If you have a spare hour, this lecture is something not to miss. Kevin Anderson, professor of energy and climate change at the University of Manchester gives this year’s University of Bristol Cabot Institute Annual Lecture, and rips into the comfortable assumption that limiting warming to two degrees is still possible. Can we stay within the “guardrail”? Only if you make a series of heroically unlikely assumptions, Anderson suggests. As we head into the Doha COP18 negotiations, this lecture provides a valuable antidote to the rose-tinted spectacles habitually worn by politicians — and, as Anderson points out — many scientists.
Tag: emissions
The Climate Show #30: Obama, Sandy and the rabbit
Another news special on this week’s Climate Show. With Barack Obama winning “four more years“, and the biggest Atlantic storm ever seen slamming into New Jersey, New York, and most of the northeastern USA, Glenn and Gareth chew over the details and consider the implications. With a side order of accountants PwC being gloomy, agricultural emissions, and a rabbit. (Not you, Eli).
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Jim Renwick on the state of climate science
I have been listening to a lecture by Victoria University climate scientist, James Renwick, who has recently moved to the university from his post as principal climate scientist at NIWA. In the seminar he sets out in broad terms some of the latest developments in the science. It’s a very clear summation, with some recent interesting graphs and charts, showing the direction which in which climate change is continuing to move. Needless to say there’s no change in direction apparent. I recommend the lecture as well worth listening to. I’ll only touch lightly in this post on the scientific content of the lecture; my main purpose is to highlight comments Renwick made along the way indicating the concern he feels about where we are headed.
I was particularly struck by an early statement made after he had remarked on the 2011 emissions reaching a record level of 31.6Gt and pointed to the graph of steadily increasing concentration of CO2 measured at Mauna Loa. I’ve transcribed it: Continue reading “Jim Renwick on the state of climate science”
20 years on, NZ’s Rio response inadequate: WWF
The WWF report this week on how New Zealand has handled its responsibilities since the first Earth Summit 20 years ago is damning on the matter of greenhouse gas emissions. We have failed to measure up to our undertakings given back in 1992 and again in 2002. New Zealand signed up to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change on the first day of the that Rio meeting, and subsequently ratified it. We committed in Article 4 to:
“Adopt national policies and take corresponding measures on the mitigation of climate change, by limiting its anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases and protecting and enhancing its greenhouse gas sinks and reservoirs. These policies and measures will demonstrate that developed countries are taking the lead.”
The WWF report points out that nothing happened here for the next fourteen years and the country’s greenhouse gas emissions continued to increase. They flattened off after 2007, but that was mainly due to a major drought affecting agriculture and then the subsequent recession. The report considers the Emissions Trading Scheme enacted in 2008 and weakened in 2009 has had limited impact on emissions.
We have clearly failed to set emissions on a downward trajectory.
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Weakened NZ ETS not responsible economic management
Tim Groser, the new Minister for Climate Change Issues, is adamant in his defence of the intention to further delay bringing the agricultural sector into the Emissions Trading Scheme beyond the current date of 2015 unless there are adequate abatement options open to them by then and unless other countries step up to the mark with mitigation measures. His remarks on Morning Report on Thursday made it clear that the interests of the overall economy were more important than mitigation of the 0.2% of the global greenhouse gas emissions that New Zealand is responsible for. He spoke of the difficulty of managing the economy through tough times.
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