GHG Concentration at Record Level: WMO

Brief History of Mankind

Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at record levels: the World Meteorological Organization (WMO)

The average mixing ratios of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) reached record level in 2009,WMO reported.

• CO2 concentrations ~ 386.8 ppm
• CH4 ~ 1,803 ppb
• N2O ~ 322.5 ppb

These values are greater than the corresponding atmospheric concentrations in pre-industrial times (~1750) by 38%, 158% and 19%, respectively.

In the twenty year period between 1990 and 2009, the combined radiative forcing—the balance between atmosphere’s incoming and outgoing radiation—for all persistent greenhouse gases increased by 27.5%, with CO2 accounting for about 80% of the increase, according to the NOAA Annual Greenhouse Gas Index.

Source: WMO GHG Bulletin

Carbon Dioxide (CO2)

Carbon dioxide is the single most important anthropogenic greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, contributing 63.54 %2 to the overall global radiative forcing. It is responsible for 85% of the increase in radiative forcing over the past decade and 83% over the last five years. For about 10 000 years before the industrial revolution, the atmospheric abundance of CO2 was nearly constant at ~ 280 ppm (ppm = number of molecules of the gas per million molecules of dry air). This level represented a balance among the atmosphere, the oceans and the biosphere. Since 1750, atmospheric CO2 has increased by 38%, primarily because of emissions from combustion of fossil fuels (8.7 Gt carbon in 2008, http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/), deforestation and landuse change. High-precision measurements of atmospheric CO2 beginning in 1958 show that the average increase in CO2 in the atmosphere (airborne fraction) corresponds to ~ 55% of the CO2 emitted by fossil fuel combustion. WMO

Source: WMO GHG Bulletin

Related Links:

• UAE, Australia, USA and Canada top list of polluters
• House Passes Emissions Bill
• New York Cognitive Dissonance
• World CO2 Emissions [2007 / 2008]
• Carbon Footprint of Your Dollar
• The Billionaires’ contribution to CO2 pollution

• CO2e

UAE, Australia, USA and Canada top list of polluters

Most Unethical Countries Worst Polluters

UAE, Australia, USA, Canada, Netherlands and Saudi Arabia are the worst CO₂ polluters: Report

The United Arab Emirates, Australia, the United States and Canada have the worst overall records for emitting carbon, based on their  current and historic emissions, says a report.

A new study, which rates 183 countries on their CO₂ emissions from energy use, has identified United Arab Emirates (UAE), Australia, USA, Canada, Netherlands and Saudi Arabia as the world’s six worst polluters in relation to CO₂ pollution.

UAE (1), Australia (2), USA (3), Canada (4), Netherlands (5) and Saudi Arabia (6) are the only countries rated by the report as ‘extreme risk’ because of their high CO₂ emissions from energy consumption.

“The poor performance of UAE and Saudi Arabia is reflective of a near 100% reliance on fossil fuels and their use of energy intensive desalination plants to produce drinking water. Saudi Arabia was the 11th highest global emitter in 2008 with 466 MtCO2. However, the desalination process that produces 70% of the country’s drinking water accounts for 50% of CO₂ emissions. UAE dropped 15 places from last year to take the bottom spot due to a huge 25% jump in its overall carbon output between 2006 and 2008 and a 20% rise in per capita emissions.  Maplecroft recognises that desalination is a positive way to address water security but high emissions underline the need to find more energy efficient innovations.” The report said. See full report.

Related Links:

• House Passes Emissions Bill

• New York Cognitive Dissonance
• World CO2 Emissions [2007 / 2008]
• Carbon Footprint of Your Dollar
• The Billionaires’ contribution to CO2 pollution

• CO2e

Congratulating India!

Kyoto Protocol Scratch Your ****

India Now Third Highest GHG Emitter

India has beaten Russia to become the world’s third largest GHG emitter.

The Pollution Horses of Apocalypse

Though the bronze medalist lags behind the top two worse emitters by a furlong.

