Global Emissions up 6%:  Biggest annual jump ever seen

The global output of heat-trapping CO2 jumped
by the biggest amount on record, the U.S. Department of Energy calculated, a
sign of how feeble the world’s efforts are at slowing man-made global warming.
The new figures for 2010 mean that levels of greenhouse gases are higher than
the worst case scenario outlined by climate experts just four years ago. “The
more we talk about the need to control emissions, the more they are growing”,
says John Reilly, co-director of MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy
of Global Change. While Steve Zwick in Forbes GREEN TECH says while there are
no quick fixes, there are stop-gap measures that will buy us time until we can
reduce industrial emissions. Chief among these is to stop paying poor people to
destroy our rainforests and start paying them to maintain them.

Biggest jump ever seen in global warming
gases

By Seth Borenstein , AP Science Writer (4 November
2011):

The global output of heat-trapping carbon
dioxide jumped by the biggest amount on record, the U.S. Department of Energy
calculated, a sign of how feeble the world’s efforts are at slowing man-made
global warming.

The new figures for 2010 mean that levels of
greenhouse gases are higher than the worst case scenario outlined by climate
experts just four years ago.

“The more we talk about the need to
control emissions, the more they are growing,” said John Reilly,
co-director of MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.

The world pumped about 564 million more tons
(512 million metric tons) of carbon into the air in 2010 than it did in 2009.
That’s an increase of 6 percent. That amount of extra pollution eclipses the
individual emissions of all but three countries — China, the United States and
India, the world’s top producers of greenhouse gases.

It is a “monster” increase that is
unheard of, said Gregg Marland, a professor of geology at Appalachian State
University, who has helped calculate Department of Energy figures in the past.

Extra pollution in China and the U.S. account
for more than half the increase in emissions last year, Marland said.

“It’s a big jump,” said Tom Boden,
director of the Energy Department’s Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center
at Oak Ridge National Lab. “From an emissions standpoint, the global
financial crisis seems to be over.”

Boden said that in 2010 people were
traveling, and manufacturing was back up worldwide, spurring the use of fossil
fuels, the chief contributor of man-made climate change.

India and China are huge users of coal.
Burning coal is the biggest carbon source worldwide and emissions from that
jumped nearly 8 percent in 2010.

“The good news is that these economies
are growing rapidly so everyone ought to be for that, right?” Reilly said
Thursday. “Broader economic improvements in poor countries has been
bringing living improvements to people. Doing it with increasing reliance on
coal is imperiling the world.”

In 2007, when the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change issued its last large report on global warming, it used
different scenarios for carbon dioxide pollution and said the rate of warming
would be based on the rate of pollution. Boden said the latest figures put
global emissions higher than the worst case projections from the climate panel.
Those forecast global temperatures rising between 4 and 11 degrees Fahrenheit
by the end of the century with the best estimate at 7.5 degrees.

Even though global warming skeptics have
attacked the climate change panel as being too alarmist, scientists have
generally found their predictions too conservative, Reilly said. He said his
university worked on emissions scenarios, their likelihood, and what would
happen. The IPCC’s worst case scenario was only about in the middle of what MIT
calculated are likely scenarios.

Chris Field of Stanford University, head of
one of the IPCC’s working groups, said the panel’s emissions scenarios are
intended to be more accurate in the long term and are less so in earlier years.
He said the question now among scientists is whether the future is the panel’s
worst case scenario “or something more extreme.”

“Really dismaying,” Granger Morgan,
head of the engineering and public policy department at Carnegie Mellon
University, said of the new figures. “We are building up a horrible legacy
for our children and grandchildren.”

But Reilly and University of Victoria climate
scientist Andrew Weaver found something good in recent emissions figures. The
developed countries that ratified the 1997 Kyoto Protocol greenhouse gas
limiting treaty have reduced their emissions overall since then and have
achieved their goals of cutting emissions to about 8 percent below 1990 levels.
The U.S. did not ratify the agreement.

In 1990, developed countries produced about
60 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases, now it’s probably less than 50
percent, Reilly said.

“We really need to get the developing
world because if we don’t, the problem is going to be running away from
us,” Weaver said. “And the problem is pretty close from running away
from us.”

Source: www.news.yahoo.com

Steve Zwick, in Forbes Green Tech (4 November
2011):

The Climate Debate is Over. Let’s Tap Markets
to Save the Trees, the Planet, and Ourselves

Our economy is changing our climate in
dangerous ways, and the latest figures show it’s getting worse, with greenhouse
gas emissions up a nauseating and unforgiveable 6% in 2010, despite the global
economic slowdown. If you’re one of these self-proclaimed “skeptics” who still
deny that man caused this mess and that man must fix it, then you’ve sacrificed
your credibility as a sentient human being.

That’s the take-home message from the Berkley
Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) Study, which was funded in part by the Koch
Brothers and headed by Richard Muller, a vocal critic of the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).  BEST
examined the evidence that “Climategate” supposedly suppressed, and published
its conclusion in mid-October.

“We find that the global land mean
temperature has increased by 0.911 ± 0.042 C since the 1950s (95% confidence
for statistical and spatial uncertainties)” the authors wrote on the very first
page.  “This change is consistent with
global land-surface warming results previously reported, but with reduced
uncertainty.”

That means that everything you have heard
about “institutional bias” among scientists in the IPCC is wrong.  It means everything you have heard about the
rate of global warming slowing down in the last decade is wrong.  It means that, if anything, the earth is
warming faster than the cautious scientists of the IPCC stated, and all signs
point to mankind as the culprit.

If you still want to blame sunspots and
volcanoes, read The Discovery of Global Warming by Spencer Weart to learn how
those and other theories emerged and failed to pass scientific muster, while
the concept of a man-made greenhouse effect not only passed those tests but
evolved as new evidence came to light.

The cause is clear, and the solution is
obvious – but it’s that solution that has conservatives in a state of paralytic
denial. To fix this problem, we must fundamentally change the way our economy
prices goods and services so that the cost of environmental degradation is
embedded in the cost of production.  If
we do that, everything else will follow. That’s the basic premise of carbon
finance, and it’s a conservative idea – first proposed and then implemented by
fiscal conservatives just a few short years before the whole movement went
collectively insane.

The only thing we should be arguing about now
is how to transition to a truly new and green economy as quickly and
efficiently as possible.  There are no
quick fixes, but there are stop-gap measures that will buy us time until we can
reduce industrial emissions. Chief among these is to stop paying poor people to
destroy our rainforests and start paying them to maintain them.

Smart money is moving in this direction, as
we saw at the end of September with the publication of State of the Forest
Carbon Markets 2011: From Canopy to Currency. This survey documents a record
$175 million flowing to support forest carbon projects in 2010, representing
commitments to sequester enough carbon to offset nearly 30 million tons of
carbon dioxide emissions.

The money comes from industrial companies
that want to reduce their carbon footprint by paying poor people to act as
providers of an ecosystem service – usually by either planting trees, shifting
to sustainable forestry, or saving endangered rainforests (REDD – Reduced
Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation).

Encouragingly, the report shows that
private-sector companies aren’t just buying credits to reduce their footprints;
they are also developing and brokering projects on an ever-larger scale – a
role traditionally filled by environmental non-profits. This indicates the
market’s growing confidence in our ability as a species to do the right thing.

And, as we all know, the market never lies.

Source: www.forbes.com