Blog

Bush Administration Searches for Alternatives to Kyoto

by William Yeatman on December 26, 2001

in Politics

The Bush Administration is actively seeking an alternative strategy to the rejected Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gases, according to the Financial Times (December 14, 2001). A leading proposal is an emissions trading program that would involve the Canada, the United States, and Mexico. In a December 4 article, FT reported that President Bush “in July called for joint action on greenhouse gases in North America.”

John Graham, head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, has also endorsed “market-based” programs. The December 19 issue of FT reports, “He is also considering an expanded program of pollution trading which might include the swap of emissions permits for the release of nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide mercury and the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.”

On November 30, the Commission for Environmental Co-operation under the North American Free Trade Agreement held the first of two meetings to discuss the establishment of such a system. There are several obstacles to overcome, including the fact that Canada is still committed to the Kyoto Protocol and that Mexico is exempt from Kyoto commitments (FT, December 14).

The Pew Center on Global Climate Change, an industry front group that has heavily lobbied the administration to regulate greenhouse gases, argues that, “Most companies think something is going to come down” (from the regulators), says Pew spokeswoman, Katie Mandes. “Some think legislation is inevitable and want to get out in front.” The 37 companies that make up Pews membership hope to profit from government regulation of greenhouse gases.

Annie Petsonk of Environmental Defense, which has set up its own corporate lobby for greenhouse regulation “predicts that the Bush Administration will balk at setting up a cap for emission trading. The most she expects is a voluntary Nafta-based program, under which companies would trade credits,” reports FT. A voluntary scheme would increase industry support for a cap since emission permits would be worthless otherwise.

Michael Marvin, president of the Business Council for Sustainable Energy, says his group “only wants three things from government. To tell us where to go (by establishing caps), when to get there and to get the hell out of the way.”

UK Must Drastically Cut CO2; Chinas Emissions Trends

by William Yeatman on December 26, 2001

in Blog

UK Must Drastically Cut CO2

A report on the United Kingdoms future energy outlook, commissioned by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, has been leaked to the media. The report argues that there is “a strong likelihood that the UK, with other developed countries will need to make very large carbon reductions over the next century,” and that the key task for future energy policy would be “addressing carbon dioxide emissions.”

The Cabinet Offices Performance and Innovation Unit (PIU) compiled the report to consider the energy implications of a previous report by the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution. The Royal Commission argues that the UK must reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by 60 percent by 2050, stating that, “Credible scenarios for 2050 can deliver a 60 percent cut in CO2 emissions, but large changes would be needed both in the energy system and in society.”

The PIU report also recommends that the UK use “economic instruments” such as emission permits and taxes, increase energy efficiency, and expand the use of renewable energy sources to reach a 60 percent reduction. Even if the electricity sector were to achieve zero CO2 emissions, however, it would still be necessary to substantially shift away from oil in the transportation sector, according to the report (BBC, December 13, 2001).

Chinas Emissions Trends

According to an article in Science (November 30, 2001), Chinas greenhouse gas emissions have fallen since 1996. The article states, “The prevailing wisdom about Chinas greenhouse gas emissions is that they are increasing steadily, because of the large quantities of coal being used to fuel a fast-growing industrial economy, and most projections show Chinas greenhouse gas emissions continuing to grow in the coming decades.”

The articles authors claim, however, that, “we find that Chinas CO2 emissions declined by 7.3 percent between 1996 (the peak year) and 2000, and CH4 [methane] emissions declined by 2.2 percent between 1997 (the peak year) and 2000.”

One of the reasons given by the Bush Administration for its rejection of the Kyoto Protocol is that it does not require commitments from developing countries, especially large emitters like China, India, and Mexico, putting U.S. industry at a competitive disadvantage with foreign industry. Many who favor U.S. ratification of the Kyoto Protocol may claim that this data proves that exempt developing countries are actively pursuing greenhouse gas reductions and that the U.S. should proceed with Kyoto participation.

