Bristol's 'business as usual' future?

bristol | the environment | news report Thursday October 29, 2009 09:18 by Mell O

.......... It's up to us, they cannot be trusted with our planet!

I've been researching and looking at UWE courses to take in Bristol in order to learn more about the facts of climate change / global warming / climate destabilisation and likely effects.

Just looking at which course to take throws up some pretty scary stuff, this from UWE's Climate Change: Implications for the planning process course ...... "By 2100, as a consequence of global warming, global temperatures may have risen by up to 6.4 degrees Centigrade"

But it might be smarter to to save my money and time by researching and learning about Anthropogenic Global Warming independently!

UN climate chief says full global warming treaty impossible this year, but framework needed.
Reaching a final global warming treaty will be impossible this year, but the political ingredients of a deal must be settled at a conference in December, the U.N.'s top climate official said Wednesday.

"Time is running out," said Yvo de Boer, the secretary-general of the U.N. climate change secretariat. "We do not have another year to sit on our hands. The deal must be done in Copenhagen."

De Boer said the key to reaching an accord during the December conference in the Danish capital would be for wealthy countries to offer a financial package to help poorer countries adapt to inevitable climate changes and to shift toward low-carbon technologies for energy and development.

He called on the European Union, whose leaders begin a two-day summit Thursday in Brussels, to declare the EU's financial contribution, which he said would push developing countries to announce their own program for limiting the growth of greenhouse gas emissions.

"Money is the oil that encourages commitments and drives action," de Boer said in a conference call with reporters from his office in Bonn, Germany.

At least $10 billion (euro6.8 billion) should be earmarked for developing countries immediately, he said. He welcomed a call by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown for Europe to offer euro10 billion ($15 billion) in upfront financing.

Eventually, hundreds of billions of dollars must be spent annually to avert scientific predictions of potentially catastrophic changes in sea levels, weather patterns and water resources.

Negotiators meet next week in Barcelona, Spain, for a final five-day session before the Copenhagen meeting opens Dec. 7. The Copenhagen talks are meant to conclude an intense two-year negotiating process over how industrial countries and developing nations will cooperate to control man-made carbon emissions.

"It is physically impossible to finalize all the details of a treaty in Copenhagen," de Boer said. But the Copenhagen meeting must agree on the "political essentials that make a long-term response to climate change clear, possible, realistic and well-defined."

The finer points of a treaty should be concluded within one year, he said, so that it is ready to take effect in 2012, when parts of the Kyoto Protocol expire. The Kyoto accord, signed in 1997 in Japan, took eight years to finish and ratify and required 37 industrial nations to cut carbon emissions by an average 5 percent from 1990 levels by 2012. The United States rejected Kyoto as unfair and harmful to the U.S. economy.

De Boer listed four critical elements of a Copenhagen agreement: setting emission reduction targets for industrial countries, securing commitments by developing countries to slow emissions growth, establishing hard figures of funding for poor countries and creating of an institution to manage those funds.

U.N. scientists say the world's total carbon emissions should peak within five to 10 years and then rapidly decline to avert the worst consequences of climate change.

Developing countries, blaming the industrial world for creating the problem by pumping fossil fuel emissions into the air for 150 years, demand the wealthy countries trim emissions by at least 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2020, and by 80 to 95 percent by mid-century.

So far, pledges by industrial countries fall short of the minimum goal of a 25 percent cut by 2020.

Denmark's Climate Minister Connie Hedegaard, who will chair the December conference, said any deal should be legally binding.

People worldwide "expect us to make a binding deal," she told reporters in Copenhagen.

Developing countries like India and China have said they would reduce the growth of carbon emissions, but are reluctant to accept binding commitments in a treaty. The United States and some industrial countries also have suggested loosening the legal nature of the emissions targets set by the pact.

Hedegaard said the agreement should be "binding in the sense that it not only binds the individual minister or government, but is binding the country"

And This from the Met Office: Mapping Climate Impacts.

A new map illustrating the global consequences of failing to keep temperature change to under 2 °C was launched today by the UK Government, in partnership with the Met Office.

The map was developed using the latest peer-reviewed science from the Met Office Hadley Centre and other leading impact scientists. The poster highlights some of the impacts that may occur if the global average temperature rises by 4 °C above the pre-industrial climate average.

Ahead of December’s international climate change talks in Copenhagen, the Government is aiming for an agreement that limits climate change as far as possible to 2 °C. Increases of more than two degrees will have huge impacts on the world.

The poster shows that a four degree average rise will not be spread uniformly across the globe. The land will heat up more quickly than the sea, and high latitudes, particularly the Arctic, will have larger temperature increases. The average land temperature will be 5.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels.

The impacts on human activity shown on the map are only a selection of those that may occur, and highlight the severe effects on water availability, agricultural productivity, extreme temperatures and drought, the risk of forest fire and sea-level rise

Agricultural yields are expected to decrease for all major cereal crops in all major regions of production. Half of all Himalayan glaciers will be significantly reduced by 2050, leading to 23% of the population of China being deprived of the vital dry season glacial melt water source.

The Foreign Secretary, David Miliband said: “We cannot cope with a four degree world. This map clearly illustrates the scale of the challenge facing us today — climate change is a truly global problem that needs a global solution and it is a solution we have within our grasp.

“But to tackle the problem of climate change, all of us — foreign ministries, environment ministries, treasuries, departments of defence and all parts of government and societies — must work together to keep global temperatures to two degrees. It is only by doing this that we can minimise the huge security risks presented by a future four degree world.”

Ed Miliband, Energy and Climate Change Secretary said: “This map shows that the stakes couldn’t be any higher at the Copenhagen talks in December. Britain’s scientists have helped to illustrate the catastrophic effects that will result if the world fails to limit the global temperature rise to two degrees. With less than 50 days left before agreement must be reached, the UK’s going all out to persuade the world of the need to raise its ambitions so we get a deal that protects us from a four degree world.”

Vicky Pope, Head of Climate Change Advice at the Met Office, said: “If emissions continue at the current rate the global average temperature are likely to rise by 4 °C by the end of this century or even substantially earlier. The science tells us that this will have severe and widespread impacts in all parts of the world, so we need to take action now to reduce emissions to avoid water and food shortages in the future.”