Topic: Carbon Dioxide & Global Warming - Case not proven...

[Mart]

Nope.

I fancy Mars.

I do what I can, but my commitment is undermined by the fact that I know recycling is Brussels driven, maybe the means justify the end, but I question a methodology that requires five large goods vehicles to trundle around, a variety of colourful crates, plastic bags in 2 hues and the electronic miracle that is the wheelie bin, all of which require administering by 'officers'.

Previously it required cheery whistling types and one vehicle.

I also question the desirability of the current methods which mean that, in effect, we are simply consolidating our recycling goodies into big piles, Rubbish mountains at the behest of the EU which have brought the recycling industry to it's knees. Top job Hercule!

I look at what we put out on the pavement and wonder if we are throwing away more by volume than we are consuming some weeks, and there's the nub of the problem. Stop sodding producing it, my personal favourite this week was cold sore cream, get yourself a cold sore and buy a tube. The product was a pimple on the bum of it's packaging. (Clearing up nicely thanks)

Peter Hain defending Gordon Brown, stuck for words presently.

Now, if we can get the USA, China, India and anyone else with a manufacturing industry to join in we are home and dry, perhaps we could spare a Belgian to advise them.

[Alex]

Looks like some positive progress is being made with China

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/may/27/monbiot-stern-east-west-deadlock-co2

Stern breaks the east-west deadlock on who's responsible for CO2China says it's unfair that the west 'outsources' emissions. Now that Lord Stern has said responsibility should be split between producers and consumers, other countries may follow suit.

I think I heard the quiet tinkling sound of an unacknowledged breakthrough last week: a statement that could make the difference between success and failure at December's crucial climate talks in Copenhagen.

One of the issues that could sink the talks is the question of "outsourced emissions". This refers to greenhouse gases produced in one nation on behalf of another. The UK, for example, is comfortably meeting its commitments under the Kyoto protocol only because much of our manufacturing industry has moved to China. Under Kyoto rules, the pollution produced by Chinese factories making goods for the UK belongs to China. The protocol counts only the production, not the consumption, of greenhouse gases.

China says this is unfair. Around half the recent increase in its emissions arises from the manufacture of goods for western markets.
This pollution should, it says, belong to the consumer nations, not the producers. A successor to the Kyoto protocol which did not recognise this would punish China for our consumption.

The rich nations have been furiously resisting this idea. That's not surprising: a study by the Stockholm Environment Institute for the British government suggests that carbon dioxide emissions caused by the UK's consumption increased by 18% between 1992 and 2004, even as our production emissions fell. Had the Kyoto agreement measured consumption, not production, the UK would be missing its targets by a very long way.

I'm with China. Greenhouse gas emissions are rising because consumption is rising. Unless we address this, we cannot prevent climate breakdown. It doesn't matter where production takes place: the problem is that we are consuming too much.

During the panel discussion that followed a screening of the eco film Age of Stupid last week, I asked Lord Stern about this. His answer surprised and delighted me: it represents a dramatic departure from the policy of the government with which he has worked so closely. Here's what he said:

It is a point that the Chinese authorities make very clearly and strongly and I think that it's a very sound one. My own view is that we need a combination of the two things. If you move to a different kind of division of labour where another country, in this case China, starts to make things that we might have made, and therefore has that production process in the emissions occurring there, rather than their own country, then we're jointly responsible for that and both parties gain from the division of labour. That's what trade is all about and that's why trade can help development.

So my own view is that we probably need something like an average of the two, or a combination of the two. But the logical point China makes is that there is a definite responsibility with the consumer and not just with the producer is a sound one.

When Stern talks about these matters, governments listen. If he is prepared to pursue this proposal - that outsourced emissions should be shared between producers and consumers - there's a good chance that it could be adopted at Copenhagen. It is surely the most realistic way to break the deadlock.

