UN panel to lay out steps on global warming

UN-Sponsored scientists who warned of the dangers of a warming Earth will issue a new study next month describing how to avert the worst:

UN-Sponsored scientists who warned of the dangers of a warming Earth will issue a new study next month describing how to avert the worst: Everyone must embrace technologies ranging from nuclear power to manure control.

For heading off severe damage, the global economy might lose 3 percentage points of growth by 2030 in deploying technologies to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, says the panel’s draft report.

But it won’t be easy. “Governments, businesses and individuals all need to be pulling in the same direction,” said British researcher Rachel Warren, one of the report’s authors.

Story continues below this ad

Governments of major emitters like the US, China and India must join the Kyoto Protocol countries of Europe and Japan in imposing cutbacks in carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases emitted by industry, power plants and other sources.

The draft from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose final version will be issued in Bangkok on May 4, says emissions can be cut below current levels if the world shifts from carbon-heavy fuels like coal, embraces energy efficiency and reduces deforestation.

“The opportunities, the technology are there and now it’s a case of encouraging increased use of these technologies,” said International Energy Agency analyst Ralph Sims, one of the 33 scientists who drafted the report.

The draft notes significant cuts can come from making buildings more energy-efficient through better insulation, lighting and by converting from coal to natural gas, nuclear power and renewable energy such as wind, solar and biofuels.

Story continues below this ad

Also important would be steps to make motor vehicles more fuel-efficient, reduce deforestation, and plant more trees as a carbon “sink”, absorbing carbon dioxide. Capturing methane emitted by livestock and its manure would also help.

Over the next century, it says, such technology as hydrogen-powered fuel cells, hybrid and electric vehicles with better batteries, and carbon sequestration—whereby carbon emissions are stored underground—will become more commercially feasible.

It says taking “optimal” mitigation measures might by 2030 stabilise greenhouse-gas concentrations in the atmosphere at 445 to 534 parts per million, up from an estimated 430 ppm today.

It indicates stabilising concentrations at 450 ppm—an unlikely scenario—might keep the temperature rise to 2 degree Celsius over preindustrial temperatures, a level scientists think may avert severe damage.