Climate Climate & Energy

Contents of the IPCC Sythesis Report Summary for Policymakers

For those not familiar with it, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was set up in 1988 to write periodic assessments of the state of climate science. Its goal is to produce policy-neutral reports that inform policymakers about the best thinking of the scientific community. These reports have tremendous impact on the debate, owing to the credibility of the IPCC process.

The IPCC is actually split into three working groups. Working group 1 focuses on basic climate science, working group 2 focuses on the impacts of climate change and human adaptation to it, and working group 3 focuses on mitigation efforts (efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions). In 2007, as part of the IPCC's fourth assessment report, each of the three working groups issued a report (e.g., see here for a discussion of the working group 1 report).

Now comes the final part of the fourth assessment report: the synthesis report. This report ties together the three working group reports in an effort to create a single unified picture of what we know about climate change.

IPCC says debate over, further delay fatal, action not costly

In its definitive scientific synthesis report (PDF), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) today issued its strongest call for immediate action to save humanity from the deadly consequences of unrestrained greenhouse gas emissions.

This report -- signed off by 130 nations including the U.S. and China -- slams the door on any argument for delay and makes clear we must under no circumstances listen to those who urge that we wait (who knows how long) to develop as yet non-existent technology [this means you President Bush, Newt Gingrich, Bjorn Lomborg]. As The New York Times put it:

Members of the panel said their review of the data led them to conclude as a group and individually that reductions in greenhouse gasses had to start immediately to avert a global climate disaster that could leave island states submerged and abandoned, African crop yields decreased by 50 percent, and cause over a 5 percent decrease in global gross domestic product.

... this summary was the first to acknowledge that the melting of the Greenland ice sheet from rising temperature [which would raise the oceans 23 feet] could result in sea-level rise over centuries rather than millennia.

Readers of this blog know the IPCC almost certainly underestimates the timing and severity of likely impacts because it ignores or downplays key amplifying feedbacks in the carbon cycle (see "Are scientists overestimating or underestimating climate change," especially Part II and Part III). Indeed, IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri -- a scientist and economist -- admitted as much:

He said that since the panel began its work five years ago, scientists have recorded "much stronger trends in climate change," like a recent melting of polar ice that had not been predicted. "That means you better start with intervention much earlier."

How much earlier? The normally understated Pachauri warns:

"If there's no action before 2012, that's too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment."

In short: time's up! America, we better pick the right President in 2008.

To balance the bad news, the IPCC and its member governments agree on the good news -- action is affordable:

IPCC synthesis report confirms global warming is a force to be reckoned with

And now, ladies and gents, the moment you’ve all been waiting for. The Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, with input from delegates of more than 140 countries, has synthesized three previous reports into one 70-page summary document and a 20-page summary of that summary, meant to be an “instant guide” to policymakers who […]

Giving up car-lessness for Rob Lowe’s plug-in hybrid

This essay is part of a series on not owning a car.

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The weekend before Halloween, my car-less family got a loaner plug-in hybrid-electric car to try. You see, the City of Seattle and some other local public agencies are testing the conversion of some existing hybrids to plug-ins to accelerate the spread of these near-zero-emissions vehicles. As a favor and, perhaps, for some publicity (this post), the city's program manager offered me four days' use of the prototype -- previously driven by actor Rob Lowe.

Enthusiasm about plug-in hybrids -- like their now-almost-mainstream siblings the gas-electric hybrids -- has been running high of late. For example, the California Air Resources Board is among the toughest air quality regulators in the world. When members of the board's expert panel reviewed the evidence on plug-in hybrids, they issued a boosterish report predicting widespread adoption and fast market penetration. The Western Governors' Association is similarly smitten (MS Word doc). The tone of some popular press reports makes it seem that the vehicular second coming may be at hand.

For this auto (pictured in our back yard, with our Flexcar visible out front), I wondered, would my family give up its car-less ways? Would the joy of these 100+ mpg wheels cause us to end our 21 months of car-free-ness, emulate Rob, and buy our own plug-in?

The short answer? No. Plug-in hybrid-electric cars hold great promise, as long as we can fix the laws. And the technology. Oh, and the price.

