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Thursday, December 31, 2009

Happy New Year!



Have a great year filled with joy and happiness! Happy New Year from the Project Jatropha Team!

"Our aspirations are our possibilities."~Samuel Johnson

Love,
Adarsha
Apoorva
Callie

Part 2 of Copenhagen Analysis



One of the reasons for "business as usual" at the Copenhagen meetings is because many people, don't get the magnitude of the impacts of climate change. For instance, a 2-3 degrees Celsius increase in global temperatures over the course of the next 50-100 years (the estimates vary considerably, so I'll use these longer range for the sake of my example), is not very perceptible, as it is over the course of one, or even two or three lifetimes. In addition, the consequences, such as a rise in sea levels of only a couple feet, or weather that's a few degrees warmer, don't seem to be too significant. Yet, the impacts of global warming can lead to the destabilization of nations (such as Bangladesh and drought-ridden countries), and the deaths of millions (due to increased droughts, increased range of diseases, and increased severe weather-hurricanes, El Nino's, etc., and changes in "normal" weather patterns [changes in monsoon times, etc.]). Yet, if the people dying or getting injured aren't close to us, then many people can't relate and therefore can't understand or altogether dismiss climate change as a mild threat, when in reality, it is one of the greatest threats ever. Consequently and regretfully, I believe that until a large number of people are suddenly and detrimentally affected by climate change very close to/in America, the issue will take a backseat.

-Sincerely,
Adarsha

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Pointing fingers at soot : An article from The Hindu

Hey readers of our blog!

I thought of sharing this interesting article from The Hindu with you all. Happy Holidays!

~Apoorva

Pointing fingers at soot
N. Gopal Raj


Short Life: While CO2 stays in the atmosphere for centuries, soot stays aloft only for days to weeks; ozone persists for just weeks to months.-- Photo: AFP

Soot absorbs 80 per cent of the solar radiation it receives; directly warms the atmosphere

It is no longer just greenhouses gases and their ability to produce global warming that scientists worry about. Concern has been growing over the role played by soot.

Fine particles of soot result from the incomplete burning of fossil fuels and biomass. Soot is produced by diesel engines, the burning of coal, forest fires, burning of crop residues and when firewood and dung is used as household fuel.

Soot particles absorb 80 per cent of the solar radiation they receive and directly warm the atmosphere, said S.K. Satheesh of the Centre for Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore.

Cloud burn off

Absorption of sunlight by soot could heat the surrounding atmosphere to such an extent that clouds “burn off,” suggested Dr Satheesh in paper published in Nature in 2000 that was co-authored with V. Ramanathan of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California.

Soot in the atmosphere could be having as much as 60 per cent of the current global warming effect of carbon dioxide, observed Prof. Ramanathan and G. Carmichael in a review paper published in Nature Geoscience in 2008.

The increased levels of soot and other pollutants in the atmosphere were reducing monsoon rainfall over India, said Prof. Ramanathan and others in another paper in 2005. Droughts might double in frequency if the emissions continued unabated.

However, William Lau of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre in the U.S. and others have suggested that the soot from northern India along with dust from the deserts of western China, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Middle East were producing an ’elevated heat pump’ over Tibet.

The effects

The rising hot air produced by enhanced heating drew in warm and moist air over the Indian subcontinent. Consequently, there could be an “advance of the rainy periods and subsequently an intensification of the Indian summer monsoon,” they remarked in a paper published in 2006.

More recently, there has been concern over soot hastening the melting of the Himalayan glaciers.

“Over areas of the Himalayas, the rate of warming is more than five times faster than warming globally, remarked Dr. Lau at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in California earlier this month. The ‘elevated heat pump’ could be contributing as much or more to atmospheric warming in the Himalayas as greenhouse gases.

Besides, soot being deposited directly on the glaciers too seemed to be playing a part. Chinese and American scientists published this month the results of research that looked at ice cores from the Tibetan Plateau. “We find evidence that black soot aerosols deposited on Tibetan glaciers have been a significant contributing factor to observed rapid glacier retreat,” reported James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and others in their paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A.

Cutting soot emission

In a recent article in the magazine Foreign Affairs, Jessica Seddon Wallack, director of the Centre for Development Finance at the Institute for Financial Management and Research in Chennai, and Prof. Ramanathan have argued that reducing soot and ozone precursors could rapidly slow the pace of global warming, thus giving efforts to cut carbon dioxide emissions time to get off the ground.

