G8 scientists tell Bush: Act now - or else...

[j_b]

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/story.jsp?story=645071

 

An unprecedented warning as global warming worsens

By Steve Connor, Science Editor

08 June 2005

 

 

An unprecedented joint statement issued by the leading scientific academies of the world has called on the G8 governments to take urgent action to avert a global catastrophe caused by climate change.

 

The national academies of science for all the G8 countries, along with those of Brazil, India and China, have warned that governments must no longer procrastinate on what is widely seen as the greatest danger facing humanity. The statement, which has taken months to finalise, is all the more important as it is signed by Bruce Alberts, president of the US National Academy of Sciences, which has warned George Bush about the dangers of ignoring the threat posed by global warming.

 

[...]

 

Lord May of Oxford, the president of the Royal Society, Britain's national academy of sciences, lambasted President Bush yesterday for ignoring his own scientists by withdrawing from the Kyoto treaty. "The current US policy on climate change is misguided. The Bush administration has consistently refused to accept advice of the US National Academy of Sciences ... Getting the US on board is critical because of the sheer amount of greenhouse gas emissions they are responsible for," Lord May said.

 

Between 1990 and 2002, the carbon dioxide emissions of the US increased by 13 per cent, which on their own were greater than the combined cut in emissions that will be achieved if all Kyoto countries hit their targets, he said.

 

"President Bush has an opportunity at Gleneagles to signal that his administration will no longer ignore the scientific evidence and act to cut emissions," Lord May said. "The G8 summit is an unprecedented moment in human history. Our leaders face a stark choice - act now to tackle climate change or let future generations face the price of their inaction.

 

"Never before have we faced such a global threat. And if we do not begin effective action now it will be much harder to stop the runaway train as it continues to gather momentum," he added

 

[...]

[tivoli_mike]

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/story.jsp?story=645071

 

An unprecedented warning as global warming worsens

By Steve Connor, Science Editor

08 June 2005

 

 

An unprecedented joint statement issued by the leading scientific academies of the world has called on the G8 governments to take urgent action to avert a global catastrophe caused by climate change.

 

The national academies of science for all the G8 countries, along with those of Brazil, India and China, have warned that governments must no longer procrastinate on what is widely seen as the greatest danger facing humanity. The statement, which has taken months to finalise, is all the more important as it is signed by Bruce Alberts, president of the US National Academy of Sciences, which has warned George Bush about the dangers of ignoring the threat posed by global warming.

 

[...]

 

Lord May of Oxford, the president of the Royal Society, Britain's national academy of sciences, lambasted President Bush yesterday for ignoring his own scientists by withdrawing from the Kyoto treaty. "The current US policy on climate change is misguided. The Bush administration has consistently refused to accept advice of the US National Academy of Sciences ... Getting the US on board is critical because of the sheer amount of greenhouse gas emissions they are responsible for," Lord May said.

 

Between 1990 and 2002, the carbon dioxide emissions of the US increased by 13 per cent, which on their own were greater than the combined cut in emissions that will be achieved if all Kyoto countries hit their targets, he said.

 

"President Bush has an opportunity at Gleneagles to signal that his administration will no longer ignore the scientific evidence and act to cut emissions," Lord May said. "The G8 summit is an unprecedented moment in human history. Our leaders face a stark choice - act now to tackle climate change or let future generations face the price of their inaction.

 

"Never before have we faced such a global threat. And if we do not begin effective action now it will be much harder to stop the runaway train as it continues to gather momentum," he added

 

[...]

 

cnn article about changing data

 

"WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- A White House official, who previously worked for the American Petroleum Institute, has repeatedly edited government climate reports in a way that downplays links between greenhouse gas emissions and global warming, The New York Times reported Wednesday."

[Mal_Con]

Don't worry he is on a mission from God to incinerate the world

[ChrisT]

j_b you might enjoy this article about energy conservation and alternatives being developed in Japan. It's what happens when a country is forced to import 96% of it's oil.

[rbw1966]

For crissakes, quit posting links to NYT articles. Not everyone is a subscriber. If you want to share with the class then cut and paste the article.

[Lionel_Hutz]

For crissakes, quit posting links to NYT articles. Not everyone is a subscriber. If you want to share with the class then cut and paste the article.

 

Yeah, 'cause its really hard to sign up for a free membership!!!