None of those fixes are "gimmes." Without fixing the laws -- and specifically, without a legal cap on greenhouse gases -- plug-ins could actually do more harm than good. And without the second two fixes -- working technology and competitive prices -- plug-ins won't spread beyond the Hollywood set. (Echoes of this point are in Elizabeth Kolbert's latest article in The New Yorker.)

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me start at the beginning.

L.A. bereft of clouds, rain; climate change the culprit?

I arrived in L.A. yesterday in the midst of an unusual meteorological phenomenon. The sky seems to have been wiped out, replaced entirely with a deep, featureless expanse of turquoise blue. And that’s not the weirdest part. All day long, a strong, bright light was falling from the sky on inhabitants, as though we were […]

IPCC Synthesis Report coming out Saturday

Policymakers of the world, get ready. Tomorrow, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change releases its Synthesis Report that will attempt to summarize the world’s climate-y plight in a language governments can understand. Saturday’s report will be the official abbreviated version of the 2,500 pages of scientific reports the IPCC churned out earlier this year. The […]

On who is accountable for Chinese greenhouse-gas emissions

Yesterday a D.C. nonprofit, the Center for Global Development, released an inventory of the world's power plants. Its nifty database shows that on a national level, China trails only the the U.S. in total emissions of greenhouse gases, and not by much.

This will disappoint the global warming proponents at the National Review, who have been predicting for months that China will surpass the traditional emissions champ -- the United States -- this year.

But both the scoffers on the right and the worriers on the left may be overlooking a central question, which was broached this Monday in a news story from The Wall Street Journal.

Simply put: a high percentage of Chinese emissions are produced in factories making products for buyers around the world. Shouldn't that be considered in the emissions accounting?

The vast majority of the world's MP3 players are made in China, where the main power source is coal. Manufacturing a single MP3 player releases about 17 pounds of planet-warming carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. iPods, along with thousands of other goods churned out by Chinese factories, from toys to rolled steel, pose a question that is becoming an issue in the climate-change debate. If a gadget is made in China by an American company and exported and used by consumers from Stockholm to São Paulo, Brazil, should the Chinese government be held responsible for the carbon released in manufacturing it?

The story hints at the complexity of fault-finding when it comes to emissions, which we as a nation and as a species have barely begun to unpack. Not only must we contend with the fact that carbon dioxide is indivisible -- and equally warming no matter if it's emitted in a Communist nation such as China, a capitalist nation such as the U.S., or a third-world nation such as India -- but there is also what The Stern Review calls the "intergenerational" aspect of emissions. Carbon released today may have catastrophic effects thirty years from now, when the original emitters are long dead. Who will the children of today blame then?

But to continue with Jane Spencer's thoughtful, probing story:

Notable quotable

“It certainly appeared a year ago that we were going to have a national push on ethanol, and we wanted to have the vehicles ready. But we always knew that food-based ethanol would not be the answer. The shift to cellulosic ethanol has been slower than we were led to believe. If we don’t end […]

What will it take to reduce Washington state GHG emissions 10 million tons by 2020?

Earlier this year, the governor of Washington set an ambitious goal (PDF): reducing the state's greenhouse-gas emissions by 10 million tons by 2020. That would put the state's emissions back to about where they were in 1990 -- roughly an 11 percent decline, all told, from today's levels.

Of course, that's only a start. Real climate leadership will require reductions on the order of 80 to 90 percent by the middle of this century. Still, a 10-million-ton reduction in annual CO2 emissions seems like a tall order -- especially since the U.S. Census Bureau projects that the state's population will grow by 20 percent between now and 2020. Measured per person, Washingtonians' greenhouse emissions will have to fall by about one quarter by 2020 to meet the goal.

The Washington Department of Ecology recently asked us what it would take to meet that 10-million-ton goal. Based on emissions data compiled by the state (PDF), here's what we came up with:

We have $100-a-barrel oil due to speculation and fear

As this Foreign Policy article points out, there is no fundamental rationale for the current prices; oil should be between $40-$60 a barrel, but because of speculation and fear the price has been driven up much higher. The peak oil people love to say "I told you so" when the price goes up. What are they going to say when the price goes down? I expect crickets.