But the reasons for Chinas greenhouse gas reductions, assuming the data is accurate, give pause to such claims. According to the article, the reductions resulted from, “the closing of small, inefficient industrial plants; improved efficiency of energy end use; improved coal quality; the switching of many residential fuel users from coal to gas and electricity; technological progress in the energy-intensive sectors; and the opening up of coal and electricity markets.” Also, “A slowdown in economic growth contributed to the decline in energy use.”

In other words, the elimination of the vast inefficiencies usually associated with communist regimes and an economic slowdown were the reasons for the alleged downward trend in greenhouse gas emissions.

The authors admit that, “In the last few years, Chinas energy data have become more prone to error and uncertainty than they were in the early 1990s,” which, “has caused some skepticism about the reduction in energy use.” But they still maintain, “Our analysis suggests that the reductions are real, but not as great as previously believed.”

An energy expert with long experience of the Chinese utility industry told Cooler Heads that the apparent reduction in emissions was primarily due to a simple change in coal production. Under communism, coal mines had to meet quotas based on tons of coal mined. This meant that miners would increase their production by including wet coal and dirt on the edge of seams. Now under semi-capitalism, utilities will not buy coal below a certain quality. This means that coal production figures have declined, while the amount of coal actually burned has not declined at all.

Major Northern Hemispheric Carbon Sink Discovered

by William Yeatman on December 26, 2001

in Science

Using satellite data researchers have determined that the forests in the U.S., Europe, and Russia soak up at least 700 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per year, equivalent to 12 percent of annual global emissions, according to a study appearing in the December 18 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. U.S. forests, according to the study, soak up about 140 million tons of carbon per year or about 11 percent of U.S. total emissions.

“This is only a piece of the total carbon sink in the north which may be as large as 2 billion tons,” said Compton Tucker of NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center, one of the studies authors. Other northern carbon sinks, such as soils, are also suggested.

Some forests, such as the Canadian boreal forest, are losing carbon. It is not clear why, however. “This means that we do not know whether these forests will continue to store carbon in the future or release it at some point. That is why we need to monitor them both from space.”

The WTO and Kyoto; Triumph at Marrakesh?; Whither Japan, Australia, Canada?

by William Yeatman on November 13, 2001

in Politics

The WTO and Kyoto

While Kyoto watchers have been focused on the proceedings in Marrakesh, Morocco, trade negotiators meeting in Doha, Qatar agreed on several Kyoto-relevant issues. The members of the World Trade Organization re-iterated their commitment to sustainable development in the draft Ministerial Declaration.

In the Trade and Environment section, WTO members agree to negotiations on “the relationship between existing WTO rules and specific trade obligations set out in multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs).” The negotiations will be limited to the “applicability of such existing WTO rules as among parties to the MEA in question.”

Developing countries remain adamantly opposed to linking environmental or labor standards to trade, but agreed to include the environmental linkage issue in the new round of trade talks as the price for getting the European Union to agree to include reducing agricultural subsidies on the agenda. A CBS News story (November 14, 2001) immediately picked up on the connection with Kyoto: “In return [for putting agricultural subsidies on the table], other countries were willing to accept EU demands that the new talks should take consideration of some environmental issues, negotiators said. For example, the EU wants to clarify how agreements like the Kyoto accord on global warming relate to the WTO, and whose rules would take precedence in case of conflict.”

Triumph at Marrakesh?

Once again, the seventh Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change finished the Kyoto Protocol at the conclusion of its meeting in Marrakesh on October 10. The agreement included agreeing that all remaining unresolved issues will be resolved at the next COP after the protocol is ratified and goes into force. COP-8 is scheduled for late October 2002, possibly in India.

The talks dragged on twelve hours beyond their scheduled close as Umbrella Group members (including Japan, Australia, Canada, and Russia) demanded and won more and more concessions from the European Union. Russia was granted 33 million metric tons of credits a year for carbon sequestration in its vast forests, which doubled the figure agreed at Bonn last July, plus significant relaxation of several rules. This includes not having to submit carbon sink inventories or verification in order to claim these credits.

Japan also won key concessions, including postponement of adopting the precise terms of compliance and enforcement until after the protocol goes into force. Final language on the use of several of the mechanisms, such as the Clean Development Mechanism, was also put off until next year.

