Cement, Energy and Environment

Environment Protection &Resource Management JUST 90 COMPANIES ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR 60% OF ALL MANMADE GLOBAL WARMING EMISSIONS Just 90 companies have been responsible for almost two-thi rds of greenhouse gas emissions generated since the Industrial Revolution began, new research has suggested. And, 83 of them are energy companies producing oil, gas and coal. If that is not worrying enough, the study by Richard Heede of the Colorado-based Climate Accountability Institute has concluded that half of all emissions have been produced in the last 25 years alone. What has got the goat of climate change activists on this count is that this happened long after governments and industry became aware of the deleterious effect that greenhouse emissions have on global warming. Courtesy: Total Energy, November- December 2013, p: 14 INTERNATIONAL CLIMATE CHANGE NEGOTIATIONS: CURRENT DYNAMICS & EXPECTATIONS The Writing on the Wall The warnings are all there. Atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide has crossed 400 parts per million (ppm). The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says it's all human– induced. Typhoon Haiyan has wrecked the Philippines. But the world continues to look the other way. At the 19th Conference of Parties in warsaw, the world missed another chance to build trust and put in place a roadmap to achieve an ambitious global deal in Paris in 2015 on May 9, 2013, two independent teams of scientists confirmed that. the global concentration of carbon dioxide (CO) m the atmosphere - the · ause of cl imate change - had crossed 400 mam c r million (ppm). At the Mauna Loa parts pet 1·n Hawaii US, which has been Observa ory ' . . . . CO concentration m the atmosphere mon1tonng 2 . · h us for the past 55 years, sc1ent1s~s :~m· _t te f National Oceanic and Atmosphenc mmls ra !On S . s Institution of Oceanography andf. thed c;~~ the daily average COz con 1rme . 03 m. So, what concentration for May 9 was 400 · PP does this mean for the world? The parties to the UN climat~ convention have pledged to limi t the increase m global average temperature to 1.5-2°C compared to the pre– industrial levels. It is generally accepted that keeping the temperature increase below 1.5°C and 2°C means keeping C0 2 concentrations in the atmosphere below 350 ppm and 450 ppm, respectively. The crossing of the 400 ppm mark means that the world will not be able to limit the temperature increase to 1.SOC. Additionally, with C02 concentration increasing at 2 ppm annually, the world is likely to hit the 450 ppm target much before 2050. If the world does not implement far– reaching measures to reduce emissions, then meeting even the 2oc will become impossible. This was also the message that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) gave in its new report. Countries like Japan and Australia have gone back on their commitment to reduce emissions, while the US and the EU have refused to increase their targets IPCC's Assessment Reports The first part of the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of IPCC was released in September 2013 (see article on AR5 in this section). The report of the Working Group I looked at the physical science basis for climate change. It examined the scientific evidence to infer why climate change is happening and what are the changes observed in the climatic systems so far. The report also projected the future climate scenarios. The AR5 says: "It is extremely likely (95 per cent confidence) that human influence on climate caused more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951-2010." The Fourth Assessment Report of IPCC, which was released in 2007, had put the confidence level at 90 per cent.