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From: greenleap@yahoogroups.com
To: greenleap@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2006 8:16 PM
Subject: [greenleap] Digest Number 1373


A list, hosted in Australia, for people interested in leapfrogging to an
ecologically sustainable economy. The list is for the
Messages In This Digest (7 Messages)
1. PricewaterhouseCoopers: Climate & "Green Growth Plus" scenario From: Philip
Sutton
2. Conclusion of UK govt investigation: economics of tackling climate From:
Philip Sutton
3. Climate Change & Australian PM: A policy U-turn in the making? From: Philip
Sutton
4. Climate: One third of planet will be desert by 2100 From: Philip Sutton
5. CO2-driven release of peat bog carbon suggests 320 ppm better air CO From:
Philip Sutton
6. Leading US scientist speaks plainly about the sabotage of climate From:
Philip Sutton
7. Mark 2006 in your diary: the climate change social tipping point yea From:
Philip Sutton
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1. PricewaterhouseCoopers: Climate & "Green Growth Plus" scenario
Posted by: "Philip Sutton" Philip.Sutton@...
philipsuttonoz
Mon Oct 9, 2006 10:17 pm (PST)
Dear Greenleapers,

You might be interested in the "Green Growth" scenario developed by the
international accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers.

See:
http://www.pwc.com/extweb/pwcpublications.nsf/docid/dfb54c8aad6742db85
2571f5006dd532
or click here.

The world in 2050
Impact of global growth on carbon emissions

The rapid economic growth of emerging countries such as China and India
- together with continued more moderate growth in today´s advanced
economies - could have serious long-term consequences for global energy
consumption and carbon emissions.

The projections demonstrate that if countries sit back and adopt a "business
as usual" approach, the result could be a more than doubling of global
carbon emissions by 2050. Based on current scientific thinking, this could
have potentially serious longer term implications in terms of global warming
and related climate change.

On the other hand a scenario such as the "Green Growth Plus" strategy
outlined in the report could allow for continued healthy growth whilst
controlling carbon emissions.

These are just some of the points highlighted in a new
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) report entitled The World in 2050:
Implications of global growth for carbon emissions and climate change
policy.

The report considers six possible scenarios but focuses most attention on
two key possibilities:

* A baseline scenario in which energy efficiency improves in line with
trends of the past 25 years, with no change in fuel mix by country; this
`business as usual´ scenario acts as a benchmark against which to assess
the need for change, rather than as a forecast of the most likely outcome;
and
* A scenario called Green Growth + CCS, which incorporates possible
emission reductions due to a greener fuel mix, annual energy efficiency
gains over and above the historic trend, and widespread use of carbon
capture and storage (CCS) technologies. Of the scenarios considered in the
report, only this `Green Growth Plus´ strategy stabilises atmospheric CO2
concentrations by 2050 at what the current scientific consensus suggests
would be broadly acceptable levels.

The G7 economies - the US, Japan, Germany, UK, France, Italy and
Canada - may need to take the lead in reducing their carbon emissions,
given that emissions from the faster-growing emerging economies will
almost certainly continue to rise over the next few decades.

This latest PwC report follows on from one published in March 2006 which
highlighted the rapid growth potential of the "E7" emerging economies -
China, India, Brazil, Russia, Mexico, Indonesia and Turkey - leading up to
2050. Take a look at this report, entitled The World in 2050: How big will the
major emerging market economies get and how can the OECD compete?,
for more details of the methodology used to project GDP growth in the new
report.

The author of both reports is John Hawksworth, head of macroeconomics at
PricewaterhouseCoopers´ UK firm. He says: "As they increase in relative
size to overtake the current G7 countries, the emerging `E7´ economies will
increasingly provide the motor for global growth and could account for
almost half of global carbon emissions by 2050 according to our model. But
this begs the question: Can the world sustain such rapid growth without
serious adverse effects on its climate? Our new report provides one possible
answer to how this might be achieved".

The chart below shows how it might be possible to get from the baseline
scenario to the preferred Green Growth + CCS scenario for global carbon
emissions in three steps.

The World in 2050 - Global carbon emmissions from fossil fuels (GtC pa)

The report also indicates how carbon emissions might need to evolve by
country to achieve the Green Growth + CCS scenario, as summarised in the
charts below. We can see that the G7 economies will need to reduce their
current level of emissions by around half by 2050 to achieve this scenario,
whereas the E7 economies would still be able to increase their emissions by
around 30% from current levels.

The World in 2050 - Carbon emissions from fossil fuels by country in Green
Growth + CCS

Top Of Page The World in 2050 - Baseline scenario to Green Growth +
CCS

These charts also show the growing weight of the E7 emerging economies
(particularly China and India) in global carbon emissions relative to the
current G7 advanced economies. According to the model, China is set to
overtake the US as the leading carbon emitter by 2010, while total E7
emissions would be more than double total G7 emissions by 2050. Together
the `Big 3´ economies (China, US and India) are projected to account for just
over half of global emissions by 2050 in both our Baseline and Green
Growth + CCS scenarios (though the absolute levels of emissions are much
lower in the latter case), up from around 45% today. The EU´s share of
global emissions is set to decline from around 15% now to just under 9% by
2050.

John Hawksworth concludes: "Our analysis suggests that there are
technologically feasible and relatively low-cost options for controlling
carbon
emissions to the atmosphere. Estimates suggest that the level of GDP might
be reduced by no more than around 2-3% in 2050 if this strategy was
followed, equivalent to sacrificing only around a year of economic growth for
the sake of reducing carbon emissions in 2050 by around 60% compared to
our baseline scenario".

"But if this is to be achieved, it will take further concerted action by
governments, businesses and individuals over a broad range of measures to
boost energy efficiency, adopt a greener fuel mix, and introduce carbon
capture and storage technologies in power plants and other major industrial
facilities".

-------------
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Messages in this topic (1)
2. Conclusion of UK govt investigation: economics of tackling climate
Posted by: "Philip Sutton" Philip.Sutton@...
philipsuttonoz
Mon Oct 9, 2006 10:25 pm (PST)
This posting contains two items:

Margaret Beckett's opening remarks to Gleneagles meeting
The Stern Review: `What is the Economics of Climate Change?´

------------

From:
http://www.fco.gov.uk/servlet/Front?pagename=OpenMarket/Xcelerate/Sho
wPage&c=Page&cid=1007029391629&a=KArticle&aid=1159195491622
or click here.

Margaret Beckett's opening remarks to Gleneagles meeting

GLENEAGLES DIALOGUE MEETING - BECKETT OPENING REMARKS
(03/10/06)

Event: Gleaneagles Dialogue Meeting

Location: Monterrey, Mexico

Speech Date: 03/10/06

Speaker: Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett

Good morning, and to many of you, hello again.

Dealing with climate change is an imperative for today, not an option for
tomorrow.

Pick up a newspaper in any one of our countries. Hardly a day goes by
without new reports of climatic extremes, new suggestions that we are
approaching a tipping point and new concerns about what this means for our
societies.

These messages from the front line of science are a rising drumbeat calling
us to action.

Next year's assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
will pull together what is now an overwhelming body of scientific findings.
The picture that emerges will confirm our mounting sense that this problem
is a lot worse - a lot bigger and more urgent - than we thought it was even a
few years ago. The IPCC's report will send shock waves round the world.

