The Copenhagen Forum -
This is a space for open discussion
1. The first part is list of events leading to Copenhagen event
2. The second part is the Conpenhagen event open discussion
1. First Part
The BBC just put this on its website: quite interesting!
http://news. bbc.co.uk/ 2/hi/science/ nature/8285247. stm
A brief history of climate change
As the UN climate summit in Copenhagen approaches, BBC News environment correspondent Richard Black traces key milestones, scientific discoveries, technical innovations and political action.
1712 - British ironmonger Thomas Newcomen invents the first widely used steam engine, paving the way for the Industrial Revolution and industrial scale use of coal.
1800 - world population reaches one billion.
1824 - French physicist Joseph Fourier describes the Earth's natural "greenhouse effect". He writes: "The temperature [of the Earth] can be augmented by the interposition of the atmosphere, because heat in the state of light finds less resistance in penetrating the air, than in re-passing into the air when converted into non-luminous heat."
1861 - Irish physicist John Tyndall shows that water vapour and certain other gases create the greenhouse effect. "This aqueous vapour is a blanket more necessary to the vegetable life of England than clothing is to man," he concludes. More than a century later, he is honoured by having a prominent UK climate research organisation - the Tyndall Centre - named after him.
1886 - Karl Benz unveils the Motorwagen, often regarded as the first true automobile.
1896 - Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius concludes that industrial-age coal burning will enhance the natural greenhouse effect. He suggests this might be beneficial for future generations. His conclusions on the likely size of the "man-made greenhouse" are in the same ballpark - a few degrees Celsius for a doubling of CO2 - as modern-day climate models.
1900 - another Swede, Knut Angstrom, discovers that even at the tiny concentrations found in the atmosphere, CO2 strongly absorbs parts of the infrared spectrum. Although he does not realise the significance, Angstrom has shown that a trace gas can produce greenhouse warming.
1927 - carbon emissions from fossil fuel burning and industry reach one billion tonnes per year.
1930 - human population reaches two billion.
1938 - using records from 147 weather stations around the world, British engineer Guy Callendar shows that temperatures had risen over the previous century. He also shows that CO2 concentrations had increased over the same period, and suggests this caused the warming. The "Callendar effect" is widely dismissed by meteorologists.
1955 - using a new generation of equipment including early computers, US researcher Gilbert Plass analyses in detail the infrared absorption of various gases. He concludes that doubling CO2 concentrations would increase temperatures by 3-4C.
1957 - US oceanographer Roger Revelle and chemist Hans Suess show that seawater will not absorb all the additional CO2 entering the atmosphere, as many had assumed. Revelle writes: "Human beings are now carrying out a large scale geophysical experiment.. ."
1958 - using equipment he had developed himself, Charles David (Dave) Keeling begins systematic measurements of atmospheric CO2 at Mauna Loa in Hawaii and in Antarctica. Within four years, the project - which continues today - provides the first unequivocal proof that CO2 concentrations are rising.
1960 - human population reaches three billion.
1965 - a US President's Advisory Committee panel warns that the greenhouse effect is a matter of "real concern".
1972 - first UN environment conference, in Stockholm. Climate change hardly registers on the agenda, which centres on issues such as chemical pollution, atomic bomb testing and whaling. The United Nations Environment Programme (Unep) is formed as a result.
1975 - human population reaches four billion.
1975 - US scientist Wallace Broecker puts the term "global warming" into the public domain in the title of a scientific paper.
1987 - human population reaches five billion
1987 - Montreal Protocol agreed, restricting chemicals that damage the ozone layer. Although not established with climate change in mind, it has had a greater impact on greenhouse gas emissions than the Kyoto Protocol.
1988 - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) formed to collate and assess evidence on climate change.
1989 - UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher - possessor of a chemistry degree - warns in a speech to the UN that "We are seeing a vast increase in the amount of carbon dioxide reaching the atmosphere.. . The result is that change in future is likely to be more fundamental and more widespread than anything we have known hitherto." She calls for a global treaty on climate change.
1989 - carbon emissions from fossil fuel burning and industry reach six billion tonnes per year.
