New Scientist
New Scientist was founded in 1956, this internationally-focused weekly British magazine aims at giving readers exhaustive information on recent worldwide developments in science from a scientific, technical and philosophical perspective. The magazine, based in London, is published in English by Reed Business Information, a Reed Elsevier subsidiary, and has US and Australian editions as well. The current Editor is Jeremy Webb, a professional physician. The New Scientist is widely read by both scientists and the general public, and often used as an information source for articles in the general press. The New Scientist website provides articles from the magazine’s weekly print edition as well as daily science updates.
www.newscientist.com
Connie Hedegaard is EU Commissioner for Climate Action.
Achim Steiner est le directeur exécutif du Programme des Nations Unies pour l'Environnement (PNUE). Auparavant, il a exercé de hautes fonctions à la Commission mondiale des barrages puis à l'Union...
The French climatologist Hervé Le Treut is in charge of the Pierre-Simon Laplace Institute which is made up of several environmental research laboratories. He is part of the Intergovernmental Panel...
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations. It was founded on 16 October 1945 in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada. In 1951 its...
Jean François Mouhot is historian. He has a long-standing interest for environmental and energy issues, in particular for climate change. He published one book about Past Connections and Present...
Fondée en 1993 et présente dans 80 pays, Transparency International est une ONG qui lutte contre la corruption.
Fred Pearce is journalist specialized in the environment and development. He was born in the United Kingdom and studied geography in the University of Cambridge. His latest book is When the Rivers...
George Soros is Chairman of Soros Fund Management and of the Open Society Institute. Photo : © AFP PHOTO / ERIC PIERMONT
The chief editor of GoodPlanet Info’s website created Le Courrier International’s green page and took part in the creation of the TV programme Vu du Ciel on the French television channel, France2. ...
Denis Loyer is a climate adviser at the Agence française de développement, AFD. AFD is France’s development bank.
Jeff Goodell is an author and contributing editor at Rolling Stone. His book on geoengineering, How to Cool the Planet: Geoengineering and the Audacious Quest to Fix Earth's Climate, will be released...
Jim Robbins is a veteran journalist based in Helena, Montana. He has written for the New York Times, Conde Nast Traveler, and numerous other publications. His fifth book, The Forgotten Forest, about...
Michael D. Lemonick is the senior writer at Climate Central, a nonpartisan organization whose mission is to communicate climate science to the public. Prior to joining Climate Central, he was a...
Khadija Sharife is a South African journalist. She is also an activist and a scholar at the Centre for Civil Society (CCS) at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa and a contributing author...
New Scientist was founded in 1956, this internationally-focused weekly British magazine aims at giving readers exhaustive information on recent worldwide developments in science from a scientific,...
Prem Shankar Jha is the author of Crouching Dragon, Hidden Tiger: Can China and India Dominate the West? In 1985-1987 he was a member of the energy panel of the World Commission for Environment and...
Joseph Eugene Stiglitz a reçu le prix Nobel d’économie en 2003. Il a travaillé pendant des années à la Banque mondiale. Il est aussi connu pour ses ouvragest : Quand le capitalisme perd la tête et La...
Michel Rocard, former Prime Minister of France and a former leader of the Socialist Party, is a member of the European Parliament.
Joss Garman est un militant écologique britannique. il est chargé de campagne à Greenpeace et a aussi participé à la fondation du mouvement Plane Stupid qui s'oppose à l'extension du trafic aérien....
Figure du militantisme altermondialiste et surtout anticapitaliste depuis la sortie de No Logo en 2000, Naomi Klein est une journaliste engagée. Elle concentre son travail sur les dérives du...
Jacques Mirenowicz est co-fondateur et rédacteur en chef de LaRevueDurable, revue franco-suisse de vulgarisation sur tout ce qui touche à l’écologie et au développement durable. Elle offre vise à...
Achim Steiner est le directeur exécutif du Programme des Nations Unies pour l'Environnement (PNUE). Auparavant, il a exercé de hautes fonctions à la Commission mondiale des barrages puis à l'Union...
Pavan Sukhdev est un économiste et banquier indien qui a notamment travaillé pour la banque centrale allemande en Inde. Il a été chargé par la commission européenne de diriger une étude mondiale sur...
Claus Leggewie is director of the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities in Essen (KWI) and a member of the Global Change Council of Germany (WBGU). Photo : Stefan/wikipedia under Creative...
New Scientist was founded in 1956, this internationally-focused weekly British magazine aims at giving readers exhaustive information on recent worldwide developments in science from a scientific,...
Professor Virgílio Viana is one of Brazil’s leading experts on forestry, environment and sustainable development. He served as Secretary of State for Environment and Sustainable Development and is...
George Monbiot is a well-known investigation reporter and columnist for the British newspaper “The Guardian” as well as a member of the BBC Wildlife magazine’s advisory board. He is also the author...
Bjørn Lomborg is an associate statistics professor at the Copenhagen Business School and former director of the Environmental Assessment in Copenhagen. He discussed his thesis of “environmental...
George Monbiot is a well-known investigation reporter and columnist for the British newspaper “The Guardian” as well as a member of the BBC Wildlife magazine’s advisory board. He is also the author...
