As nations haggle, global carbon cut targets get impossibly deep

David Fogarty and Alister Doyle PlanetArk 29 Nov 12;

As the nations of the world struggle in Doha to agree even modest targets to tackle global warming, the cuts needed in rising greenhouse gas emissions grow ever deeper, more costly and less likely to be achieved.

U.N. talks have delivered only small emissions curbs in 20 years, even as power stations, cars and factories pump out more and more heat-trapping gases.

An overriding long-term goal set by all nations two years ago to keep temperature rises to less than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 F) above levels prior to the Industrial Revolution is fast slipping away.

"The possibility of keeping warming to below 2 degrees has almost vanished," Pep Canadell, head of the Global Carbon Project at Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organization, told Reuters.

Disagreements mean the U.N. climate talks in Doha, Qatar, that run until December 7 have scant chance of making meaningful progress. The talks are aimed at reaching a new deal to start by 2020 to slow climate change in the form of more floods, droughts, rising sea levels and severe storms like Hurricane Sandy that lashed the U.S. Northeast last month.

Global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse gas, have risen 50 percent since 1990 and the pace of growth has picked up since 2000, Canadell said. In the past decade, emissions have grown about 3 percent a year despite an economic slowdown, up from 1 percent during the 1990s.

Based on current emissions growth and rapid industrial expansion in developing nations, emissions are expected to keep growing by about 3 percent a year over the next decade.

For the talks to have any chance of success in the long run, emissions must quickly stop rising and then begin to fall. Temperatures have already risen by 0.8 C (1.4 F) since pre-industrial times.

"The alarm bells are going off all over the place. There's a disconnect between the outside world and the lack of urgency in these halls," Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists said at the Doha talks.

Nearly 1,200 coal-fired power plants, among the biggest emitters, are proposed around the globe, with three-quarters of them planned for China and India, a study by the Washington-based World Resources Institute think-tank said last week.

Emissions from China, the world's top carbon polluter, are growing 8 to 9 percent a year and are now about 50 percent higher than those of the United States. And China's carbon emissions are not expected to peak until 2030.

POLLUTION

In some projections, global emissions will need to go into reverse by mid-century, with the world sucking more carbon out of the air than it puts in, if warming is to be kept to below 2 C.

And air pollution, mostly particles from fossil fuel use, may be masking the warming by dimming sunshine.

"Those aerosols today hide about one-third of the effect of greenhouse gases," Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, vice-chairman of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), told Reuters.

Without that pollution, a breach of the 2 degree threshold might already be inevitable, he said.

The latest IPCC report, in 2007, said keeping greenhouse gas concentrations low would cost less than 3 percent of world gross domestic product by 2030. So far, the panel has not assessed the costs of delays, said Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the panel.

The report also said that world emissions of greenhouse gases would need to peak by 2015 to give a good chance of keeping the average temperature rise to below 2 C.

But deep disagreement on future emissions cuts between rich and poor nations has delayed the start of a new global pact until 2020, undermining the chances of a robust extension in Doha of the existing plan, the Kyoto Protocol, which obliges almost 40 rich nations to cut emissions until the end of 2012.

The deadline for a deal on new cuts due to start in 2020 has been put back to 2015, giving breathing space for the troubled talks as ever more carbon enters the air.

Yet current emissions cut pledges are putting the planet on course for a warming of 3 to 5 C, a U.N. report said last week, adding that 2 C was still possible with tough action.

"The later we go in getting complete action and the higher emissions are in 2020, the greater is the risk that these targets are not possible or are extremely expensive," said Bill Hare, head of the non-profit advisory organization Climate Analytics.

Key will be a switch to nuclear or biomass power and carbon capture and storage. If these don't step up, there will be no financially feasible solutions to meet the target, he said.

In Doha, both the United States and the European Union - the main emitters among developed nations - say they will not deepen their pledges for cuts by 2020. "It's a desperate situation," said Martin Kaiser of Greenpeace.

