Climate 411

Slicing the greenhouse gas pie: Where from?

By Bill Chameides / Published: April 26, 2007

In the previous post, I described which gases are important and what activities they come from. But we can also learn a lot by looking at regional patterns in how those gases are emitted.

For example, most deforestation occurs in poor tropical countries (in fact, in many of these countries deforestation is a much larger source of CO2 than fossil fuel use). In contrast, most CO2 emissions from fossil fuel use come from the developed countries.

As I described in an earlier post, the U.S. is the largest emitter in the world, both today and historically. Next let’s take a closer look at the U.S. greenhouse gas pie.

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Posted in Greenhouse Gas Emissions / Read 5 Responses

Slicing the greenhouse gas pie: What gases?

By Bill Chameides / Published: April 26, 2007

We keep talking about the need to reduce the greenhouse gas we produce. But how do these gases get in the atmosphere? To answer that question we need to look at what I like to call the “greenhouse gas pie,” and it turns out there are lots of ways to slice it up.

One way is to slice the pie up by the type of gases we’re talking about. There are dozens of human-produced greenhouse gases, three of them get special attention: carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O). Here’s why.

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Posted in Greenhouse Gas Emissions / Read 6 Responses

Supreme Court Reverberations

By Bill Chameides / Published: April 9, 2007

Last week’s Supreme Court ruling on Massachusetts versus EPA was a landmark victory for Planet Earth, but there’s still much work to be done. The ruling doesn’t demand any specific action – it just sets the stage for future rulings. Case in point: California’s petition to EPA to use its own, stricter emissions standards rather than federal emissions standards.

In light of this ruling, will the EPA grant California’s petition? On April 5th, a couple of news outlets reported that EPA had approved California’s request. Unfortunately, they got it wrong. EPA simply agreed to take the next to step in considering the California waiver – holding public hearings. We won’t know for months how EPA will rule.

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Also posted in Cars and Pollution / Read 4 Responses

Part 3 of 4: U.S. Emissions Target

By Bill Chameides / Published: March 21, 2007

This is the third installment of a four-part series to be published each Wednesday on Action Needed to Stop Global Warming.

1. How Warm is Too Warm?
2. Worldwide Emissions Target
3. U.S. Emissions Target
4. Technologies to Get Us There

In Part 1 of this series, I defined the global tipping point as the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, which could cause sea levels to rise 20 feet. In Part 2, I showed by how much global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) must drop to avoid this tipping point. They must start to decline around 2020, drop 50 percent by 2050, and drop at least 75 percent by the end of the century.

Meeting these global emissions targets will require a global effort. Even if the U.S. and other developed countries were to cut their emissions to zero, global emissions would likely exceed the targets by mid-century. This is because of the rapid rise in emissions from China and other developing countries.

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Also posted in Basic Science of Global Warming / Read 8 Responses

Part 2 of 4: Worldwide Emissions

By Bill Chameides / Published: March 14, 2007

This is the second installment of a four-part series to be published each Wednesday on Action Needed to Stop Global Warming.

1. How Warm is Too Warm?
2. Worldwide Emissions Target
3. U.S. Emissions Target
4. Technologies to Get Us There

In Part 1 of this series, we described why scientists and policy-makers have identified the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, which would lead to a 20-foot rise in sea level, as the tipping point that must not be crossed. To stay below the tipping point, average global temperatures must not rise more than 3.6oF above pre-industrial temperatures, or 2.3oF above current temperatures.Today we consider how global emissions of greenhouse gases must change over the coming century to stay below that tipping point.

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Also posted in Basic Science of Global Warming / Read 11 Responses

Carbon Offsets Count

By Bill Chameides / Published: March 8, 2007

ignoratio elenchi n.
A logical fallacy of presenting an argument that may in itself be valid, but has nothing to do with the proposition it purports to prove. Also known as “irrelevant conclusion”. [Lat. ignorance of refutation.]

Al Gore’s response to charges of being an energy hog was that he buys carbon offsets to neutralize his carbon emissions. This sounded bogus to a lot of people, but in fact it’s not.

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Also posted in Economics / Read 14 Responses