Emissions of soot and ozone precursors could be brought down significantly at relatively low cost with technologies that already existed. While carbon dioxide could remain in the atmosphere for centuries, soot stayed aloft only for days to weeks while ozone persisted for just weeks to months.

Reducing the emissions of these pollutants would quickly lower their concentration in the atmosphere and, in turn, their impact on global warming, they pointed out.

For U.S. dollars 15 billion, 500 million households could be provided with clean stoves, Prof. Ramanathan was quoted as saying in a recent media report. These families were currently using firewood, coal and dung as fuel and the switch would greatly reduce soot production.

Undesired result

Cutting soot levels in the atmosphere might produce the opposite effect – an increase in warming rather than a reduction, pointed out Dr. Satheesh,. He received the Bhatnagar Award this year.

Much of the warming of the atmosphere occurred when the earth’s surface became heated by radiation from the sun. Removing soot could increase the amount of sunlight reaching the surface, thereby leading to greater warming of the atmosphere.

One recent study showed evidence of such an effect in California where reduction in soot levels after about 1980 led to a statewide surface temperature increase.

Keywords: carbon emissions, soot, soot emission, NASA

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

We can challenge India on Copenhagen goals: US TNN 22 December 2009, 01:24am IST

* China
* India
* US
* Copenhagen talks

NEW DELHI: Even though the final document in Copenhagen contained no legally binding commitments by anybody, US officials are claiming the right to unilaterally verify or review what India and other countries are doing.

Forced to defend the deal, White House senior advisor David Axelrod told CNN that the Copenhagen Accord would allow US verification. "Now China and India have set goals. We are going to be able to review what they are doing. We are going to be able to challenge them if they do not meet those goals," Axelrod said.

While this was probably intended to keep the enraged constituencies of US labour unions at bay, who had insisted that Barack Obama come back with a commitment from India and China for carbon cuts and their verification, these statements will only fuel a fire in countries like China and India. Besides, the government will be asked to come clean on whether the Copenhagen document was another nail in the Kyoto Protocol coffin.

The developed countries have tried all means to junk the protocol, and introduce a new framework where the developing countries take on some of the burden.

The US assertion is sure to figure in the debate in Rajya Sabha on Copenhagen text on Tuesday. Many political parties and NGOs have already come out against it, with the Left citing it as yet another instance of government succumbing to pressure from the US.

They are sure to cite Axelrod's remarks as vindication. "This was not the end of the road. The end of the road would have been the complete collapse of those talks. This is a great step forward," Axelrod said. Obama called it a meaningful beginning while British PM Gordon Brown lashed out at China and its friends.

The European nations, who were ultimately left out of the final deal-making, leaving Obama and the BASIC bloc (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) to strike the last bargain, are looking for more ways to get around the final text. In fact, over the next few months, the world will see a growing clamour to remove climate change negotiations from the UNFCCC and move it to a G20-like framework.

Sitaram Yechury of CPM, accusing the government of "shifting goalposts", said there was no clarity in the accord. "The accord is deeply ambiguous with several loopholes and the possibility of different interpretations, particularly with regard to emission cuts by developing countries, and fund and technology transfers," he said.

The government will be hard-pressed to defend signing on to the Copenhagen agreement, specially when there is no commitment from the developed countries on technology transfers. The battlelines were already drawn on Monday, with the Left parties leading the charge.

"Whether it is George Bush or Barack Obama, the narrow self-interests of America must prevail over the interests of the world community. The apprehensions of all poor nations that ultimately a deal will be imposed by the US has proved correct. It is a sorry spectacle of succumbing to US pressure," the CPI central secretariat said in a statement.

For Obama, it had a domestic political benefit. Since he stuck to the letter of the Waxman-Markey Bill in negotiating for a deal in Copenhagen, Obama had the added advantage of leveraging the climate deal to move his healthcare legislation forward.

QnA: Have the G77 countries been able to stall the West's attempts to kill the Koyoto Protocol?