[ChrisT]

Sorry Rob - i was recently criticized for cutting and pasting. Here it is:

 

 

June 4, 2005

 

Japan Squeezes to Get the Most of Costly Fuel

By JAMES BROOKE

 

TOKYO, June 3 - Surging oil prices and growing concerns about meeting targets to cut greenhouse gases produced by burning fossil fuels have revived efforts around the world to improve energy efficiency. But perhaps nowhere is the interest greater than here in Japan.

 

Even though Japan is already among the most frugal countries in the world, the government recently introduced a national campaign, urging the Japanese to replace their older appliances and buy hybrid vehicles, all part of a patriotic effort to save energy and fight global warming. And big companies are jumping on the bandwagon, counting on the moves to increase sales of their latest models.

 

On the Matsushita appliance showroom floor these days, the numbers scream not the low, low yen prices, but the low, low kilowatt-hours.

 

A vacuum-insulated refrigerator, which comes with a buzzer if the door stays open more than 30 seconds, boasts that it will use 160 kilowatt-hours a year, one-eighth of that needed by standard models a decade ago. An air-conditioner with a robotic dust filter cleaner proclaims it uses 884 kilowatt-hours, less than half of what decade-old ones consumed.

 

"It's like squeezing a dry towel" for the last few drips, said Katsumi Tomita, an environmental planner for the Matsushita Electric Industrial Company, maker of the Panasonic brand and known for its attention to energy efficiency. "The honest feeling of Japanese people is, 'How can we do more?' "

 

A number of other affluent countries with few domestic energy resources of their own are responding in similar ways.

 

In Germany, where heating accounts for the largest share of home energy use, a new energy saving law has as its standard the "seven-liter house," designed to use just seven liters of oil to heat one square meter for a year, about one-third the amount consumed by a house built in 1973, before the first oil price shock. Three-liter houses - even one-liter designs - are now being built.

 

In Singapore, where year-round air-conditioning often accounts for 60 percent of a building's power bill, new codes are encouraging the use of things like heat-blocking window films and hookups to neighborhood cooling systems, where water is chilled overnight.

 

In Hong Kong, many more buildings now have "intelligent" elevator systems in which computers minimize unnecessary stops. Parking restrictions encourage bus and rail transit, and authorities are also pushing hybrid cars equipped with engines that shut down when idling.

 

Other countries, including the United States, the world's largest energy consumer by far, have lagged behind, but even American consumers are starting to turn their backs on big sport utility vehicles and looking at more fuel-efficient cars in response to higher gasoline prices.

 

But Japan is where energy consciousness probably reaches the highest levels. The country has the world's second-largest economy, but it produces virtually no oil or gas, importing 96 percent of its energy needs.

 

This dependence on imports has prodded the nation into tremendous achievements in improved efficiency. France and Germany, where government crusades against global warming have become increasingly loud, expend almost 50 percent more energy to produce the equivalent of $1 in economic activity. Britain's energy use, on the same measure, is nearly double; the United States nearly triple; and China almost eight times as much.

 

From 1973 to today, Japan's industrial sector nearly tripled its output, but kept its energy consumption roughly flat. To produce the same industrial output as Japan, China consumes 11.5 times the energy.

 

At JFE Holdings, Japan's second-largest steel company, plastic pellets made from recycled bottles now account for 10 percent of fuel in the main blast furnaces, reducing reliance on imported coal. Japanese paper mills are investing heavily in boilers that can be fueled by waste paper, wood and plastic. Within two years, half of the electricity used in the nation's paper mills is to come from burning waste.

 

Many easy steps were taken after the oil shocks of the 1970's. Now Japan is embarking on a new phase. Billions of dollars are being invested to reach a 2012 target of reducing Japan's emission of global warming gases to 6 percent below the 1990 level. These gases are released by burning oil, coal, and, to a lesser extent, natural gas - sources for about 81 percent of Japan's energy.

 

As host nation for the Kyoto Protocol on cutting greenhouse gases, Japan takes its commitment seriously. But it faces a big challenge. Figures released last month show Japan was 8.3 percent over the 1990 level for the fiscal year ended March 2004.

 

"We are now at the stage where we only save energy by investing in equipment," Mr. Tomita said of Matsushita's effort. "If we can collect money in three years, we invest."