We do not need to imagine what the costs of an unstable climate will be in
insecurity and suffering. There are already more than enough illustrations.
Take the tragic conflict in Darfur. It has its origins in competition for
access
to freshwater and productive land, made worse by a shift in the local pattern
of rainfall.

We in the UK are clear that without climate security it will become
increasingly difficult to guarantee national security and economic security..
An unstable climate will undermine the capacity of governments to deliver
the outcomes that our citizens expect on growth and jobs, trade and
investment, migration, conflict, eradicating poverty and protecting public
health - in fact, pretty much in every area in which the public holds
governments to account.

That is why among my first actions as Foreign Secretary I designated
climate security and the transition to a low carbon economy as a strategic
international priority for the UK, and appointed a Special Representative for
Climate Change.

This commitment runs right through our government. Gordon Brown, in his
keynote speech to the Labour Party Conference last week said 'I don't want
our children to say to us: you knew what needed to be done, you had the
political power but you lacked the political will'.

Indeed the same commitment is now building fast in our public life, across
the political spectrum, as politicians and leaders in all areas respond to
mounting public expectations for more urgent and effective action. And the
tide is not going to turn. Climate change will continue to rise up the
political
agenda as each year passes. Britain's engagement on this issue will be
sustained, because we know our national interest depends on it.

Tony Blair was one of the first British politicians to see this. On the
international stage, he made climate change one of his two priorities, with
Africa, for our Presidency last year of the G8. He knew that climate change
was not just a question for Environment Ministers. It needs the attention of
Heads of Government, of Ministers across the policy waterfront, from
Finance and Foreign Affairs to Agriculture, Trade, Defence, Health,
Education, Transport, Innovation and pretty much everything else. Without a
focussed effort across all areas of government, we will not be able to build
the broad foundation we need for the actions we must take. This is a major
political enterprise for which we need to assemble the widest possible
political coalition.

That is why I am pleased to see so many policymakers from the world of
energy here today, to continue the energy-environment dialogue that Patricia
Hewitt and I launched 18 months ago in London.

Our success in stabilising the climate will depend more than anything else
on the kind of energy infrastructure we build over the next generation. So the
energy policies we adopt now, and the investments we make now, will be
absolutely critical.

The International Energy Agency estimates that US$17 trillion will be spent
in the energy sector between now and 2030. With that investment we need
to achieve a transition from today's carbon intensive growth to the low
carbon economy of tomorrow. We must transform the very foundations of
how we live: how we generate and consume power, how we move around,
and how we use land.

Most of that US$17 trillion will be from the private sector. But a stable
climate is a public good: and that makes it a responsibility of governments to
put in place the conditions that will achieve it.

Our task as governments is to build the biggest public-private partnership
ever conceived. We must construct the mutually reinforcing frameworks of
incentives and penalties, of opportunities and burdens equitably shared, that
will drive private capital towards low carbon outcomes.

We must give investors the certainty they are seeking that investment in low
carbon today will yield growing returns as the transition progresses. And
because we live in a globally interconnected economy, we must build these
frameworks simultaneously at all levels, so that they reinforce each other
and expand the political space that we will need in order to go further.

This dialogue in Monterrey gives us a chance to think creatively together
beyond the limits of our roles as negotiators about the part that we as
governments must play.

We need to find a new way of mobilising together in pursuit of our mutual
interest. And to do that we need above all to build a common perspective on
the landscape in which governments, businesses and societies must make
the critical choices that will determine our success. And we must map a
shared path through that landscape.

We need to understand the economics of this issue. That is why last year
Tony Blair and Gordon Brown commissioned Sir Nicholas Stern to conduct
the most comprehensive and rigorous assessment ever attempted of the
economics of climate change. I shall leave it to Nick to tell you about his
emerging findings. But I will not be surprised if he confirms what has been
becoming increasingly clear as the evidence builds: that it is sound
economic sense to respond to climate change and economic nonsense not
to.

We need to understand the technological options that can carry us towards
a low carbon economy, and the policy choices that will broaden them. That
is why the groundbreaking work on technology perspectives conducted over
the last year by the IEA is so important, and why we can all be grateful to
Claude Mandil for leading it with such vision. The IEA's World Energy
Outlook later this year will be more eagerly awaited than ever, as a guide to
current trends and the scale of the changes we will need to make to change
them.

Since this is above all an investment problem we also need to work out how
best to use public capital under the right enabling conditions to leverage
private finance towards clean energy outcomes. And we need in so doing to
make low carbon technologies available and affordable as rapidly as
possible across borders, particularly in the emerging economies. The
Investment Framework for Clean Energy and Development being developed
with Paul Wolfowitz and his team at the World Bank will be an enormously
powerful tool in this effort.

All these contributions are beginning to give us the shared analysis on which
we will need to base our actions. Tony Blair's aim in launching this process
was that we should rapidly achieve consensus on what those actions should
be. For example:
* what goals should we set ourselves to guide our choices as we embark
on the transition to low carbon?
* what will be the critical decisions that governments will need to make
about technology options in that transition?
* what can we do, through the UN process which must remain the
backbone of international action on climate, through trade and
investment frameworks and by other means, to accelerate the growth in
markets for the technologies we need and their rapid diffusion across
borders?
* what should we do at the global and regional levels to facilitate the
national decisions we need to take, to minimise political blockages
arising from competitiveness or other concerns and to maximise
economies of scale?

The answers to these questions will tell us much about steps we need to
take - nationally, regionally, and globally as we build the architecture we
need. From them we will begin to discern the key features of an international
regime that will carry this enterprise into its next phase, beyond 2012.

And as we do this there is one thing of which I am already certain. We will
find that if we make the right choices this will be an agenda of opportunity
not of sacrifice. True, there will be some costs. But these will be well
within
our means. And they will be far outweighed by the benefits - not only in
climate security but also in energy security, public health, innovation and
competitiveness, in growth and sustainable livelihoods, and in the resilience
of our economies.

It is a myth that effective action on climate kills growth. It is a myth that
it
needs to constrain the legitimate economic choices of developing countries.

The European Emissions Trading scheme already covers 11 000 power
plants and businesses. It is nowhere near as strong as it ought to be - and
will be - but nevertheless, in its first year it made trades worth 7.2 billion
euro, as businesses learn to treat carbon liability as a commercial
opportunity.

Yesterday, here in Mexico, we saw the launch of yet another new carbon
fund.

China has among the world's most aggressive policies to increase energy
efficiency and accelerate the deployment of renewable energy technologies.
It intends to reduce energy use per unit of GDP by 20 per cent by 2010, and
has established a program drastically to cut energy waste among over 1000
major industrial firms and utilities. In Dongtan Eco-City the Municipality of
Shanghai will put China at the cutting edge of sustainable urban
development. China is not taking these steps to shackle its economy but
because it sees them as essential to maintaining the conditions for growth.

Brazil has invested billions of dollars in wind power, bio-mass and small
hydro-power projects and is now sharing its very successful bioethanol
technology with developing country partners.

In India, the growth of feedstock for biodiesel on marginal land is offering
the
prospect of new and sustainable livelihoods in poor rural communities.

Accelerating the growth in markets for renewable energy technologies will
bring down prices, contributing to energy security and bringing clean
affordable power to many of the 1.5 billion people who still lack access to
grid electricity.

