CO2 emissions higher than projected

CO2 emissions increasing faster than expected

Reference: 07/89

http://www.csiro.au/news/GlobalCarbonProject-PNAS.html

Carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels – the principal driver of climate change – have accelerated globally at a far greater rate than expected over recent years, according to a paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

22 May 2007

• Background: Australia's CO₂ Emissions in the Global Context

The paper explains that the average growth rate of carbon dioxide emissions increased from 1.1 per cent a year in the 1990s to a three per cent increase per year in the 2000s.

Lead author of the paper, Dr Mike Raupach from CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research and the Global Carbon Project, says that nearly eight billion tonnes of carbon were emitted globally into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide in 2005, compared with just six billion tonnes in 1995.

“A major driver of the accelerating growth rate in emissions is that, globally, we’re burning more carbon per dollar of wealth created,” Dr Raupach says. In the last few years, the global usage of fossil fuels has actually become less efficient. This adds to pressures from increasing population and wealth.”

“As countries undergo industrial development, they move through a period of intensive, and often inefficient, use of fossil fuel. Efficiencies improve along this development trajectory, but eventually tend to level off. Industrialised countries such as Australia and the US are at the levelling-off stage, while developing countries such as China are at the intensive-development stage. Both factors are decreasing the global efficiency of fossil fuel use.”

“Dr Raupach says that Australia, with 0.32 per cent of the global population, contributes 1.43 per cent of the world’s carbon emissions.”

He says that China’s emissions per person are still below the global average. “On average, each person in Australia and the US now emits more than five tonnes of carbon per year, while in China the figure is only one tonne per year. Since the start of the industrial revolution, the US and Europe account for more than 50 per cent of the total, accumulated global emissions over two centuries, while China accounts for less than eight per cent. The 50 least developed countries have together contributed less than 0.5 per cent of global cumulative emissions over 200 years.”

Dr Raupach says that Australia, with 0.32 per cent of the global population, contributes 1.43 per cent of the world’s carbon emissions.

He says recent efforts globally to reduce emissions have had little impact on emissions growth. “Recent emissions seem to be near the high end of the fossil fuel use scenarios used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Our results add to previous findings that carbon dioxide concentrations, global temperatures and sea level rise are all near the high end of IPCC projections.”

Dr Raupach led an international team of carbon-cycle experts, emissions experts and economists, brought together by the Global Carbon Project, to quantify global carbon emissions and their drivers.

“In addition to reinforcing the urgency of the need to reduce emissions, an important outcome of this work is to show that carbon emissions have history. We have to take both present and past emissions trajectories into account in negotiating global emissions reductions. To be effective, emissions reductions have to be both workable and equitable,” he says.

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Background: Australia's CO₂ emissions in the global context

Australia, with 0.32 per cent of the world population, contributes 1.43 per cent of CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels. In a global context, and particularly in comparison with other developed regions (the USA, European Union and Japan), these emissions rank as follows:

• Australia's per capita emissions in 2004 were 4.5 times the global average, just below the value for the USA.
• Australia's carbon intensity of energy (amount of carbon burned as fossil fuel per unit of energy) is 20 per cent higher than the world average, and 25 to 30 per cent higher than values for the USA, Europe and Japan. Therefore, the energy efficiency of fossil fuel use is significantly lower in Australia than in these other developed countries.
• Australia's carbon intensity of GDP (amount of carbon burned as fossil fuel per dollar of wealth created) is 25 per cent higher than the world average. It is a little higher than the USA and nearly double that of Europe and Japan. Therefore, the overall carbon efficiency of the economy, per unit of fossil fuel used, is about half that for Europe and Japan.
• Over the last 25 years, the average growth rate of Australian emissions was approximately twice the growth rate for world as a whole, twice the growth rate for the USA and Japan, and five times the growth rate for Europe.
• The rate of improvement (decline) in the carbon intensity of GDP for Australia is lower than in the USA and Europe.

