Carbon catastrophe

[styky]

Carbon catastrophe
Kyoto causes rainforest cutting and food-price hikes

Lawrence Solomon
<a href=http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/comment/story.html?id=4ef9edf4-137c-4b8c-8b7e-88f6f9653ae3>Financial Post </a>


Friday, October 19, 2007


Four environmental catastrophes loom large, all due to sweeping changes to the world economy in the wake of the Kyoto Treaty.

The first is the threat to the world's forests, especially old-growth forests which do not soak up carbon from the atmosphere. By seizing these forests, cutting them down, and converting them to carbon-intensive plantations, Third World governments and their cronies can cash in on carbon credits, to the dismay of the old-growth forests' inhabitants. As expressed in a Declaration by the Forest Peoples Programme, a gathering of tribal peoples in India's North Eastern Region of Guwahati in 2003, "The climate change debate has turned forests into a carbon commodity, which will have to provide carbon credits for a lucrative carbon market that will allow industrialized countries to continue emitting greenhouse gases."

The declaration, designed to protest an upcoming Kyoto meeting in Milan, objected to the technocratic mind-set that valued their communities on their potential to capture carbon. "The Kyoto Protocol's focus on carbon sequestration means that more credits can be gained the faster a tree can grow, which in turn leads to an incentive for large-scale tree plantations and ignores the role of forests, particularly old growth forests."

The indigenous peoples feared Kyoto-caused devastation that they were seeing around the world, such as the Plantar carbon sequestration project in Brazil's Minas Gerais, opposed by more than 50 Brazilian NGOs, citizens' movements, churches and trade unions, as well as the World Rainforest Movement. The Plantar project - financed by OECD governments and run by the World Bank's Carbon Finance Unit - is converting 23,100 hectares of natural forest to eucalyptus tree plantations to produce wood for charcoal, for use in pig iron production instead of coal. The Plantar project, like numerous others in the Third World, are at the other end of the carbon credit schemes that have become so popular with Westerners. Every time we buy carbon offsets to salve our consciences at flying in a jet, we are helping to dispossess someone, somewhere, by boosting the carbon-credit value of their land.

The second looming catastrophe, also caused by Kyoto carbon credits, again affects the poorest of the poor -- a widespread food shortage, accompanied by rising prices, as agricultural lands are turned to ethanol and other bio-fuels rather than nourishment. In Mexico City in February, some 75,000 marched in protest at the dramatic rise in the price of tortillas, a corn-based staple of their diet that typically consumes one-third of a poor family's income. Indonesia, Egypt, Algeria, and Nigeria have also seen protests, leading to growing alarm at Kyoto's implications for the Third World, as seen by opinion pieces in the Third World press predicting "worldwide famine affecting billions of people" and "political instability, social unrest and general chaos."

While worldwide famine is unlikely to materialize, an increase in hunger is entirely plausible: Goldman Sachs describes the food price increases as part of a structural change in world agricultural markets, with high-cost marginal lands brought into

production to produce fuel. The social and environmental costs will be prohibitive, and not only because wilderness and all manner of ecosystems will be converted to monoculture farming. Ethanol production is water-intensive, requiring 1700 litres of water per litre of ethanol produced, according to David Pimental of Cornell University. To meet this demand, aquifers are being drained and disputes over watercourses increasing.

The perversity of this wholesale re-engineering of the world's natural resources becomes complete with two additional revelations. Earlier this year, Stanford's Mark Jacobson discovered that, if all cars in the United States converted to E85, a blend of 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline, smog deaths would increase significantly. Los Angeles would disproportionately suffer because of its airshed, with 120 additional deaths per year, a 9% increase, along with 650 more hospitalizations and 1,200 additional asthma-related emergency visits. Nobel Prize winner Paul Crutzen, meanwhile, discovered that ethanol production actually increases the amount of greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere.

