The target of 1 trillion tonnes of CO2 is part of the discussion underway in Poland at COP 19. The delegates want to get a treaty in place by 2020 which all nations will sign when the Kyoto Treaty expires. The new treaty will demand two things. Reparations for the developing nations for the “damage” resulting from global warming that the developed nations are responsible for and an agreement by which CO2 emissions are dramatically reduced. (Click on charts to enlarge.)
The developed nations had agreed to supply $30 billion in the period of 2010-2012. Five nations–US, Germany, Norway, UK and Japan—gave a total of $27 billion. The desired treaty will include vast sums of money to be transferred between developed and less developed countries. There was a study done of how much money would be needed to accomplish the objective of never letting the atmospheric CO2 exceed 1 trillion tonnes and the number was $5.7 trillion. Not all of this is transfer money. Much of it would go for changes to the global energy structure.
The total allowable atmospheric CO2 is, by their calculations, set at one trillion tonnes. That is a very suspect target number as their computers predict that the global temperature will rise 2C as a result of the GHG effect when the 1 trillion tonnes are reached. Because their computers have been so spectacularly wrong, why anyone would want to place that much certainty based upon a computer number is a mystery. The AR5 did acknowledge that the “positive feed back” adjustment used by the computers has been lowered. But they did not report how much they lowered it. Nature does not like positive feedbacks generally speaking—they are rare, so why should we believe this invented one for which they have never been able to show the evidence.
In a recent POD cast from the London based Organization for Development Institute, the Head of Climate Change for ODI said that to achieve the no-more-than 1trillion tonnes, the nations of the world would have emit no more than 1 tonne per person. Here is how he, Tom Mitchell, expressed it:
“Now the point is that then there’s this budget left, and what are we going to do with it. Really, Warsaw is in some ways about the discussion about that budget. People for a long time have said that we’ve got to recognise that in the past some countries have emitted a lot more than others; certainly, the US and the European Union countries have emitted a lot more than others – but China and India are fast catching up in terms of total emissions. But the way I’d like to look at it is actually per capita, per head how much are we emitting. And certainly in the US, Australia, Canada and Europe it’s well above eight, nine tonnes per capita. Whereas in China it’s much less; and in India it’s an even smaller number. And with China, I’d say how much of that emissions is actually yours in terms of how much we import from them.
I think what we know, though, is if we’re going to stay within this carbon budget we’ve actually got to reduce it down to something like less than one tonne per capita– which means we all need to become a country like the Philippines or Nicaragua, and we need to do that almost tomorrow. And I think that’s where the challenge is; which means that almost every country has a carbon debt. And that’s the way we need to approach the discussions”
Mitchell says that to not exceed 1 trillion tonnes every nation must reduce their use to a level of 1 tonne per capital and “..we need to do that almost tomorrow”.
Every rational discussion on a rapid turnover from fossil fuels to renewable fuels would indicate doing this will cause a mammoth collapse of the world’s economies. If you are a poor nation, when that happens you will have a lot of company—everybody will be poor.
According to data on the “Gapminder” the US per capita is 17 tonnes, the UK is 7.3, China is 6.8 and India is 1.8. When you look at the productivity as the measure, the US emits a 0.415 kg of CO2 per $ of GDP. The UK is 0.253, China is 0.929 and India is 0.55.
For another way to look at this, here are some numbers from the World Bank for the year 2012. The per capita GDP (using purchasing power parity) for the US is $49,965, the UK is $36,901, China is $9,235, India is $3,876, Philippines $4,410 and Nicaragua $ 4,072. Doubtful the citizens of the US and the UK, for example, wish to have lives comparable with those in the Philippines and Nicaragua.
So what’s to worry about? The myth that CO2 emissions will result in a catastrophic climate seems to be a few years from being completely disproved. The political class is what’s to worry about. One of the participants in the PODcast, Amal-Lee Amin, associate director of E3G, a non-profit organization promoting sustainable development had this to say: “I think we shouldn’t forget that the UNFCCC [UN framework convention on climate change], the convention is about creating international law and an international legal framework”.
Keep an eye out for the politicians that want to give the UN world governmental control and try to put a stop to them.
cbdakota
Climate Change Sanity 