Climate Change Blamed for Fading Foliage
Oct 21, 1:29 AM (ET)By DAVE GRAM

Tom Vogelmann, chairman of the plant biology department at the University of Vermont, stands in a maple tree in Burlington , Vt., Tuesday, Oct. 9, 2007. People around New England are asking what's up with the foliage. Hillsides usually riotous with red and orange in early October have shown those vibrant colors in spots, but less extensively than in the past. "It's nothing like it used to be" says Vogelmann. (AP Photo/Toby Talbot)
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20071021/D8SDE8DO0.html

EAST MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) - Every fall, Marilyn Krom tries to make a trip to Vermont to see its famously beautiful fall foliage. This year, she noticed something different about the autumn leaves.
"They're duller, not as sparkly, if you know what I mean," Krom, 62, a registered nurse from Eastford, Conn., said during a recent visit. "They're less vivid."
Other "leaf peepers" are noticing, too, and some believe climate change could be the reason.
Forested hillsides usually riotous with reds, oranges and yellows have shown their colors only grudgingly in recent years, with many trees going straight from the dull green of late summer to the rust-brown of late fall with barely a stop at a brighter hue.


"It's nothing like it used to be," said University of Vermont plant biologist Tom Vogelmann, a Vermont native.
He says autumn has become too warm to elicit New England's richest colors.
According to the National Weather Service, temperatures in Burlington have run above the 30-year averages in every September and October for the past four years, save for October 2004, when they were 0.2 degrees below average.
Warming climate affects trees in several ways.
Colors emerge on leaves in the fall, when the green chlorophyll that has dominated all spring and summer breaks down.

The process begins when shorter days signal leaves to form a layer at the base of their stems that cuts off the flow of water and nutrients. But in order to hasten the decline of chlorophyll, cold nights are needed.
In addition, warmer autumns and winters have been friendly to fungi that attack some trees, particularly the red and sugar maples that provide the most dazzling colors.
"The leaves fall off without ever becoming orange or yellow or red. They just go from green to brown," said Barry Rock, a forestry professor at the University of New Hampshire.
He says 2004 was "mediocre, 2005 was terrible, 2006 was pretty bad although it was spotty. This year, we're seeing that same spottiness."
"Leaf peeping" is big business in Vermont, with some 3.4 million visitors spending nearly $364 million in the fall of 2005, according to state estimates.

State tourism officials reject the notion that nature's palette is getting blander. Erica Housekeeper, spokeswoman for the state Department of Tourism and Marketing, said she had heard nothing but positive reports from foresters and visitors alike this year.
The problem is perception, Housekeeper says: Recollections of autumns past become tinged by nostalgia.
"Sometimes, we become our own worst critics," Housekeeper said.
People who rely on autumn tourism in New England are worried.
"I don't have a sense that the colors are off, but the timing is definitely off," said Scott Cowger, owner and innkeeper at the Maple Hill Farm Bed & Breakfast Inn at Hallowell, Maine.
"Some trees are just starting to change now," Cowger said Thursday. "It used to be, religiously, it was the second week of October when they were at their peak. I would tell my guests to come the second week if you want to see the peak colors. But it's definitely the third or fourth week at this point."
People in Northampton, Mass., are still waiting on fall color. If foliage-viewing is the goal, "I wouldn't send anybody down this way yet," Autumn Inn desk clerk Mary Pelis said this past week.
"The way things are going, the foliage season is the one sure thing for us," said Amie Emmons, innkeeper at the West Mountain Inn, in Arlington, Vt. "We book out two years in advance. It's very concerning if you think the business could start to be affected."

Severe drought in Georgia

Georgia Seeks Water Disaster Declaration
Oct 20, 11:34 AM (ET)By GREG BLUESTEIN

(AP) Map shows drought conditions in U.S.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20071020/D8SD21380.html

CUMMING, Ga. (AP) - With water supplies rapidly shrinking during a drought of historic proportions, Gov. Sonny Perdue declared a state of emergency Saturday for the northern third of Georgia and asked President Bush to declare it a major disaster area.
Georgia officials warn that Lake Lanier, a 38,000-acre reservoir that supplies more than 3 million residents with water, is less than three months from depletion. Smaller reservoirs are dropping even lower.
Perdue asked the president to exempt Georgia from complying with federal regulations that dictate the amount of water released from Georgia's reservoirs to protect federally protected mussel species downstream.
"We need to cut through the tangle of unnecessary bureaucracy to manage our resources prudently - so that in the long term, all species may have access to life-sustaining water," he said.
On Friday, Perdue's office asked a federal judge to force the Army Corps of Engineers to curb the amount of water it drains from Georgia reservoirs into streams in Alabama and Florida. Georgia's environmental protection director is drafting proposals for more water restrictions.
More than a quarter of the Southeast is covered by an "exceptional" drought - the National Weather Service's worst drought category. The Atlanta area, with a population of 5 million, is smack in the middle of the affected region, which encompasses most of Tennessee, Alabama and the northern half of Georgia, as well as parts of North and South Carolina, Kentucky and Virginia.
Georgia was placed under statewide water restrictions in April that limited outdoor watering to three days a week. By May Atlanta allowed watering only on weekends, and in September environmental officials banned virtually all outdoor watering through the northern half of the state.
The state of emergency Perdue declared Saturday affects 85 Georgia counties, roughly the northern third of the state.
Conditions were worsened by stifling summer heat and a drier-than-normal hurricane season. State climatologist David Stooksbury said it will take months of above average rainfall to replenish the system.