Above all, as the IEA and others have pointed out, we urgently need to bring
to rapid deployment the carbon capture and storage technologies that will
allow us to burn coal without destabilising the climate. Indeed there is
probably no higher priority in the entire effort on climate. But in doing that
we
will be enhancing global energy security, and therefore strengthening our
economies, because coal is so widely distributed. Given the right
frameworks, this need not impose unreasonable burdens on the economies
of China, India and other countries whose development will continue to
depend heavily on coal.

But we now need to bring these opportunities to life. They will not take shape
unless we, the world's biggest energy consumers, accept the need for a
much faster progress than we have made so far, and unless we set out a
clear path towards our goal.

In Europe we will in coming months be taking momentous decisions about
our energy strategies. We in the UK will be publishing a White Paper on
energy early next year, and analogous processes are under way in other
capitals. We need to make sure these strategies reflect the reality that
energy security and climate security are now indivisible. We cannot have
one without the other and so we need to use energy policy to help build a
low carbon economy.

And at the front of our minds we must all recognise that the investment
decisions we make now will determine our emissions for decades ahead. If
we make the wrong choices we may never have the chance to rectify them,
because to all intents and purposes the climate thresholds that we cross will
be irreversible.

For all these reasons this Dialogue will remain, as it progresses towards
2008 when it will report back to the G8 Summit in Japan, one of my highest
priorities for British diplomacy. We will work closely with Germany, Japan,
with Mexico and all our partners to ensure that it builds the clearest
possible
shared understanding of the steps we can take together to shape the next
stage of an effective response to climate change.

But for now, on behalf of the Prime Minister, let me express my warmest
thanks to President Fox and the government of Mexico for hosting this
meeting; and my best wishes to all of you for a productive 2 days here in
Monterrey.

-------------

The Stern Review: `What is the Economics of Climate Change?´

From: www.sternreview.org.uk

To access the links in the following article go to the source page on the web.

31 January 2006
Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change

The Chancellor announced on 19 July 2005 that he had asked Sir Nick
Stern to lead a major review of the economics of climate change, to
understand more comprehensively the nature of the economic challenges
and how they can be met, in the UK and globally.

The review will be taken forward jointly by the Cabinet Office and HM
Treasury, and will report to the Prime Minister and Chancellor by Autumn
2006. It takes place within the context of existing national and international
climate change policy.

The announcement of this review is a further demonstration of the
importance which this Government attaches to the issue of climate change,
and follows its decision to make climate change a priority for the UK
Presidencies of the G8 and EU.
Oxford Institute of Economic Policy Distinguished Lecture: 'What is the
Economics of Climate Change?´

Sir Nicholas Stern, Head of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate
Change, gave a keynote lecture to the Oxford Institute of Economic Policy
as part of their distinguished lecture series entitled `What is the Economics
of Climate Change?´on the evening of Tuesday 31 January. This paper sets
out the key approaches and questions for the Stern Review. The deadline
for reactions to this paper has now passed however we will endevour to
consider belated responses received either by email
(oxonia.responses@... ) or by post to the address below.
The responses received can be viewed via the link below.

Links to key documents relating to Oxford Institute of Economic Policy
Distinguished Lecture:

* PDF file of ´What is the Economics of Climate Change´ Discussion
Paper (558KB) Technical Annex (411KB)
* PDF file of Lecture Transcript (37.4KB) Lecture Notes (165KB)
Lecture Slides (Powerpoint file) (787KB)
* List of responses to the Stern Review Discussion Paper: ´What is the
Economics of Climate Change?´
* Press Notice 31/01/06: Sir Nicholas Stern gave Keynote Speech to the
Oxford Institute of Economic Policy on `What is the Economics of Climate
Change?´

Following Sir Nick Stern´s speech to Oxonia on 31 January and the papers
published alongside it, a summary article setting out these arguments has
been published in World Economics. The journal also includes a critique of
the work by Byatt et al, and a reply to Byatt et al from Nick Stern. The Byatt
et al paper was previously published on this website as part of the
responses to the Oxonia speech, alongside the other responses received.
All these responses are being considered as part of the evidence base for
the Review"

* PDF file of Summary Article in World Economics (65KB)
* PDF file of Nick Stern reply to Byatt et al in World Economics (69KB)

Other Presentations by Sir Nicholas Stern

* PDF file of Remarks by Sir Nicholas Stern at Delhi-India sustainable
Development Summit on 3 February 2006 (14.2KB)
* Presentation on innovation policy by Nick Stern to a seminar organised
by the Institut du Developpement Durable et des Relations Internationales
(IDDRI), Paris, 9 March 2006 (55.9KB)
* PDF file of presentation by Sir Nicholas Stern on sustainable
development, climate change and international action at the inaugural
lecture of the the European Institute for Asian Studies sustainable
development series in honour of Amartya Sen March 16th, 2006 (882KB)
* PDF file of speech by Sir Nicholas Stern on Speaking in personal
capacity: views expressed are not necessarily those of the UK Government
at South Africa on 25 April 2006 (597KB)

Stern Review Analysis on Chinese Energy Markets

In response to the increasing importance of China in the global economy,
the Stern Review commissioned research by the Chinese Academy of
Social Sciences into the key economic and policy issues affecting its
domestic energy markets. A report summarising this work is available via
the link below.

* PDF file of report by Chinese Academy of Social Sciences:
Understanding China´s Energy Markets (356KB)

Stern Review Transport Seminar in January 2006

The Stern Review hosted a seminar to discuss the drivers behind global
growth in emissions from transport and the prospects for new technologies
to reduce emissions.

* PDF file of Presentation by Laura Cozzi at IEA on global growth in
transport emissions (1.98MB)
* PDF file of Presentation by Adam Chase at E4Tech on prospects for
hydrogen technology (2.84MB)
* PDF file of Presentation by Ian McCrae at TRL on how to transport
emissions in developing countries (2.42MB)
* PDF file of Presentation by Nobuhiko Koga at Toyota Motor Co on
prospects for hydrogen technology (1.82MB)
* PDF file of Minutes from discussion at seminar (40KB)

Call for Evidence

At the outset of the Review, Nick Stern invited interested stakeholders in the
UK and the rest of the world, including academic, private sector, scientific,
NGO and other experts, to submit evidence on all areas relevant to the
Terms of Reference. The formal deadline for submitting evidence has now
passed. However, the Review team will endeavour where possible to
consider material we receive in the future via the contact details listed
below:

*
List of Responses to the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate
Change: Call for Evidence

Review Team contact details

Stern Review
2nd Floor, Room 35/36
HM Treasury
1 Horse Guards Road
London SW1A 2HQ
Email: callforevidence@...
Terms of Reference

The terms of reference of the review are to:

Examine the evidence on:

*
The implications for energy demand and emissions of the prospects for
economic growth over the coming decades, including the composition and
energy intensity of growth in developed and developing countries;
*
The economic, social and environmental consequences of climate
change in both developed and developing countries, taking into account the
risks of increased climate volatility and major irreversible impacts, and the
climatic interaction with other air pollutants, as well as possible actions to
adapt to the changing climate and the costs associated with them;
*
The costs and benefits of actions to reduce the net global balance of
greenhouse gas emissions from energy use and other sources, including the
role of land-use changes and forestry, taking into account the potential
impact of technological advances on future costs; and
*
The impact and effectiveness of national and international policies and
arrangements in reducing net emissions in a cost-effective way and
promoting a dynamic, equitable and sustainable global economy, including
distributional effects and impacts on incentives for investment in cleaner
technologies

Consult with key stakeholders, internationally and domestically, to
understand views and inform analysis.