The enforcement provisions agreed last July in Bonn at the continuation of COP-6 have been described as legally binding, but it remains unclear what this means. It was agreed that parties to the protocol that failed to reach their emissions targets in the first compliance period (2008-12) would have to make up the shortfall in the second compliance period plus a 30 percent penalty. However, no second compliance period or emissions targets for that period have been negotiated, so the agreed enforcement provision would seem to have little effect. The agreement in Marrakesh to postpone spelling out what constitutes compliance and how it will be enforced adds to the uncertainty.

Reaction from environmental pressure groups was mildly negative. A November 12 Reuters story quoted Bill Hare of Greenpeace: “Government may be congratulating themselves now, but what have they really achieved?” Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, a well-funded industry-front group of corporations that hope to make money from limiting hydrocarbon use, told the Washington Post (November 11), “Without U. S. participation and with credits being granted for business as usual, I think the reductions you get off the baseline are very small.”

The United States delegation, true to its word, largely remained on the sidelines as an observer to the COP-7 negotiations. The Marrakesh talks and their triumphant conclusion attracted little media attention.

Kyotos main backers now hope that the protocol will be ratified in time to be celebrated at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in September 2002. If the protocol is ratified before COP-8 in October 2002, then that conference will become the first Meeting of the Parties (or MOP-1). Once the protocol goes into force, any further changes to the protocol, such as those noted above, must then be agreed to formally as amendments.

Whither Japan, Australia, Canada?

With the conclusion of COP-7, attention now turns to ratification of the Kyoto Protocol. Ratification requires 55 nations and in addition these must include nations that comprised at least 55 percent of Annex I greenhouse gas emissions in 1990. Over forty nations have already ratified the protocol, but only Romania among Annex I nations has officially submitted its ratification. So reaching 55 percent of Annex I emissions is the only challenge. The major question marks are Japan, Australia, and Canada.

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi signaled his governments intention to proceed with ratification at a meeting with his governments Global Warming Prevention Headquarters staff on November 12, according to a Kyodo News Service story. The Prevention Headquarters released a statement laying out the steps it will take to prepare for ratification. Included in the statement was this exhortation: “[I]t is vital that each and every person in Japan changes his or her lifestyle in order to prevent global warming….”

Kyodo also reported on November 13 that Environment Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi had asked to meet with Keidanrenthe Federation of Economic Organizationsto seek support from business and industry. Yomiuri Shimbun reported the same day that industry remained opposed to ratification because higher energy costs would damage Japans international competitiveness. Industry leaders are not proposing, however, that Japan withdraw from the protocol. Instead, “We need to step up our efforts to urge Washington to return to the Protocol,” Yotaro Kobayishi, chairman of Japans Association of Corporation Executives, told the newspaper.

Although the Japanese economy appears headed for depression after a decade of recessions, it is hard to see how Japan can meet its Kyoto target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions to 6 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12 without severe economic pain. Japan reacted to the OPEC oil boycott in the 1970s by forcing energy efficiency and conservation measures. Thus there is little “low-hanging fruit” to be picked. Emissions increases since 1990 have come almost entirely from transportation and households. Manufacturing emissions have gone up only one percent since 1990.

In Australia, the Liberal-National coalitions narrow election victory on November 10 returns Prime Minister John Howards government to office for a third term. Although Australia was given major concessions in Marrakesh, first indications are that Howard remains unlikely to move forward with ratification as long as the United States stays on the sidelines.

The Canadian government of Prime Minister Jean Chretien has been a major booster of the protocol throughout the negotiations, but this enthusiasm conceals two obstacles to ratification. First, as the head of a major economic forecasting institute told Cooler Heads, “It will be economic suicide if Canada ratifies Kyoto without the U. S. And there must be some people in the government who understand that.” Second, although the national government can ratify, under Canadas highly devolved federal system implementation will be impossible without the co-operation and support of the provincial governments. The government of Alberta has so far been most unco-operative and indeed hostile to regulating carbon dioxide emissions. Not co-incidentally, Alberta holds vast hydrocarbon reserves, far larger than the other provinces combined.

