Tomorrow, leaders from 6 nations will meet in Sydney, Australia to discuss mechanisms for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The group are a fascinating mix:
1. The United States, the largest emitter of greenhouse gases and a super power.
2. India and China, the most populous nations on earth and emerging super powers.
3. South Korea and Japan, members of an alliance that plan to build a $16 billion nuclear fusion reactor in the south of France. Fusion is what powers the sun.
4. Australia, the other Kyoto recalcitrant and a country with a lot of natural resources including coal and uranium.
Together these six countries account for about half the world's GDP, population, energy use and greenhouse gas emissions.
They have already decided that arbitary emissions targets (a central plank of Kyoto) will not be on the agenda. Instead they want to focus on developing, promoting and sharing new technologies including nuclear, hydrogen, fusion and solar.
The theme for the meeting tomorrow was perhaps forshadowed by Quigqing Zhao, First Secretary, Chinese Embassy in Australia, in his address to a climate change conference in Canberra last April, click here for full text. He said,
In China's school textbook, there is a sentence which almost all Chinese adults believe to be true and I think most children
between 10 and 18 can recite, that is "Science and technology
is the most powerful impetus to productivity". If I were one
of the editors, I would propose to add one more sentence
somewhere in the text book, that "Science and technology is
the most reasonable way to address climate change".
We need a new approach - a new focus. With just Kyoto, global emissions will be some 40 percent higher in 2010 than in 1990.
I wish the new Asia-Pacific Partnerhsip on Clean Development and Climate well in Sydney at their first official meeting tomorrow.
The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade outlines government policies on climate change and the new Partnership at its website, click here. For information on tomorrow's meeting click here.
Paul - renewables need storage. I am coming to the idea that electric transport (electric cars and plug in hybrids) are an essential part of a renewable solution. Cars represent an enormous potential storage as modern AC electric drives can generate 240V electricity from their batteries. I calculated that 7 million electric cars could run all Australia demand for 2 hours.
Wind alone will not be enough. A total distributed renewable system will be household PV, large solar thermal and wind power.
Thanks for that, Phil.
Paul it was sort of in Stoat's but anyway it's like this - water deson't have a high residence time like CO2:
Water vapor in the troposphere, unlike the better-known greenhouse gases such as CO2, is essentially passive in terms of climate: the residence time for water vapor in the atmosphere is short (about a week) so perturbations to water vapor rapidly re-equilibriate. In contrast, the lifetimes of CO2, methane, etc, are long (hundreds of years) and hence perturbations remain. Thus, in response to a temperature perturbation caused by enhanced CO2, water vapor would increase, resulting in a (limited) positive feedback and higher temperatures. In response to a perturbation from enhanced water vapor, the atmosphere would re-equilibriate due to clouds causing reflective cooling and water-removing rain.
So you don't get a runaway greenhouse effect.
Phil - Nothing in either link about what limits temperature rise, or why relative humidity isn't at 100% constantly. Maybe it is obvious to others, and so not explained in the links.
Do you think the author of the mustelid link is influenced by his former membership of the UK Green party? Why should he have any credibility, given the Green's policy of reducing fossil fuel use, and the AGW hypothesis that fossil fuel use is causing AGW? Anything he says in defence of AGW is likely to be tainted.
Phil - Thanks for the reference, I'll read it today, I hope. (Second link didn't work).
Ender - I was wondering why such a good wind site is only producing 8% of a small town's energy. Also what it would look like if wind power was producing say 20% of Australia's energy needs. Would that be possible? How many turbines? Sited where? What infrastructure? Maybe some of these practicalities account for why wind power is not more widespread.