Based on this evidence, provide:

*
An assessment of the economics of moving to a low-carbon global
economy, focusing on the medium to long-term perspective, and drawing
implications for the timescales for action, and choice of policies and
institutions.
*
An assessment of the potential of different approaches for adaptation to
changes in the climate.

Assess how this analysis applies to the specific case of the UK, in the
context of its existing climate change goals.

Produce a report to the Prime Minister and Chancellor by Autumn 2006.

Related links:

*
12/10/05 Pn85 Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change:
Terms of reference and call for evidence announced
*
12/10/05 Pn86 Adviser to the Government on the economics of climate
change and development
*
Stern Workshop 27 March 2006 discussion for Carbon Trust Co UK,
collective internal reference 1 , 2 , 3 , 4

Independent Reviews Index
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Messages in this topic (1)
3. Climate Change & Australian PM: A policy U-turn in the making?
Posted by: "Philip Sutton" Philip.Sutton@...
philipsuttonoz
Mon Oct 9, 2006 10:25 pm (PST)
Christian Kerr discussed on Late Night Live last night his article below (from
Crikey 9
October). In essence, he is saying that Australian Prime Minister, John
Howard, is preparing
to do a back-flip on climate change and will usethe security risks to
Australia from climate
change as new information which will justify his policy switch, while
reinforcing his image as
resolute in the defence of Australia.

(Thanks to Keith Thomas, Nature and Society Forum and Adrian Whitehead, Beyond
Zero
Emissions for this item)

From:
http://www.crikey.com.au/

5.Global warming and a driving lesson from the PM
Christian Kerr writes:

John Howard is nothing if not cautious. Indeed, Gerard Henderson often reminds
us of
the problems he has had in the past with indecision.

Caution can be bad. It can also be safe. On the roads, for example, caution
pays. And
on global warming, it appears, the PM is behaving like a model driver.
Geoffrey Barker
writes in the Fin today:

Welcome signs are emerging that the federal government has realised that
global
warming is infinitely more threatening to Australia than Islamist terrorism.

To his credit John Howard has reportedly asked Australia's intelligence
analysis
agency, the Office of National Assessments (ONA), to prepare a detailed report
for
cabinet on global warming and its security implications.

By contrast he has not sought a national intelligence estimate on terrorism,
perhaps
because he does not want to be told, as US intelligence agencies have told
President
George Bush, that the Iraq War has increased the overall terrorist threat...

It's cute, getting ONA involved. A very nice angle. And what a wonderful
driving lesson
we're getting from the PM on how to do a u-turn - pull over to the side of the
road, draw
to a complete stop and then head in the opposite direction.

If the passengers wonder what on earth you're doing, you simply tell them
there was a
safety hazard on the road ahead. No one's going to quibble with that.

As this guy points out, climate change material is akin to p*rn for
journalists...!


6.The scary security implications of global warming
Sophie Black writes:

Geoffrey Baker speculates today in the Fin Review (not online) that the PM's
request
for an ONA report on the security implications of global warming coincides
pretty neatly
with Rupert Murdoch's green light on global warming. But Crikey understands
that the
idea for a paper on the security implications of climate change came up at a
high-level
meeting around a year ago.

Maybe the government was takingits cue from Washington -- a secret Pentagon
report
on the global security implications of climate change that was leaked back in
February
2004 made for some pretty scary reading. The London Observer obtained a copy
of the
Pentagon report that painted Biblical scenes of global catastrophe costing
millions of
lives, with "nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting"
that could
erupt across the world and "bring the planet to the edge of anarchy."

The Pentagon report warned that global warming was a far greater risk than
terrorism,
advised that climate change should be considered "immediately" as a top
political and
military issue and concluded: "Disruption and conflict will be endemic
features of life ...
Once again, warfare would define human life." Among the catalogue of
unbelievable
predictions was that "catastrophic" shortages of portable water and energy
will lead to
widespread war by 2020.

So what would an ONA report on the security implications of global warming for
Australia look like? Clive Hamilton of The Australia Institute told Crikey
that "the most
startling claim of the Pentagon report for Australia was that we, along with
the United
States, could find ourselves building 'defensive fortresses' around our
country to protect
our resources from desperate outsiders and aggressive states created by rapid
and
unpredictable climate change."

The Pentagon report also "raised the issue of food security and the
implications for
countries like Australia if crops persistently fail in developing countries
leading to
famine and mass migration," says Hamilton.

And today's release of the report Australia Responds: Helping our Neighbours
Fight
Climate Change also offers a glimpse of what could be in store for us - it
argues that
rising sea levels caused by global warming could force the mass exodus of
millions of
Pacific Islanders as "environmental refugees".

The scenario mirrors last week's World Bank report Not If But When which
warned that
climate change will have a huge impact on Pacific islands. Since 2001,
citizens of Fiji,
Tonga, Kiribati and Tuvalu have been able to enter New Zealand as
environmental
refugees displaced by climate change but that's a mere trickle compared to the
predicted deluge of displaced people that Australia is set to face if the
Pentagon
predictions are anything to go by.

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4. Climate: One third of planet will be desert by 2100
Posted by: "Philip Sutton" Philip.Sutton@...
philipsuttonoz
Mon Oct 9, 2006 10:26 pm (PST)
------- Forwarded message follows -------
From: "Andrew Marks" <andrewm@...>
Subject: One Third Of Planet Will Be Desert By 2100
Date sent: Tue, 10 Oct 2006 11:18:02 +1000

THE CENTURY OF DROUGHT
By Michael McCarthy
The Independent
October 4, 2006

http://news. independent.co.uk/environment/article1786829.ece

One third of the planet will be desert by the year 2100, say climate experts
in the most dire warning yet of the effects of global warming.

.............

Drought threatening the lives of millions will spread across half the land
surface of the Earth in the coming century because of global warming,
according to new predictions from Britain's leading climate scientists.

Extreme drought, in which agriculture is in effect impossible, will affect
about a third of the planet, according to the study from the Met Office's
Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research.

It is one of the most dire forecasts so far of the potential effects of
rising temperatures around the world -- yet it may be an underestimation,
the scientists involved said yesterday.

The findings, released at the Climate Clinic at the Conservative Party
conference in Bournemouth, drew astonished and dismayed reactions from aid
agencies and development specialists, who fear that the poor of developing
countries will be worst hit.

"This is genuinely terrifying," said Andrew Pendleton of Christian Aid. "It
is a death sentence for many millions of people. It will mean migration off
the land at levels we have not seen before, and at levels poor countries
cannot cope with."

One of Britain's leading experts on the effects of climate change on the
developing countries, Andrew Simms from the New Economics Foundation, said:
"There's almost no aspect of life in the developing countries that these
predictions don't undermine -- the ability to grow food, the ability to have
a safe sanitation system, the availability of water. For hundreds of
millions of people for whom getting through the day is already a struggle,
this is going to push them over the precipice."

The findings represent the first time that the threat of increased drought
from climate change has been quantified with a supercomputer climate model
such as the one operated by the Hadley Centre.

Their impact is likely to even greater because the findings may be an
underestimate. The study did not include potential effects on drought from
global-warming-induced changes to the Earth's carbon cycle.

In one unpublished Met Office study, when the carbon cycle effects are
included, future drought is even worse.

The results are regarded as most valid at the global level, but the clear
implication is that the parts of the world already stricken by drought, such
as Africa, will be the places where the projected increase will have the
most severe effects.