 

With the Japanese prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, introducing its national campaign two months ago to meet the Kyoto targets, business is booming for energy service companies and consultants who advise companies on cutting energy bills.

 

But Japan's flattening of industrial energy consumption has not been matched in the transportation and residential sectors, where energy consumption has more than doubled since 1973, roughly pacing Japan's economic growth over the period.

 

Japan may be a mass transit nation, but now there is also a car for almost every Japanese household. Since 1970, the number of buses in Japan increased 23 percent, the number of trucks doubled, and the number of passenger cars increased more than sixfold, to 56 million.

 

With personal use accounting for the bulk of April's $6.4 billion bill for imported oil, Tokyo is trying to encourage greater efficiency by pushing fuel taxes even higher, lifting the pump price for gasoline to $4.70 a gallon, the highest in a decade.

 

During the 1990's, Japan's average fuel consumption per mile fell 13 percent. But since then, with more Japanese driving bigger cars, fuel efficiency growth has stalled.

 

Japan finds hope in the history of its refrigerators, which have doubled in size since 1981 as their energy use per liter has plunged 80 percent.

 

In hopes of working the same engineering magic on cars, Japan has extended its minicar tax breaks to hybrid cars - fuel-efficient vehicles that rely on a combination of a gasoline engine and an electric motor. Hybrid sales, while still relatively low in Japan, are growing fast. And in this environment,Toyota and Honda have become the world leaders in hybrid technology.

 

"We're entering the age of hybrid automobiles," Hiroyuki Watanabe, Toyota's senior managing director for environmental affairs, recently told journalists at the 2005 World Exposition Aichi, in Nagoya. "I want every car to have a hybrid engine."

 

The next energy-savings battleground is the home front.

 

After $1.3 billion in subsidies, about 160,000 homes have solar power systems. Solar power remains two to three times as expensive as the electricity supplied to households. But homeowners say that with time, the "free" electricity pays for the high installation costs. And the government is willing to devote taxes to the effort, preferring to spur rural employment through solar power installations to help reduce payments for foreign oil, coal and gas.

 

Although residential subsidies may be phased out, a Japanese government plan calls for increasing solar power generation 15-fold during this decade.

 

Japanese companies, notably Sharp, Kyocera, Mitsubishi and Sanyo, produce about half the world's photovoltaic solar panels, a roughly $10-billion-a-year market. With large commercial projects like a 4,740-panel generator going online at a filtration plant in Nara last month, Japan produces more than the combined total of the next biggest, Germany and the United States.

 

Prime Minister Koizumi is a political conservative who believes that saving oil starts at home. Visitors to his official residence here walk past a boxy hydrogen fuel-cell generator, a prototype installed by Matsushita in April to power the residence and educate the nation's leadership.

 

"Fuel cells are the key to the door of a new era in which we utilize hydrogen as an energy source," Mr. Koizumi told Parliament in 2002. "We intend to put them into practical use within three years, either as power sources for automobiles or households."

 

His government has set goals for cutting power consumption even further for the four main household appliances: televisions, 17 percent; personal computers, 30 percent; air- conditioners, 36 percent; and refrigerators, 72 percent. Engineers have been attacking the problem of the power used by appliances on standby, a drainage that can account for 5 percent to 10 percent of a household's energy consumption.

 

Still, while energy efficiency is seen as a patriotic act, many consumers in Japan are reluctant to part with working appliances, made with the Japanese ingenuity and attention to detail that ensure they will last for decades.

 

"The problem we are facing is over how much we induce consumers to trade in their appliances for more energy-efficient ones," Hajimi Sasaki, chairman of the NEC Corporation, a major appliance maker, said in April at a news conference billed as "Proposals Aimed at Overcoming Global Warming."

 

"I drive a hybrid car, and last fall I put heat-cutting film on some of our windows," he said. "And I intend to buy a new refrigerator."

 

Petra Kappl contributing reporting for this article from Frankfurt,

 

Wayne Arnold from Singapore and

 

Alyssa Lau from Hong Kong.

[bunglehead]

Come on, people! Everybody knows that Global warming is liberal hooey. Along with all the glaciers receding, etc.

(Kidding.) I think we're fucked. We'll just keep consuming more and more until we end up in a "Soylent Green" type of situation.