Dear Blog Readers,
I thought of posting this interesting article from Times of India. I will follow up with the discussion soon.
Adarsha

Friday, December 18, 2009

Part 1 of an analysis about COP15


For the past couple of weeks, I have been closely following the Copenhagen meeting, and have posted several links on the blog. As of today, the meeting officially finished, and the results are…mixed, to say the least. The Guardian recently posted an article that highlighted the failures of the meeting (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/18/copenhagen-deal), and I agree with the general assessment presented in the article. The fact that no actual, tangible goals were set/fixed upon at the meeting is disappointing-yet, it shows business as usual in the world. Obama’s policy at the meeting seemed to be “don’t walk away empty-handed, get some goals accomplished, even if they’re reduced and rather modest.” The Guardian also had this interesting, and arguably accurate quote regarding the meeting as a whole: “Lumumba Di-Aping, chief negotiator for the G77 group of 130 developing countries, was scathing: ‘This deal will definitely result in massive devastation in Africa and small island states. It has the lowest level of ambition you can imagine. It's nothing short of climate change scepticism in action.’” Lumumba does have a point when he says that the negotiations produced a very small level of results. In fact, like stated earlier, no actual LIMITS were set…just a purposely ambiguous goal to make sure that temperature levels do not rise beyond 2 degrees Celsius this century. It’s important to note that no agreement on HOW this goal would be accomplished was reached. Obama even admitted that this meeting is only the beginning of much, much more work. Yet, at the same time, it is disappointing to see so little progress at the meeting. To read more about the differing opinions about the Copenhagen meeting, here’s another link: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/climate

This is just part 1 of my analysis on the Copenhagen meetings, and several more parts will be posted in the coming week.

-Sincerely,
Adarsha

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Climate conference emits its share of carbon By MICHAEL CASEY, Associated Press Writer , Yahoo News

COPENHAGEN – If they fail to reach a climate deal in Copenhagen, world leaders flying in their private jets and huddling in five-star hotels will have little to show for their efforts beyond a big, fat carbon footprint.

The U.N. estimates 40,500 tons of carbon dioxide will be pumped into the atmosphere during the 12-day conference — 90 percent of it from flights. The rest comes from waste and electricity related to transport to and from the conference center and lodging in and around the Danish city.

Most of the leaders were flying either on commercial airlines or government-owned jets and Sweden was one of the few to announce plans to offset those aviation emissions — something it does routinely. Most are doing nothing to boost their green credentials and some saw no reason to treat their trip to the U.N. climate talks any differently.

"This prime minister is the last person in India or maybe even the world to do anything for effect," said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's spokesman Harish Khare. "It'll be a normal visit, like any other visit by the prime minister." Singh was scheduled to travel in a private jet to Copenhagen for security, his office said.

Those traveling on commercial flights include Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejajjiva, Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann and Finnish President Tarja Halonen.

Barack Obama is traveling on Air Force One, French President Nicolas Sarkozy in his special Airbus and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on a presidential jet nicknamed "Aerolula."

A handful of Europeans made a point of taking the train, like the environment ministers of the Netherlands and Switzerland.

Few environmentalists at the conference made an issue of the carbon footprints from more than 100 world leaders. They were more worried that governments are failing to make progress on reaching a global climate pact.

Norway's Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg — who often gives green advice to Norwegians — was criticized at home, however, for deciding to take a private jet from Oslo to Copenhagen rather than one of the 17 shuttles that daily make the hour-long run between the two Scandinavian capitals.

"If he tells everybody to take the bus, take the train, stop wasting energy, then you'd have to expect Stoltenberg to sacrifice something too," said Oerjan Holm, vice president of the Norwegian Conservation Society.

A statement from Stoltenberg's office said he decided to travel by private jet because he wanted the "flexibility" to match the somewhat unstable schedule of the climate conference. It added that the government buys carbon credits at the end of every year to offset the prime minister's air travels.

Some activists said leaders should at least find ways to make their trip more sustainable, especially if they aren't serious about reaching a deal.

"There is an obsession by world leaders to be able to come in here with big entourages on their special airplanes, land at the airport and be driven in big limousines, with bigger entourages," said Asad Rehman, spokesman for the environmental group Friends of the Earth.

"What they should be looking at is how they could travel here with the minimal carbon impact that they can have," he said. "But also, more importantly, are they coming here to actually sign a deal and make a deal that will save both the people and the planet? If they're coming here with an empty pocket and empty promises, then they should stay at home."

Susan Burns, the chief executive officer of the Global Footprint Network, a California-based sustainability research institute, said it would be wrong to scale back negotiations over concerns about carbon emissions, especially with so much work to be done.