[komadori]

My lecturer at the time stated that volcanoes and cows, pale our emissions of co2 contribution into insignificance.  He was quite adamant that are effect on global warming was all a load of for want of a better word twaddle and yet I have just been looking and online and the amount of conflicting views is quite amazing.

There's a couple of points hidden in there.

(1) The reason for the large number of cows (and other cattle) is human activity. If it wasn't for human consumption of meat and milk, there'd be far fewer.

(2) Human CO2 output may be 'insignificant' (I don't have the figures, so can't say), but that is not entirely the issue. It is the balance that matters. To use a financial analogy, £1 is insignficant in comparison with £1M, but if I consistently spend £1,000,001 pounds whilst only earning £1,000,000 I am, in principle, insolvent. So with CO2. The carbon cycle has CO2 being absorbed (e.g. by plants and the oceans) as well as being emitted. What matters is the balance between the two, not the overall amounts.

[Simon]

Here's another China link...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/09/china-green-energy-solar-wind

China is planning a vast increase in its use of wind and solar power over the next ­decade and believes it can match Europe by 2020, producing a fifth of its energy needs from renewable sources, a senior Chinese official said yesterday.

Zhang Xiaoqiang, vice-chairman of China's national development and reform commission, told the Guardian that Beijing would easily surpass current 2020 targets for the use of wind and solar power and was now contemplating targets that were more than three times higher.

In the current development plan, the goal for wind energy is 30 gigawatts. Zhang said the new goal could be 100GW by 2020.

and

Beijing seeks to achieve these goals by directing a significant share of China's $590bn economic stimulus package to low-carbon investment. Of that total, more than $30bn will be spent directly on environmental projects and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

But the indirect green share in the stimulus, in the form of investment in carbon-efficient transport and electricity transmission systems, would be far larger.

Now if only our government was doing the same thing instead of bailing out failed banks 

[Krippers]

My 2 pence worth contribution to case not proved.

Basic truths:
The earth is a system, everything on earth is a system.

The biomass which makes up all life interacts with the closed system that is earth.

In order for the biomass to exist it must exist in a system where it has no choice but to exist.

The biomass has been around for about 3800 million years so the system that contains it has been successful for that long.

The system that contains the biomass has regulated temperature through the utilisation of energy by the biomass which takes component parts of the containing system and the energy to do work. Additionally CO2 has been captured by the organisms and when they expire they've taken the energy within their own closed systems and carbon into the ground or ocean depending. This is a buffer mechanism.

Humans have now evolved to the point where they can dig up all the buffered energy in the dead biomass and set fire to it thus releasing all the stored energy and carbon that has been buffered for the millions of years. Truth be told it's an astonishing thing to do to but humanity is pretty close to completely releasing the energy of several million years in less than 200.

Each litre of petrol has about 34 Megajoules energy in it, of which a significant amount is used in producing motion but there is still heat and CO2 produced as a by-product variably depending on the efficiency of the engine and the application methodology by the user.

I think I read that there are about 800 million cars in the world, if the average use was 1 litre a day for all of them then the amount of energy released is about 27.4 billion Megajoules of energy released which means that after about 700 days the equivalent energy of the Nagasaki nuclear bomb will have been released. That however depends on an average of 1 litre per day, if it's 2 litres then every year we are releasing a Nagasakis worth of energy. Of course what is not factored in there is every other form of transport so it's a fair guess that we are releasing that much energy each year and more.

The earth is a closed system, everything that happens in it tends to stay in it, it's no stretch of imagination to understand that there is consequence to releasing that much energy and associated pollutants year after year after year. Of course there is consequence and in this case the consequences WILL affect anyone who isn't about to die in the next 5-10 years, it WILL affect people by starvation, and war. This is already happening with food riots beginning to take place and with the starvation of Africa and the desertification of Australia. This is happening as Russia is almost at war with neighbours over energy, and the fuel based foreign policies of the previous Bush administration, and the terrorism in the Niger Delta region.