The study, by Eleanor Burke and two Hadley Centre colleagues, models how a
measure of drought known as the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) is
likely to increase globally during the coming century with predicted changes
in rainfall and heat around the world because of climate change. It shows
the PDSI figure for moderate drought, currently at 25 per cent of the
Earth's surface, rising to 50 per cent by 2100, the figure for severe
drought, currently at about 8 per cent, rising to 40 cent, and the figure
for extreme drought, currently 3 per cent, rising to 30 per cent.

Senior Met Office scientists are sensitive about the study, funded by the
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, stressing it contains
uncertainties: there is only one climate model involved, one future scenario
for emissions of greenhouse gases (a moderate-to-high one) and one drought
index. Nevertheless, the result is "significant", according to Vicky Pope,
the head of the Hadley Centre's climate programme. Further work would now be
taking place to try to assess the potential risk of different levels of
drought in different places, she said.

The full study -- Modelling the Recent Evolution of Global Drought and
Projections for the 21st Century with the Hadley Centre Climate Model --
will be published later this month in The Journal of Hydrometeorology.

It will be widely publicised by the British Government at the negotiations
in Nairobi in November on a successor to the Kyoto climate treaty. But a
preview of it was given by Dr Burke in a presentation to the Climate Clinic,
which was formed by environmental groups, with The Independent as media
partner, to press politicians for tougher action on climate change. The
Climate Clinic has been in operation at all the party conferences.

While the study will be seen as a cause for great concern, it is the figure
for the increase in extreme drought that some observers find most
frightening.

"We're talking about 30 per cent of the world's land surface becoming
essentially uninhabitable in terms of agricultural production in the space
of a few decades," Mark Lynas, the author of High Tide, the first major
account of the visible effects of global warming around the world, said.
"These are parts of the world where hundreds of millions of people will no
longer be able to feed themselves."

Mr Pendleton said: "This means you're talking about any form of development
going straight out of the window. The vast majority of poor people in the
developing world are small-scale farmers who... rely on rain."

A glimpse of what lies ahead

The sun beats down across northern Kenya's Rift Valley, turning brown what
was once green. Farmers and nomadic herders are waiting with bated breath
for the arrival of the "short" rains -- a few weeks of intense rainfall that
will ensure their crops grow and their cattle can eat.

The short rains are due in the next month. Last year they never came; large
swaths of the Horn of Africa stayed brown. From Ethiopia and Eritrea,
through Somalia and down into Tanzania, 11 million people were at risk of
hunger.

This devastating image of a drought-ravaged region offers a glimpse of what
lies ahead for large parts of the planet as global warming takes hold.

In Kenya, the animals died first. The nomadic herders' one source of
sustenance and income -- their cattle -- perished with nothing to eat and
nothing to drink. Bleached skeletons of cows and goats littered the barren
landscape.

The number of food emergencies in Africa each year has almost tripled since
the 1980s. Across sub-Saharan Africa, one in three people is
under-nourished. Poor governance has played a part.

Pastoralist communities suffer most, rather than farmers and urban dwellers..
Nomadic herders will walk for weeks to find a water hole or riverbed. As
resources dwindle, fighting between tribes over scarce resources becomes
common.

One of the most critical issues is under-investment in pastoralist areas.
Here, roads are rare, schools and hospitals almost non-existent.

Nomadic herders in Turkana, northern Kenya, who saw their cattle die last
year, are making adjustments to their way of life. When charities offered
new cattle, they said no. Instead, they asked for donkeys and camels --
animals more likely to survive hard times.

Pastoralists have little other than their animals to rely on. But projects
which provide them with money to buy food elsewhere have proved effective,
in the short term at least.

.............

NHNE Climate Change Resource Page:
http://www.nhne.org/tabid/ 490/Default.aspx

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5. CO2-driven release of peat bog carbon suggests 320 ppm better air CO
Posted by: "Philip Sutton" Philip.Sutton@...
philipsuttonoz
Mon Oct 9, 2006 10:28 pm (PST)
Most public discussion focuses on stabilising CO2 at between 450-550 parts
per million.

(There is currently 382 parts per million of CO2 in the air and before
industrialisation there was 280 ppm).

The following items (taken together) from the New Scientist suggest that it
might be best if the stabilisation target was no more than 320 ppm.

Philip Sutton

----------

Two items:

Greenhouse action - letter to the Editor
Peat bogs harbour carbon time bomb

To find articles search in the this email on the titles.

----

From:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18324574.600

Greenhouse action - letter to the Editor

24 July 2004
New Scientist Print Edition
Lewis Cleverdon Kington, Herefordshire, UK

Chris Freeman observes that, due directly to rising atmospheric carbon
dioxide, the world's peat bogs "are going into solution" and releasing rising
volumes of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) into watercourses, which in turn
emit increased CO2 to the atmosphere (10 July, p 9). With this phenomenon
evidently having begun about 40 years ago, and if it is true that global
river-
borne DOC has been rising exponentially by about 6 per cent per year, the
prognosis on this trend is of "ex-peat" emissions reaching 7 gigatonnes per
year by 2060 - equal to society's present global carbon emissions.

Freeman's findings strengthen the case for multilateral action on carbon
emissions and set a new goal for the stabilisation of atmospheric CO2 at
perhaps 320 parts per million by volume.

Secondly, the urgency is changed: on this evidence we appear to have less
than three decades to displace the use of fossil fuels if we are to avoid
positive feedback from increased atmospheric carbon swamping the carbon
sinks and committing us to a global climatic destabilisation and consequent
catastrophic crop failure, geo-economic collapse, contested mass-migration
and so on.

Thirdly, the urgency dictates that policies for cutting carbon emissions must
be complemented by the recovery of gigatonnes per year of carbon from the
atmosphere. Numerous techno-fixes have been proposed to achieve a
fraction of this recovery, none of which are self-funding.

An obvious, long-proven and long-ignored option is for a global effort to
develop coppice woodland to produce methanol. This would entail
widespread deciduous reforestation, particularly of upland regions, with plots
of woodland being felled and regrown from the stump in cycles ranging from
7 to 20 years, and their produce being used as feedstock in village-scale
methanol refineries.

This option could recover airborne carbon both during coppice development
and in their root growth thereafter. It could displace fossil fuels in
internal
combustion engines, fuel cells and gas turbines. It could, if applied
sustainably, help communities and ecosystems adapt to climate change by
helping to mitigate flooding, supplying rural jobs, stabilising hill soils,
buffering old forests, reconnecting forest that is now fragmented and so on..

I suggest that the uplands of the UK are as much in need of it as anywhere.

Global Commons Institute

>From issue 2457 of New Scientist magazine, 24 July 2004, page 28

-------------

From:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18324551.500-peat-bogs-harbour-
carbon-time-bomb.html

Peat bogs harbour carbon time bomb

Fred Pearce
10 July 2004
New Scientist Print Edition.

THE world's peat bogs are haemorrhaging carbon dioxide into the
atmosphere, accelerating global warming. Worse, the process appears to be
feeding off itself, as rising atmospheric levels of CO2 are triggering further
releases from the bogs.

That's the claim of a British researcher this week who is warning that
billions
of tonnes of carbon could pour into the air from peat bogs in the coming
decades. "The world's peatland stores of carbon are emptying at an
alarming rate," says Chris Freeman of the University of Wales at Bangor.
"It's a vicious circle. The problem gets worse and worse, faster and faster."

