LondonAccord:Climate Act Models
Contents |
Copenhagen Blame Game
Written by Aubrey Meyer and Terry O'Connell of the Global Commons Institute
View the article posted in Business Green 11 January 2010.
'Targets in the UK Climate Act: Where did they come from? Were the models upon which they were based valid'?
Written by Aubrey Meyer of Global Commons Institute
If you would like the full PDF please contact: leonor_fishman@zyen.com
Introduction
1. The EAC Enquiry set up in April 2009 asked about “’targets’ in the UK Climate Act: - where did they come from and were the model[s] on which they were based valid?”
2. Detail supporting this summary is given in this “Second Memo from GCI to the UK House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee and their 2009 Enquiry into Targets in the UK Climate Act”.
3. The Committee on Climate Change [CCC] acknowledged that the targets originally came from the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution [RCEP] Report [2000]. The RCEP report recognised the validity of the Contraction and Convergence [C&C] model and advocated its adoption as the global mitigation framework.
Global context
1. UK targets and budgets will be subject to an international treaty mandated by the UNFCCC. This treaty must comply with the existing Convention in achieving a safe and sustainable level of concentrations in the atmosphere to avoid dangerous climate change, in accordance with the UNFCCC principles of equity and precaution.
2. C&C has been proposed by many as the necessary global framework for the treaty. Evidence given by Lord Turner [CCC Chair] to both the EAC and the Energy and Climate Change Committee [ECCC] in February and March this year acknowledged the CCC report was, “strong support for what GCI has been saying” and confirmed two global C&C points of relevance to policy makers:
- that converging to equal per capita entitlements globally is the only option that is in his words, “doable and fair” for organising and sharing the full-term emissions-contraction-event to bring us to UNFCCC-compliance.
- that “if, for reasons of urgency the rate of global contraction has to be accelerated, for reasons of equity the rate of international convergence has to be accelerated relative to that.”
3. We urge the Parliamentarians of the EAC to continue their advocacy of C&C, aware that many others are now making this judgement as well [see page 9 this memo].
UK targets and budgets are too little too late
1. The CCC report has a calculated policy prescription for the global emissions contraction event, with the leading scenario designated 2016:4% low [see pages 22 & 23 this memo] and Government repeatedly claim this gives us a 50:50 chance of avoiding a two degree Celsius temperature rise globally. It thus prescribes the contraction event, rather than proposing the C&C model as a basis of negotiation.
2. CCC say this is broadly in line with the 50% cut in emissions globally by 2050 agreed at the G-8 in 2007/8 (base year not specified). However, the global emissions reduction target calculated by CCC and shown in the Appendix is 34%-46% below 1990 levels by 2050. By comparison, the EU target is to reduce global emissions to at least 50% below 1990 levels by that date.
3. It embeds a convergence to equal per capita sharing globally by 2050, requiring therefore an 80% cut in emissions by 2050 for the UK and Annex One parties. It thus prescribes the convergence year, rather than proposing the C&C model as a basis of negotiation.
4. The CCC says it is fully up to date with the latest coupled-carbon-cycle feedback. While CCC correctly note that, “feedbacks further alter GHG concentrations in response to climate change: in particular, carbon cycle feedbacks are likely to add to CO2 concentrations and have been incorporated into the latest model projections”. The prescription was processed by the Hadley Centre with the use of an out-of-date version of the ‘MAGICC’ model [4.1] with assumptions made in 2004. The next version of MAGICC was 5.3, “brought up to date after IPCC AR4 [2007]” and the current version is 6.
5. IPCC AR4 says, “The emission reduction to meet a particular stabilisation level reported in the mitigation studies assessed here might be underestimated due to carbon cycle feedbacks,” and “CO2 emissions in most models do not include emissions from decay of above ground biomass that remains after logging and deforestation, and from tundra-melt, peat fires and drained peat soils.”
6. The impression is spun that the CCC’s scenario is consistent with 50:50 odds for avoiding atmospheric concentrations of 500 ppmv CO2 e and a global 2o Celsius temperature rise though in the fine-print of the CCC Appendix, the odds of success in avoiding 2o C are shown as 44% and not 50%.
7. The CCC’s UK emissions reduction targets and carbon budgets are thus founded on global targets that are insufficient to provide an acceptable level of security to remain within 2oC warming above pre-industrial levels. Further, the UK strategy is highly dependent on COP 15 arriving at an agreement that would secure the objective of keeping global temperature rise to within the 2oC limit. Failure at Copenhagen would result in delay to Peak and could require significantly faster rates of reduction to be adopted.
CCC Methods and modelling
1. GCI asked the CCC and the Hadley Centre about the coupled-carbon-cycle feedback effects that we observed were omitted from the scenarios and they spent much time asserting that these effects had all been dealt with. We questioned the unexpectedly rapid gains in ‘sink-efficiency’ shown in the CCC scenarios and the Hadley Centre offered to perform runs of the GCM to seek corroboration of what they had done with MAGICC. As things stand this has not yet been done and we recommend that the EAC press for this. As a holding position the Hadley Centre observed that these rates of efficiency gain seem to be, “physically reasonable behaviour for some plausible values of the model parameters we use in MAGICC to represent the uncertainty in scientific understanding.”
2. This is a vague and an insufficient response, as it quantitatively:
3. Contradicts all IPCC published contraction:concentration scenarios for the last 15 years.
4. Contradicts the coupled carbon-cycle feedback models from the C4MIP results published in IPCC AR4 [2007] and profoundly contradicts James Hansen - see memo.