1. The Gold Medalist: CHINA [with more than 23% of global emissions]
2. The Silver Medalist: USA [more than 22%]
3. The Bronze Medalist: INDIA [more than 5%]
4. Fourth Place: Russia [about 5%]

Related Links:

• CO2 forcing deadly changes in the oceans

• May Global Temperature Warmest on Record
• Ocean Accumulated Significant Heat Content Since 1993
• Verifiable Impacts of Climate Change (Part II)
• Verifiable Impacts of Climate Change Despite Dinosaurs

• Ocean Deserts Source of GHG
• North Atlantic Ocean Garbage Patch
• Back from the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch”
• WILD FACTS SERIES: Our Oceans Are Dying!

• Southern Ocean already losing ability to absorb CO₂
• Ocean Accumulated Significant Heat Content Since 1993
• How Big is Your CO2 Dome?
• 133,000,000 Wise Monkeys

• Carbon Footprint of Your Dollar

• Tourism: A Major Destructive Force Killing Oceans:Thousands of marine mammals, sea turtles, seabirds and others, are choked or poisoned each year by eating trash discarded in the ocean…

• Oceans, Where Life Started, Are Dying – Part V : Hundreds of thousands of tons of surplus chemical weapons including large quantities of arsenic, cyanide, mustard gas, sarin gas and VX nerve gas are dumped off the US Atlantic coast as well as off other countries. [And a number of nuclear weapons are lying down there, too!]

• Terrible Ocean Headlines : About one third of the world’s annual emissions of CO2 is absorbed by the surface of the oceans forming carbonic acid (ancient name acid of air or aerial acid), H₂CO_3, which is increasing the acidity of the oceans to as much as 7.7 pH in some areas off the California coast. [Pre-industrial (1700s) ocean pH: 8.179]

• Oceans, Where Life Started, Are Dying – Part IV : Researchers found evidence of corrosive water about 20 miles off the west coast of North America from Canada to Mexico.

• Human carbon emissions make oceans corrosive : ‘Carbon dioxide spewed by human activities has made ocean water so acidic that it is eating away at the shells and skeletons of starfish, coral, clams and other sea creatures …’

• The Eight Steps that Help Kill More of Our Fish : How Your Car’s Exhaust Emissions Helps Create Dead Zones and Kill Our Fish.

• Global warming could starve oceans of oxygen: study : Areas of the eastern Atlantic and Pacific Oceans with low amounts of dissolved oxygen have expanded in the past 50 years, apparently in line with rising temperatures.

• The Floating Toxic Garbage Island : A patch of garbage twice as large as the continental United States and dubbed the Great Pacific Garbage Patch floats in the middle of the Pacific Ocean in North Pacific Gyre.

• Oceans, Where Life Started, Are Dying – Part III : Tourism: The Most Destructive Human Activity After Warfare

• Oceans, Where Life Started, Are Dying – Part II : Major Problems: Fertilizer Runoff; Tourism; Coastal Developments [and Ocean Warming due to climate change]

• Oceans, Where Life Started, Are Dying – Part I : Our Oceans Are Now Dying!

• Dead Zones : Eutrophication—the overenrichment of water by nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus—has emerged as a leading water quality problem. This report identifies over 415 areas worldwide that are experiencing eutrophication symptoms, and there are significant information gaps in many regions. (Source: WRI)

How Could Pollution Possibly Harm You?

It’s NO longer science, NOT even common sense; it’s ‘corporment’ at its worst!

The Exponential Growth Economy Dilemma is Fast Shaping up

1. The only way to live in this world is through exponential growth economy.

2. Exponential growth economy is responsible for the deadly pollution and looming environmental collapse and extinction of human race.

Solution: Deny pollution’s role in the environmental collapse; sue EPA to prove the point.

Up to 20 states have filed suits against EPA asking U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. to review EPA’s finding that greenhouse gases endanger both human health and welfare. The finding, which was released in December 2009  (it was prompted by a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court ruling), enables the agency to regulate GHG emissions under the existing Clean Air Act.

States sue EPA to stop greenhouse gas rules

At least 15 U.S. states have sued the Environmental Protection Agency seeking to stop it from issuing rules controlling greenhouse gas emissions until it reexamines whether the pollution harms human health.

Florida, Indiana, South Carolina and at least nine other states filed the petitions in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, states said.

