Tag Archives: Emissions

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31 January 2017, Climate News Network, Video demand drives up global CO2 emissions. Sitting back and watching your favourite streamed TV series may seem harmless enough – but video demand is leaving a hefty carbon footprint. LONDON, 31 January, 2017 – The internet is fast becoming a major source of global carbon emissions – and the main cause is video demand, the increasing popularity of “real time” streamed video content. Video streaming to internet-enabled TVs, game consoles and mobile devices already accounts for more than 60% of all data traffic – and the latest forecasts suggest this will rise to more than 80% by 2020. Increasingly, viewers across the world are watching films and TV series in real time through subscriptions to Netflix or Amazon, while social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are offering more and more streamed video content for free. This is driving a dizzying increase in the amount of information that needs to be stored and transmitted by power-hungry data centres.  Up until 2003 the world had accumulated a total of five exabytes – five billion gigabytes –  of stored digital content. By 2015 that amount was being consumed every two days, as annual consumption reached 870 exabytes. As more video is streamed and more of the world’s population goes online, annual data traffic is forecast to reach 2,300 exabytes by 2019. Read More here

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26 December 2016, Climate News Network, Online calculator cuts farms’ emissions. An internet tool is now available that helps to quantify and control farms’ greenhouse emissions released during the crop production cycle. It’s called the Cool Farm Tool (CFT)  – an easy-to-use online calculator that helps farmers monitor their emissions of greenhouse gases. Agriculture accounts for about 15% of total global greenhouse gas emissions, though when fertiliser manufacture and use and the overall food processing sector are included in calculations, that figure is considerably higher. The land can also act as a vital carbon sink, soaking up or sequestering vast amounts of carbon: when soils are disturbed the carbon is released, adding to greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The CFT was initially developed by researchers at the University of Aberdeen in the UK in partnership with Unilever and the Sustainable Food Lab. Now managed by a group including academics and food manufacturers called the Cool Farm Alliance, the CFT is free for farmers to download. Various details, including the crops being planted, soil types and pH levels (the relative acidity or alkalinity of the land), are entered into a series of boxes. Moisture levels, amounts and types of fertiliser used and general management details are also entered, along with information on quantities of diesel and electricity used in the cultivation and storage of crops and the fuel needed to transport goods on and off the farm. Halving emissions In 2010 PepsiCo, the drinks and food conglomerate, launched a programme aimed at making its operations more environmentally friendly. In particular it sought to halve the amount of greenhouse gas emissions and water use arising from production at its Walkers Crisps factory at Leicester in the UK – the largest such plant in the world, producing five million packets of crisps (known as potato chips in the US) every day. A central part of the PepsiCo project involved encouraging its potato suppliers to farm more sustainably through the use of the CFT and by using other devices to monitor and cut back on water use. New potato varieties with improved yields were also introduced. Within six years, the goal of halving carbon emissions and achieving a 50% reduction in water use was reached. Read More here

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12 December 2016, Climate News Network, Methane’s rapid spurt risks climate curbs plan. A recent rapid rise in methane could damage global attempts to slow climate change through cuts in carbon dioxide emissions. One year ago today, with huge relief, scarcely able to believe their achievement, world leaders finally agreed to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide. But a bare 12 months later comes sobering news: atmospheric concentrations of another gas, methane, are growing faster than at any time in the last 20 years, putting further pressure on the historic Paris Agreement to deliver substantial cuts in emissions very soon. Some scientists say the world now needs to change course and do more about methane to have a chance of keeping average global temperatures from rising by more than 2°C. And one seasoned Arctic watcher says the changes there in the last decade are altering a system which has remained intact since the Ice Age. Methane is the second major greenhouse gas, with agriculture accounting for 40% of emissions. Over a century it is 34 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide (though far less abundant), but over 20 years methane is 84 times more potent than CO2. In an editorial in the journal Environmental Research Letters, an international team of scientists reports that methane concentrations in the air began to surge around 2007 and grew steeply in 2014 and 2015. In those two years concentrations rose by 10 or more parts per billion annually. In the early 2000s they had been rising by an annual average of 0.5 ppb. Read More here

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11 December 2016, The Guardian, On climate change and the economy, we’re trapped in an idiotic netherworld. The shrieks of horror that follow mentions of pricing carbon show politics remains wedded to the belief that economic growth trumps concerns of climate change. This week was a prime example of how economics and, by extension, politics doesn’t cope very well with the issue of climate change. The news that Australia economy went backwards in the September quarter was greeted with alarm by politicians and then used as a reason to push their policy barrow. And most of the barrows were piled high with coal. The treasurer and the prime minister in their press conferences on Wednesday made great mention of the need to keep electricity prices low for the economy to grow. Malcolm Turnbull especially was in full Tony Abbott 2010 mode out of a desire to cover the silly back flip on the issue of investigating whether or not to introduce an emissions intensity trading scheme. When asked about the prospect of GDP growth going backwards he immediately responded by suggesting the issue was for Bill Shorten to “explain why he is proposing to increase the price of electricity”. Never mind that such a scheme would more efficiently price emissions than does the current system, for now we remained trapped in an idiotic netherworld where any mention of pricing carbon (no matter how oblique) must be greeted with shrieks of horror, with the prime minister leading the chorus. And while you do wonder if Malcolm Turnbull ever looks in the mirror in the morning and asks himself how it all came to this – or whether he first rings Cory Bernardi to ask whether he is allowed to look into the mirror and ask such questions – the broader issue is that this netherworld is one that inherently sees action on climate change as a negative for the economy. And by contrast, the economic impact of anything that will cause climate change is seen as inherently positive. Read More here