Peat bogs are a vast natural reservoir of organic carbon. By one estimate,
the bogs of Europe, Siberia and North America hold the equivalent of 70
years of global industrial emissions. But concern is growing that such bogs
are releasing ever more of their carbon into rivers in the form of dissolved
organic carbon (DOC).

"There seems to be an increase of DOC in rivers of about 6 per cent a year
at present," says Fred Worrall of the University of Durham in the UK, who
collates global data on DOC levels in rivers. Worrall suspects the rise in
DOC began about 40 years ago.

Bacteria in the rivers rapidly convert DOC into CO2 that bubbles into the
atmosphere. But speculation has been rife about why the peat bogs are
giving up their carbon in the first place. Three years ago, Freeman proposed
that global warming was the cause (New Scientist, 25 August 2001, p 8). But
that hypothesis failed to stand up in field trials. A second suggestion, that
increased river flows were flushing more carbon out of the bogs, has also
bitten the dust.

So Freeman tested a third idea - that summer droughts cause more
vegetable matter in bogs to decompose, freeing up more carbon that is
released into the rivers. But that too failed when Freeman simulated drought
conditions in a bog in central Wales, and found that this reduced the DOC in
rivers, rather than increasing it.

The trials indicate that there may be another culprit altogether: the direct
effects of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Freeman grew plants on soil
from peat bogs in igloo-like glass structures, some containing normal air and
others with a CO2-rich atmosphere. He found that plants in the CO2-rich
atmosphere began to assimilate much larger amounts of CO2, which in turn
was released into the soil moisture. There it can feed bacteria in the water
that break down the peaty soil itself, releasing stored carbon from the bog
into the rivers.

After three years, the proportion of DOC in the CO2-rich soil was 10 times
that within the normal soil. And there was no sign of the increase tailing
off.
"This shows that even without global warming, rising CO2 can damage our
environment," says Freeman. "The peat bogs are going into solution."

Researchers from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Lancaster, UK,
have been measuring DOC levels in water for some years as part of a
programme to monitor river chemistry. But the study is also providing critical
evidence of the impact of rising levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. Recent
data shows a 90 per cent increase in DOC levels in Welsh mountain rivers
since 1988.

"The rate of acceleration suggests that we have disturbed something critical
that controls the stability of the carbon cycle in our planet," Freeman says.
"On these trends, by the middle of the century, DOC emissions from peat
bogs and rivers could be as big a source of CO2 to the atmosphere as
burning fossil fuels."

Freeman says the dissolved carbon also poses a potential health threat.
DOC can react with chlorine disinfectant at water treatment works to
produce cancer-causing chemicals called trihalomethanes. "Apart from the
global warming implications, this means we will have to pay higher water
bills for removing these toxins," Freeman says.

>From issue 2455 of New Scientist magazine, 10 July 2004, page 9

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6. Leading US scientist speaks plainly about the sabotage of climate
Posted by: "Philip Sutton" Philip.Sutton@...
philipsuttonoz
Mon Oct 9, 2006 10:54 pm (PST)
From:
http://www..columbia.edu/~jeh1/worldwatch_nov2006.pdf
and from
November/December 2006 issue (Volume 19, No. 6) of World Watch magazine.
www.worldwatch.org/ww/hansen

Swift Boating, Stealth Budgeting, and Unitary Executives
by James Hansen

The American Revolution launched the radical proposition that the commonest of
men should have a vote equal in weight to that of the richest, most powerful
citizen.
Our forefathers devised a remarkable Constitution, with checks and balances,
to
guard against the return of despotic governance and subversion of the
democratic
principle for the sake of the powerful few with special interests. They were
well aware
of the difficulties that would be faced, however, placing their hopes in the
presumption of an educated and honestly informed citizenry.

I have sometimes wondered how our forefathers would view our situation today.
On
the positive side, as a scientist, I like to imagine how Benjamin Franklin
would view
the capabilities we have built for scientific investigation. Franklin
speculated that an
atmospheric "dry fog" produced by a large volcano had reduced the Sun´s
heating of
the Earth so as to cause unusually cold weather in the early 1780s; he noted
that the
enfeebled solar rays, when collected in the focus of a "burning glass," could
"scarce
kindle brown paper."As brilliant as Franklin´s insights may have been, they
were only
speculation as he lacked the tools for quantitative investigation. No doubt
Franklin
would marvel at the capabilities provided by Earth-encircling satellites and
super-
computers that he could
scarcely have imagined.

Yet Franklin, Jefferson, and the other revolutionaries would surely be
distraught by
recent tendencies in America, specifically the increasing power of special
interests in
our government, concerted efforts to deceive the public, and arbitrary actions
of
government executives that arise from increasing concentration of authority in
a
unitary executive, in defiance of the aims of our Constitution´s framers.
These
tendencies are illustrated well by a couple of incidents that I have been
involved in
recently.

In the first incident, my own work was distorted for the purposes of
misinforming the
public and protecting special interests. In the second incident, the mission
of the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was altered
surreptitiously
by executive action, thus subverting constitutional division of power. These
incidents
help to paint a picture that reveals consequences for society far greater than
simple
enrichment of special interests. The effect is to keep the public in the dark
about
increasing risks to our society and our home planet.

The first incident prompted New York Times columnist Paul Krugman to argue not
long ago that I must respond to "swift boaters"-those who distort the record
to
impugn someone´s credibility. I have had reservations about doing so, stemming
from the perceptive advice of Professor Henk van de Hulst, who said, when I
was a
post-doc at Leiden University, "Your success will depend upon choosing what
not to
work on." Unfortunately, given the shrinking fuse on the global warming time
bomb,
Krugman is probably right: we cannot afford the luxury of ignoring swift
boaters and
focusing only on science.

Pat Michaels, a swift boater to whom Krugman refers, is sometimes described as
a
"contrarian." Contrarians address global warming as if they were lawyers, not
scientists. A lawyer´s job often is to defend a client, not seek the truth.
Instead of
following Richard Feynman´s dictum on scientific objectivity ("The only way to
have
real success in science...is to describe the evidence very carefully without
regard to
the way you feel it should be"), contrarians present only evidence that
supports their
desired conclusion.

Skepticism, an inherent aspect of scientific inquiry, should be carefully
distinguished
from contrarianism. Skepticism, and the objective weighing of evidence, are
essential for scientific success. Skepticism about the existence of global
warming
and the principal role of human-made greenhouse gases has diminished as
empirical evidence and our understanding have advanced. However, many aspects
of global warming need to be understood better, including the best ways to
minimize
climate change and its consequences. Legitimate skepticism will always have an
important role to play.

However, hard-core global warming contrarians have an agenda other than
scientific
truth. Their target is the public. Their goal is to create an impression that
global
warming or its causes are uncertain. Debating a contrarian leaves an
impression
with today´s public of an argument among theorists. Sophistical contrarians do
not
need to win the scientific debate to advance their cause.

Science Fiction

Consider, for example, Pat Michaels´ deceit (in a 2000 article in Social
Epistemology)
in portraying climate "predictions" that I made in 1988 as being in error by
"450
percent."This distortion is old news, but by sheer repetition has become
received
wisdom among climate-change deniers. In fact, science fiction writer Michael
Crichton was duped by Michaels, although Crichton reduced my "error" to "wrong
by
300 percent" in his 2004 novel State of Fear.