"They should have a Copenhagen every month until they figure this out," Burns said. "We need to spend our carbon very wisely. And getting world leaders together and locking them in a room while they get this done is one such investment, as is investing it in the economy of the future."

Climate summits, which attract thousands of delegates and are often held in far-flung or glitzy locations like Barcelona and Rio de Janeiro, are easy targets for critics.

The last big climate conference, in 2007 on the Indonesian island of Bali, blew through 47,000 tons of carbon — equal to the daily emissions of Marseilles, one of the biggest cities in France. Delegates were criticized for running their air conditioners as they chatted in beach-side villas.

This time, it's the idling limos waiting in subzero temperatures to shuttle delegates between their hotels and the conference center.

Organizers from the Danish government said they were doing everything they could to minimize the conference's carbon footprint.

They have reduced emissions 20 percent through a number of energy efficiency measures, promoted public transport, encouraged hotels to provide environmentally certified rooms and installed efficient lighting in the conference center, according to Jan-Christoph Napierski, who heads conference logistics for the Danish Foreign Ministry.

They are offsetting the rest of the emissions by investing in a program to upgrade antiquated brick kilns in Bangladesh with the help of the World Bank.

"Bangladesh is one of the countries hardest hit by climate change and there's a great need to assist the country with technology and capital contributions," said conference president Connie Hedegaard. "In addition, the project will result in significant environmental improvements for the local community, where particle pollution from the existing old brick works is clearly visible."
Copyright © 2009 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved

Sunday, December 13, 2009

Girls (and Boys) Gone Wild
Why should policymakers, investors, and businesspeople care about youth in Copenhagen? 1

* Terry Tamminen
11 Dec 2009 11:30 AM
by Terry Tamminen
*
Posted in
o Politics,
o Climate & Energy,
o Business,
o Living Green


Grist\\'s coverage of Copenhagen climate talks

Of the estimated 20,000 people converging on the U.N. climate conference this week and next, half of them are expected to be under the age of 30. My colleague in Copenhagen, Kristina Haddad, reports, “I observed that many in the crowds of people were young. Most were wearing t-shirts or passing out flyers that essentially pleaded for the world leaders to do the right thing—to stop the talking and compromise and really do something about this crisis or they will have no future.”

She went on to describe how a group from India unraveled a banner at the conference center that had notes, drawings and messages from hundreds of children making similar demands. Others took cellphone photos of themselves with a cardboard cutout of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (the real Governator will speak to delegates next week about the benefits of a low carbon economy). And organized groups of these young people met with U.N. climate czar, Yvo deBoer, to press their views.

“Trust is something that is earned,” he told them, “and the [climate negotiations] process is something that has not yet earned your trust. Keep it up…negotiators must be reminded of why they are doing what they are doing.”

Other than the anti-war campaigns of the 1970s, it’s hard to recall a movement that has been so embraced, even motivated, by the world’s youth. Solving the climate crisis is not the only thing these young people are focused on—they are also inventing, embracing, and sharing the solutions. Twitter, Facebook, Badoo, Bebo, MySpace, and Flickr are among the most active social networks that are ablaze with discussion about climate change and tips of what to buy, what to avoid, and other ways to reduce their carbon footprints.

Why should policymakers, investors, or businesspeople care about this? Because these are the voters and consumers of the next 50 years and they’re very serious about this low carbon thing. A marketing exec once explained to me why the 18-34 age group was so important—they will buy several cars, for example, in their remaining lifetime, while someone at age 55 may only buy one more. He wanted those youthful eyes, ears, and brand loyalty focused on his products and spent millions to understand that coveted age group. Ditto the politicians, as they think of future elections.

Well, neither marketers nor political consultants need spend a penny on polls and focus groups this month, but should spend a few minutes surfing the web and looking at the social networking sites to understand how deeply rooted this youthful interest is when it comes to climate change. Then, look at your own products—supply chain, corporate carbon footprint, packaging, and other contributors to their carbon footprints. If a reasonable observer (or an angry, unreasonable youth) would consider your products a net plus for climate change, find a way to communicate that and become part of the solution. If your products are more on the carbon-heavy side, I suggest a makeover pronto.

Mr. DeBoer is right—trust on this topic must be earned, but any investment now by a company to be a meaningful part of these young people’s low-carbon future will pay handsome dividends for generations to come.

Terry Tamminen is the former secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency and is now a policy adviser and author. His latest book is Lives Per Gallon: The True Cost of our Oil Addiction.