Richard Paton, president of the Canadian Chemical Producers Association told the Financial Post (November 12) that the Canadian government was engaged in “wishful thinking” if it believed that Canada can meet its emissions target. Paton spoke on behalf of a broad coalition of Canadian businesses. The coalition estimates that Canada will be 25 percent over its Kyoto target by 2010.

U.S. Emissions Soar in 2000; New Hampshire Special Interests Agree on Multi-pollutant Bill

by William Yeatman on November 13, 2001

in Kyoto Negotiations

U.S. Emissions Soar in 2000

A new report by the Department of Energys Energy Information Administration shows that U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases increased by 2.5 percent over 1999 levels in 2000. That is a significant increase from the average yearly increase of 1.3 percent from 1990 to 2000. EIA attributes the increase “to strong growth in carbon dioxide emissions [3.1 percent] due to more normal weather, decreased hydroelectric power generation that was replaced by fossil-fuel power generation, and strong economic growth (a 4.1-percent increase in gross domestic product).”

Overall, U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2000 were about 14 percent higher than in 1990, the baseline year used in the Kyoto Protocol. The U.S. emission reduction target under Kyoto is 7 percent below 1990 levels. According to the EIA study, “Since 1990, U.S. emissions have increased slightly faster than the average annual growth in population (1.2 percent) but more slowly than the growth in energy consumption (1.6 percent), electric power generation (2.3 percent), or gross domestic product (3.2 percent),” indicating continued improvements in energy efficiency.

The growth rate in carbon dioxide emissions in 2000 was the second highest of the last decade with 1996 seeing a 3.4 percent increase. The study notes, “Although short-term changes in carbon dioxide emissions can result from temporary variations in weather, power generation fuel mixes, and the economy, in the longer term their growth is driven by population, energy use, and income, as well as the carbon intensity of energy use (carbon dioxide emissions per unit of energy consumed).”

The study can be found at www.eia.doe.gov.

New Hampshire Special Interests Agree on Multi-pollutant Bill

New Hampshires utilities, conservation groups, and government leaders have reached a compromise on new legislation that will force its three fossil-fuel power plants to further cut the emissions of three pollutantssulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and mercuryplus carbon dioxide.

“This amendment is a common-sense approach to the problem of pollution coming from older, fossil-fuel burning plants that have been grandfathered under federal law,” said New Hampshire Governor Jeanne Shaheen. “The revised Clean Power Act employs proven national market-based strategies for cost-effectively reducing pollution and sets aggressive targets for reducing that pollution.”

Shaheen also stated that New Hampshire will continue to work with other states to pressure the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to force other power plants in the country, particularly those in the Midwest, to reduce emissions, which she claims affect her state. “Thats why Congress needs to pass a rigorous national law on this issue,” Shaheen said (Union Leader, November 7, 2001).

Coal Makes a Comeback in UK; Fuel Cells not Ready for Primetime

by William Yeatman on October 30, 2001

in Blog

Coal Makes a Comeback in UK

British coal consumption for electricity generation is going up sharply, which threatens the Blair government’s voluntary pledge to reduce CO2 emissions by 23% below 1990 levels by the end of the decade. According to an October 25 Reuters story, British coal use shot up 17.4 percent in the first quarter of 2001, compared to a 3.6 percent rise for natural gas. In 2000, coal increased 15 percent over 1999, while gas consumption was up only 0.7 percent.

“Emissions have increased for the second year running, above levels when the government first came into office (1997), and this is largely due to increased coal-burn,” Colin Godfrey, managing director of CLG Energy consultants, told Reuters. The “dash to gas” in the 1990s has been reversed by the steep increases in gas prices. Coal is now cheaper than gas.

Powergen, an electric utility, announced that it was re-opening a 1970s-era 485-megawatt coal-fired plant that it shut down in 1996 and would mothball a 450-megawatt gas-fired plant that opened in 1992. Another utility, Innogy, re-started a 340-megawatt coal-fired plant in August that it had mothballed three years ago. Other utilities are reportedly considering closing newer gas plants in favor of older coal plants.

