From: RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH NEWS #738 November 22, 2001 http://www.rachel.org
Environmental Research Foundation P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403 Fax (410) 263-8944; E-mail: erf@rachel.org
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ENVIRONMENTAL TRENDS--PART 2

Here we continue summarizing the main points from the 327-page report titled OECD ENVIRONMENTAL OUTLOOK[1] from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which describes current environmental trends in the OECD's 30 member nations.[2] (See Rachel's #737.) .... Here we continue listing the most important "red light" problems that the OECD has identified:

** Energy: Total energy use will increase 35% in OECD regions by 2020, and 51% elsewhere in the world. Oil will remain the OECD's energy mainstay, and the share of oil supplied by OPEC countries[3] will increase from 54% today to 74% by 2020. Only 6% of energy will come from renewable sources (such as solar power) by 2020, says the OECD, and even this "will depend upon financial incentives from government." (pg. 148)

The OECD report does not say so, but any such financial incentives would be subject to challenge under World Trade Organization rules as illegal restraints of free trade. The WTO does not allow governments to subsidize particular industries, such as solar energy, though of course military subsidies to keep the oil flowing from the Middle East are allowed. By 2020, the share of OECD energy supplied by nuclear power may decline slightly from its current 11%, the OECD says, because the technology lacks popular support everywhere. (pg. 148)

** Global warming: "Global warming is a reality," says the OECD report. (pg. 157) As the Earth warms, we should expect more extreme weather in some regions (floods, droughts, and perhaps more "catastrophic" events such as large hurricanes and typhoons). We should also expect the sea level to rise somewhere between 6 inches and 37 inches by the year 2100, inundating valuable and densely-populated coastal lands. (pg. 162) Serious human diseases carried by mosquitoes, such as dengue fever (also called "breakbone fever" because it is so painful) and malaria, are likely to increase in both the northern and southern hemispheres, says the OECD. (pg. 162) "The possible effects of climate change are a widely recognised future threat to human health," says the OECD. "Climate change might result in new infectious diseases, as well as changing patterns of known diseases, and loss of life due to extreme weather conditions." (pg. 252)

"Overall studies show that some of the most adverse impacts [of global warming] are bound to occur in the Southern Hemisphere where countries are most vulnerable and least likely to easily adapt to climate change," says the OECD. (pg. 162)

Humans are contributing to global warming by releasing "greenhouse gases" -- mainly carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. Of these, CO2 is the largest. The OECD forecasts CO2 emissions rising 33% in OECD countries and 100% in the rest of the world by 2020. To meet the goals of the Kyoto agreement, intended to curb the damage from global warming, OECD countries will need to reduce their CO2 emissions by anywhere from 18% to 40% depending on what non-OECD countries do. (pg. 160) Given that the U.S. increased its CO2 emissions 11% between 1990 and 1998, even an 18% reduction by 2020 would require a Herculean political commitment to reverse "business as usual." (pg. 159)

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From: Defenders of Wildlife <DENlines@den.defenders.org>To Access the HTML version of DENLines, Click here: http://www.defenders.org/den/dl00055.html

ISLAND EVACUATION: Global warming forces entire country to flee. The debate over global warming isn't merely academic for the 11,000 citizens of the Pacific island country of Tuvalu halfway between Hawaii and Australia. Rising seas from the melting of glaciers are forcing them to abandon their homeland. During the 20th century, the ocean rose by up to a foot at Tuvalu, causing saltwater to contaminate its drinking water and erode its coast. Higher temperatures are also generating more tropical cyclones. The country is bitterly critical of the United States for abandoning the Kyoto agreement to combat climate change. A Tuvaluan government official told the BBC: "By refusing to ratify the protocol, the U.S. has effectively denied future generations of Tuvaluans their fundamental freedom to live where our ancestors have lived for thousands of years."

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GLOBAL WARMING June 6, 2001 http://www.econet.apc.org/econet/

WASHINGTON -- In a report requested by the Bush administration, a committee of the National Academies' National Research Council summed up science's current understanding of global climate change by characterizing the global warming trend over the last 100 years, and examining what may be in store for the 21st century and the extent to which warming may be attributable to human activity. The committee -- made up of 11 of the nation's top climate scientists, including seven members of the National Academy of Sciences, one of whom is a Nobel-Prize winner-- also emphasized that much more systematic research is needed to reduce current uncertainties in climate-change science.

