Tiempo Climate Newswatch

The United States emitted a record quantity of greenhouse gases during 2004, according to the latest figures from the Environmental Protection Agency. Greater electricity consumption was the main cause of the 1.7 per cent increase from 2003. National carbon emissions have risen sharply in recent years despite concern about climate change and have increased by almost 16 per cent since 1990. Methane and nitrous oxide levels have, however, decreased by ten and two per cent, respectively, from 1990 levels.

David Read, Vice President of the London-based Royal Society, commented that "while the United Kingdom appears to be doing slightly better, its carbon dioxide emissions have been rising annually for the past three years." "The United States and the United Kingdom are the two leading scientific nations in the world and are home to some of the best climate researchers. But in terms of fulfilling the commitment made by their signature to the United Nations Convention to stabilize greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere, neither country is demonstrating leadership by reducing their emissions to the levels required," he concluded.

More information

• Independent Online
• ENS

• Emissions report, EPA

Scientists predict that global warming will mean drier summers in the Caribbean and parts of Central America. The forecast is based on a review of a number of climate model simulations. The model consensus was that a substantial decrease in tropical rainfall could occur by 2054, earlier according to some models. The regions most likely to experience summer drying are Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, Belize, Guatemala and Honduras.

Lead author of the study, David Neelan of the University of California at Los Angeles, said that "the regions in the tropics that get a lot of summer precipitation are going to get more, and the regions that get very little precipitation will get even less, if the models are correct." "Certain regions in between will get shifted from a moderate amount of precipitation to a low amount," he continued. "The bigger the temperature rise, the larger the change in precipitation." Commenting on the slight decrease in summer rainfall that has affected the Caribbean over the past 50 years, Neelin said that "it is plausible that the decrease is due to global warming, but there is not yet a smoking gun that shows that to be the case." It could be "part of a natural cycle."

More information

• ENS
• SciDev.Net

• Research paper (1.6Mb download), UCLA

If you want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions become a vegetarian, according to a recent study from the University of Chicago. Gidon Eshel and Pamela Martin examined a range of typical American diets, considering the amount of fossil-fuel energy and greenhouse gas emissions associated for each. The vegetarian diet proved the most energy-efficient. "The less animal-based food you eat, and the more you replace those calories with plant-based food, the better off you are, in terms of your health as well as your contributions to the health of the planet," Eshel concludes.

In terms of total emissions, red meat was the worst offender, though the fish-based diet rivalled red meat in energy consumption. "The seafood portion of American diets is heavily skewed toward what is called charismatic predator fish," Eshel reported. "Sword, shark and tuna and so on require long-distance ocean journeys, and those efforts... require a lot of labour and a lot of fossil fuel."

More information

• ABC News

• EurekAlert!