Coal produces roughly twice as much carbon dioxide as gas for each unit of electricity. As Kate Hampton of Friends of the Earth UK remarked, “If there is a shift from gas towards coal we wont meet emission targets. The government has been betting on gas.”

Fuel Cells not Ready for Primetime

A new study by industrial proponents of fuel cell technology examines the challenges that must be met to make fuel-cell-powered vehicles economically viable and concludes that significant government subsidies will be necessary over many years or even decades. “Bringing Fuel Cells to Market: Scenarios and Challenges with Fuel Alternatives” was prepared by a team of experts led by Bevilacqua Knight, Inc., a consulting firm based in Hayward, California, for the California Fuel Cell Partnership.

According to an article on the study by Matt Nauman in the San Jose Mercury News (October 16, 2001), if fuel-cell vehicles are to become commercially viable, the government must spend millions of dollars to minimize the financial risks for car and oil companies…. Thats because it will take years perhaps decades before anyone makes any money of of fuel-cell vehicles or the infrastructure needed to fuel and service them, the study says.

The California Fuel Cell partnerships study specifically examines what it will take from both a technical and an economic standpoint to reach annual sales of 40,000100,000 fuel-cell vehicles in California, or 2 to 5 percent of the market. They study explains that there is tremendous uncertainty regarding whether or not the fuel cell idea is viable.

While discussing prospects for assembling the energy infrastructure necessary to expand usage of fuel cells to a larger scale, they state, “While this study used assumptions judged by its authors to be plausible, these are not forecasts or expectations but illustrative values that combine to create a result that meets the success criterion.”

Thus, they admit that their predictions suffer from the same problems that plague other forms of economic forecasting: it is simply impossible to predict everything that will go wrong with a given technology or innovation particularly if the government plays a major role in pushing it ahead. The Partnership includes major auto companies, oil companies, state and federal government agencies, and fuel cell technology companies. Their report may be found at www.cafcp.org.

Will Anything Happen in Marrakesh?

by William Yeatman on October 30, 2001

in Kyoto Negotiations, Politics

New episodes of the long-running soap opera known as the Kyoto Protocol are being shot this week and next on location in Marrakesh, Morocco, as the world’s major media reported with varying mixtures of anger and sadness that the series big star the United States was still refusing to appear in any new episodes. The new chairman of the seventh Conference of the Parties (COP-7), Moroccan environment minister Mohamed El Yazghi, warned that the Bush administrations decision to stay on the sidelines and merely observe the negotiations could lead to international isolation of the U.S.

Although outgoing COP chairman Jan Pronk and others claimed last July at COP-6.5 in Bonn that they had finally reached agreement on all unresolved issues, it turns out that agreement still must be reached on the “technical details,” that is, on the actual legal text of the agreement in several key areas. The most important of these are reporting, monitoring, and enforcement.

Negotiators in Bonn agreed in principle to enforce the Protocol by penalizing nations that failed to meet their emissions targets. The penalties would include being banned from international emissions trading and other flexibility mechanisms and reducing the emissions limit in the second compliance period (beginning in 2013) by 1.3 tons for every ton of emissions above a nations target in the first compliance period (2008-2012).

This latter penalty is problematic because no targets have been agreed to for the second compliance period. It seems likely that nations failing to meet their initial targets will simply demand easier targets in the second period. What is meant by “legally-binding commitments” therefore remains a major question.

“Im quite worried that the deeper we get into [the legal text], the more bureaucrats trying to re-engineer it will come to fore,” said Paul Vickers, director of TransAlta Corp.s Carbon Market Initiative. “I must admit, I think it’s going to be slower than everyone thinks on rules” (Greenwire, October 26, 2001).

For example, Russia has demanded greater flexibility. As noted in Greenwire (October 30, 2001), under the Bonn agreement “Russia would be allowed to sell the equivalent of 17 million metric tons of CO2 in greenhouse gas emission reduction credits to other countries each year. Russias credit is based on certain forestry sinks aimed at soaking up CO2, as well as the fact Russias emissions fell in the early 1990s when the economic shrank.” Russia is now requesting that its sink credit by doubled to 34 million metric tons of CO2.

