Climate change is likely to dominate discussions at the three day summit of the Group of Eight (G8) leading industrial economies beginning on Wednesday in Heiligendamm, Germany.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, host of the meeting, wants G8 members to agree that global warming should be kept to a maximum of 2° C; to reduce their emissions by 50 per cent of their 1990 level by 2050; and to start work on a global emissions trading scheme.
But Ma Kai, Director of China’s National Development and Reform Commission, which determines climate change policy, has said that the EU proposal to limit warming to 2C has not been subjected to proper study.
“I fear this lacks a scientific basis,” he said of the EU’s proposed goal.
Meanwhile Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper will bring his own climate change plan to the G8 talks. “We have our own plan. We don’t have the German plan. We don’t have the American plan. We have a Canadian plan … with excellent ingredients to bring down greenhouse gas emissions,” said Sandra Buckler, Harper’s spokeswoman.
But in fact Canada does appear to support the American plan because the US President, George Bush, is calling for the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases to settle within 18 months on nation-by-nation programs for slowing emissions.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
“global warming should be kept to a maximum of 2° C” – what a silly statement – like we can control the temperature, weather, climate?
Dear Angela,
Please arrange good weather/suitable temperatures for my trip to Kefalonia tomorrow, my trip to Amsterdam in August, my trip to Spain in September, and my trip to Australia in March.
Regards,
Paul Biggs
It will be interesting to see what Russia has to say on this…
Oil and gas accounts for some 20% of Russia’s GDP, 50% of Russian exports and 50% of the federal budget revenues. And most of this comes from the EU. I seriously doubt that Putin is going to be happy with all these planned reductions by Merkel & Co as they imply Russia’s a huge threat to the fragile Russian economy.
Conversely, EU access to Russia’s gas is critical if they have any hope of meeting their short-term Kyoto targets. Russian gas is much cleaner than the brown coal which the EU countries would otherwise have to use. And in their usual arrogant way, EU wants access to it for their own companies AND have the rights to use Russian pipelines to deliver it for basically nix. Guess what – Russia’s all of a sudden becoming intransigent.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/12/12/news/energy.php
And don’t forget they were blackmailed by the EU into ratifying Kyoto (i.e. ratify or the EU won’t support Russia’s WTO membership application).
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1222190,00.html
I’d love to be a fly on the wall when all this is discussed…
cheers
Arnost
So the G8 summit of world leaders will be asked to set a target of 50% reduction of 1990 Green House Gas by 2050.
Are they aware that Tasmania’s land managers and foresters have met and exceeded that target already?
In the latest state by state figures released by the Australian Greenhouse Office, shows that in 2005 Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry had made a 55.7% reduction in emissions from the Kyoto base year. This included a massive 2.1 Mega tonnes of CO2 equivalent greenhouse gas contributable to establishing new forests.
It amazes me that this outstanding achievement is being ignored by those in Australia that demand action on Climate change.
It is an achievement that can only continue if we have a robust and sustainable timber industry willing to invest in the future.
Without any doubt as to the considerable pro-rata contribution of the sink by Tasmania, 2.1Mt is small number in an overall 560Mt inventory. Can we 10-50x the number and balance the hydrological and albedo negative impacts? How much will the 2.1Mt be mopped up in energy growth? Desalination plants to be plugged in, water pipelines to be pumped etc. Small beer.
Paul
in this case, since we are the reason the temperature is rising, then we can stop it rising. We can’t
‘control’ the temperature due to external influences, but we can control our influence.
Luke dismissess the outstanding achievement of the Tasmanian Forest Industry as “small beer”. Howevever he might be suprised to know that if half of Australia’s new homes were built predominately with wood products, over 1.3 million
tonnes of CO2 emissions could be saved.
Growing trees and using wood is clearly an effective way of providing carbon storage.
It is also a way of combatting deforestation that the Stern Report said “The cost of avoiding deforestation, for instance, appears to be
relatively low compared with the cost of many low-carbon power generation options”.
Luke might also want to support Tasmania’s new pulp mill that if approved will “reduce Gunns’ net greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 1.3 million tonnes CO2-e per annum”
That’s a tall, fat and icy clold beer to me!