[rbw1966]

Some of us don't care to increase the amount of spam we receive.

 

Thanks for posting the article Chris. Interesting.

[ChrisT]

Maybe I'm a naive optimist but it seems that we could do way more as a nation in terms of simple conservation and developing alternative energy sources. I heard on the news last night (yes I'm a news junkie) that Oregon is building its first bio-diesel plant down in Salem with the goal of producing a million gallons per year. Why aren't we doing more of this? Frustrating that we're actually lagging behind the rest of the world (on this and many other issues as well).

[tivoli_mike]

Maybe I'm a naive optimist but it seems that we could do way more as a nation in terms of simple conservation and developing alternative energy sources. I heard on the news last night (yes I'm a news junkie) that Oregon is building its first bio-diesel plant down in Salem with the goal of producing a million gallons per year. Why aren't we doing more of this? Frustrating that we're actually lagging behind the rest of the world (on this and many other issues as well).

 

Because "Dino-diesel" and gasoline are still relatively cheaper ( even at $55 a barrell) As crude becomes more expensive then other options become attractive.

[Fairweather]

The soot from bio-diesel has been implicated in glacial recession in places as remote as Greenland.

[Double_E]

.... energy conservation and alternatives being developed in Japan. It's what happens when a country is forced to import 96% of it's oil.

 

 

yeah no kidding huh? we could all learn a lot from Japan.. they have to conserve ALL their resources, each and every one, just from having so many millions squeezed onto a country the size of like... Montana I think.

 

one cool thing I've heard they do is that most(?) Japanese bathrooms have pipes which fill up the toilet tanks with the grey water from the sink drain.

[rbw1966]

The Oregonian reported that a biodiesel plant was being built in North Portland.

[mtnsavy]

The soot from bio-diesel has been implicated in glacial recession in places as remote as Greenland.

 

Where did you hear this?

[selkirk]

The soot from bio-diesel has been implicated in glacial recession in places as remote as Greenland.

 

wtf? source please. Somehow I can't imagine enough bio-diesel has been burned in the history of the world to do jack shit.

[foraker]

The soot from bio-diesel has been implicated in glacial recession in places as remote as Greenland.

 

wtf? source please. Somehow I can't imagine enough bio-diesel has been burned in the history of the world to do jack shit.

 

 

Ummmm, I'd say someone's trolling and not quoting a reputable source....

[Off_White]

Diesel soot has been implicated in artic melting, but not biodiesel, which produces significantly less particulate exhaust and no sulphur dioxide and at least 75% less carbon dioxide. It's a lot cleaner than petro-diesel.

 

Are you just hippie fishing Fairweather? I can't imagine you'd actually be opposed to domestically produced alternative fuels that don't support hostile regimes abroad.

[AlpineK]

The soot from bio-diesel has been implicated in glacial recession in places as remote as Greenland.

 

wtf? source please. Somehow I can't imagine enough bio-diesel has been burned in the history of the world to do jack shit.

 

 

Ummmm, I'd say someone's trolling and not quoting a reputable source....

 

Maybe Faiweather is jealous of all the fun they're having at the White House and wants to start creating his own scientific research.

[foraker]

He should publish it here then.

[j_b]

interesting article ChrisT. Japan has been working on conservation for quite a while and they are getting excellent results. I read somewhere they just had a campaign to get people to dress more casually (i.e. fewer clothes) so that they'd use air conditioning less (huge issue in Japan). All this energy conservation and need to replace old appliances, cars, etc ... just don't add up to the fossil fools argument "kyoto will destroy the economy"

 

Tivoli_mike wrote:

Because "Dino-diesel" and gasoline are still relatively cheaper ( even at $55 a barrell) As crude becomes more expensive then other options become attractive.

 

at the risk of sounding like a broken record, let me say that i doubt oil is cheaper than alternative sources of energy if all costs incurred in securing access to oil, safety of oil transport, subsidies, tax breaks, external costs (health, environment and climate damage), etc .. are included in gas pump prices.

 

also if there was any doubt as to what motivates administration policy toward climate change: White House sought advice from Exxon on Kyoto stance

[rbw1966]

He should publish it here then.

 

I had an article published there a few years ago. I should dig it up and post it.

[Bill_Simpkins]

Looks like GWB might get his rapture.