12 January 2018, Reuters, Warming set to breach Paris accord’s toughest limit by mid century: draft. Global warming is on track to breach the toughest limit set in the Paris climate agreement by the middle of this century unless governments make unprecedented economic shifts from fossil fuels, a draft U.N. report said. The draft, of a report due for publication in October, said governments will also have to start sucking carbon dioxide from the air to achieve the ambition of limiting temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times. “There is very high risk that … global warming will exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels,” the U.N. panel of experts wrote, based on the current pace of warming and current national plans to limit their greenhouse gas emissions. There were no historic precedents for the scale of changes required in energy use, to shift from fossil fuels to renewable energies, and in reforms ranging from agriculture to industry to stay below the 1.5C limit, it said. The draft, by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of leading scientists and obtained by Reuters, says average surface temperatures are about 1C above pre-industrial times and that average temperatures are on track to reach 1.5C by the 2040s. Curbing warming to 1.5C would help limit heat extremes, droughts and floods, more migration of people and even risks of conflict compared to higher rates of warming, according to the draft summary for policymakers. But a 1.5C rise might not be enough to protect many coral reefs, already suffering from higher ocean temperatures, and ice stored in Greenland and West Antarctica whose melt is raising sea levels. Read More here. For expert response read more here
Tag Archives: Emissions
11 January 2018, ABC News – Science: Forget Paris: Australia needs to stop pretending we’re tackling climate change. As the Bureau of Meteorology confirms another record-breaking year for temperatures in Australia, we should expect a sense of urgency to be creeping into Australia’s climate policy. Instead, we’re seeing the opposite. While 2015-17 were all within the hottest six years on record, our carbon emissions also continued to increase during the same period, including an all-time peak in 2017, when unreliable land-use data was excluded from the analysis. This is despite signing up to the Paris Agreement in 2015, which outlined a plan to reduce our carbon emissions by 26-28 per cent by 2030. Government data pushed out under the cloak of Christmas indicates that we will be about 140 million tonnes — or about 30 per cent — above that target based on current growth Government optimism at odds with UN: Despite last financial year’s continued emissions growth, Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg remains upbeat about Australia’s commitment to the Paris Agreement. “If you look on a yearly basis that is true [that emissions went up]. But if you look on the last quarter, they went down. If you look at the trend, it is improving. And when you talk about the 2030 target, which is our Paris commitment, the numbers that were most recently shown, indicate that they were 30 per cent better than when Labor were last in office,” the Minister told RN Breakfast. But his optimism is at odds with a number of experts, and is contrary to what was reported in the United Nations Emissions Gap Report (see below), 2017. “Government projections indicate that emissions are expected to reach 592 [million tonnes] in 2030, in contrast to the targeted range of 429-440 [million tonnes],” the report states.. Read More here
4 January 2018, Geophysical Research Letters, Decline in Antarctic Ozone Depletion and Lower Stratospheric Chlorine Determined From Aura Microwave Limb Sounder Observations. The Antarctic ozone hole is healing slowly because levels of the man-made chemicals causing the hole have long lifetimes. We use Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) satellite data to measure O3 over Antarctica at the beginning of winter and then compare it to O3 near the end of winter to calculate depletion. During this period, nearly all O3 change is due to depletion. MLS also measures HCl, and when ozone levels are very low, nearly all the reactive chlorine species (Cly) are converted to HCl. Clyvaries a lot from year to year from atmospheric motions. Fortunately, MLS measures nitrous oxide (N2O), a long-lived gas that also varies with the motions. Using the ratio of Cly to N2O, we find that there is less chlorine now than 9 years ago and that Cly has decreased on average about 25 parts per trillion/yr (0.8%/yr). The O3 depletion we calculate from MLS data responds to changes in the Clylevels, and the ratio of the change in ozone loss to the change in Cly matches model calculations. All of this is evidence that the Montreal Protocol is working—the Cly is decreasing in the Antarctic stratosphere and the ozone destruction is decreasing along with it. Read More here
19 December 2017, CSIRO-ECOS, Refining the accounts on canola emissions savings. BIOFUELS are about to work even harder to prove their renewable worth, under new European Union rules. From 2018 the European Commission’s Renewable Energy Directive mandates that biofuels must demonstrate a 50 per cent emissions saving compared to their fossil fuel companions (or a 60 per cent saving when produced in refineries constructed after October 2015), compared to a flat 35 per cent saving now. CSIRO was commissioned by the Australian Oilseed Federation and the Australian Export Grains Innovation Centre to assess the greenhouse gas emissions of growing canola in Australia, in order to continue exports to the European Union for use as a feedstock for biodiesel under the new rules. In 2016/17, more than 3.1 million tonnes of Australian canola was exported to the EU, worth around $1.8 billion. EU buyers can pay a $20-40 per tonne premium for non-genetically modified canola (which Australia primarily produces), making the EU export market one with a cool $100 million premium riding on it. The vast majority of this canola (91 per cent in 2015-16) is used to make biodiesel. To secure this important export market the Australian industry needed to demonstrate that canola can be grown at a low enough carbon footprint so that once all the other processes of shipping and refining are added, the final product can be deliver to the customer at the fuel bowser within the target saving of 50-60 per cent. We are happy to say it did. Read More here