Vancouver Sun April 3, 2008
Climate change ‘seriously underestimated’ by UN
Curbing emissions more daunting than panel reported: study
Margaret Munro
The United Nations' celebrated climate change panel has "seriously
underestimated" the challenge of curbing global CO2 emissions, say Canadian
and U.S. researchers.
Radical "decarbonization" of the global energy system is needed to stabilize
emissions -- a task that is much more daunting than the panel has led the
world to believe, the researchers report in journal Nature today.
"The size of this technology challenge has been seriously underestimated by
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change," say economist Christopher
Green at McGill University in Montreal and his U.S. colleagues. The IPCC
shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore for its work, showing how
human activities are warming the climate system, with potentially
catastrophic consequences.
The IPCC has also laid out several scenarios for curbing emissions, being
considered as part of international climate talks. The current round of
talks is underway in Bangkok this week.
Green and his colleagues say many of the panel's scenarios are unrealistic
and are diverting attention away from the task of getting on with the
transformation of the global energy system.
Their critique, entitled Dangerous Assumptions, says IPCC assumptions for
2000 to 2010 "are already inconsistent" with economic reality that has seen
a boom in China and India powered by fossil fuels. The burning of fossil
fuels, such as coal, oil, and gas, sends heat-trapping carbon dioxide into
the atmosphere.
China's carbon dioxide emissions are estimated to be rising at a rate of 11
to 13 per cent a year, more than twice the rate projected by the IPCC, the
researchers say. They predict the economic transformation will expand across
South Asia, and eventually Africa, until well beyond 2050.
"The world is on a development and energy path that will bring with it a
surge in carbon-dioxide emissions -- a surge that can only end with a
transformation of global energy systems," say Green and co-authors Roger
Pielke Jr. of the University of Colorado and Tom Wigley, at the National
Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.
They say transformation and "decarbonization," of the energy system "will
take many decades to complete, even if we start taking far more aggressive
action on energy technology innovation today."
They say the IPCC has not only underestimated the technological challenge,
but plays a "risky game" in assuming much of the necessary innovation will
occur spontaneously.
Green said in an interview that much time has already been lost -- global
carbon dioxide emissions have been climbing at more than three per cent a
year since 2000, more that triple the rate in the 1990s, despite years of
international talks about reducing emissions.
"We are going in the wrong direction rapidly," says Green, pointing to the
rising emissions.
Canwest News Service