"We know that greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere, causing surface temperatures to rise," said committee chair Ralph Cicerone, chancellor, University of California at Irvine. "We don't know precisely how much of this rise to date is from human activities, but based on physical principles and highly sophisticated computer models, we expect the warming to continue because of greenhouse gas emissions." Based on assumptions that emissions of greenhouse gases will accelerate and conservative assumptions about how the climate will react to that, computer models suggest that average global surface temperatures will rise between 2.5 and 10.4 degrees Fahrenheit (1.4 and 5.8 degrees Celsius) by the end of this century.

With regard to the basic question of whether climate change is occurring, the report notes that measurements show that temperatures at the Earth's surface rose by about 1 degree Fahrenheit (about .6 degrees Celsius) during the 20th century. This warming process has intensified in the past 20 years, accompanied by retreating glaciers, thinning arctic ice, rising sea levels, lengthening of the growing season in many areas, and earlier arrival of migratory birds.

The committee said the conclusion of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that the global warming that has occurred in the last 50 years is likely the result of increases in greenhouse gases accurately
reflects the current thinking of the scientific community. However, it also cautioned that uncertainties about this conclusion remain because of the level of natural variability inherent in the climate on time scales from decades to centuries, the questionable ability of models to simulate natural variability on such long time scales, and the degree of confidence that can be placed on estimates of temperatures going back thousands of years based on evidence from tree rings or ice cores.

The greenhouse gas of most concern is carbon dioxide since the naturally occurring chemical also is generated by the continuing burning of fossil fuels, can last in the atmosphere for centuries, and "forces" more climate change than any other greenhouse gas, the committee said. Other significant greenhouse gases include methane, nitrous oxide, water vapor, tropospheric ozone, and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which together have a "forcing" on climate change approximately equal to that of carbon dioxide. Man-made sources of methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone have resulted in substantially increased concentrations in the atmosphere in the 20th century, although each of these gases also has natural sources. CFCs are entirely synthetic compounds.

The best information about past climate variability comes from ice cores drilled miles deep in Antarctica and Greenland, which revealthat temperatures changed substantially over the past 400,000 years. Although most of these changes occurred over thousands of years, some rapid warmings took place over a period of decades. The ice cores also trapped carbon dioxide and methane, which shows that the gases were present in the atmosphere at their lowest levels during cold eras and at higher levels during warm eras. Carbon dioxide did not rise much above 280 parts per million by volume (ppmv) until the industrial revolution. By the end of the 20th century, it had reached 370 ppmv, with an average increase in the last two decades of 1.5 ppmv a year. Both carbon dioxide and methane are more abundant in the atmosphere now than at any time during the 400,000-year ice core record.

The committee noted that the IPCC has examined a range of scenarios concerning future greenhouse gas emissions. The committee called such scenarios valuable because they provide a warning of the magnitude of climate change that may occur if emission rates continue to climb at a rate similar to last century, but it also said alternative scenarios are needed to illustrate the sensitivity to underlying assumptions, particularly with regard to future technological development and energy policy.

The committee also was asked by the White House to examine whether there were any substantive differences between the IPCC reports and their abridged technical and policy-maker summaries. The IPCC was established by the United Nations and World Meteorological Organization in 1988 and its reports and summaries have been influential in international negotiations related to the Kyoto protocol. The full IPCC Working Group 1 report does an admirable job of reflecting research activities in climate science, and is adequately summarized in the technical summary, the committee said. The corresponding summary for policy-makers, it added, placed less emphasis on the scientific uncertainties and caveats. Looking to the future, the committee suggested that improvements to the IPCC process may need to be made to ensure the best scientific representation possible, and to keep the process from being seen as too heavily influenced by governments "which have specific postures with regard to treaties, emissions controls, and other policy instruments." To reduce some of the uncertainties inherent in current climate change predictions, a strong commitment must be made to basic research as well as to improving climate models and building a global climate observing system, the committee said. More comprehensive measurements of greenhouse gases and increased computational power also will be needed.

Although potential impacts from global warming were looked at in the report, it was not part of the committee's charge to make policy recommendations for dealing with them.

The White House requested this fast-track review of the state of climate science in preparation for international discussions on global warming scheduled to take place in the coming weeks. "In view of the critical nature of this issue, we agreed to undertake this study and to use our own funds to support it," said Bruce Alberts, president of the National Academy of Sciences and chair of the National Research Council. The study took a month. The National Research Council is the principal operating arm of the National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Engineering. It is a private, nonprofit institution that provides scientific and technical advice under a congressional charter.

Read the full text of Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions as well as 1,800 other publications from the National Academy Press. Printed copies are available for purchase from the National Academy Press Web site or by calling (202) 334-3313 or 1-800-624-6242.

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