and 50 percent of the carbon transfer from the atmosphere to the deep ocean. Each day, the oceans absorb 30 million tonnes of CO2 and if forams can no longer play their role in this carbon storage system then atmospheric concentrations of CO2 could skyrocket with calamitous effects on the global climate system. And it turns out that forams have a particularly tough shell, utilising calcite - the most stable form of calcium carbonate and less sensitive to acidification. Many other shell-forming species that are vital parts of the oceanic food chain like pteropods utilise a carbonate mineral called aragonite and are likely to be more vulnerable to acidification, researchers warn. Another new study has found that the larvae of clownfish - the bright orange and white reef fish - were unable to detect the odours from adult fish that led them to their breeding sites. This lab study shows that acidified waters that are expected before the end of the century affected the larvae's ability to follow odours, disrupting the breeding cycle of an important fish species. The world's leading marine scientists are increasingly alarmed by acidification and its impacts. Last Jan. 30, they issued a warning to policy makers called the Monaco Declaration that states "acidification is accelerating and severe damages are imminent" and that corals will not survive in most of the oceans by 2050. The declaration was a dramatic step for scientists, says signatory Victoria Fabry, an oceanographer at the University of California, Santa Barbara. "The potential is there for drastic changes in the oceans," Fabry told IPS. There is a crucial need to alert policy makers and the public and to act soon. "We can make a difference by reducing emissions," she said. "About two percent of the Gross World Product would need to be invested in energy production, efficiency and usage to reach the stabilisation target of 450 ppm, a cost considered to be tolerable by most economists," said Hermann Held of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany, who helped craft the Declaration. Despite this modest investment, little is happening to substantially reduce emissions in virtually every country in the world. For that reason this week's climate science update involving experts from 80 countries is a deliberate attempt to influence policy, said conference organiser Katherine Richardson, a marine biologist at the University of Copenhagen. This latest science paints a dire picture, from increasing ocean acidification to rapidly rising sea levels that will swamp most of the world's coastal regions before 2100, among many other impacts. The hope is this climate science update will push policy makers to reach a significant emissions reduction agreement at the climate change negotiations at the end of the year in Copenhagen, Richardson has said in media reports. (END/2009)
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