They joined petitions filed last month by Virginia, Texas and Alabama.

The Obama administration has long said it would attack greenhouse gas emissions with EPA regulation if Congress failed to pass a climate bill.

The EPA is set to issue regulations later this month that would require autos and light trucks to increase energy efficiency. That would trigger rules on large emitters like power plants requiring them to get permits showing they are using the best technology available to reduce emissions.

The state petitions call for the EPA to reopen hearings on the so-called “endangerment finding” the agency issued last year declaring the emissions dangerous to people.

“If EPA doesn’t reopen the hearings we will move forward to try to stop them from regulating greenhouse gases,” said Brian Gottstein, an assistant to Virginia’s Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli.

The states have complained that the EPA relied too heavily from reports by the U.N.’s climate science panel which included information that exaggerated the melting of Himalayan glaciers.

The EPA said it was confident it would withstand legal challenges on the issue. “The question of the science is settled,” spokeswoman Adora Andy said. The science “came from an array of highly respected, peer-reviewed sources from both within the United States and across the globe, and took into consideration hundreds of thousands of comments from members of the public, which were addressed in the finding,” she said.

Allison Wood, a lawyer at Hunton & Williams, said the suits could push some lawmakers to support the climate bill if they oppose EPA regulation and the legislation preempts the agency from taking action.

About the same number of states support the EPA. In January, 16 states including New York and California asked the court for permission to support the EPA in industry lawsuits seeking to stop the agency from regulating the gases from stationary sources like power plants and factories.

Copyright: Reuters – http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE62I4DP20100319

Make NO mistake: Preserving the lives of corporations is more important than preventing the extinction of human race! [Are they too stupid to matter?]

Related Links:

• British Govt Makes Another Straw Man

• 133,000,000 Wise Monkeys
• Google’s Top 10 List of ‘Holy Cows’
• Ten Climate Change Lies, Myths and Misconceptions

Background Links:

• EPA Declares PHE in Libby, Montana

• “Don’t worry, boss, I know what to say!”

• The things EPA capo won’t do!
• California Sues EPA on GHG Emissions
• Antienvironmental, Antisocial, Anti American!
• Friend of the Environment
• Shameful EPA slammed with yet another lawsuit

• Arnie Knows the Score!
• EPA Plays Piggy In the Middle
• The White House of Horror!!
• Disgrace, Disgrace, You’re Such an Ugly Disgrace …
• EPA official resigns citing Dow Chemical

Related EPA Links:

• Background page on Libby Asbestos Site
• Protect Your Family from Asbestos-Contaminated Vermiculite Insulation
• National Priorities List (NPL)

6 of One Fuel, Half Dozen of the Other

Needed a sophisticated new analysis to tell you?

More maize ethanol may boost greenhouse gas emissions

New economic analysis confirms that maize-based biofuel is unlikely to reduce global production of carbon dioxide

Ethanol plant in West Burlington, Iowa.

Public release
American Institute of Biological Sciences

In the March issue of BioScience, researchers present a sophisticated new analysis of the effects of boosting use of maize-derived ethanol on greenhouse gas emissions. The study, conducted by Thomas W. Hertel of Purdue University and five co-authors, focuses on how mandated increases in production of the biofuel in the United States will trigger land-use changes domestically and elsewhere. In response to the increased demand for maize, farmers convert additional land to crops, and this conversion can boost carbon dioxide emissions.

The analysis combines ecological data with a global economic commodity and trade model to project the effects of US maize ethanol production on carbon dioxide emissions resulting from land-use changes in 18 regions across the globe. The researchers’ main conclusion is stark: these indirect, market-mediated effects on greenhouse gas emissions “are enough to cancel out the benefits the corn ethanol has on global warming.”

The indirect effects of increasing production of maize ethanol were first addressed in 2008 by Timothy Searchinger and his coauthors, who presented a simpler calculation in Science. Searchinger concluded that burning maize ethanol led to greenhouse gas emissions twice as large as if gasoline had been burned instead. The question assumed global importance because the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act mandates a steep increase in US production of biofuels over the next dozen years, and certifications about life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions are needed for some of this increase. In addition, the California Air Resources Board’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard requires including estimates of the effects of indirect land-use change on greenhouse gas emissions. The board’s approach is based on the work reported in BioScience.

