EnergyPolicyGlobalWarming

By JOE GROSSMAN, UPI Science News

May 16 (UPI) -- Unless something quite radical occurs, the modern industrial goose that laid the golden egg will slowly be roasted in its own greenhouse gas juices. The energy policies of governments will determine the oven temperature, which is to say, the future climate of our planet.

Even if all the governments of the world were to sign-on to the emissions-limiting Kyoto Protocol tomorrow, global warming would continue indefinitely. Reduction of carbon dioxide emissions and other greenhouse gases to below 1990 levels, as Kyoto calls for, is only the first step in a series dramatic emissions reductions necessary to halt global warming 100 years from now, according to climate scientists.

Climate researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the former director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Lab all provided United Press International with detailed examples of the drastic CO2 cuts that would be necessary if the constantly increasing atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases is to be halted by 2100.

Severe reductions in CO2 emissions will be necessary, down to between 25 and 50 percent of today's levels by 2100, depending on the target level of atmospheric CO2, the scientists agreed. This is opposite the direction that planet-wide CO2 emissions are going. Energy use is projected to rise five to 10-fold in the next 100 years and CO2 emissions, mainly from fossil fuels, are expected to increase up to four times, both largely due to explosive economic growth and increased population, unless there are major policy and practice changes.

Some scientists are not optimistic about CO2 reduction in the near term. "From the standpoint of the climate system, it probably is already too late for the next 50 years. What's at stake now is what happens after 2050," David Rind, a climate modeler at NASA Goddard Institute on Space Studies told UPI.

The U.S. Department of Energy projects total world emissions of CO2 to increase by 50 percent in the next 20 years, under current laws and regulations. Climate scientists talk about attempting to minimize the damage.
The conservation and efficiency measures included in the Bush administration energy plan are not expected to address the magnitude of the CO2 emissions problem. Additionally, the administration's call to build more than 1300 fossil fuel-burning generating plants will result in increased emissions.

Earlier this month, Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy, Robert S. Kripowicz said, "The new emphasis on clean coal technology reflects this Administration's view that we can keep coal in our energy mix without compromising environmental progress." But clean coal does not mean coal with reduced CO2 emissions, unless CO2 capture and sequestration (permanent storage) technologies are put into place, which could easily take decades or more.
Coal is responsible for 35% of the CO2 produced in the world from fossil fuels.

The Democrat's alternative legislation, proposed in March by Senator Jeff Bingaman, D-New Mexico, proposes reductions in carbon dioxide emissions and energy use reductions to get down to the 1990 level by the year 2020 through a combination of conservation and technology measures in power generating, motor vehicle and building efficiencies sectors.
It will be instructive to compare the Bingaman legislation with the Bush administration plan due out tomorrow.
Bingaman's legislation, the Comprehensive and Balanced Energy Policy Act of 2001, would establish an 11-member Presidential Commission on Energy and Climate Change, "to undertake a study of measures to achieve stabilization of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States in the context of an overall U.S. energy policy."

Bingaman told UPI, "That was a proposal we put in there in order to provide a vehicle that the president, hopefully, would be able to buy into that would move us in the direction of developing a climate change policy. There is no way the country is going to develop a credible climate change policy unless the president is on board with that."

However, there is more than one view about the right way to achieve climatological correctness. Although the reports of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have tended to set the tone for climate discussions, not everyone has embraced the IPCC studies. Earlier this month, [May 1] Senator Chuck Hagel, R- Nebraska, told a Senate hearing on climate change that the IPCC "summaries are political documents, drafted by government representatives after intense negotiating sessions. The IPCC summaries aren't science, they're UN politics." As far as Kyoto is concerned, Hagel added, "When President Bush said the Kyoto Protocol was dead, he was merely stating the obvious. The Kyoto Protocol has been dead for a long time . . . In the meantime we've lost precious time where we could have been looking at achievable ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions."

According to Henry Jacoby, co-director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, new technologies will need to be introduced. "Greenhouse gas reductions cannot be achieved without substantial changes in technology. You cannot do that by efficiency and conservation and by being good. It requires ways of generating the energy you need to run a modern industrial economy while not emitting the carbon -- which requires technologies that we either don't have now, or are not willing to use now," Jacoby told UPI.

Jayant Sathaye, a lead author of the IPCC report on mitigating climate change and a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory specializing on energy, forestry and climate change, told UPI that efficient hybrid engine cars, underground carbon dioxide storage, fuel cells, switching from coal to natural gas or nuclear, using renewable sources and improved generating efficiencies are some of the technologies that could reduce greenhouse gas in 10 or 20 years to below 2000 levels.
Sathaye said that taxing carbon, an idea that has been studied extensively by the Department of Energy, or taxes on emissions or energy use, as well as trading in carbon permits, and performance standards for vehicles and appliances could make a big contribution.

As most other scientists interviewed, he stressed the need for increased funding for research and development.
Jerry Mahlman, former head of NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, told UPI that if the goal was to stop CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere at today's levels, emissions would need to be cut between 60 and 85 percent.
"People have the idea that if you recycle your garbage and just drive a few less miles a week that everything will be groovy -- not even close," Mahlman added.

Global warming is expected to negatively impact food crop production in tropical regions, affecting many countries. Droughts are expected to occur, many ecosystems will be destroyed and oceans will rise. If the global average temperature rises more than 5.4 degrees F (3 degrees C), there is concern that there will be widespread catastrophic crop failure.
A 5.4 degrees F (3 degrees C) increase is associated with a rise from the current 375 parts per million to 700 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere by century's end, a scenario that the IPCC projects even if a mix of fuel resources are used with new technologies in a world with high economic activity and a population that peaks mid-century.