The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali is nearing its halfway mark. Senior delegates are hopeful an international agreement will be reached on how to control harmful climate emissions when the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012. But environmental activists fear the talking is taking too long. Chad Bouchard reports from Bali.
UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer (R) answers question during press briefing at UN Climate Change Conference 2007, 06 Dec 2007Yvo de Boer, the United Nations' climate change chief, told reporters Friday that over the past two days, the mood at negotiations has been positive.Delegates in Bali hope to begin drafting a plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions in an effort to contain rising global temperatures. Many scientists believe the emissions contribute to a rise in global temperatures.
Asked to provided a concrete example of progress, he said a special working group of delegates has agreed that any future agreement should include ways to encourage countries such as China and India to develop environmentally friendly practices as their industries and economies grow.
"So they've gone into an in-depth discussion on mitigation, and have come to the conclusion that really a strong focus needs to be on putting in place incentives for developing countries to mitigate climate change. That came up very strongly. That, to me at least, is a good indication that the mood is good, people are at work," said de Boer.
Indonesian police keep group of activists from proceeding to U.N. climate conference venue in Nusa Dua, Bali, 7 Dec 2007 But environmentalists have not been as optimistic about progress in this week's negotiations.Earlier this week, Japan took a position similar to the United States in proposing that any new agreement should favor voluntary emissions targets instead of mandatory ones. The two nations believe that binding emissions caps would threaten the economic growth needed to fund technology used to fight global warming.
Hans Verlome, director of the World Wildlife Fund's Climate Change Program, urged the U.S., Japan and others to take more decisive action in light of a report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that found global warming is occurring and is likely caused by humans.
"We did not come to Bali to just have another process, and we have two years of talks. It is time to get on with it," said Verlome. "The IPCC report has delivered the results that are necessary to inform decision making, and the decision making is here, now."
Verlome and other environmentalists say China has taken a leading role in negotiations this week. China wants wealthy countries to help spread technology for cutting greenhouse gas emissions in poor countries.
Harlan Watson of the U.S. delegation reaffirmed his country's opposition to mandatory caps on carbon emissions, but said the U.S. would be open and flexible.
"The U.S. is committed to advancing negotiations, and developing a Bali roadmap, that will guide negotiations on a new post-2012 global climate change regime that is environmentally effective and economically sustainable," he said.
Delegates are on schedule to begin drafting proposals early next week. Environment and trade ministers are scheduled to meet over the next few days.
Glaciers are melting, sea levels are rising, cloud forests are drying, and wildlife is scrambling to keep pace. It's becoming clear that humans have caused most of the past century's warming by releasing heat-trapping gases as we power our modern lives. Called greenhouse gases, their levels are higher now than in the last 650,000 years.
We call the result global warming, but it is causing a set of changes to the Earth's climate, or long-term weather patterns, that varies from place to place. As the Earth spins each day, the new heat swirls with it, picking up moisture over the oceans, rising here, settling there. It's changing the rhythms of climate that all living things have come to rely upon.
What will we do to slow this warming? How will we cope with the changes we've already set into motion? While we struggle to figure it all out, the face of the Earth as we know it—coasts, forests, farms and snow-capped mountains—hangs in the balance.
Greenhouse effect
The "greenhouse effect" is the warming that happens when certain gases in Earth's atmosphere trap heat. These gases let in light but keep heat from escaping, like the glass walls of a greenhouse.
First, sunlight shines onto the Earth's surface, where it is absorbed and then radiates back into the atmosphere as heat. In the atmosphere, “greenhouse” gases trap some of this heat, and the rest escapes into space. The more greenhouse gases are in the atmosphere, the more heat gets trapped.
Scientists have known about the greenhouse effect since 1824, when Joseph Fourier calculated that the Earth would be much colder if it had no atmosphere. This greenhouse effect is what keeps the Earth's climate livable. Without it, the Earth's surface would be an average of about 60 degrees Fahrenheit cooler. In 1895, the Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius discovered that humans could enhance the greenhouse effect by making carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. He kicked off 100 years of climate research that has given us a sophisticated understanding of global warming.
Levels of greenhouse gases (GHGs) have gone up and down over the Earth's history, but they have been fairly constant for the past few thousand years. Global average temperatures have stayed fairly constant over that time as well, until recently. Through the burning of fossil fuels and other GHG emissions, humans are enhancing the greenhouse effect and warming Earth.
Scientists often use the term "climate change" instead of global warming. This is because as the Earth's average temperature climbs, winds and ocean currents move heat around the globe in ways that can cool some areas, warm others, and change the amount of rain and snow falling. As a result, the climate changes differently in different areas.
Aren't temperature changes natural?
The average global temperature and concentrations of carbon dioxide (one of the major greenhouse gases) have fluctuated on a cycle of hundreds of thousands of years as the Earth's position relative to the sun has varied. As a result, ice ages have come and gone.
However, for thousands of years now, emissions of GHGs to the atmosphere have been balanced out by GHGs that are naturally absorbed. As a result, GHG concentrations and temperature have been fairly stable. This stability has allowed human civilization to develop within a consistent climate.
Occasionally, other factors briefly influence global temperatures. Volcanic eruptions, for example, emit particles that temporarily cool the Earth's surface. But these have no lasting effect beyond a few years. Other cycles, such as El Niño, also work on fairly short and predictable cycles.
Now, humans have increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by more than a third since the industrial revolution. Changes this large have historically taken thousands of years, but are now happening over the course of decades.
Why is this a concern?
The rapid rise in greenhouse gases is a problem because it is changing the climate faster than some living things may be able to adapt. Also, a new and more unpredictable climate poses unique challenges to all life.
Historically, Earth's climate has regularly shifted back and forth between temperatures like those we see today and temperatures cold enough that large sheets of ice covered much of North America and Europe. The difference between average global temperatures today and during those ice ages is only about 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit), and these swings happen slowly, over hundreds of thousands of years.
Now, with concentrations of greenhouse gases rising, Earth's remaining ice sheets (such as Greenland and Antarctica) are starting to melt too. The extra water could potentially raise sea levels significantly.
As the mercury rises, the climate can change in unexpected ways. In addition to sea levels rising, weather can become more extreme. This means more intense major storms, more rain followed by longer and drier droughts (a challenge for growing crops), changes in the ranges in which plants and animals can live, and loss of water supplies that have historically come from glaciers.
Scientists are already seeing some of these changes occurring more quickly than they had expected. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, eleven of the twelve hottest years since thermometer readings became available occurred between 1995 and 2006.