The third and fourth environmental catastrophes involve the resurrection of large hydro-electric dams and nuclear reactors. Before the Kyoto mind-set took hold, these grandiose government-backed relics of yesteryear were struggling to get off the drawing boards of energy planners. With Kyoto's low-carbon chic restoring their respectability, and carbon credits making them less ruinous financially, both are back with a vengeance.

The vengeance could be harsh. The recently completed Three Gorges Dam in China, the world's largest, is proving so dangerous that Chinese officials themselves acknowledge trouble. Fifty-metre high waves in its reservoir and shoreline collapses of Biblical proportions are leading to the relocation of one to two million Chinese from its banks, in addition to the 1.3 million already moved. The worst-case scenario of a dam failure -- no longer laughed at -- could lead to a tsunami that would take out downstream Wuhan, a city of 10 million people.

Neither would a nuclear Armageddon be remote if reactors proliferated around the world, as many energy planners consider inevitable if Kyoto-scale cuts in carbon emissions are to be achieved. Safety systems have failed dramatically in Ontario, Pennsylvania, and other western jurisdictions that have high engineering standards, little corruption, and meaningful regulation. Should reactors in large numbers be built in countries where corruption permits shoddy construction materials, and where regulation is non-existent, the chance of avoiding future Chernobyls or worse are poor. Even if reactors don't fail due to a design fault, they are subject to catastrophe from terrorism. The worst-case scenario of a nuclear accident is unthinkable -- the accident at Chernobyl, which was far from a major city, cost an estimated $350-billion. A worst-case accident in North America near a pricey financial centre like New York or Toronto would wipe out much more than that in property alone, and very much more with human suffering factored in.

One, two, three, four. Which disaster do you fear more?

LawrenceSolomon@nextcity.com

-Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and Urban Renaissance Institute, and a founder of the World Rainforest Movement.

[fourhorses]

This may be worth a sticky note. I believe there will be more and more data emerging on the carbon catastrophes.

[littleharbour]

The Law of Unintended Consequences strikes again.

[styky]

This may be worth a sticky note. I believe there will be more and more data emerging on the carbon catastrophes.

Good suggestion. I'll do that.

[Darski]

The Law of Unintended Consequences strikes again.

I am not convinced that these were unintended. It didn't take a brain trust to extrapolate to these effects.

[fourhorses]

Exports fuel China's CO2 output

A quarter of China's greenhouse gas emissions are produced making goods exported to the West, a report from a UK government-funded body has found.


Climate research body the Tyndall Centre, using 2004 data, estimates the emissions are double those of Britain for the same period.

It wants rich nations to take the lead in cutting the pollution they cause.

In the last year, UK imports from China rose by 10%, nearing 6.5 million tonnes, according to a recent study.

'Rethink needed'

The Tyndall Centre report concludes that in 2004 - the most recent year in which comprehensive data is available - net exports from China accounted for 23% of its total CO2 emissions.

The authors said the emission levels are due to China's trade surplus, but are also due to the relatively high level of carbon intensity within the Chinese economy.

The report said: "The extent of 'exported carbon' from China should lead to some rethinking by government negotiators as they work towards a new climate change agreement.

"It suggests that a focus on emissions within national borders may miss the point. Whilst the nation state is at the heart of most international negotiations and treaties, global trade means that a country's carbon footprint is international.

"Should countries be concerned with emissions within their borders (as is currently the case), or should they also be responsible for emissions due to the production of goods and services they consume?"

China is believed to be the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7052115.stm

[concan]

The Law of Unintended Consequences strikes again.

I am not convinced that these were unintended. It didn't take a brain trust to extrapolate to these effects.

Those naive enough to support the swindle and condemn mankind for a change in the climate caused by global warming, those millions of people did not have a brain to think beyond the hype that was Kyoto. We can't charge them with any intention other than the intention to want "do good" and make themselves feel better.

The few that cooked this up have high stakes in the swindle. They have invested billions of dollars into a scheme that takes billions of consumer and tax dollars from rich nations to prop up regimes in poor nations. These few are getting rich by setting up the transfer schemes and again by selling unneccessary technologies to the poor countries.