COP-7 continues through Friday, November 9, 2001. For daily updates by Bonner Cohen, of the Lexington Institute, of the COP-7 negotiations see www.earthtimes.org.

Sea Ice Thickens; Junk Science in Science

by William Yeatman on October 30, 2001

in Science

Sea Ice Thickens

On August 19, 2000 the New York Times published a front-page story claiming that open sea sighted by Dr. James J. McCarthy director of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University, at the North Pole was clear evidence of global warming.

The story implied that this hasnt occurred since the Eocene epoch 55 million years ago. McCarthy described the reaction to the sighting, “There was a sense of alarm. Global warming was real, and we were seeing its effects for the first time that far north.”

Ten days later the Times ran a retraction in a Science Times article that quoted Dr. Mark Serreze, a climatologist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., as saying, “Theres nothing to be necessarily alarmed about. Theres been open water at the pole before. We have no clear evidence at this point that this is related to global climate change.”

Perhaps due to this embarrassing gaffe, the New York Times is shying away from publishing further sea ice stories. That might explain its failure to mention sea ice thickening in the Antarctica. According to the Agence France-Presse (October 31, 2001), “Global warming might be a popular worry but scientists on Antarcticas coast this southern summer are recording some of the thickest sea ice ever seen.”

“To my knowledge this is the greatest summer sea ice extent thats ever been recorded in McMurdo Sound,” said Michael Cameron a seal expert working from New Zealands Scott Base. “Everybodys guess is that its due to this giant iceberg off of Cape Bird blocking the swells that would normally break up any sea ice in the area.” The sea ice near McMurdo Sound was 40 percent thicker than normal last year, and this year its even thicker.

Of course, if the New York Times had reported this, they would have explained that thicker Antarctic sea ice is just the sort of thing one would expect with global warming.

Junk Science in Science

The October 26 issue of Science carried a study that attempts to use data from the Nenana Ice Classic, a betting lottery where participants guess the date and time when the frozen Tanana River, near the town of Nenana southwest of Fairbanks, Alaska, breaks up, to detect global warming.

A tripod connected to a clock mechanism on shore is secured to the ice on the river. When the ice melts the tripod is swept downriver tripping the clock and recording the time. This lottery has occurred every year since 1917, thereby providing a continuous record of ice breakup.

The Science study suggests two mechanisms to explain the ice breakup: thermal effects where the ice melts and dynamic effects where the ice is broken up by mechanical forces upstream. The first would be attributed to temperature, the latter to precipitation.

The study claims that there has been a trend towards earlier breakup that is correlated with a warming trend. But this conclusion is dubious, according to John Daly who maintains the “Still Waiting for Greenhouse” website. A look at the whole Nenana record shows significant cyclical variation ice breakup, but overall there is no trend.

The authors of the study, however, begin their statistical analysis at the year 1949, a very cold year. They also excluded the breakup of 2001, which was very late, later in fact than the breakup in 1917. The trend found in the analysis is entirely dependent on the starting and ending dates chosen.

Moreover, as Daly points out, the authors dismiss the possibility of dynamic effects as the major cause of earlier ice break up and claim that there are no significant precipitation and snowfall trends.

“Thats not how the Alaska Climate Research Center sees it,” writes Daly. “As we can see [from their chart] there has been a significant increase in tital snowfall during the 20th century, the inevitable effect of which would be greater mechanical forces acting upon the river ice from upstream, causing it to break up earlier than would be the case with thermal melt alone.”

For a more comprehensive critique of the study, go to www.john-daly.com/nenana.htm.

Etc.

  • The city of Marrakesh, Morocco, the site of COP-7 was likely chosen for its considerable charms and pleasant climate. Its interesting to note, however, that since 1924 there has been no warming and perhaps an overall cooling in that city (www.john-daly.com).

  • IPCC Chairman Robert Watson told Kyodo News Service (October 18, 2001) that, “I could envision that the U.S. will sooner or later be part of the international debate on climate because industries in the U.S. will demand it.” Fortunately, Dr. Watsons expertise as a scientific bureaucrat makes his political prophecies as credible as his climatic predictions.