People acquainted with this topic are aware that Michaels, in comparing global
warming predictions made with the GISS (Goddard Institute for Space Studies)
climate model with observations, played a dirty trick by showing model
calculations
for only one of the three scenarios (not predictions!) that I presented in
1988. Here´s
why this trick has a big impact.

The three scenarios (see figure, opposite page) were intended to bracket the
range
of likely future climate forcings (changes imposed on the Earth´s energy
balance that
tend to alter global temperature either way). Scenario C had the smallest
greenhouse gas forcing: it extended recent greenhouse gas growth rates to the
year
2000 and thereafter kept greenhouse gas amounts constant, i.e., it assumed
that
after 2000 human sources of these gases would be just large enough to balance
removal of these gases by the "sinks." Scenario B continued approximately
linear
growth of greenhouse gases beyond 2000. Scenario A showed exponential growth
of
greenhouse gases and included a substantial allowance for trace gases that
were
suspected of increasing but were unmeasured.

Scenarios A, B, and C also differed in their assumptions about future volcanic
eruptions. Scenarios B and C included occasional eruptions of large volcanoes,
at a
frequency similar to that of the real world in the previous few decades.
Scenario A,
intended to yield the largest plausible warming, included no volcanic
eruptions, as it
is not uncommon to have no large eruptions for extended periods, such as the
half
century between the Katmai eruption in 1912 and the Agung eruption in 1963.

Multiple scenarios are used to provide a range of plausible climate outcomes,
but
also so that we can learn something by comparing real-world outcomes with
model
predictions. How well the model succeeds in simulating the real world depends
upon
the realism of both the assumed forcing and the climate sensitivity (the
global
temperature response to a standard climate forcing) of the model.

As it turned out, in the real world the largest climate forcing in the decade
after 1988,
by far, was caused by the Mount Pinatubo volcanic eruption, the greatest
volcanic
eruption of the past century. Forcings are measured in watt-years per square
meter
(W-yr/m2) averaged over the surface of the Earth (1 W-yr/m2 is a heating of 1
W/m2
over the entire planet maintained for one year). The small particles injected
into the
Earth´s stratosphere by Pinatubo reflected sunlight back to space, causing a
negative (cooling) climate forcing of about -5 W-yr/m2. In contrast, the added
greenhouse gas climate forcings ranged from about +1.6 W-yr/m2 in scenario C
to
about +2.3 W-yr/m2 in scenario A.

So of the four scenarios (A, B, C, and the real world) only scenario A had no
large
volcanic eruption. The volcanic activity modeled in scenarios B and C was
somewhat
weaker than in the real world and was misplaced by a few years, but by good
fortune
it was such as to have a cooling effect pretty similar to that of
Pinatubo.Despite the
fact that scenario A omitted the largest climate forcing, Michaels chose to
compare
scenario A-and only scenario A-with the real world. Is this a case of
scientific
idiocy or is there something else at work? Perhaps Michaels is just not very
interested in learning about the real world.

Although less important for the temperature change between 1997 and 1988 that
Michaels examined, measured real-world greenhouse gas changes in carbon
dioxide
(CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs)
yielded
a forcing similar to those in scenarios B and C. The reason for the slow
real-world
growth rate was that both CH4 and CO2 growth rates decreased in the early
1990s
(the slowdowns may have been associated with Pinatubo; in any case the CO2
growth rate has subsequently accelerated rapidly).

An astute reader may wonder why the world showed any warming during the period
1988-97, given that the negative (cooling) forcing by Pinatubo exceeded the
positive
(warming) forcing by greenhouse gases added in that period. The reason is that
the
climate system was also being pushed by the planetary "energy imbalance" that
existed in 1988. The climate system had not yet fully responded to greenhouse
gases added to the atmosphere before then. The observed continued decadal
warming, despite the very large negative volcanic forcing, provides some
confirmation of that planetary energy imbalance.

Noise and Distortion

Michaels´ trick of comparing the real world only with the inappropriate
scenario A
accounts for his specious, incorrect conclusions. However, a second
unscientific
aspect of his method is also worth pointing out.

Scientists seek to learn something by comparing the real world with climate
model
calculations. Climate sensitivity is of special interest, as future climate
change
depends strongly upon it. In principal, we can extract climate sensitivity if
we have
accurate knowledge of the net forcing that drove climate change, and the
global
temperature change that occurred in response to that change. However, even if
these demanding conditions are met, it is necessary to compare the magnitude
of
the calculated changes with the magnitude of "noise," including errors in the
measurements and chaotic (unforced) variability in the model and real-world
climate
changes.

If Michaels had examined the noise question he would have realized that a
nine-year
change is insuf- ficient to determine the real-world temperature trend or
distinguish
among the model runs. Even the period 1988-2005 is too brief for most
purposes.
Within several years the differences among scenarios A, B, and C, and
comparisons
with the real world,will become more meaningful.

Michaels´ latest tomfoolery, repeated on several occasions, is the charge that
I
approve of exaggeration of potential consequences of future global warming.
This is
more unadulterated hogwash.Michaels quotes me as saying," Emphasis on extreme
scenarios may have been appropriate at one time, when the public and decision-
makers were relatively unaware of the global warming issue."

What trick did Michaels use to create the impression that I advocate
exaggeration?
He took the above sentence out of context from a paragraph in which I was
being
gently critical of a tendency of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
climate
simulations to emphasize only cases with very large increases of climate
forcings.My
entire paragraph (from a June 2003 presentation to the Council on
Environmental
Quality) read as follows:

Summary opinion re scenarios. Emphasis on extreme scenarios may have been
appropriate
at one time, when the public and decision-makers were relatively unaware of
the global
warming issue, and energy sources such as "synfuels," shale oil, and tar sands
were
receiving strong consideration. Now, however, the need is for demonstrably
objective
climate forcing scenarios consistent with what is realistic under current
conditions.
Scenarios that accurately fit recent and nearfuture observations have the best
chance of
bringing all of the important players into the discussion, and they also are
what is needed for
the purpose of providing policy-makers the most effective and efficient
options to stop global
warming.

Would an intelligent reader who read the entire paragraph (or even the entire
sentence; by chopping off half of the sentence Michaels brings quoting-out-of-
context to a new low) infer that I was advocating exaggeration? On the
contrary.
Perhaps I should take it as a compliment that anyone would search my writing
so
hard to find something that can be quoted out of context.

Having taken this trouble to refute Michaels´ claims, I still wonder about the
wisdom
of arguing with contrarians as a strategy.Many of them, including Michaels,
receive
support from special interests such as fossil fuel and automotive companies..
It is
understandable that special interests gravitated, early on, to scientists who
had a
message they preferred to hear. But now that global warming and its impacts
are
clearer, it is time for business people to reconsider their position-and
scientists,
rather than debating contrarians, may do better to communicate with business
leaders. The latter did not attain their positions without being astute and
capable of
changing. We need to make clear to them the legal and moral liabilities that
accrue
with continued denial of global warming. It is time for business leaders to
chuck
contrarians and focus on the business challenges and opportunities.

(if graph doesn't appear here - go to to web source of document)

Stealth Budgets & Unitary Executives

The second incident involved NASA´s budget.Many people are aware that
something
bad happened to the NASA Earth Science budget this year, yet the severity of
the
cuts and their longterm implications are not universally recognized. In part
this is
because of a stealth budgeting maneuver.