Hertel and colleagues’ analysis incorporates some effects that could lessen the impact of land-use conversion, but their bottom line, though only one-quarter as large as the earlier estimate of Searchinger and his coauthors, still indicates that the maize ethanol now being produced in the United States will not significantly reduce total greenhouse gas emissions, compared with burning gasoline. The authors acknowledge that some game-changing technical or economic development could render their estimates moot, but sensitivity analyses undertaken in their study suggest that the findings are quite robust.

Global warming worse than predicted: Surprised?

Our regular readers probably remember Thought for the Day: A 2009 Forecast AND

The most widely used phrase by ‘scientists’ in 2009 : ‘We were completely surprised!’

The first of the ‘surprises’ in 2009 is a BIG one!

Global Warming is occurring at a faster rate than scientists had predicted, according to a climate scientist.

“The consequence of that is we are basically looking now at a future climate that is beyond anything that we’ve considered seriously,” Chris Field, a climate scientist and a  member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, said on saturday.

Smoke billows from an iron and steel plant in Hefei, Anhui province December 9, 2007. All nations must do more to fight climate change, and rich countries must make deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the worst impacts, a draft proposal at United Nations talks said on Saturday. REUTERS/Jianan Yu (CHINA). Image may be subject to copyright.

Field reported that “the actual trajectory of climate change is more serious” than any previously predicted in the IPCC’s fourth assessment report named “Climate Change 2007.”

“He said recent climate studies suggested the continued warming of the planet from greenhouse gas emissions could touch off large, destructive wildfires in tropical rain forests and melt permafrost in the Arctic tundra, releasing billions of tons of greenhouse gasses that could raise global temperatures even more.” Reuters reported.

“There is a real risk that human-caused climate change will accelerate the release of carbon dioxide from forest and tundra ecosystems, which have been storing a lot of carbon for thousands of years,” Field said.

“We now have data showing that from 2000 to 2007, greenhouse gas emissions increased far more rapidly than we expected, primarily because developing countries, like China and India, saw a huge surge in electric power generation, almost all of it based on coal,” Field added.

Related Links:

• Stern Report: “a great toxic dump of doublespeak in truly Orwellian fashion”
• FEWW CO2e Links
• Burning Earth

325 words, 1 image, 3 links

Arctic Sea Ice: Likely Record-Low Volume

Arctic Sea Ice Down to Second-Lowest Extent; Likely Record-Low Volume – NSIDC

The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) says despite cooler temperatures and ice-favoring conditions, long-term decline of Arctic ice cover is continuing.

As previously reported, Arctic sea ice extent for 2008 melt season as measured by satellite was the second-lowest level since 1979, reaching the lowest point on September 14, 2008. Average sea ice extent over the month of September, a standard measure in the scientific study of Arctic sea ice, was 4.67 million square kilometers. The record monthly low was 4.28 million square kilometers set in September 2007.

The 2008 observation strongly reinforces the thirty-year downward trend in Arctic ice extent, NSIDC said. The 2008 low was 34% below the long-term September average for the 1979 to 2000 period and only 9% greater than the 2007 record low. The 2008 low was so far below the average, it forced the negative trend in September extent downward to –11.7 % per decade (from 10.7 %).

A comparison of ice age in September 2007 (left) and September 2008 (right) shows the increase in thin first-year ice (red) and the decline in thick multi-year ice (orange and yellow). White indicates areas of ice below ~50 percent, for which ice age cannot be determined. AVHRR, SMMR SSM/I, and IABP buoy data.
—From National Snow and Ice Data Center courtesy C. Fowler, J. Maslanik, and S. Drobot, University of Colorado at Boulder – High-resolution image

“The trend of decline in the Arctic continues, despite this year’s slightly greater extent of sea ice. The Arctic is more vulnerable than ever.” —NSIDC Lead Scientist Ted Scambos

Related Links:

• Arctic ice cover second-lowest on record
• NSIDC Arctic ice extent animation

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