“Without any doubt as to the considerable pro-rata contribution of the sink by Tasmania” – well done Tassy – Cinders take a bow.
Now can you guys revegetate Indonesia and SE Asia?
I think farmers and forest owners have already done enough for greenhouse abatement. The Qld clearing bans were introduced at the express behest of the Fed Minister for Environment for the purpose of GH abatement.
If the existing consultation processes had been respected we would now have a much more just and equitable set of measures in place. But no, the feds, the WWF and Witless Group of Scientists came right over the top and established an imposed solution based on bullshit science with zero compensation.
So they have acted in haste, we’ve done our bit, now the rest of the community can repent at leisure.
Betray me once, shame on you.
Betray me twice, shame on me.
Cinders: i’d be interested in how you calculated the savings of homes made from wood. while wood would have less embodied energy than brick and concrete, it would also have less thermal mass, which might result in homes that require more heating/cooling. I’m genuinely interested, and think that wood gets a bum steer under current housing EE standards, which ignore embodied energy. got the calcs?
The calculation for carbon storage in residential houses has been calculated by the National Association of Forest Industries (NAFI). This statement can be found at nafi.com.au in a media release celebrating World Environment Day. NAFI also has released a booklet on Forest industries and climate change available at their web site.
Their calculations are based on the Australian Government’s Forest and Wood Products Research Corporations joint publication with the Cooperative Research Centre for Carbon accounting. This publication is Forest, Wood and Australia’s Carbon Balance’, published in 2006, available at http://www.fwprdc.org.au/content/pdfs/new%20pdfs/Forests,Wood&CarbonBalance.pdf
This publication states that by choosing wood wherever possible in house construction, greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to up to 25 tonnes of carbon dioxide per house could be saved in Australia.
Further details can also be found at http://www.greenhouse.crc.org.au/Research/a3.cfm
That site states more than 25 tonnes of CO2-equivalents would be saved if the ‘wood products’ option was used. The research demonstrates that the use of wood products can extend the significant benefits for greenhouse gas reductions gained from sequestering carbon in trees.
The figures, however, do not include the greenhouse gas implications over the life of the house of other important factors, such as insulation properties, maintenance and product service lives.
So lots of scope for discussion, but also maths like how many houses at 25 tonnes equals 1.3 million tonnes and will this level of new housing starts increase.
All in all pretty good numbers if like me you believe that “Trees are the answer”!
For those that like pictures perhaps Jennifer could arrange for the graph on page 8 (figure 3) of the FWPRDC publication to be reproduced.
If Europe could merely match what the US has done with its carbon emissions it would be a miracle of major proportions. But it won’t, because it can’t.
Exactly, Schiller. This is a problem of European emissions taking place on a scale that the European environment is unable to deal with. And rather than curb their own emissions they have the gall to claim that the worlds excess emissions will eventually impact on everyone else so it is everyone else’s problem.
This is pure bollocks. Europe’s excess emissions will spread and impact on the rest of the world and it is Europe’s responsibility to either do something about it or compensate the rest of the world for the cost of their excess.
They carefully guard the benefits of their affluence while letting the costs of their affluence roam free. They have been doing it since the Punic wars.
By the way, Paul Biggs. Have you been to Fiskardo lately?
Schiller and Ian, how do you get around this Wikipedia table which shows the US in 2003 at 19.8 tonnes of CO2 per capita while old Europe, and most of new Europe is in single figures.
This map shows where the problems are at a glance.
Geoff Kitney in the Fin Review of 2-3 June said that Germany is down 18.4% on 1990, Britain (also in Europe) is down 14.8, France was low anyway.
Is it compulsory to slag off at Europe at every opportunity?
The links didn’t work. You can fid them here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita
Brian , why do you think Europe chose 1990 for its base year?
Thing is, the US fixes more carbon than it emits. If the US increased its carbon emissions, it would come close to being a net-zero emitter.
Given the slow growth of US carbon emissions, the net-zero day is a long way off.
Europe seriously needs to consider adopting the US model for carbon management if they want to walk the walk.