Devastating bushfires sweeping across large swathes of Australia on the back of the hottest day ever recorded are a sign of things to come. With average temperatures in Australia predicted  to rise by 5 degrees C by 2070,  extreme weather conditions and firestorm events are set to be the new norm. The New Scientist also reports that while the extended Kyoto Protocol takes us through to 2020, it is unlikely to achieve what it set out to do. Emissions have risen over time and it’s not likely to change that trend any time soon. Read more

Climate change looms large as Australia swelters

By Andy Coghlan in New Scientist (7 January 2013):

Australia is baking in a record-breaking “dome of heat“, threatening to unleash the worst firestorms since those that claimed hundreds of lives in 2009. Temperatures reached almost 48 °C on Monday at the Oodnadatta airport in South Australia, and 43 °C on Tuesday in Sydney. The typical January high is 37.7 °C at Oodnadatta. The average across the country is tipped to break the previous record of 40.17 °C in 1976.

“It’s likely to just beat it,” Karl Braganza of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology told The Age newspaper on Monday. “It’s just an extensive dome of heat over the continent.”

At least 90 fires were sweeping through New South Wales by Monday, and 100 people remained unaccounted for in Tasmania following major fires covering 60,000 hectares. Bushfire experts warned that things could get worse. “The current heatwave is unusual due to its extent, with more than 70 per cent of the continent currently experiencing heatwave conditions,” says John Nairn, South Australia’s acting regional director for the Bureau of Meteorology, in comments to the Australian Science Media Centre.

Lack of rainfall in recent months has left soils completely dry and unable to release moisture that would take up heat from the air through evaporation. At the same time, vegetation across the continent that had been revived by rains over the past two years is now completely dried out. “Much of this grass is fully dried and is ready to burn,” says Gary Morgan of the Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre in Melbourne.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in the fourth and most recent of its assessments of the effects of climate change, predicted that in south-eastern Australia, the frequency of days when extreme fire danger threatens will increase by up to 25 per cent by 2020, and up to 70 per cent by 2050. In its most recent study of the impact of climate change, the Bureau of Meteorology noted that average temperatures across Australia have increased by almost 1 °C since 1910, and could rise by up to 5 °C by 2070.

Source: www.newscientist.com

By Fred Pearce in New Scientist (3 January 2013):

Fifteen years after its painful birth in Kyoto, Japan, the world’s first legally binding agreement to limit emissions of greenhouse gases ended this week.

For some it is a victorious conclusion. The 37 industrial nations that stuck with the protocol after the US pulled out in 2005 say they exceeded their promises, cutting their emissions for the period from 2008 to 2012 to an average of 16 per cent below 1990 levels, compared with the 4.7 per cent promised in the agreement.

But the protocol only ever applied to rich industrialised nations. Most of the cuts came from Eastern European countries when their economies collapsed after the fall of the Berlin Wall – reductions that would have happened anyway.

Emissions rise

In the same period, global emissions have risen by 50 per cent, thanks to the rapid industrialisation of nations such as China, not covered by the original deal.

Formally the protocol lives on. Climate talks in Doha in December created a second “compliance period” stretching to 2020, when diplomats promise a new deal involving all nations will come into force. But with Russia, Japan, New Zealand and Canada pulling out, this next period only covers nations which contribute 14 per cent of global emissions, mainly the European Union and Australia.

What’s more, phase 2 contains the same fundamental loophole as the first deal. Too many rich countries have met their targets by moving their carbon-intensive industries, such as steel and aluminium manufacturing, offshore to nations not covered by the protocol.

Moving to China

This allowed the UK to easily meet its Kyoto target, cutting its domestic carbon dioxide emissions by 23 per cent from 1990 levels by 2011. But several assessments of its total carbon footprint – including emissions produced from the manufacture of imported goods – reveal an increase of around 10 per cent since 1990, even allowing for the recent economic downturn.

Worse still, most of the new manufacturing nations are both highly inefficient users of energy and power their manufacturing largely with the dirtiest of the major fuels, coal. The result is higher emissions.

Energy economist Dieter Helm from the University of Oxford asked recently:”What exactly is the point of reducing emissions in Europe if it encourages energy-intensive industry to move to China, where the pollution will be even worse?”

It seems likely that, in this way, the Kyoto protocol may actually have increased global emissions. Ouch.

Source: www.newscientist.com