India Satisfied with Copenhagen Summit

Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh told Parliament Tuesday that a coordinated approach by India, China, Brazil and South Africa enabled them to thwart what he calls "relentless efforts" by rich countries to impose legally binding targets for carbon emission cuts.

Ramesh says India can be satisfied that the four emerging economies - called the BASIC group of countries - got their way on the issue in Copenhagen. 

"This is a very, very important achievement," he noted. "There is no mention whatsoever of a new legally binding instrument because this was clearly the intention of many European countries."

Ramesh says the four countries have emerged as a powerful force in climate-change negotiations, which are to continue until a summit is held in Mexico, next year. 

The Copenhagen summit set a commitment to limit global warming to two degrees.  But many people fighting climate change were disappointed because it failed to spell out specific targets that will enable the world to hold down temperatures.

Developed countries want commitments on carbon emission reductions made by countries like India and China to be subject to international scrutiny.  But developing countries have insisted that these pledges remain voluntary. 

Ramesh told Parliament that the final accord at Copenhagen safeguards the rights of developing countries.

He expressed satisfaction that India's commitment to cut its carbon emissions will not be subject to international verification.

"Mitigation actions of the developing countries will be subject to domestic measurement, domestic reporting and domestic verification, as per its internal procedures," he said.

Ramesh expressed confidence that India could not only meet its pledge of cutting carbon emissions by 20 to 25 percent by 2020 over 2005 levels, but could even improve upon it.

He says India will continue to adopt a constructive approach to the issue of climate change.

India is among the countries which could be adversely impacted by rising global temperatures. But, like other developing countries, it is wary that cutting carbon emissions will hamper it growing economy and insists that rich countries should bear the brunt of reducing greenhouse gases.

read more...

Developing nations reject US-led climate deal

Several developing nations rejected on Saturday a climate deal worked out by US President Barack Obama and four major emerging economies, saying it could not become a UN blueprint for fighting global warming.

Earlier, European Union nations reluctantly agreed to sign up for the accord worked out at a summit of 120 leaders by the United States, China, India, South Africa and Brazil -- meant as the first UN climate pact since the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. "I regret to inform you that Tuvalu cannot accept this document," said Ian Fry, delegate for the low-lying Pacific island state that fears it could be wiped off the map by rising sea levels.

At an extra night session in Copenhagen after most leaders left, he said that a goal in the document for limiting global warming to a maximum rise of 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times was too lax and would spell "the end for Tuvalu".

Delegates of Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba and Nicaragua also angrily denounced the "Copenhagen Accord", saying it would not help address global warming and was unfairly worked out behind closed doors at the December 7-18 conference.

For any deal to become a UN pact it would need to be adopted unanimously at the 193 nation talks. If some nations are opposed, the deal would be adopted only by its supporters -- currently a group of major nations representing more than half the world's greenhouse gas emissions.

Even backers of the accord conceded it was imperfect and fell far short of UN ambitions for the Copenhagen talks, meant as a turning point to push the world economy towards renewable energy and away from fossil fuels.

Before leaving, Obama said the deal, which holds out the prospect of an annual $100 billion in aid for developing nations by 2020, was a starting point for world efforts to slow climate change.

"This progress did not come easily and we know this progress alone is not enough," he said after talks with China's Premier Wen Jiabao and leaders of India, South Africa and Brazil. "We've come a long way but we have much further to go," he said of the deal, meant to prevent more heatwaves, floods, wildfires, mudslides and rising ocean levels.

"The meeting has had a positive result, everyone should be happy," said Xie Zhenhua, head of China's climate delegation. European nations were lukewarm. "The decision has been very difficult for me. We have done one step, we have hoped for several more," said German Chancellor Angela Merkel. She had hoped that all nations would promise deeper cuts in emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels, during the Copenhagen summit.

A goal mentioned in some draft texts of halving world greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, for instance, was dropped. "I came here to Copenhagen wanting the most ambitious deal possible. We have made a start. I believe that what we need to follow up on quickly is ensuring a legally binding outcome," said British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

"This is not a perfect agreement. It will not solve the climate threat to mankind," said Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency.

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd called the deal "a significant agreement on climate change action. It is the first global agreement on climate change action between rich nations and poor countries." But he added "these negotiations have been exceptionally tough. The attitude taken by various countries in these negotiations has been particularly hardline."

Many European nations had wanted Obama to offer deeper cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. But Obama was unable to, partly because carbon capping legislation is stalled in the US Senate.

Washington backed a plan to raise $100 billion in aid for poor nations from 2020. The deal sets an end-January 2010 deadline for all nations to submit plans for curbs on emissions to the United Nations.

A separate text proposes an end-2010 deadline for transforming the non-binding pledges into a legally binding treaty. Some environmental groups were also scathing. "The city of Copenhagen is a crime scene tonight, with the guilty men and women fleeing to the airport," said John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace UK.

Tensions between China and the United States, the world's two biggest emitters, had been particularly acute after Obama -- in a message directed at the Chinese -- said any deal to cut emissions would be "empty words on a page" unless it was transparent and accountable.

read more...

