A handy guide to help understand your net zero from an NDC…
World leaders meeting in Glasgow for the UN Cop26 summit are under pressure to take action on climate change – but what exactly is it they are talking about?
Here are some of the commonly used climate terms and what they mean.
Greenhouse Gases
These are gases that trap some of the heat from the sun in the atmosphere and keep the planet warm enough for life to thrive.
Concentrations of these gases – which include carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide – have increased at a rapid rate in recent years.
Greenhouse Gas Or Carbon Emissions
This is the release of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere, mainly from burning fossil fuels – coal, gas and oil – in things such as power stations, vehicle engines and boilers for heating buildings.
Livestock and changes to how we use land, including cutting down or burning forests and draining peatland, industrial processes such as cement making and refrigerants are among other sources of greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activity.
Global Warming
Because of emissions from human activity, the overall level or concentration of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has increased.
The higher the concentrations in the atmosphere, the more they trap heat and warm the Earth, pushing up temperatures across the land and oceans, which is known as global warming.
In 2020, global temperatures were around 1.2C above what they were in the 19th century, before most of the industrial activity driving emissions got going.
Climate Change
This encompasses the rapid changes we are seeing to weather conditions and the natural world, driven by global warming and the human activities that cause it.
Impacts we are already seeing include more frequent and extreme heatwaves and wildfires, increased rainfall and storms which can cause floods, melting ice and rising sea levels, changes to crop yields and loss of wildlife.
As temperatures continue to rise, the impacts of climate change are projected to worsen, and the situation is increasingly being referred to as a climate crisis or emergency.
Net Zero
Cutting greenhouse gas emissions from human activity to zero overall, which is needed to halt the global temperature rises driven by the increase in levels of gases in the atmosphere.
Just as you need to turn off a tap completely to stop the level of water in a bath from continuing to rise, we need to cut emissions to zero to stop the greenhouse gas levels – and therefore temperatures – rising.
Completely stopping emissions is extremely difficult, but there are some measures, such as planting trees, which can absorb greenhouse gases from the atmosphere – the equivalent of bailing some water out of the bath to keep the water level steady even if the tap is still running slightly.
So emissions have to be cut as much as possible, and any remaining pollution, from hard-to-tackle sectors such as aviation, needs to be “offset” by action that absorbs carbon to have the net effect of cutting emissions to zero.
Decarbonisation
The process of removing the emissions associated with activities or sectors, for example decarbonising electricity generation by phasing out coal and gas plants that put out pollution, and building renewables such as offshore wind farms.
Paris Agreement
The world’s first comprehensive treaty on climate change, agreed under the United Nations in the French capital in December 2015.
Under the deal, all countries commit to action to limit temperature rises to “well below” 2C above pre-industrial levels and pursue efforts to keep them to 1.5C, to reduce the risks and impacts of climate change.
Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs)
National plans for climate action submitted by countries under the Paris Agreement, which outline post-2020 action to tackle climate change, with many plans running to 2030.
Cop26 is the deadline for new, more ambitious NDCs under a five-year process established by the Paris deal, with current policies and plans leaving the world way off track to meet the 2C or 1.5C goals.
Cop26
This is the latest global climate summit held under the UN’s climate change convention, which is being hosted by the UK and taking place in Glasgow.
Cop26, delayed from last year by the pandemic, is seen as the most important international climate meeting since Paris 2015, because it is the NDC deadline and has been described as the last best chance to keep 1.5C in reach.
There will also be negotiations to agree the final parts of the “rulebook” for implementing the Paris Agreement, and talks focusing on finance to help countries cope with the impacts of climate change.
Cop stands for “conference of the parties”, and this is the 26th one held under the convention, usually annually since 1995.
AOSIS, LULUCF, YOUNGO and more…
These are just some of acronyms and jargon that surrounds the UN convention – which is known as the United Framework Convention on Climate Change or UNFCCC.
There are country groupings such as AOSIS, or the Alliance of Small Island States, areas of climate action, such as LULUCF or land use, land use change and forestry, and representative groups including children and young people – known as YOUNGO.
(Source – Irish Independent – Environment – Emily Beament – 29/10/2021)
The Long Road To Cop26: 13 Notable Moments During The Fight Against Climate Chaos
Key milestones in the history of scientific discoveries and politics of global warming.
When world leaders gather in Glasgow for Cop26 in a bid to curb dangerous warming, it will be in the face of code red scientific warnings of climate change and urgent calls for action.
