Global Warming Un Foundation Report

Science Panel Outlines Roadmap for Reducing Risks from Climate Change

UN Foundation

February 27, 2007

It staggers my imagination to read such an incredibly weak and ineffective report summary. When has so much money been spent to tell the public very little more than what they already know? The most profound lack is the complete blindness to what we all know and most will not face and that is that we must radically and quickly change our whole way of life. Huge economic sacrifices must be borne and industrial expansion, must be halted immediately. These radical changes must occur in all walks of life; especially: transportation, transnational shipments of unseasonal food, sweatshop labour of industrial goods for a free trade economy, rainforest destruction, millions of cattle for unnecessary meat protein that emit tons of methane, (each kg of methane warms the Earth 23 times as much as the same mass of CO2.) and a minimum-dig, organic fertiliser farming system which eliminates leaving exposed farmland contaminated with tons of ammonium nitrate chemical fertiliser. (per unit of weight, nitrous oxide has 296 times the effect of carbon dioxide (CO2) for producing global warming) And this is just for starters.
Please find below a summary of measures recommended and my comments:


• The technology exists to seize significant opportunities around the globe to reduce emissions and provide other economic, environmental and social benefits, including meeting the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals. To do so, policy makers must immediately act by:
• Improving efficiency in the transportation sector through measures such as vehicle efficiency standards, fuel taxes, and registration fees/rebates that favor purchase of efficient and alternative fuel vehicles.

*********This is entirely too weak and virtually useless. We are looking at plans for road expansion. Is this preparation for fewer vehicles? Fee rebates? Just consider how many years it will take to make a significant impact with fee rebates. And what about air travel? "One short haul flight produces roughly the same amount of the global warming gas as three months worth of driving a 1.4 litre car."
"Record demand for cheap flights has resulted in 21 (mostly regional) airports publishing expansion plans in the last 5 years. They have been spurred on to do so by the Government’s plans to raise plane passenger numbers from 200 million in 2003 to 500 million by 2030." 28 February, The Ecologist. What political party is going to cancel this? ************• Improving design and efficiency of commercial and residential buildings through building codes, standards for equipment and appliances, incentives for property developers and landlords to build and manage properties efficiently, and financing for energy-efficiency investments.

******This implies business as usual with energy savings. We need drastic measures, not slow adaptation. ("The global atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide has increased from a pre-industrial value of about 280 ppm to 379 ppm3 in 2005. The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide in 2005 exceeds by far the natural range over the last 650,000 years (180 to 300 ppm) as determined from ice cores.") China is building coal-fired generators by the hundreds and is dedicated to unlimited industrial expansion. Neither they nor the Us signed the Kyoto Protocol. This is just one example and one country. Has the United States pledged to halt expansion of energy use? ********************

• Expanding the use of biofuels through energy portfolio standards and incentives to growers and consumers.
*******The Ecologist has published a wonderfully thorough examination of biofuels. Please find below an edited partial version:
19 February, 2007

Is Biofuel a solution or an even bigger problem?

Biofuels - facts and fiction
The Ecologist

Claim 1: You get more out than you put in

For more than 15 years, David Pimentel, Professor of Ecology and Agriculture at Cornell University in New York, and his colleague, Professor Tad Patzek at Berkeley, have published peer-reviewed research showing that biofuels give out less energy when burnt than was used in their manufacture.

By using a ‘cradle-to-grave’ approach – measuring all the energy inputs to the production of ethanol from the production of nitrogen fertiliser, through to the energy required to clean up the waste from bio-refineries – they have shown that while it takes 6,597 kilocalories of nonrenewable energy to produce a litre of ethanol from corn, that same litre contains only 5,130 kilocalories of energy – a 22 per cent loss.(1) (1) (Pimentel, D & Patzek, T, 2005, ‘Ethanol Production Using Corn, Switchgrass, and Wood; Biodiesel Production Using Soybean and Sunflower’, Natural Resources Research, 14:1.)

Claim 2: It makes economic sense

In 2006, the American government handed out between $5.1 and $6.8 billion in ethanol subsidies. These include payments made to farmers, tax breaks given to refiners and payments made under carbon reduction programmes.(12) But instead of these subsidies finding their way into farmers’ pockets, they are instead swelling the accounts of several large biofuel manufacturers.(13) (Pimentel & Patzek, 2005:67.)