Al Gore didn't get rich from good intentions. He's the biggest shyster on the planet and his audience loves him and awards him. It's almost comical if it wasn't so serious.

Al Gore's character is that of a phoney balloney quack(salver) who traveled the country and selling snake oil. Difference is that Al Gore's world wide show of doom and gloom has a bigger and dumber audience or so it seems.

He's still a quack.

[rbacon]

Some leading scientist's are claiming now that huge dams like Quebec's release more CO2 than coal burning plants. I will find that link again.

[fourhorses]

error

[rbacon]

So when will Ottawa shut down James Bay. It is worse than Fort McMurray Oil Sands....... Monday, July 23, 2007
Hydro, not so Green?

We tend to think of hydro-electric power as a totally clean form of energy, but there is a carbon footprint here too. According to figures obtained by Vincent St. Louis, who is a scientist at the Canadian University of Alberta, man-made reservoirs (of which one quarter are used for hydrolectric power production) release one billion tonnes of CO2 annually on top of another 70 million tonnes of methane, which has a global warming capacity of around 100x that of CO2. The problem is that bacteria break down plant materials submerged under their huge reservoirs into greenhouses gases. 80% of electricity is provided by Hydropower in Brazil, as an example of a tropical country, and Norway produces almost 100% of its electricity from hydroelectric sources. Canada and Switzerland, too, use the technology on a large scale since both are well provided for by rivers.

[The above figure that methane has 100x the global warming potential of CO2 might be disputed since it is often cited that it is nearer 20x. However, that is the average taken over 100 years, if equal volumes of methane and CO2 were emitted into the atmosphere, allowing that methane is oxidised in the troposphere to CO2 over a period of about 12 years. It is the "instantaneous radiative warming factor" that matters, since this would account for the relative effects of a steady release of the two gases, rather than a one-off emission].

The UN has decided to evaluate whether some countries might actually be better off by constructing coal and gas-fired power stations, which is an especially touchy point when heavy financial investments have been pledged, and certainly for the developing nations, e.g. Brazil. According to St.Louis, over a period of 100 years, hydro-dams will account for 7% of the global warming from all human activities. A typical example is the 250 MW Balbina dam in Brazil, which was created by flooding 2,500 square kilometers of Amazonian rainforest, the emissions from which are reckoned at 25% - 38% higher than from a coal-fired power station of equivalent capacity.

The degree of the emissions depend on the area and the depth of the reservoir, and on the nature of the underlying vegetation, and the deeper the better it would seem. However, each dam needs to be evaluated on its individual basis. Philip Fearnside, a conservation biologist at the National Institute for Amazon Research in Manaus, has concluded that the problem of the Balbina and Tucurui dams (the latter with 20x the generating capacity, but a dam area some 300 km^2 less than Balbina) is worse than previously thought, and that an average tropical hydropower plant emits four times as much carbon during the first four years of its life than a comparable fossil-fuel fired power station. Others have argued that the large emissions are caused by poor system design, and could be improved.

The jury is out still, since "The big issue is what would have happened if the reservoir hadn't been there," so sums-up Mike Acreman, a professor at the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Wallingford, Oxfordshire. "You can't go to oine and measure the methane coming off the surface and say that that was definitely caused by the hydropower scheme." Nonetheless, he does concede, "Perhaps hydropower is not as green as we thought. A lot of these tropical hydropower schemes would have been made by simply flooding a forest. There would have been a lot of trees and plants, and you need to think about what happens to all that carbon."

To my mind there are two issues here. Global warming and the decline in world oil and gas reserves. In the UK we make most of our electricity from gas, along with coal and nuclear, but hydropower is renewable unlike these finite and rapidly dwindling resources. I think we will need as much hydropower as possible, since the depletion of fuel resources will most likely decimate human civilization ahead of climate change.


Related Reading.
"Hidden dangers," by David Adam, The Guardian: http://environment.guardian.co.uk/

[rbacon]

Hydroelectric power's dirty secret revealed
14:29 24 February 2005
Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.
Duncan Graham-Rowe


Enlarge image
Hydropower pollutersTools
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Contrary to popular belief, hydroelectric power can seriously damage the climate. Proposed changes to the way countries' climate budgets are calculated aim to take greenhouse gas emissions from hydropower reservoirs into account, but some experts worry that they will not go far enough.