But the latest update to the Oxford English Dictionary shows we have been talking about “climate change” for more than a century and a half, so how did we get here and why has it taken so long?
Here are some key milestones in the history of climate change:
Industrial Revolution
James Watt patented his steam engine in 1769, helping drive the Industrial Revolution and its use of fossil fuels.
‘Greenhouse Effect’
Joseph Fourier recognised the atmosphere acts as a blanket, keeping the Earth warmer than it would otherwise be, the “greenhouse effect”, as early as 1824.
Irish Physician’s Discovery
Just a few decades later Irish physicist John Tyndall measured the absorption of heat by greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide in his laboratory in London, publishing a paper on his findings in 1861.
A few years before him American female scientist Eunice Newton Foote conducted an experiment revealing the heat-trapping properties of carbon dioxide, and warned in a scientific paper in 1856 that an atmosphere of that gas would give the Earth a high temperature.
Changing Levels
Before the end of the 19th century – which saw the development of ocean-going steamships, coal fired power stations for electricity and the motor car – scientists began to spell out the impact of changing carbon dioxide levels.
In 1896 Svante Arrhenius published a paper on ice ages which estimated temperature changes due to changing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
He was followed a few years later by fellow Swede Nils Ekholm suggesting the gas could increase in the atmosphere over the coming millennium due to the burning of coal, which would warm the Earth.
Emissions
In 1938 Guy Callendar, an amateur meteorologist who collected and combined thousands of observations of temperature and carbon dioxide from around the world, was the first to show that human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide were contributing to rising global temperatures.
He did the calculations in his spare time, without a computer.
Climate Change
Oceanographer Roger Revelle first briefed the US Congress on climate change in 1956, warning that “we are making perhaps the greatest geophysical experiment in history”.
Shortly afterwards, Charles David Keeling started measuring carbon dioxide at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, producing the “Keeling Curve” – a clear record of rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere
Two decades later Nasa scientist James Hansen’s testimony to Congress in 1988 was front page news: he told a Senate committee that global warming was “already happening now” and was almost certainly not due to natural variation.
IPCC is Established
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established by the UN at the end of that year, to prepare a comprehensive review of the state of knowledge of the science of climate change and its impacts.
We are now in the sixth assessment cycle that the IPCC has conducted, which issued a “code red” for humanity this summer.
Calls For Treaty
In the late 1980s there were growing calls for an international treaty on climate change, not least as countries had just managed to successfully negotiate the Montreal Protocol to phase down the use of CFC chemicals that were damaging the ozone layer, another major environment problem.
Among those making the calls was UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher, who warned of the threat of climate change in a speech to the UN in 1989.
UN Framework Convention on Climate Change
The treaty, known as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), was agreed at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992.
The First Cop
The first Cop – or “conference of parties” to the UNFCCC – in 1995, presided over by Angela Merkel, got the show on the road towards a deal to take action on the greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change.
Kyoto Protocol
The world’s first climate change treaty, the Kyoto Protocol, was agreed in 1997, with developed nations committing to cuts to their emissions.
It entered into force in 2005, but was never ratified by the United States and did not cover the burgeoning emissions of emerging economies such as China.
Copenhagen Failure
– Talks in Copenhagen in 2009 to secure a new treaty did not go as planned, against a backdrop of the financial crisis, acrimony between countries and efforts by climate sceptics to cast doubt on the science, and failed to secure the comprehensive deal it was now clear was needed.
Paris Agreement
Countries finally secured the Paris Agreement in 2015 in the French capital, agreeing a comprehensive global deal to limit temperature rises to well below 2C above pre-industrial levels and to pursuing efforts to curb warming to 1.5C.
Another six years on, countries meeting in Glasgow for Cop26 are being urged to deliver on the promises they made in Paris and drive the action needed to curb dangerous warming.
Climate campaigner and author of Our Biggest Experiment, a history of the climate crisis, Alice Bell, said that the world was still talking about delivering action three decades after the first calls for action in part because the oil industry pushed back with successful tactics for delay.
Also, she said, climate diplomacy takes time, adding: “The architects of the UNFCCC knew that in 1992, which is one of the reasons why they didn’t just make an agreement but agreed to meet every year to keep making that agreement, and trying to make it better.”
But she said people would be “forgiven for thinking this has just offered an opportunity for generations of politicians to keep on chatting rather than actually doing anything.
“We’ve been talking about climate change for well over 150 years, and worried about it for a good 50. It’s time to get to work.”
(Source – Irish Independent – Environment – Emily Beament – 29/10/2021)