Greenpeace’s Proposals for Combating Global Burning.

Greenpeace’s latest climate campaign is the ‘Carbon Logic’ and replaces the earlier ‘fossil free energy scenario’ in which it was envisaged that by 2100 there would be a 13-fold increase in global gdp, a rise in the global population from 5 billion to 11.3 billion, a tripling in energy consumption, and approximately 1,600,000,000 vehicles on the world’s roads. The influence of krause, bach & koomey on the new campaign will also be noted.

Greenpeace’s Carbon Logic.

Bill hare wrote ‘The Carbon Logic’ and greenpeace now argues it is necessary to restrict the rise in global burning to a maximum of 0.1C per decade because ecosystems would not be able to adapt to greater rates of change, "In 1995 the UK Meteorological Office Hadley Centre noted: "The global mean rate of change is predicted to be a little above 0.2.C/decade in the early part of the next century; approximately twice the rate of change that many of the more sensitive ecosystems are thought to be capable of surviving". It further pointed out that such rates: "are likely to exceed the adaptive capacity of many ecosystems. Indeed the IPCC concluded that 0.1oC/decade was probably the maximum that many ecosystems could tolerate."" What this means is that the maximum change that should be permitted is 1C per century. This is the same assumption made by krause, bach & koomey .. "the rate of climate warming is to be reduced to match the capacity of forest ecosystems to adapt to warming, or to no more than about 0.1C per decade." It ought to be pointed out that the rapid rate of warming since 1976 has been "approximately 0.2C per decade .."

If a 1C rise per century is taken as a geophysiological limit this means that over this period oomans can release only 112.5 to 337.5 billion tonnes of carbon (gtC) - it is not yet possible to be more precise about the amount of Carbon that will produce a 1C rise in global temperatures, "Scientists estimate that we can only afford to release a limited amount of carbon into the atmosphere, otherwise, we pass the "safe" limits of climate change. It is at this point that climate change happens so fast that ecosystems are unable to adapt. Greenpeace believes that a temperature increase of 1C is the absolute maximum that should be allowed. The amount of carbon that we can release to keep within these limits can be calculated and is in the range of 112.5 to 337.5 billion tonnes of carbon over the next 100 years. Greenpeace calls this the "carbon logic"." Once again, this is similar to the ‘Carbon logic’ outlined by krause, bach & koomey, "In this chapter, we .. determine an approximate concentration limit for carbon dioxide. We then translate this concentration limit into a global fossil carbon budget." By way of comparison, "Human activity has now added more than 200bn tons of carbon to the atmosphere since 1950."

For the sake of simplicity, greenpeace rounds the limit for Carbon emissions to 225 gt Carbon, "Analysis of carbon cycle models suggests that to avoid dangerous climate change over the next 100 years, the total amount of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels that can be released is around 225 billion tonnes - or gigatonnes - of carbon (GtC). If no action is taken on deforestation (which also releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere), the amount will be lower." Greenpeace then works out a Carbon budget from this position, "Taking the climate sensitivity to be 3.5oC, with a limit of a 1oC increase in global mean surface temperature above pre-industrial levels and assuming that other greenhouse gases contribute about one quarter of the effect of CO2 alone in the long term, the `carbon budget' over the next century can be estimated in terms of billions of tonnes of carbon (gtC). With these assumptions, the `carbon budget' is:

* 145 gtC - With no action to stop current trends of deforestation (as forests release carbon when destroyed), with 80 GtC emitted from this source over the next century.

* 225 gtC - With major action to halt deforestation, stabilising the role of forests at current levels, which would involve a significant global reafforestation programme next century.

* 265 gtC - With major action to halt deforestation and a major global afforestation programme to sequester (take up) an extra 40 gtC." In other words oomans can release up to 145gt Carbon without having to bother about current rates of deforestation; they can release 225 GtC if they halt deforestation; but they can release 265 GtC if they must carry out 40 gtC of Reforestation.

It shouldn’t be too surprising that krause, bach & koomey proposed a fossil Carbon of 300gtC, "The upper limit for cumulative carbon releases between 1985 and 2100 should be about 300gtC." This is virtually the same as that adopted by greenpeace seven years later.

Hare concludes .. "industry already has around four times this amount of carbon - over one thousand billion tonnes - in existing reserves of oil, coal and gas. This means that three quarters of the oil, coal and gas already found cannot be burned if we want to avoid dangerous climate change. If we continue burning fossil fuels at present levels, the "safe" limit of 1 degree C will be reached in just 40 years." As krause, bach & koomey suggested, "A 300btC budget means major restrictions on the use of global fossil resources. Our analysis suggests that climate stabilization requires keeping significant portions of even the world's conventional fossil resources in the ground."

Greenpeace’s Climate Time-Bomb.

‘Carbon logic’ is a considerable improvement on the ‘fossil fuel energy scenario’. It is difficult to understand, however, why greenpeace has failed to build on ‘The Climate Time Bomb’. Although predicated on the now redundant ‘fossil free energy scenario’ it was still a major document in the history of climate campaigning. Even that scarily silly girl francine stock realized it was a major propaganda publication and yet greeenpeace hasn’t followed through with a second edition. Or perhaps it’s in the pipeline?

In tf6, the mundi club published a review of ‘The Climate Time Bomb’ and suggested a number of improvements. The mundi club would like to reiterate these recommendations:-

"Presentationally ‘The Climate Time Bomb’ is disappointing in many ways. It could have presented:-

* a league table of the hottest years since records began - most of the hottest occurred since 1980;

* a list of the $1 billion climate disasters;

* a list of the climate disasters which have hit each country;

* the number of people who have been made homeless by climatic disasters;

* the area of Forest destroyed by climate disasters;

* a fuller list of the insurance companies going broke because of climatic disasters; the areas of the world which have lost insurance cover; and the areas threatened by the loss of insurance cover.

This summarization would have involved only cross referencing data in ‘The Climate Time Bomb’ but would have added considerably to the impact of this work."