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[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
4 degrees warming "likely" without CO2 cuts: study
Sun Sep 27, 2009 11:00pm EDT
By Gerard Wynn

LONDON (Reuters) - Global temperatures may be 4 degrees Celsius hotter by the mid-2050s if current greenhouse gas emissions trends continue, said a study published on Monday.

The study, by Britain's Met Office Hadley Center, echoed a U.N. report last week which found that climate changes were outpacing worst-case scenarios forecast in 2007 by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

"Our results are showing similar patterns (to the IPCC) but also show the possibility that more extreme changes can happen," said Debbie Hemming, co-author of the research published at the start of a climate change conference at Oxford University.

Leaders of the main greenhouse gas-emitting countries recognized in July a scientific view that temperatures should not exceed 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels, to avoid more dangerous changes to the world's climate.

The IPCC shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for its fourth assessment report, or AR4. One finding was that global temperatures could rise by 4 degrees by the end of the 2050s. Monday's study confirmed that warming could happen even earlier, by the mid-2050s, and suggested more extreme local effects.

"It's affirming the AR4 results and also confirming that it is likely," Hemming told Reuters, referring to 4 degrees warming, assuming no extra global action to cut emissions in the next decade.

One advance since 2007 was to model the effect of "carbon cycles." For example, if parts of the Amazon rainforest died as a result of drought, that would expose soil which would then release carbon from formerly shaded organic matter.

"That amplifies the amount of carbon dioxide that goes into the atmosphere and therefore the global warming. It's really leading to more certainty," said Hemming.

DRASTIC

Some 190 countries will try to reach an agreement on how to slow global warming at a meeting in Copenhagen in December.

Chinese President Hu Jintao won praise for making a commitment to limit emissions growth by a "notable" amount, at a U.N. climate summit in New York last week. Other leaders made pledges to agree a new climate pact.

Temperature rises are compared with pre-industrial levels. The world warmed 0.7 degrees last century, scientists say.

A global average increase of 4 degrees masked higher regional increases, including more than 15 degrees warmer temperatures in parts of the Arctic, and up to 10 degrees higher in western and southern Africa, Monday's study found.

"It's quite extreme. I don't think it's hit home to people," said Hemming. As sea ice melts, the region will reflect less sunlight, which may help trigger runaway effects.

Such higher Arctic temperatures could also melt permafrost, which until now has trapped the powerful greenhouse gas methane, helping trigger further runaway effects, said Hemming.

"There are potentially quite big negative implications."

The study indicated rainfall may fall this century by a fifth or more in part of Africa, Central America, the Mediterranean, and coastal Australia, "potentially more extreme" than the IPCC's findings in 2007.

"The Mediterranean is a very consistent signal of significant drying in nearly all the model runs," said Hemming. A 20 percent or more fall is "quite a lot in areas like Spain already struggling with rainfall reductions in recent years."

(Editing by Andrew Roche)


[Green Business]
Promises? Leaders must act to spur climate talks
Sun Sep 27, 2009 1:42pm EDT
By Jeff Mason - Analysis

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - World leaders pledged last week to step up efforts to reach a U.N. deal to fight climate change, but they will have to match rhetoric with rapid action to break a crippling deadlock before a December deadline.

At a United Nations meeting on climate change in New York and a subsequent summit of G20 leaders in Pittsburgh, leaders from U.S. President Barack Obama to Chinese President Hu Jintao laid out measures to advance talks on global warming.

It was not enough.

With only two and a half months to go before 190 nations gather in Copenhagen to forge a successor to the emissions-capping pact known as the Kyoto Protocol, urgency for a breakthrough on key topics of disagreement is growing.

Progress on those outstanding roadblocks did not emerge from either meeting. Industrial and developing nations remain at odds over how to spread out greenhouse gas emission curbs.

Hu promised China would reduce its emissions compared to economic growth and Obama got G20 leaders to agree to phase out subsidies on oil and other fossil fuels, but the issue of climate finance -- aid from industrial countries to developing nations dealing with climate change -- went largely untouched.

"We will intensify our efforts, in cooperation with other parties, to reach agreement in Copenhagen," G20 leaders said in a final statement on Friday, directing finance ministers, again, to study climate finance issues and report back at their next meeting.

That has happened before.

At a July G8 meeting in Italy, Obama said leaders had tasked G20 finance ministers to report back on the financing issue in Pittsburgh, but arguments over whether the G20 was the right body to do such work hampered negotiations, and leaders could not agree on even a basic framework in Pittsburgh despite lofty promises made at the United Nations days before.

"It was like the tale of two cities," said Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists. "You started on a high note in New York and it ended on a low note in Pittsburgh."

FINANCE DEADLOCK, OBAMA EYED

Developing nations are waiting for their industrial counterparts to pony up promises of cash before they will agree to discuss emissions curbs for their growing economies.

"The burden really falls on the U.S., Europe and Japan to rectify this before Copenhagen or there's not going to be the basis for a meaningful agreement," Meyer said.

"Among leaders at this point in time, the least common denominator on climate financing turns out to be zero, and that's doesn't augur well."

Leaders acknowledged the urgency. French President Nicolas Sarkozy called for heads of state and government to meet again before December to discuss climate, and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi indicated a meeting of some kind would take place in New York in the coming weeks.

U.S. deputy national security adviser Michael Froman, Obama's top G20 aide, said no meeting was planned but leaders realized they held the key to moving the talks forward.

"My sense is they will continue to have conversations because they did conclude that their involvement in this issue will be important to making Copenhagen a success," Froman told reporters on Friday.

Obama will be eyed especially in the coming weeks.

The U.S. president's leadership on climate change has been called into question as chances dim that the Senate will pass a bill before December to cut U.S. emissions -- a step seen as crucial to the international process.

"How much work can the Senate get done between now and Copenhagen depends in part on how much the administration presses the Senate to get done," said Annie Petsonk, international counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund.

With healthcare reform dominating the congressional agenda, Obama's commitment to pushing for lawmakers to act on a climate bill, too, was an "open question," she said.

"The fact that he put the fossil fuel subsidies issue on the table was a leadership step, but countries were expecting considerably more steps than that one," she said.

Climate negotiators meet in Bangkok on Monday for formal U.N. talks and again on November 2 in Barcelona. The Copenhagen talks begin on December 7.

(Additional reporting by Caren Bohan; Editing by Doina Chiacu)