One company, Archer Daniel Midlands (ADM, one of the world’s largest agribusiness companies), accounted for nearly 28 per cent of the US ethanol industry in 2006.(14) According to attorney Arnold Reitze, Professor of Environmental Law and Director of the Environmental Life Programme at George Washington University Law School, every dollar of ADM’s profit has cost US taxpayers $30. To ensure the continuation of ethanol subsidies, the Renewable Fuels Association (of which ADM is a member) had reportedly contributed $772,000 to Republican coffers between 1991 and 1992.

Claim 3: It is the solution to our energy problems

Recent figures show that if high-yield bio-energy crops were grown on all the farmland on earth, the resulting fuel would account for only 20 per cent of our current demand.(19)(http://www.ecoworld.com/home/articles2.cfm?tid=380) The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) published research which shows that more than 70 per cent of Europe’s farmland would be required for biofuel crops to account for even 10 per cent of road transport fuel.

But there are more basic reasons why biofuels cannot be the answer to our energy problems. A normal petrol engine cannot run on more than a 15 per cent ethanol blend, and it is considered too expensive to modify a car after manufacture.(20,21) Given that the average life expectancy of a vehicle is 14 years,(22)9Asia Times Online, Beware the Ethanol Hype, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/HH01Dj01.html)
it would take approximately this long to replace the current petrol fleet. By 2021, however, it could already be too late to make a difference to serious global warming.(23)(23) Monbiot, 'Heat')

Claim 4: It's clean and safe

The biofuels ethanol and biodiesel are often referred to as ‘clean-burning’ fuels, and much has been made of their lower emissions of carbon monoxide. However, analyses of exhaust emissions from cars burning ethanol show an increase in nitrogen oxides, acetaldehyde and peroxy-acetyl-nitrate.(30)(Patzek, 2004:63.)

Likewise, cars burning biodiesel have been shown to emit higher levels of nitrogen oxides than those burning mineral diesel. Nitrous oxides are powerful greenhouse gases and can lead to the depletion of atmospheric ozone. At low levels they can react with VOCs and create low-level ozone, which can give rise to urban smog and respiratory problems.

When ethanol is blended with gasoline it makes the entire fuel more volatile. This means that it is more likely to evaporate, especially in the summer, through rubber and plastic parts of the fuel system. A study by the California Air Quality Board in 2004 found that blending ethanol with petrol increased fuel evaporation by 14 to 18 per cent.(31)(Hancock, 2005, cited by Patzek, 2004:63.) This means a higher quantity of hydrocarbon and nitrogen oxide emissions, as the fuel dissipates from vehicle tanks.

Mark Anslow is a reporter for The Ecologist

Biofuels is just NOT the answer************************

• Beginning immediately, designing and deploying only coal power-plant types that can be affordably retrofitted to capture and sequester CO2.

********I have no criticism of this possibility except two questions. Who decides what is affordable? At what cost is it not worth it?*****************

We need active timetables for a quick decrease in our standard of energy consumption NOW.
We need also to concentrate our research on what is causing the increased warming and not what is causing the increased carbon dioxide, especially when you consider that melting of the permafrost will release tons of methane, the ozone layer continues to be wrecked and most importantly, the 4th IPCC report contained the following paragraph that got absolutely no press coverage: "Global average sea level in the last interglacial period (about 125,000 years ago) was likely 4 to 6 m higher than during the 20th century, mainly due to the retreat of polar ice. Ice core data indicate that average polar temperatures at that time were 3 to 5°C higher than present, because of differences in the Earth’s orbit." So my question is: We know that we have destroyed significantly Gaia's land carbon dioxide absorption capabilities by wiping out trees. How much more global warming will occur as a result of non- anthropogenic, cyclic combination of planetary tilt, wobble and orbit? In other words what more interglacial warming will the orbital forcing (Milankovich cycles) cause? I don't believe we know and suggest we find out pronto. (plenty fast!)

Best wishes to all,
Sky McCain
2 March, 2007