China urges U.S. to increase Copenhagen offer

Xie Zhenhua said that China wanted to play a constructive role at the December 7-18 climate talks, where a successful outcome largely depends on agreement between the United States and China which together emit 40 percent of global greenhouse gases.
"I do hope that President Obama can bring a concrete contribution to Copenhagen," Xie told Reuters.
When asked whether that meant something additional to what Obama has already proposed, a 3 percent cut on 1990 levels by 2020, Xie said: "Yes."
Xie also said that China could accept a target to halve global emissions by 2050 if developed nations stepped up their emissions cutting targets by 2020 and agreed to financial help for the developing world to fight climate change.
"We do not deny the importance of a long-term target but I think a mid-term target is more important. We need to solve the immediate problem."
"If the demands of developing countries can be satisfied I think we can discuss an emissions target," to halve global emissions by 2050.
The deputy chairman of the powerful economic planning superministry, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), told Reuters he wanted rich countries to cut their emissions by 25-40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.
"It is our hope that the emissions cuts of developed countries can fall into the range of 25-40 percent (below 1990 levels." Earlier this year, at some previous rounds of U.N. talks, China had insisted on a cut of "at least 40 percent."
Xie said that he preferred a final, legally binding agreement at the meeting in Copenhagen, but if that were not possible a deadline to wrap up a full treaty by June "would be very good." He rejected a U.N. proposal for fast-track funding of $10 billion a year from 2010-2012 as "not enough."

read more...

Current decade warmest, 2009 fifth hottest, since 1850

BEIJING, Dec. 9 (Xinhuanet)-- The past decade has been the warmest since records began 160 years ago and the year 2009 ranks in the top ten warmest year, Britain's Met Office and UN World Meteorological Organization said Tuesday at the Copenhagen climate changesummit. 
    "Despite 1998 being the warmest individual year, the last 10 years have clearly been the warmest period in the 160-year record of global surface temperature maintained jointly by the Met Office Hadley Centre and the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia," the statement from the U.K.'s national weather service said.
    Figures show a steady rise in temperatures over the past four decades, with 2009 listed as likely to be the fifth warmest year since 1850. The U.K. data are derived from a rolling average of 10 years in the 2000 to 2009 period.
    "In the last decade we have seen that the temperatures haven't gone up very much, but they are clearly a lot warmer then they were in the previous decade," said Doctor Vicky Pope, the head of climate change advice at the Met office.
    Also, the UN World Meteorological Organization said there are abnormal temperatures in most parts of the world, but only the United States and Canada experience cooler conditions than average. Australia has so far had its third warmest year on record.
    According to data sources compiled by the organization, the global combined sea- and land-surface air temperature for January to October 2009 is estimated at 0.44 degrees Celsius above the 1961 to 1990 annual average of 14.0 degrees Celsius.
    The organization also said that this decade is warmer than the 1980s and 1990s.

read more...

CO2 unleashes more warming than thought

Carbon dioxide indirectly causes up to 50% more global warming than originally thought, a finding that raises questions over targets for stabilising carbon emissions over the long term.


          In a paper published in the journal Nature Geoscience, British scientists said a tool commonly used in climate modelling may have badly underlooked the sensitivity of key natural processes to the warming caused by CO2.
   
        As a result, calculations for man-made global warming on the basis of carbon emissions may be underpitched by between 30 and 50%.

     The study was coincidentally published on the eve of a 12-day UN conference in Copenhagen aimed at providing a durable solution to the greenhouse-gas problem.

      The authors stressed that the more-than-expected warming would unfold over a matter of hundreds of years, rather than this century.
     The findings do not mean that the predictions for temperature rise by 2100, established notably by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), should be rewritten, they said.
                   "We don't want to be overly alarmist here," said lead author Dan Lunt of Britain's University of Bristol.
               "But if people are thinking about stabilising CO2 at a certain atmospheric level, or putting together a treaty, or having a debate about what the levels should be, it really is important to know what the long-term consequences of those emissions are going to be, because CO2 hangs around for so long."
    
                          Lunt and colleagues decided to test a widely-used climate model on an epoch called the mid-Pliocene warm period, about three million years ago, when Earth heated up in response to natural processes.

            Cores drilled from ocean sediment provide a good idea about atmospheric carbon levels and temperature at the time.

                             What the team found, though, was that the CO2 levels in the Pliocene -- around 400 parts per million (ppm) -- were not consistent with the warming, which was around three degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than today.
                    The difference could only be fully explained by the long-term loss of icesheets and and changes in vegetation, says the paper. These changes cause Earth's surface to absorb more solar radiation, which causes more warming, and so on.

When applied to what awaits us this century, the adjusted model suggests that nothing significantly different will happen compared to what has already been estimated.

"In that time scale, we don't think the Greenland icesheet is going to melt completely or that East Antarctica will melt. That was what we saw in the model for three million years ago, but it is unlikely to take place in the next century," said Lunt.

     Where it poses a dilemma, though, is how to fix a target for stabilising CO2 emissions so that future generations, centuries from now, are not hit by this long-term warming mechanism.

                A popular goal is to limit warming since pre-industrial times to 2 C (3.6 F), a figure that in mainstream climate models typically equates to about 450 ppm. At present, Earth's CO2 concentrations are at around 387 ppm.
"Our work says that at 400 parts per million, you are looking at more than two degrees C [3.6 F].

"To stabilise at two degrees C, you would have to aim for something like 380 ppm. But remember, this is the sort of level that applies if you want a long-term commitment that goes on for centuries, for generations to come."

read more...