Countries still bicker as greenhouse gases rise

FRANK McDONALD, Environment Editor

PREVIEW  : Record CO2 emissions provide grim backdrop to key UN climate talks in Bonn beginning today

NEW FIGURES showing that greenhouse gas emissions from world energy generation reached all-time record levels in 2010 should serve as a “stark warning to governments” that they must work harder to achieve a global agreement on how to tackle climate change, according to UN climate chief Christiana Figueres.

The latest estimate by the International Energy Agency showed that energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions last year were at their highest level in history, following a brief dip in 2009 due to the global financial crisis and economic recession in developed countries.

Contrary to expectations that emissions would continue to fall as a result of the recession, a record 30.6 gigatonnes of CO2 poured into the atmosphere last year. “I am very worried. This is the worst news on emissions,” one senior agency official told the Guardian.

Dr Fatih Birol, the agency’s chief economist, said it was a “wake-up call” for the international community. Unless “bold and decisive” action was taken very soon, he warned that it would be “extremely challenging” to limit the rise in global temperatures at two degrees.

Figueres said the estimate for 2010 was “the inconvenient truth of where human-generated greenhouse gas emissions are projected to go [under a “business-as-usual” scenario] without much stronger international action now and into the future”. The warnings came as negotiators representing almost 190 countries began to gather in Bonn for yet another round of talks that begin today and are due to last two weeks. They aim to lay the groundwork for the next major UN climate change conference in Durban at the end of this year.

Figueres, who is executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, said its signatories needed to do more to avoid “dangerous” global warming. “I won’t hear that this is impossible – governments must make it possible,” she added.

They needed to strengthen the international framework to allow nations to make deeper emissions cuts and also to agree on “effective designs” for new institutions to aid developing countries – the green climate fund, technology mechanism and adaptation committee.

Atmospheric carbon, man made Co2 measurement problems

Plants absorb more C12 than C13 (by about 2%), - the C12 and C13 are isotopes of Co2 - same 'function', different atomic weights; Plants are ‘deficient’ in C13, and so, by implication, given what fossil fuel is made out of, so should be the fossil fuel.... Therefore; if in the air C12 is increasing, compared to C13, we are burning fossil fuel more, and from that we can derive the amount of Co2 we are pumping into the atmosphere. Bingo, we did it! C4 metabolism plants absorb more C13 than do C3 metabolism plants. Basically C4 plants are grasses, and grasses grow fast and include a lot of farmed field crops (like wheat). So we grow more C4 plants, the C13 goes down and the C12/13 ratio is effected in the same way as fossil fuel.... The C12/C13 ratio varies in the fossil fuel source used (i.e coal and oil), see this paper .... Bacteria make methane with even less C13 in it than natural gas, after oxidization.

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