'IPCC seriously underplays climate change'

Roger Highfield, The Telegraph 2 Apr 08;

The UN body which won the Nobel prize for warning the world about climate change has seriously underplayed the problem, leading scientists say today.

Their analysis suggests that assumptions about the rising efficiency of cars, appliances, power stations and air conditioning, based on complex analyses, are too optimistic, although they do not go into details.

Reducing global emissions of carbon dioxide over the coming century will be more challenging than society has been led to believe by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), according to the commentary entitled "Dangerous Assumptions" published today in the journal Nature.

Roger Pielke Jr, University of Colorado, Boulder, Prof Tom Wigley, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, and Christopher Green of McGill University, Quebec, argue that the IPCC, the pre-eminent body engaged in crystal-ball gazing about future climates, has sent out the wrong signals about the need for new technology to curb emissions.

After studying what would happen if there were no improvements in technology, they conclude that the emissions scenarios that the IPCC has developed for looking at future climate change assume that "business as usual" will include continuous significant increases in energy efficiency, so that the emissions of carbon for a given amount of energy generation will continually decrease.

"The huge relative magnitude of the spontaneous emissions reductions is not widely known or appreciated," said Prof Wigley.

The IPCC plays a "risky game in assuming that spontaneous advances in technological innovation will carry most of the burden of achieving future emissions reductions," the authors write.

By assuming continuous improvement in technology, the IPCC has had the paradoxical effect of underplaying the dire need to develop radical new clean and efficient energy technologies.

Recent changes in emissions per unit of energy consumed already are higher than those predicted by the IPCC because of rapid economic development, says Dr Pielke Jr. In Asia, for instance, the demands of more energy-intensive economies are being met with conventional fossil-fuel, a process expected to continue there for decades and eventually move into Africa.

"Not only is this reduction unlikely to happen under current policies, but we are moving in the opposite direction right now. We believe these kinds of assumptions in the analysis blind us to reality and could potentially distort our ability to develop effective policies."

The Nature commentary points out, for example, that to stabilise CO2 levels at around 500 parts per million (compared to the present level of about 390 ppm), IPCC scenarios assume that 57 to 96 per cent of the total carbon removed from the energy supply over the coming century would occur spontaneously, from energy efficiency improvements.

The IPCC was aware of this issue, says Dr Pielke, though why it did nothing to address it is "a question most appropriate for the IPCC."

"Stabilisation is a more daunting challenge than many realise," Prof Wigley adds. "Global energy demand is projected to grow rapidly, and these huge new demands must be met by largely carbon-neutral energy sources - sources that either do not use fossil fuels or that capture and store any emitted CO2."

U.N. climate panel seen downplaying technology need
Deborah Zabarenko, Reuters 2 Apr 08;

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.N. climate change panel seriously underestimated the need for new technology in its reports on what it will take to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions that spur global warming, ecology and economy experts said on Wednesday.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change based its global warming predictions issued last year on the assumption that technology would automatically improve, giving the world even greater energy efficiency, which would help lower climate-warming emissions over the coming decades.

But this automatic technology improvement has not happened so far this century, according to the authors of a commentary in the current issue of the journal Nature.

"We argue that the size of this technology challenge has been seriously underestimated ... diverting attention from policies that could directly stimulate technological innovation," they wrote.

While energy efficiency has continued to improve in the richest countries, including the United States and Europe, it has declined in fast-developing countries like China as demand increases there, lead author Roger Pielke Jr. said in a telephone interview.

SURGING DEMAND FOR ENERGY

"There are more than 2 billion people worldwide with no access to electricity," said Pielke, who is based at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado in Boulder. "And as they demand, rightly, access to energy, their carbon emissions have nowhere to go but up."

Carbon dioxide is emitted by coal-fired power plants, petroleum-fueled vehicles and some factories as well as by natural sources including human respiration. It is one of several so-called greenhouse gases that exacerbate global climate change by trapping heat near the Earth's surface.

Pielke likens the U.N. panel's technology assumptions to the assumption that any individual will automatically get a raise in pay every year.

If you figure you will always get an annual raise, you will spend more based on that assumption, and have to rethink things if the expected raise does not materialize, Pielke said.

He acknowledged a decades-long trend toward greater energy efficiency but said the last decade or so has deviated from that trend.

"It may be that 100 years from now ... we will look back and see that this was a temporary excursion from that trend," Pielke said. "The point would be that the amount of carbon dioxide emitted during this excursion from the trend could be quite significant and a lot larger than is accounted for in the range of scenarios used by the (U.N. climate panel)."

Nothing less than a technology revolution is required, Pielke said, with investments in research and development comparable to the U.S. military's investments during the Cold War.

(Editing by Bill Trott)