Acid Oceans

Acid Oceans From Carbon Dioxide Will Endanger One Third Of Marine Life, Scientists Predict

Acidity from the gradual buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is dissolving into the oceans. Scientists fear it could be lethal for animals with chalky skeletons -- like the ones that make up coral reefs, such as Australia's Great Barrier Reef. (Credit: iStockphoto)

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071017102133.htm

ScienceDaily (Oct. 19, 2007) — The world’s oceans are becoming more acid, with potentially devastating consequences for corals and the marine organisms that build reefs and provide much of the Earth’s breathable oxygen.
The acidity is caused by the gradual buildup of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, dissolving into the oceans. Scientists fear it could be lethal for animals with chalky skeletons which make up more than a third of the planet’s marine life.
“Recent research into corals using boron isotopes indicates the ocean has become about one third of a pH unit more acid over the past fifty years. This is still early days for the research, and the trend is not uniform, but it certainly looks as if marine acidity is building up,” says Professor Malcolm McCulloch of CoECRS and the Australian National University.
“It appears this acidification is now taking place over decades, rather than centuries as originally predicted. It is happening even faster in the cooler waters of the Southern Ocean than in the tropics. It is starting to look like a very serious issue.”
Corals and plankton with chalky skeletons are at the base of the marine food web. They rely on sea water saturated with calcium carbonate to form their skeletons. However, as acidity intensifies, the saturation declines, making it harder for the animals to form their skeletal structures (calcify).
“Analysis of coral cores shows a steady drop in calcification over the last 20 years,” says Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg of CoECRS and the University of Queensland. “There’s not much debate about how it happens: put more CO2 into the air above and it dissolves into the oceans.
“When CO2 levels in the atmosphere reach about 500 parts per million, you put calcification out of business in the oceans.” (Atmospheric CO2 levels are presently 385 ppm, up from 305 in 1960.)
“It isn’t just the coral reefs which are affected – a large part of the plankton in the Southern Ocean, the coccolithophorids, are also affected. These drive ocean productivity and are the base of the food web which supports krill, whales, tuna and our fisheries. They also play a vital role in removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, which could break down.”
Professor Hoegh-Guldberg said an experiment at Heron Island, in which CO2 levels were increased in the air of tanks containing corals, had showed it caused some corals to cease forming skeletons. More alarmingly, red calcareous algae – the ‘glue’ that holds the edges of coral reefs together in turbulent water – actually began to dissolve. “The risk is that this may begin to erode the Barrier of the Great Barrier Reef at a grand scale,” he says.
“As an issue it’s a bit of a sleeper. Global warming is incredibly serious, but ocean acidification could be even more so.”
Acid oceans will be among the issues explored by Australia’s leading coral scientists at a national public forum at the Shine Dome in Canberra, Australia, October 18. The Coral Reef Futures 07 Forum is on October 18-19, 2007 and is hosted by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (CoECRS).
Australia’s coral reefs, particularly the Great Barrier Reef, Ningaloo Reef, and Lord Howe Island World Heritage Area, are national icons, of great economic, social, and aesthetic value. Tourism on the Great Barrier Reef alone contributes approximately $5 billion annually to the nation’s economy. Income from recreational and commercial fishing on Australia’s tropical reefs contributes a further $400 million annually. Consequently, science-based management of coral reefs is a national priority.
Globally, the welfare of 500 million people is closely linked to the goods and services provided by coral reef biodiversity. Uniquely among tropical and sub-tropical nations, Australia has extensive coral reefs, a small population of relatively wealthy and well-educated citizens, and well developed infrastructure. Coral reef research is one area where Australia has the capability, indeed the obligation, to claim world-leadership.
Adapted from materials provided by ARC Centre of Excellence in Coral Reef Studies.