5. Repeats the same parameters in all nine of the CCC scenarios, from 2014:3% low to 2028:1.5% and from 1.5 - 5.25 degrees Celsius temperature rise, monotonically.
6. The “plausible values of the model parameters” they used in MAGICC were not revealed in the CCC report. However, it appears they were uniformly applied throughout the range of scenarios with a wide range of temperature variance.
7. This procedure raises questions on the validity of the CCC/Hadley Centre approach: the monotonic application of assumptions and parameters across all emissions scenarios modelled with widely differing values. In this way the CCC scenarios mimic a conceptual shortcoming in models over the last 17 years: - tipping points, because of the most important feedback effects, are still not in the climate-models being used.
GCI target and budget recommendation for enough, soon enough
1. As shown on pages 6 and 7 [and below], GCI proposes that to keep within 2 degrees, a global contraction budget no more than 350 - 400 GTC, with a minimum 80% cut all emissions globally by 2050 and negotiating a convergence to equal per capita shares of this globally to have occurred within one third of the timeline for contraction i.e. no later than 2030. This is as indicated in GCI’s first memorandum to the EAC enquiry.
2. We also recommend that the EAC recommend to the UK Government and its negotiators a more candid and coherent C&C basis for their negotiating strategy at the UNFCCC. Their handling of the C&C argument so far has been a ‘half-truth’; lacking transparency it has been partial and inflexible.
3. We are confident that arguing the ‘whole truth’ of C&C - the truth of contraction and the reconciliation of convergence - and openly encouraging this truly global ‘framework-based market’ to be the stated basis of negotiation and reconciliation at the UNFCCC, will foster the atmosphere of ‘justice without vengeance’ that the process now so urgently needs.
The Hadley Centre has now confirmed to GCI [30 09 09] that the odds for remaining below two degrees are better with the GCI C&C scenario than with the CCC C&C scenario.
CCC Odds are Worse than 50:50 for a maximum 2 Degrees Scenario
GCI Odds are Better than 50:50 for a maximum 2 Degrees Scenario
Responses
In response to Aubrey's findings, the Hadley Institute have written to say:
"We would expect the curve with the lower cumulative CO2, as in the GCI C&C CO2 curve, to have a greater probability of staying below a 2 deg C peak warming level."
17:09, 27 May 2010 (UTC)17:09, 27 May 2010 (UTC)17:09, 27 May 2010 (UTC)17:09, 27 May 2010 (UTC)17:09, 27 May 2010 (UTC)17:09, 27 May 2010 (UTC)17:09, 27 May 2010 (UTC)~
A recent development is the appointment of Chris Huhne [LD] to the position of Minister at DECC. Chris and the Lib Dems have a long history of pro C&C position: - http://www.tangentfilms.com/Huhne.mp4
Encouragingly these items appeared recently on the DECC website: - http://programmeforgovernment.hmg.gov.uk/energy-and-climate-change/comment-page-1/
Colin Challen says: 25 May 2010 at 8:17 pmThe government needs to give an early signal as to what its international climate change posture is going to be: will it reflect the science of climate change, or will it continue with a form of cross our fingers and hope to die (after poorer people)? The Lib Dem manifesto rightly named Contraction and Convergence as the correct policy to follow – has this been dropped? It shouldn’t be so hard to be in the open about this – Labour had more less come round to accepting the import of C&C, it just failed to show leadership where it mattered on the subject. Chris Huhne understands C&C and I look forward to hearing what he has to say about it.
A Meyer says: 26 May 2010 at 9:20 amAs the UNFCCC itself publicly declared at COP-9, ‘contraction and convergence [C&C] is inevitably required’ to be UNFCCC-compliant.
That is the global deal needed and since 2005 C&C has been a key Liberal Democrat manifesto commitment which now reads: – “leading the fight against climate change Liberal Democrats are committed to securing a legally binding global agreement on limiting the increase in global temperatures to below 1.7 degrees Celsius. We believe that such an agreement must be based on reducing emissions overall, while equalising emissions between the developed and developing worlds – the principle of contraction and convergence.”
Having put C&C at the heart of the UK Climate Act [Adair Turner] last year, DECC made its attempted presentation at COP-15 inevitable. However, the C&C situation we were in at the UN was misjudged and consequently there was international ‘discord’ at COP-15 when this was tried. However desirable per se, EU leadership didn’t rescue that.
To put this right means to be biddable on the need to accelerate convergence relative to contraction rate needed to be UNFCCC-compliant as this presentation-animation shows: – http://www.gci.org.uk/public/COP_15_C&C.swf.
Adair Turner agreed with this to the Energy Climate Committee last year and Chris Huhne and the All Party Parliamentary Group on Climate Change ‘Climate Consensus’ Report have backed C&C since 2005: – http://www.tangentfilms.com/Huhne.mp4
It was encouraging that David Cameron bonded publicly with DECC’s climate-mission a few days ago. COPs-16/17 and ‘no deal’ looms again. ‘Freedom and fairness’ need the missing ‘f-words’ – ‘finite-focus’ – that the global deal needs and that C&C provides.
07:22, 1 September 2010 (UTC)07:22, 1 September 2010 (UTC)07:22, 1 September 2010 (UTC)07:22, 1 September 2010 (UTC)~~
At this link is an animation that analyses 'sink-efficiency' claims by weight behind Government's Climate Act: - http://www.gci.org.uk/animations/Sources_and_Sinks_UK_Climate_Act.swf
At this link is a letter co-signed by over 200 eminent persons calling on Chris Huhne to make good on Lib Dem C&C advocacy: - http://www.gci.org.uk/politics.html
At this link is a diverse list of C&C endorsements: - http://www.gci.org.uk/endorsements.html