To be effective, the next climate pact from 2020 would need global agreement for rapid and deep cuts. Under a scenario drawn up by the IPCC, rich nations needed to achieve cuts of 25 to 40 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels.

But existing pledges are for less than 20 percent.

STARK MESSAGE

Canadell, citing work by the Global Carbon Project and other researchers, said that to have a reasonable chance of keeping warming to 2 C, global emissions would have to drop about 3 percent a year from 2020.

Since developed nations are meant to take the lead, that would mean the rich would have to cut by between 4 and 5 percent a year, he said. That could cripple economies by prematurely shutting down coal-fired power plants and polluting factories.

Global accountancy firm PwC estimated that the improvement in global carbon intensity - the amount of carbon emitted per unit of economic output - needed to meet a 2 C target had risen to 5.1 percent a year, from now to 2050.

"We have passed a critical threshold - not once since World War Two has the world achieved that rate of decarbonisation, but the task now confronting us is to achieve it for 39 consecutive years," PwC said.

(Editing by Hugh Lawson)

Extreme weather calls for action, U.N. climate chief says
Alister Doyle PlanetArk 29 Nov 12;

Extreme weather from melting Arctic ice to Superstorm Sandy shows snail-paced U.N. climate talks have to do more to cut greenhouse gas emissions, the head of the U.N. weather agency and its climate chief said on Wednesday.

"Climate change is taking place before our eyes," Michel Jarraud, the head of the U.N.'s weather agency, said of the shrinking of ice floating on the Arctic Ocean to a record low in September and other extremes.

And the first 10 months of 2012 were the ninth-warmest since records began in the mid-19th century, with early months cooled by a "La Nina" weather event in the Pacific, according to a report by Jarraud's World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

It also documented severe floods, droughts and heatwaves, in what the U.N. expected to add to pressure for action at the November 26-December 7 meeting among 200 nations in OPEC member Qatar.

"The message here for this conference is very clear," Christiana Figueres, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat told Reuters of extremes and rising emissions. "Governments need to hurry up and they need to be much more on track."

Superstorm Sandy, which struck the U.S. east coast after raging through the Caribbean, showed the United States "is not exempt from the vulnerabilities of climate change and that it also needs to do something," she said.

"We have had severe climate and weather events all over the world and everyone is beginning to understand that is exactly the future we are going to be looking about if they don't do something about it," she said.

SEA LEVELS

Rajendra Pachauri, head of the U.N. panel of climate scientists, said the costs of defenses against higher sea levels would rise towards 2100 and could amount to five to 10 percent of gross domestic product of low-lying nations.

And between 75 and 250 million people in Africa alone could face greater stress on water supplies by 2020, hitting food output. "This would further adversely affect food security and exacerbate malnutrition," he said in a speech to the conference.

He said polls showed U.S. public opinion had swung towards wanting more action by President Barack Obama to slow global warming after Sandy. "But whether that's a lasting change it's too early to say," he told Reuters.

China, the United States, the European Union and India are the top emitters. None have announced plans to limit emissions at Doha despite wide pleas for action.

The U.N. meeting is struggling to overcome disputes about how to extend the Kyoto Protocol, the existing plan for cutting emissions by developed nations that will otherwise expire at the end of the year.

The European Union, Australia and a few other countries are willing to extend but Japan, Russia and Canada have pulled out, arguing that it is meaningless unless emerging nations led by China and India also sign up.

The United States never ratified the 1997 Kyoto pact. Without an extension of Kyoto, developing nations say they won't work for a global deal applicable to all and meant to be agreed by 2015 and enter into force by 2020.

Also, coal-dependent Poland won backing as the host for next year's U.N. climate talks after OPEC member Qatar, a double act that dismayed environmentalists who say both oppose action to drop fossil fuels and embrace greener energies.

"The prospect of Poland hosting the next global climate conference is hugely concerning. At a time when action is desperately needed, a host country should be firmly committed to climate protection," Greenpeace's Jiri Jerabek said.

(Editing by Hugh Lawson and Jason Webb)