The green image of hydro power as a benign alternative to fossil fuels is false, says Éric Duchemin, a consultant for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). "Everyone thinks hydro is very clean, but this is not the case," he says.

Hydroelectric dams produce significant amounts of carbon dioxide and methane, and in some cases produce more of these greenhouse gases than power plants running on fossil fuels. Carbon emissions vary from dam to dam, says Philip Fearnside from Brazil's National Institute for Research in the Amazon in Manaus. "But we do know that there are enough emissions to worry about."

In a study to be published in Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, Fearnside estimates that in 1990 the greenhouse effect of emissions from the Curuá-Una dam in Pará, Brazil, was more than three-and-a-half times what would have been produced by generating the same amount of electricity from oil.

This is because large amounts of carbon tied up in trees and other plants are released when the reservoir is initially flooded and the plants rot. Then after this first pulse of decay, plant matter settling on the reservoir's bottom decomposes without oxygen, resulting in a build-up of dissolved methane. This is released into the atmosphere when water passes through the dam's turbines.

"Drawdown" regions
Seasonal changes in water depth mean there is a continuous supply of decaying material. In the dry season plants colonise the banks of the reservoir only to be engulfed when the water level rises. For shallow-shelving reservoirs these "drawdown" regions can account for several thousand square kilometres.

In effect man-made reservoirs convert carbon dioxide in the atmosphere into methane. This is significant because methane's effect on global warming is 21 times stronger than carbon dioxide's.

Claiming that hydro projects are net producers of greenhouse gases is not new (New Scientist print edition, 3 June 2000) but the issue now appears to be climbing up the political agenda. In the next round of IPCC discussions in 2006, the proposed National Greenhouse Gas Inventory Programme, which calculates each country's carbon budget, will include emissions from artificially flooded regions.

But these guidelines will only take account of the first 10 years of a dam's operation and only include surface emissions. Methane production will go unchecked because climate scientists cannot agree on how significant this is; it will also vary between dams. But if Fearnside gets his way these full emissions would be included.

With the proposed IPCC guidelines, tropical countries that rely heavily on hydroelectricity, such as Brazil, could see their national greenhouse emissions inventories increased by as much as 7% (see map). Colder countries are less affected, he says, because cold conditions will be less favourable for producing greenhouse gases.

Despite a decade of research documenting the carbon emissions from man-made reservoirs, hydroelectric power still has an undeserved reputation for mitigating global warming. "I think it is important these emissions are counted," says Fearnside.

[doggedlyright]

I believe hydro electric dams were exempted from Kyoto so the Liberals could say to Quebec that see we are on your side and against Alberta.

Also let us not forget that the auto industry in Ontario was also exempted.

What they really should have done was exempt the entire country from Kyoto or any other version of it.

[fourhorses]

I believe hydro electric dams were exempted from Kyoto so the Liberals could say to Quebec that see we are on your side and against Alberta.

Also let us not forget that the auto industry in Ontario was also exempted.

Was it that the hydro dms were exempted or that they re calculated differently to lower their carbon costs ?

[doggedlyright]

Fourhorses,

I believe tkey were exempted from the calculation as it was beleived they emited negligible carbon.

Strange that they never calculated the lost of trees and other carbon footrpint stocks for these projects. They do such when developers are builidng ordinary buildings.

We all know the truth of this program .... illegal taxation of the people to support communists, despots and corrupt politicians and their cronies.

[rbacon]

The Green Commies will inflict another famine on the world just like their blood brother Uncle Joe Stalin. Many Canadians have never accepted the fact that Socialism and Communism have been the deadliest most lethal thing or concept ever unleashed. Hitler, Stalin, Chairman Mao butchered millions of citizen's yet the brain dead socialists still believe and promote their ideals and we pay for them.