When annual budgets for the coming fiscal year are announced, the differences
in
growth from the previous year, for agencies and their divisions, are typically
a few
percent.An agency with +3 percent growth may crow happily, in comparison to
agencies receiving +1 percent. Small differences are important because every
agency has fixed costs (civil service salaries, buildings, other
infrastructure), so new
programs or initiatives are strongly dependent upon any budget growth and how
that
growth compares with inflation.

When the administration announced its planned fiscal 2007 budget, NASA science
was listed as having typical changes of 1 percent or so. However, Earth
Science
research actually had a staggering reduction of about 20 percent from the 2006
budget. How could that be accomplished? Simple enough: reduce the 2006
research
budget retroactively by 20 percent! One-third of the way into fiscal year
2006, NASA
Earth Science was told to go figure out how to live with a 20-percent loss of
the
current year´s funds.

The Earth Science budget is almost a going-out-of-business budget. From the
taxpayers´ point of view it makes no sense.An 80-percent budget must be used
mainly to support infrastructure (practically speaking, you cannot fire civil
servants;
buildings at large facilities such as Goddard Space Flight Center will not be
bulldozed
to the ground; and the grass at the centers must continue to be cut). But the
budget
cuts wipe off the books most planned new satellite missions (some may be kept
on
the books, but only with a date so far in the future that no money needs to be
spent
now), and support for contractors, young scientists, and students disappears,
with
dire implications for future capabilities.

Bizarrely, this is happening just when NASA data are yielding spectacular and
startling results. Two small satellites that measure the Earth´s gravitational
field with
remarkable precision found that the mass of Greenland decreased by the
equivalent
of 200 cubic kilometers of ice in 2005. The area on Greenland with summer
melting
has increased 50 percent, the major ice streams on Greenland (portions of the
ice
sheet moving most rapidly toward the ocean and discharging icebergs) have
doubled
in flow speed, and the area in the Arctic Ocean with summer sea ice has
decreased
20 percent in the last 25 years.

One way to avoid bad news: stop the measurements! Only hitch: the first line
of the
NASA mission is "to understand and protect our home planet."Maybe that can be
changed to "...protect special interests´ backside."

I should say that the mission statement used to read "to understand and
protect our
home planet."That part has been deleted-a shocking loss to me, as I had been
using the phrase since December 2005 to justify speaking out about the dangers
of
global warming. The quoted mission statement had been constructed in 2001 and
2002 via an inclusive procedure involving representatives from the NASA
Centers
and e-mail interactions with NASA employees. In contrast, elimination of the
"home
planet" phrase occurred in a spending report delivered to Congress in February
2006, the same report that retroactively slashed the Earth Science research
budget.
In July 2006 I asked dozens of NASA employees and management people (including
my boss) if they were aware of the change. Not one of them was. Several
expressed
concern that such management changes by fiat would have a bad effect on
organization morale.

The budgetary goings-on in Washington have been noted, e.g., in editorials of
The
Boston Globe: "Earth to NASA:Help!" (June 15, 2006) and "Don´t ask; don´t ask"
(June 22), both decrying the near-termination of Earth measurements. Of
course, the
Globe might be considered "liberal media," so their editorials may not raise
many
eyebrows.

But it is conservatives and moderates who should be most upset, and I consider
myself a moderate conservative.When I was in school we learned that Congress
controlled the purse strings; it is in the Constitution. But it does not
really seem to
work that way, not if the Bush administration can jerk the science budget the
way
they have, in the middle of a fiscal year no less. It seems more like David
Baltimore´s
"Theory of the Unitary Executive" (the legal theory that the president can do
pretty
much whatever he wants) is being practiced successfully. My impression is that
conservatives and moderates would prefer that the government work as described
in
the Constitution, and that they prefer to obtain their information on how the
Earth is
doing from real observations, not from convenient science fiction.

Congress is putting up some resistance to the budget manipulation. The House
restored a fraction of the fiscal year 2007 cuts to science and is attempting
to restore
planning for some planetary missions. But the corrective changes are moderate.
You
may want to check your children´s textbooks for the way the U.S. government
works.
If their books still say that Congress controls the purse strings, some
updating is
needed.

But may it be that this is all a bad dream? I will stand accused of being as
wistful as
the boy who cried out, "Joe, say it ain´t so!" to the fallen Shoeless Joe
Jackson of the
1919 Chicago Black Sox, yet I maintain the hope that NASA´s dismissal of "home
planet" is not a case of either shooting the messenger or a too-small growth
of the
total NASA budget, but simply an error of transcription. Those who have
labored in
the humid, murky environs of Washington are aware of the unappetizing forms of
life
that abound there. Perhaps the NASA playbook was left open late one day, and
by
chance the line "to understand and protect our home planet" was erased by the
slimy
belly of a slug crawling in the night. For the sake of our children and
grandchildren,
let us pray that this is the true explanation for the devious loss, and that
our home
planet´s rightful place in NASA´s mission will be restored.

James Hansen is an adjunct professor at the Columbia University Earth
Institute and
director of NASA´s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. He
expresses his
opinions here as a private citizen under the protection of the First
Amendment.

The NASA Mission
To understand and protect our home planet,
To explore the universe and search for life,
To inspire the next generation of explorers
....as only NASA can.

For more information about issues raised in this story, visit
www.worldwatch.org/ww/hansen.

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Philip Sutton
Greenleap List Manager

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Messages in this topic (1)
7. Mark 2006 in your diary: the climate change social tipping point yea
Posted by: "Philip Sutton" Philip.Sutton@...
philipsuttonoz
Mon Oct 9, 2006 10:57 pm (PST)
Dear Greenleapers,

Mark 2006 in your diary - I predict with considerable confeidence that it will
be the year that the world (and even the recalcitrants, Australia and the US)
decided to take climate seriously.

When Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signs in one of the toughest
climate action programs in the world and Rupert Murdoch, Richard Branson
and George Soros agree that we have to take climate change seriously - we
know that something profound has happened at the big end of town.

It is not a coincidence that this is the year in which the once "next
President
of the United States" launched his movie "An inconvenient truth".

So, it's time to celebrate. The world WILL take climate change seriously.

But the question now is: Will the response be fast enough and strong
enough to avoid massive social and environmental disruption and damage
to our economic capacity?

The world seems to be focusing on goals rather like the British Government
60% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050 - with the certainty that the
achieveent of this goal will result in at least 550 parts per million CO2 in
the
air and average global warming of at least 2 degrees Celcius over the pre-
industrial level.

This outcome results in far too much CO2 in the air (we have too much
there NOW) and the action program is far too slow.

The Greenleap list will now shift its attention to promoting a change program
that will be effective - targetiing zero emissions and a turnaround decade to
make some of the biggest physical changes.

The issue for the future is not business-as-usual versus climate action. The
issue is which new future will prevail? One that will act on climate change
but will fail to protect life and humans in general versus action on climate
change that is actually equal to the challenge that we face?

Cheers!

Philip

Philip Sutton
Director, Strategy
Green Innovations Inc.
PO Box 27
Fairfield (Melbourne) VIC 3078
AUSTRALIA

Also:
President, Sustainable Living Foundation
www.slf.org.au
Manager of the Greenleap info list

Tel: +61 3 9486-4799
Skype: philip_sutton
Email: <Philip.Sutton@...>
http://www.green-innovations.asn.au/

Victorian Registered Association Number: A0026828M


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