Cleaning Up the Excess CO2
The other way to reduce the air’s excess CO2 is to unbalance the carbon cycle, typically by preventing some of the CO2 captured by photosynthesis from going back into the air when cells decompose. One has to stash dead biomass where the air can’t get to it. While sealed landfills help, it is only the ocean depths that would appear to have the capacity to draw down all of the CO2 that we have added since 1750.
Climate Betrayal in Copenhagen – GPC-PVC
“The political statement agreed to with much fanfare in Copenhagen at the 15th Conference of the Parties is not what was needed,” says Elizabeth May, the Green Party of Canada Leader. “With clear warnings from science that greenhouse gas emissions must halt their global rise and begin a steep decline no later than 2015, the leaders gathered in Copenhagen have issued a compromise statement that should never have been written.”
The Physics of Copenhagen: Why Politics-As-Usual May Mean the End of Civilization
In Copenhagen, if the U.S. is willing to treat climate change as politics-as-usual, most of the other major players will simply follow suit. They’ll sign some kind of paper in Denmark — that became all but certain on Friday night when Obama announced he’d jet in for the meeting’s close. European leaders and some environmental groups may then call it a “qualified success,” and on we will go through more years of negotiation. In the meantime, physics will continue to operate, permafrost will continue to thaw, sea ice to melt, drought to spread. It’s like nothing we’ve ever faced before — and we’re facing it as if it’s just like everything else. That’s the problem.
56 newspapers around the world in 20 languages publish the same editorial calling for action from world leaders on climate change
Today 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. We do so because humanity faces a profound emergency.
Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record, the Arctic ice-cap is melting and last year’s inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of future havoc. In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage. Yet so far the world’s response has been feeble and half-hearted.
In Copenhagen, an Absolute Necessity to Peak CO2 Emissions Within Just a Few Years to Keep Within Our Carbon Budget
The cuts in greenhouse gas emissions being proposed at the Copenhagen climate conference, which opens today, are completely inadequate to stop dangerous climate change, one of Britain’s leading climate scientists warns. Current proposals, including recent ones from major emitting nations such as the US, China and India, are “little more than token gestures”, compared to what the science deems necessary to give even a 50-50 chance of staying below the danger threshold, says Professor Kevin Anderson, Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Manchester.
A Debate on Climate Change, the Most Important Topic of our Time
Be sure to watch Elizabeth May and George Monbiot debate Bjørn Lomborg and Lord Nigel Lawson today beginning at 6:30 PM EST in Toronto.
The Copenhagen Diagnosis: Updating the World on the Latest Climate Science
On the eve of the Copenhagen conference, a group of scientists has issued an update on the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Their conclusions? Ice at both poles is melting faster than predicted, the claims of recent global cooling are wrong, and world leaders must act fast if steep temperature rises are to be avoided.
A Outspoken Interview and Strongly Worded Article by Naomi Klein on the Case for Climate Debt
As faith in government action dwindles, however, climate activists are treating Copenhagen as an opportunity of a different kind. On track to be the largest environmental gathering in history, the summit represents a chance to seize the political terrain back from business-friendly half-measures, such as carbon offsets and emissions trading, and introduce some effective, common-sense proposals — ideas that have less to do with creating complex new markets for pollution and more to do with keeping coal and oil in the ground.
Among the smartest and most promising — not to mention controversial — proposals is “climate debt,” the idea that rich countries should pay reparations to poor countries for the climate crisis.
More Countries Recognizing the Importance of Stronger Targets at Copenhagen
It hasn’t made massive headlines in Europe; in fact it’s hardly been noticed. But over the last fortnight, three big countries have made major new pledges to cut their emissions of carbon dioxide from industry, transport and deforestation which is causing climate change.
Since 12 November, Russia, South Korea and Brazil have all announced new targets for cutting CO2, leading to a significant improvement in hopes for the outcome of the Copenhagen climate summit, which is now only two weeks away – and which, it was announced yesterday, at least 65 world leaders will attend.