Fred Pearce is journalist specialized in the environment and development. He was born in the United Kingdom and studied geography in the University of Cambridge. His latest book is When the Rivers...
Patrick Luganda is chairman of the Network of Climate Journalists in the Greater Horn of Africa Secretariat based in Kampala, Uganda.
Born on May 8th, 1950, in Tampico, Mexico, Angel Gurría is OECD Secretary-General, since June 2006. He was Mexico’s Minister of Foreign Affairs from December 1994 to January 1998, and Mexico’s...
Olivier BOUYER est Ingénieur du Génie Rural, des Eaux et Forêts. Il a participé à la conférence de Poznan (en 2008) avec la délégation française comme chargé de mission “effet de serre et forêt””...
Olivier Godard is currently a research director of economics at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). In 1998 he joined the econometrics laboratory, part of the École...
Methane controls before risky geoengineering, please
16/07/2009 11:30 pm
WHEN the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change came into force in 1994, climate change's impacts seemed distant. Not any more. With daily reports of changes to glaciers, ice sheets, oceans and ecological systems, climate change seems upon us.
As a result, the debate over what to do is changing. Geoengineering schemes, once considered nearly science fiction, are now discussed seriously. Most attention, though, has focused on reducing emissions of carbon dioxide.
There is no question that to stop climate change in the long run requires a substantial reduction in CO2 emissions. However, significant opportunities exist to slow warming over the next few decades by reducing emissions of other greenhouse gases.
Only about half the warming that has occurred up to now is due to CO2. The rest is caused by other greenhouse gases, particularly methane (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol 97, p 9875). Similarly, less than half of the total warming expected over the next 20 years will be caused by CO2. Methane, along with other gases such as carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and black carbon particles, will cause most of the changes.
Recent modelling shows the way to have the biggest impact on warming over this century is to immediately reduce emission of these gases, and keep them low (International Journal of Climate Change Strategies and Management, vol 1, p 42).
Methane is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2. A tonne of methane is responsible for nearly 100 times more warming over the first five years of its lifetime in the atmosphere than a tonne of CO2. Methane is removed from the atmosphere much more rapidly than CO2, with a half-life of 8.5 years compared with many decades for CO2, but a tonne of methane eventually turns to 2.75 extra tonnes of CO2 in the atmosphere. Even without taking this into consideration, a tonne of methane emitted today will exert more annual warming than a tonne of CO2 emitted today until 2075. Not until the year 7300 will the cumulative warming exerted by the two become equal. It is truly carbon on steroids.
This makes methane a good target for emissions reductions. Indeed, methane's shorter lifetime means that atmospheric levels are much more responsive to reduction by emissions cuts.
Another important consideration is the impact on human health. Of all the greenhouse gases, CO2 is one of the least damaging. Methane, on the other hand, is a precursor of ground-level ozone, which is a toxic air pollutant. Carbon monoxide, VOCs and black carbon particles are also directly harmful to human health.
The global health burden from these air pollutants exceeds that of any other environmental risk and even that of some major diseases, including malaria and TB. Cutting methane emissions and those of other health-damaging greenhouse pollutants would thus save many lives.
More serious attention to methane would also change the terms of climate change negotiations, possibly for the better. Taking methane into account would shift some of the burden of responsibility onto developing countries. It may seem unfair to make developing countries more accountable for warming than they are now. But on the other hand, a range of new opportunities would arise for them to participate in tackling global warming. They could therefore benefit from schemes that reward progress in reducing emissions.
Why, then, are methane and the other non-CO2 greenhouse gases not more prominent in discussions over global warming? One reason is that the official weighting scheme to assess the relative impacts of greenhouse gases is out of date and too focused on long-term warming.
According to this scheme, a tonne of methane is equivalent to 21 tonnes of CO2 over a 100-year period. This is out of date - current estimates put the ratio at 25 or more. More importantly, the timescale is all wrong given the urgency we now face. It gives equal weight to measures that will reduce warming in 2109 and warming next year. This is a rather odd perspective: surely reducing next year's warming should be the priority.
Reducing methane levels in the atmosphere would arguably be less painful than reducing CO2. The technology already exists, and reductions would be politically and economically easier to implement. Methane is also easier to handle in international negotiations than black carbon, the next most important non-CO2 greenhouse pollutant, because its impacts are better understood.
Global methane emissions are divided roughly equally between the energy sector (coal mine emissions and leaks from oil and gas wells), waste management (landfill, waste water and animal manure) and agriculture (mainly rice paddies and emissions from livestock).
Reducing livestock and rice production would require changes in consumption, but that is not the case with waste handling and leaks from fossil-fuel systems. Fixes for these do not directly threaten lifestyles and are amenable to direct regulation; no need for controversial carbon taxes or cap-and-trade schemes.
We urgently need measures that can help keep Earth from overheating while we work to control CO2 emissions. Doing all we can to reduce methane emissions makes more sense than embarking on risky geoengineering schemes.
This fruit is low-hanging, ripe and heavy with immediate benefits. Helping to pick it also means I can tell my grandchildren that, yes, I did do something to directly protect the planet.
Methane controls before risky geoengineering, please
25 june 2009 by Kirk Smith, professor of global environmental health at the University of California, Berkeley
New Scientist Magazine n° 2714
]
Signaler un abus
