Nucleophobia strikes again

It’s the second anniversary of the Japan earthquake and the resulting problem with the Fukushima nuclear plant.

A quick reminder, this earthquake, and the Fukushima problem (which was contained as well as possible), caused such a surge of “Nucleophobia” on the other side of the world, in the west, that Germany decided to withdraw from nuclear power entirely. And do what instead? Plaster the Alps with solar panels? No, of course not. Get more energy from coal and gas plants. Because they are safer… right?

Now, I don’t mean to play down the problems with Fukushima’s nuclear incident. We still need reliable data on how much radiation escaped, and the Japanese government was slow in containing the risks. Admitted.

But – and here is the big point – a magnitude 7.1 earthquake hit a nuclear power station, and nothing much happened! Trust me, had the thing blown up, we would have noticed. Had it been another Chernobyl, we wouldn’t be wondering anymore about the scale of fallout. We would know.

The nuclear plant held fast, because it was well-maintained, and there were stringent safety procedures in place. Fukushima, that dangerous nuclear power station, has not killed anyone.

Enter the Guardian today, with this story. Coal power plans, in India (probably less well controlled than here) are estimated to kill 120,000 people a year. In India. Alone.

The cause of death here is not explosion, although coal power plans have lots more deadly accidents than nuclear power plants. It’s their emissions. Soot, sulphur, toxic gases… all the lovely stuff. And that is excluding the CO2, which heats our atmosphere at a scale the planet has never experienced before.

Nuclear power, even though it has its hazards, is CO2 free. It’s clean, as clean as can get. If only governments would spend more money on researching ways to get rid of radioactive waste, we’d have a green energy source big enough to supply the planet right at our hands.

But instead we are panicking, decommissioning, and instead we buy the power from nuclear plants in Russia, thus creating dangerous energy dependency from power plants that are unlikely to be as well maintained as the ones in Western Europe.

And we build lots of nice coal and gas power stations. Because we feel safer. What’s a 120,000 Indians when we want our tellies to be on each night. And our asthmatic babies? Surely that’s just because of vaccinations and horse meat. And not because we are breathing toxic fumes…

The rains are coming

If you haven’t read it yet, I recommend Louis Bromfield’s The Rains Came, a story about an overly strong monsoon in colonial India.

This is a riveting, and astonishingly useful read, considering that extreme rainfall events are likely to increase, and have already done so, across the Northern hemisphere, and in particular in north-western Europe.

The 2012 summer was the wettest in 100 years, according to the UK met office. Rain fell heavily across the UK, in tightly compacted extreme events. More rain is a direct consequence of climate change, and I just want to quickly explain why.

2012 was the 9th warmest year since records began, and 2013 is likely to be among the 10 warmest years since records began in 1850, the Met Office says. Average temperatures in the UK are likely to be 0.43 and 0.71 degrees Celsius above the long-term average.

Now, warmth makes water evaporate, as you can see quite visibly in your hot tea cup. The evaporated water rises higher, cools, condenses, forms clouds and eventually falls down again as rain.

For this process to happen in temperatures lower than your teacup you need a lot of water. And that is what the UK has – a lot of water, all around. So only a few tenths of a degree change in sea surface temperatures will result in more cloud build-up and more rain.

However, this rain will not fall equally throughout the year. More torrential rainstorms are expected, and more flooding as a result. These are the first harbingers of what is to come if the globe warms further.

And the rain sends a clear message – climate change is already happening, and we are already seeing the consequences. Not in a far-away place, but floating past our own front doors.

Why Kyoto is not a total failure

Much ado this week about the weak outcomes of the Doha climate negotiations. It’s been disappointing, on the whole, to see so little progress in the negotiations. As usual, there was lots of talk about commitment, but little action. But the one thing that we now have secure is a second commitment period for the Kyoto Protocol.

The Kyoto Protocol has come under a lot of criticism in the past, and some of this is justified. The overall emission reductions it imposes are weak, and there are no punishments in place for countries that fail to meet them. The biggest emitters, among them Canada (emissions per head) and the United States (overall emissions), are not part of the protocol at all. And the vast majority of countries, including all developing countries, have no emission targets to meet, as their emissions, despite increasing rapidly, are considered to be too small to count.

I won’t go into more detail here. Fact is, we do have a second commitment period, which for now excludes Canada, the United States, Russia and New Zealand. There remains little incentive for action. Even the EU, usually at the forefront of emission reduction, was prevented from showing consensus by Poland.

Delegates at the Doha conference

 

Weak as it is, the Kyoto Protocol has at least served one purpose – it has created a worldwide effort to reduce emissions and has kept climate change and emission prevention in the political negotiations. True, this has not led to much actual activity on the ground. But think about a world without the Kyoto Protocol. Would we do anything? Would we still be talking about this?

What needs to happen next is that the protocol is strengthened, and that non-industrialised countries are included. We are well on track to warm the globe by at least 4 degrees by 2100 (even the World Bank has recognised this now), and this will pose a huge threat to our economy, society and well-being, not even mentioning what this will do to flora and fauna on our planet. It is absolutely essential that the world acts together on this, and now. Politicians have shown before that they can do this – think of the global ban on CFC gases, nuclear disarmament or international aid. So it’s definitely possible.

The Kyoto Protocol has helped to keep climate change on the political agenda, but it’s not enough. What the world needs now is the Kyoto Actual Action Plan to make sure the world stops talking and starts doing something.

Critical, not cozy—Why warm Earth is not good

Anyone else got the feeling that climate change deniers have shifted their patterns? They don’t actually deny climate change anymore, which, I guess, could be seen as some progress. Instead they acknowledge it, but say that it’s not a problem, because Earth can cope, as climate change and high CO2 levels in the atmosphere are nothing new.

And they are right; of course Earth can cope with the minimum of 4 degrees warming that seems now unavoidable. I have full faith that the planet will continue to thrive, even if we triple CO2 in the atmosphere (we are for sure going to double it). And even if the planet warms by 10 degrees, Earth will be fine.

Only we won’t.

Let’s look at global warming first. Earth has been warmer than this before, say the deniers. Yes, it has. Earth was warmer during the dinosaur age, about 3 degrees warmer. Cosy hu?

Well, the temperature increase was not evenly spread, with the polar regions being up to 7 degrees warmer. No permafrost, no snow. Sea levels were a whopping 120 metres higher than today. Most of Europe, Australia and South America were underwater (in the shape of a different continent, mind).  The climate was extremely arid, so that only ferns and conifers were able to thrive. There was extreme drought.

And what about CO2 levels, which are estimated to have been up to seven times as high as they are now? Again, Earth was able to cope. But there were no trees, nor would any of our modern food staples have been able to survive. Seas were extremely acidic, with entirely different types of species roaming the planet.

If these were present conditions, Earth would be fine and lizards would be having one hell of a time. Only humans would be severely limited, if not unable to survive because of lack of food, shelter and reasonable temperature conditions.

So how about recent climate change then? I hear a lot about the medieval warm period, a time between about 900 and 1100 when it was so warm that wine was being grown in England and Greenland’s coast was largely ice-free, so that Viking settlers gave the country its rather peculiar name.

The medieval warm period was only 0.5 degrees warmer than today. Half a degree! And it was such a different picture from what we have today.

In the past 100 years we have managed to warm the planet by 0.7 degrees. The climate machine reacts slowly, but already we see Greenland’s ice sheet melting, and drought returning to Britain.

If 0.5 degrees over 300 years made such profound changes, then what are 3 degrees over 100 years going to do to the planet?

Well, let’s not worry. Earth will cope.

Only, the age of humans may be drawing to a rather interesting end.

Greenhouse gas concentrations reach record

World Meteorological Organization warns that greenhouse gas concentrations have reached 390 parts per million in 2011, that’s 140% more than the pre-industrial level of 280 parts per million. Link

The ugly truth: never before has the greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere risen that quickly. Never.

Yes, it has been that high, and higher, before, but then there were no people, no polar bears and no oak trees, just tiny bacterial floating about in boiling puddles. Not the best future I can envisage…

UPDATE: Message from Friends of the Earth:

Friends of the Earth’s International climate campaigner Asad Rehman said:

“This report is a stark warning that cannot be ignored – nations must take urgent and comprehensive action to slash emissions to avert a climate disaster.

“The clock is ticking but there’s still time to act – countries meeting in Doha next week must agree a clear course of action to tackle climate change before it is too late.

“Current EU plans are hopelessly inadequate – its proposals to cut emissions by 20 per cent of 1990 levels have already been met.

How clean is your house’s international trade record?

As a western European country, the UK might pride itself in its efforts to lower emissions. And there has been success on this front. Carbon emissions in Great Britain have fallen since 2008, following a steady increase for over 100 years in line with industrialisation (early data is estimated, of course).

This is cause for celebration, and the UK is not alone in its success. All across western Europe, CO2 emissions are falling. Europe takes its commitment to the Kyoto Protocol seriously.

Or does it?

There is, in fact, a hidden caveat, and that is international trade. Western countries are not just getting “cleaner” because they make a greater effort of reducing emissions. No, they have also been very successful at outsourcing emissions to poorer, far away countries.

Think about the worst emission sectors. Housing actually is responsible for the most emissions in an average country, but right behind that comes industry. Within industry, heavy industries such as metal manufacturing and mining come first. Then we have chemical industries and other manufacturing, quickly followed by agriculture. Trailing the list are paper production and food manufacturing.

Now think about it – how much of this does actually happen in your country? And how much do we import? And what about the emissions produced to make our goods? How high are they, and how to they add up?

International carbon emission flows

Check out the map above (from Carbontrust.com). You see what I am trying to get at? This shows the “journey” of emissions, meaning the CO2 produced by the production of goods, and where those goods are going.

So you can see what’s going on. A large part of the apparent emission reduction in the west is actually more an emission displacement. Emissions still happen, they just happen conveniently in other places. Which means that we, as Europeans, can proudly pat our on backs for the good work we’ve done on lowering our CO2, whilst pointing a finger at high-emission China and India. And we conveniently forget that the fast-growing emissions of China end up in our house as laptops, clothes pegs and shampoo.

As the following diagram shows, when so-called consumption-based emissions are included in the picture, the UK’s total emissions nearly double!

UK emissions (dark blue) plus consumption-based emissions (grey)

I believe it is very important to include outsourced emissions in overall calculations. Otherwise it will be too easy for countries to talk themselves out of lowering emissions by pointing at past “success”. And it is unfair to blame developing countries for their high emissions, when these emissions are ending up over here as cheap goods. Rather, a fairer and more inclusive picture of emissions must be developed, so we know what we really emit, and how we can really make a difference by consuming less.