THE COPENAGHEN CLIMATE CHANGE CONFERENCE? A BIG FIASCO

The agreement among the head of states and governments (the small capital letter is needed) reached at the Climate Change Conferenze in Copenagher is a no-agreement. I have never seen a usefuless document like that. The agreement is composed of 12 clauses, for a total of only 3 pages (the Kyoto protocol and the Montreal Agreement have respectively 18 and 45 pages plus annexes) and two annexes COMPLETELY VOIDS, without a single word !! If we would not speak about a planetary problem, we could joke by telling that there was more participating nations than the rows written in the document. Let perform a short analysis of the agreement.
In the first clause, the document underlines that the climate change is a challenge and that, to avoid anthropogenic problems, the long term cooperation among the nations shall be enhanced (an obvious recommendation). The document also recognizes (fortunately) the scientific point of vies that the temperature increasing should (please, not the conditional) be under 2 Celsius degree. What else? In the second clause, all agree (fortunately) that deep cuts in the emission are required, with a “ view to reduce global emissions so as to hold the increase in global temperature below 2 degrees Celsius”, but the nations “should cooperate in achieving the peaking of GLOBAL AND NATIONAL EMISSIONS AS SOON AS POSSIBLE” (the capital letters are mine). Two things are sure: the greenhouse gas emission will increase and we don’t know for how long time. Moreover, for the developing countries it is recognized that “the time frame for peaking will be longer “. The problem is that in the developing countries list there is also the China, the main CO2 emitter with the USA. And what about if Chine becomes a developed country? It would still be authorized to emit as a developing nations? This is a non-sense clause. In the third clause, the countries indicate that are required “Enhanced action and international cooperation on adaptation ….. to ensure the implementation of the Convention by enabling and supporting the implementation of adaptation actions aimed at reducing vulnerability and building resilience in developing countries, … especially least developed countries, small island developing States and Africa. “ This is a non sense either, at least for the islands. How can save the small islands from the sea level increasing? Building fortress around the islands and destroying their value? Anoter non-sense in the agreement is the division in nations that accept to cut the emissions, indicating the quantity of their 2020 emission reduction, and nations that, on the contrary, will implement some not well defined “mitigation actions”, not subject to international control: this nation will only notify (to who is not written) their emission. In other words, some nations would be induced to distort their data of the emission. The agreements end with same clauses dealing with the money to developing countries (30 billion of dollars in the time frame 2010-2012 with the goal to mobilize jointly 100 billion dollars per year by 2020. What we can say? The risk is that, with this agreement, nothing will happen. The scientific community via the l’International Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assesment Report, indicates that the temperature trend, in the last 25 years, has been of a 0.17 Celsius degree increase. Therefore, in order to comply with the agreement, it would be sufficient to maintain the emission growth from 1993 to today. The developing countries (China first of all) could try to increase their emission in spite of the emission decrease of the developed countries. Moreover, the small islands asked to have a CO2 concentration of 350 ppm. The problem is that, with the current trends, the IPCC indicates an increase of CO2 emission equal to 1.4 ppm per year and, therefore, the CO2 concentration in 2020 will be largely more than 400 ppm, with problems of submersions of the small islands. The agreement is distressing, it was only a theater for the head of nations and governments. The only serious voice has been, for me, the California Governor Schwarzenegger (a right party exponent), who said that no agreement is possible without a bottom-up involvement: not only governments but also NGOs, Regions, People, Society. Those are words that would induce the world leader to re-think their role and their political view.

THE POOR RESULT OF THE US PROPOSAL IN COPENAGHEN

Finally, something of official is known in Copenaghen. The USA proposes a cut of 17% of the greenhouse gas by 2020 and give 10 billion of dollars to the developing countries for the technologies. What would be the environmental impact of this data? Minimum. Let’s calculate the temperature reduction if a reduction of 17% of the CO2 only would occur: since the US proposal deal with the 17% of all the greenhouse gases, the temperature reduction will be less than the value that we will obtain for CO2. Let’s calculate the value. The emission of CO2 for 2020, if all the countries would follow the US in the 17% of reduction, would be 48464 millions of metric tons, while in 2006 the value was 58319 (see previous post). Figure 1 shows the emission breakdown and the difference between 2020 end 2006 emissions: the difference is so small that I will not show on the figure.