Is Greenlands Ice Sheet Thinning?; Sea Ice Expanding in Antarctica

by William Yeatman on October 13, 2001

in Science

Is Greenlands Ice Sheet Thinning?

A new study in Nature (November 1, 2001) claims to have found significant thinning in the north Greenland ice sheet. The study compared current ice sheet thickness, measured by radar altimetry during 1994 and 1995, with ice sheet measurements from 1954, using “trigonometric leveling.” This entailed positioning a tripod at the midpoint of a 1,200-mile traverse from the east to the west coast of the ice sheet. The elevation of the tripod was then measured from 300 stations along the traverse.

The problem is that the east coast and west coast measurements differed by 11.8 meters, a rather large measurement error. The authors of the Nature study attempted to correct the errors through statistical processes based upon assumptions that may or may not be valid. So the 1954 data point is highly suspect.

The ice sheet was divided into six longitudinal bands, A through F. The authors found that the band A ice stream had thickened, bands B-D experienced no significant change, and that bands E and F had thinned.

Since, as the authors note, the “Greenland ice sheet is still responding to climatic changes that occurred thousands of years ago,” it is important to distinguish between long-term changes in ice dynamics with short-term changes in snow accumulation. They argue that their “41-year interval is long enough to ensure that we are measuring the dynamic response of the ice sheet rather than fluctuations in snow accumulation.”

But given that they are comparing two data points rather than a continuous record, their argument is unconvincing. They also note that, “The only other direct measurement of elevation changes in this area come from a study covering the whole ice sheet for the period 1994-99. It shows slight thickening in bands E and F where we measured significant thinning.” They attribute the thickening to “variations in snow accumulation.”

Sea Ice Expanding in Antarctica

We noted in the last issue that Antarctic sea ice has been thickening substantially for the past two years. Now we notice a scientific study published last spring that indicates that this is a longer-term phenomenon. A study published in the April 15 issue of Geophysical Research Letters finds that sea ice in Antarctica has been increasing rather than decreasing for decades. Satellite microwave imaging data from October 1987 to September 1999 “show an ongoing slight but significant hemispheric increase of 3.7 (0.3) percent in extent and 6.6 (1.5) percent in area.”

The authors also note, “These results suggest that the rather smaller increase of 1.0 (0.5) percent per decade in the Antarctic sea-ice extent and 1.3 (0.6) percent in area detected for the period November 1978-December 1996 is ongoing.”

EU Bows to Industry Pressure; EU to Propose Aviation Fuel Tax

by William Yeatman on October 2, 2001

in Politics, Small business

EU Bows to Industry Pressure

The European Union has been devising an emissions trading scheme to trade greenhouse gas permits, that is scheduled to take effect in 2005. According to Reuters (October 2, 2001), “The EU executive originally aimed to propose the regulations in July but was persuaded to redraft them in a more business-friendly form after intense lobbying from industry.”

Firms within the EU have demanded the changes because they fear that the plan would put them at a competitive disadvantage with U.S. firms. “The latest draft bows to several industry demands by halving the proposed fines, allowing the Commission to exempt certain sectors temporarily and enabling member states to give firms extra emission credits in special market conditions.”

Fines for noncompliance were reduced from 200 euros to 100 euros per excess ton of CO2 emitted. If permit prices go too high, then governments can issue extra permits. Governments can also temporarily exempt certain sectors during the first three years of the program if they can demonstrate that they can reduce the same amount of emission by other means.

The ability of governments to issue additional permits is very problematic and is likely to short circuit the trading that would take place otherwise. Increasing the supply of permits not only defeats the cap, but it also decreases the price of existing permits, thereby harming the firms holding them.

EU to Propose Aviation Fuel Tax

The European Union is pushing for a tax on aviation fuel for international flights at a meeting of the International Civil Aviation Organization currently underway in Montreal. Under a long-standing international agreement, aviation fuel for international flights is exempt from taxation. Environmentalists claim that this is a major subsidy to the airline industry.

The EU says that if an agreement cannot be reached it may and unilaterally impose a tax on internal EU flights or impose a tax on airfreight (ABC News, September 15, 2001).

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →