Tiempo Climate Newswatch

The Bush administration, in the United States, has welcomed the range of climate mitigation options defined by the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), released May 4th. The IPCC report concludes that the cost of climate-control measures can be relatively small and might even benefit the economy. The Bush administration does, however, have serious reservations about the more expensive scenarios that could cut world gross domestic product by three per cent. "There are measures that come currently at an extremely high cost because of the lack of available technology," warned James Connaughton, head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. "Well, that would of course cause global recession, so that is something that we probably want to avoid," he continued.

There had been considerable debate over the final wording of the report. "It's especially troubling that the Bush administration was seeking last-minute changes to play down the report's conclusion that quick, affordable action can limit the worst effects of global warming," said Larry Schweiger, president of the National Wildlife Federation. Chinese delegates had been "masters of deception and the art of interpretation", according to a German environment ministry official, in arguing that it would cost more and be much harder to reduce greenhouse gas emissions than the draft report suggested. On the release of the final report, the review's endorsement of nuclear technology was strongly opposed by some environmentalists. "Nuclear power threatens humans and the environment. It is not necessary to combat climate change," said Brent Blackwelder of Friends of the Earth. Greenpeace accused the IPCC of underestimating the impact of the Chernobyl nuclear accident. "Denying the real implications is not only insulting to the thousands of victims, but it also leads to dangerous recommendations," said Greenpeace's Ivan Blokov.

A new initiative, called for by forest-rich developing nations, aims to make forest preservation politically and economically attractive. "Many of these countries resisted certain provisions of the Kyoto Protocol because they felt that it intruded on their national sovereignty," said Christopher Field, head of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology. "Now, they are ready and willing to address forestry strategies in a constructive manner, on their own terms. It is very encouraging." The two-year programme, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation, has been launched by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

In a separate development, delegates to the United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF) adopted a landmark agreement on international forest policy and cooperation following two weeks of intense negotiations. UNFF Chair Hans Hoogeveen said that the agreement ushered in "a new chapter" in forest management. Pekka Patosaari, director of the UNFF Secretariat, described the agreement as a major step towards "people-centred" forest policy. Though the new agreement is not legally binding, it represents a strong international commitment. It sets a standard in forest management that is expected to have a major impact on international cooperation and national action to reduce deforestation, prevent forest degradation, promote sustainable livelihoods and reduce poverty for all forest-dependent peoples.

Much of the carbon entering the oceans may not reach the deep ocean, according to a new study involving scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in the United States and an international team of collaborators. Recent data show that only 20 per cent of the total carbon in the ocean surface reached the deep ocean off Hawaii, though about half of the total did in the northwest Pacific. Much of the carbon remains in the so-called twilight zone, between 100 and 1000 metres deep, where it is consumed by living things and continually recycled.

"The twilight zone is a critical link between the surface and the deep ocean," said lead author Ken Buesseler at WHOI. "We're interested in what happens in the twilight zone, what sinks into it and what actually sinks out of it. Unless the carbon that gets into the ocean goes all the way down into the deep ocean and is stored there, the oceans will have little impact on the atmosphere and hence, climate." Current estimates of ocean storage are based on a global average. "It is a good average but it doesn't describe the dynamics of the system where the ocean might be a good carbon sink," concludes Buesseler. "We've really only scratched the surface."