In the previous post, we have seen that with the hypothesis of of 40% (for rich countries) -30% (for emerging countries) CO2 emission reduction , the emission level would have been the same of 1984. With the scenario of 17% reduction, the value of emission are those of 1998. The concentration of CO2 for that year was 366.50 ppm, accordiong to the Mauna Loa data. Therefore , if we apply the same calculation of the first post(see box below) , we obtain a decrease of temperature in 2020 (w.r.t. 2006) of 0.17 celsius degree. But, since in the US proposal the 17% of emission is related to ALL THE GREENHOUSE GAS, the reduction of the CO2 will be lower than that value, and the temperature decrease will be lower of 0.17 degree. A POOR RESULT!!! This proposal is insufficient and is in contrast with the request of the small island state, wich required an emission of CO2 of 350 ppm by 2020: that request was satisfied with the scenario of 40% reduction of CO2 emission (see previous post). Mr Obama, please: cut the emission of the 40% percentage, and think to the future of your daughters (also).

CLIMATE CHANGE ESTIMATES OF THE DRAFT COPENAGHEN AGREEMENT

Some news, reported in Italy by Sky Tg24, describes an UN draft agreement proposing the following: 1) the “rich countries” shall reduce the CO2 emissions in the range of 20-40 % by 2020; 2) the developing countries shall reduce the CO2 emission in the range of 15%-30%; 3) all the nations shall cooperate to decrease the CO2 emission of 75%-90% by 2050. In this blog, I will provide an emission analysis and an estimate of the temperature reduction in 2020 in case the UN proposal should be accepted. Elaborating the International Energy Annual 2006 data of the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the total 2006 anthropic CO2 emission was 58391 metric tons. If we subdivide the emission for each continent, we obtain what is show in figure 1.



North America, Asia & Oceania contributes for more than 62% to the CO2 emission, while Europe and Eurasia contribute togheter for a little bit more than North America. The following table shows the relevant 2006 emissions. USA emits the 85% of its continent emission, while





China, India, Japan e South Korea emit more than 80% of the Asia & Oceania emission. Russia emits around 66% of the Eurasia emission. Europe performs better: the four main countries emit only the 49% of the Old Continent emissions. To calculate the temperature reduction in case of the best scenario (reduction of 40% for “rich” countries and 30% of developing countries) , let’s calculate first the emissions in this scenario. Let’s assume that the countries which will perform a 40% reduction are the following: all the European Countries, Japan, Russia and North America. With this hypothesys, we obtain the values in fig. 2.


The total value of the CO2 anthropomorphic emissions will be 37721 million of tons, with a reduction of near 35% w.r.t. the 2006 emissions. In this scenario, the pollution percentage are equal to the 2006 percentages. First of all, in ordert to estimate the temperature change, let’s note that the value in the 2020 CO2 emissions is near equal to the global emissions in 1984 (38338 million of metric tons, see figure 3).



Let assume that the CO2 distribution among ocean, atmosphere and biosphere is the same. In this way, we can assume that the percentage of CO2 in atmosphere in 2020 will be the same of 1984. The Mauna Loa data shows that the CO2 concentration values in the atmosphere in the 1984 and 2006 are 344.41 ppm and 381.85 ppm respectively. Therefore, for the hypothesis, the C2020 O2 concentration will be 344.41 ppm. After some calculations (see the box) , we obtain





that the temperature, due to the deacrease of the CO2 concentration, will deacreas of 0.44 degree (assuming, according to IPCC AR, that a double of the CO2 concentration will have the effect of increase the temperatore of 3 degree) . The temperature value is low: a decrease of near half degree in 14 years. However, since the temperature trend in the last year has been to increase of 0.117 degree per decade, the 0.44 decrease is a good change in the trend. Moreover, this results show that the scenario proposed by UN could reflect the value of 350 ppm that, according to some news, the Association for the Small Island States and some other countries have requested, and should also satisfy the rich or “potentially rich” countries, since they maintain their developing percentage. However, I see a lot of unknows: how to arrive to a decreas of 2 degree and, in particular, which plans will be used to reach that goal of a decrease of 90% of CO2 emissions by 2050? Moreover, the percentage of the CO2 emission in 2020 for each continent will be, according to our analysi, the same of 2006. This imply the same distribution of people, and the same energetic needs. What about in case of migration due to the current climate change? How the developing countries will obtain the technologies to decrease the CO2 emissions? Will they immediately decrease the CO2 emissions? If the countries do not act in this direction, the obtained values will be very optimistics. In other words, the definition of the agreement requirement is not sufficient: the countries shall undertake to act immediately, whitout wait long acting times that will nullify the positive effect of the choice.