1990 - IPCC produces First Assessment Report. It concludes that temperatures have risen by 0.3-0.6C over the last century, that humanity's emissions are adding to the atmosphere's natural complement of greenhouse gases, and that the addition would be expected to result in warming.
1992 - at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, governments agree the United Framework Convention on Climate Change. Its key objective is "stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system". Developed countries agree to return their emissions to 1990 levels.
1995 - IPCC Second Assessment Report concludes that the balance of evidence suggests "a discernible human influence" on the Earth's climate. This has been called the first definitive statement that humans are responsible for climate change.
1997 - Kyoto Protocol agreed. Developed nations pledge to reduce emissions by an average of 5% by the period 2008-2012, with wide variations on targets for individual countries. US Senate immediately declares it will not ratify the treaty.
1998 - strong El Nino conditions combine with global warming to produce the warmest year on record. The average global temperature reached 0.52C above the mean for the period 1961-1990 (a commonly-used baseline).
1998 - publication of the controversial "hockey stick" graph indicating that modern-day temperature rise in the northern hemisphere is unusual compared with the last 1,000 years. The work would later be the subject of two enquiries instigated by the US Congress.
1999 - human population reaches six billion.
2001 - President George W Bush removes the US from the Kyoto process.
2001 - IPCC Third Assessment Report finds "new and stronger evidence" that humanity's emissions of greenhouse gases are the main cause of the warming seen in the second half of the 20th Century.
2005 - the Kyoto Protocol becomes international law for those countries still inside it.
2005 - UK Prime Minister Tony Blair selects climate change as a priority for his terms as chair of the G8 and president of the EU.
2006 - the Stern Review concludes that climate change could damage global GDP by up to 20% if left unchecked - but curbing it would cost about 1% of global GDP.
2006 - carbon emissions from fossil fuel burning and industry reach eight billion tonnes per year.
2007 - the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report concludes it is more than 90% likely that humanity's emissions of greenhouse gases are responsible for modern-day climate change.
2007 - the IPCC and former US vice-president Al Gore receive the Nobel Peace Prize "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change".
2007 - at UN negotiations in Bali, governments agree the two-year "Bali roadmap" aimed at hammering out a new global treaty by the end of 2009.
2008 - half a century after beginning observations at Mauna Loa, the Keeling project shows that CO2 concentrations have risen from 315 parts per million (ppm) in 1958 to 380ppm in 2008.
2008 - two months before taking office, incoming US president Barack Obama pledges to "engage vigorously" with the rest of the world on climate change.
2009 - China overtakes the US as the world's biggest greenhouse gas emitter - although the US remains well ahead on a per-capita basis.
2009 - 192 governments convene for the UN climate summit in Copenhagen.
Roslyn ArayataPolicy Research & Advocacy Officer, ATM
2. Second Part
Dear ATM Team:
Thank you Jaybee and Roslyn.
The Conpenhagen Forum
Can we take few open discussions?. I reviewed only few from those documents leading to the Copenhagen forum. And I got a story to tell- Climate Change due to human activity (industrialization and population): Due to human activity CO2 in the atmosphere increased. It has a precursor gas, methane (which at a given period naturally oxidizes in the atmosphere ending to CO2 and H2O). CO2 balance in nature was stable when there was no multi user (man). Since man has brain he must be responsible of his resource use activities. Base on the documents the forum is logical for the perpetuity of humanity. I am one of it, if one or two would accept me.
I agree that logical and responsible works need to be projected, globally. The premises that may be included are: 1) non disturbance production system (built in system design of farm and industrial processes to prevent onsite and offsite negative impact), repair and maintenance (measures/mitigation for possible occurrence of impact). From those documents information was drawn that human processes and measures are leaky, simply because a human made system is a replica of human. So we must do our responsibility: prevent that damaging leak of human activity, and implement measures if system leak occurs.
But still something horned out from the word responsibility: from the war of ideas it seems that nobody drawn what is the ultimate standard of responsibility except stop, which is synonymous to death: But I don’t like it. Anyway this is just and open discussion.
In this communication site of yours, from current and o the future I vow due respect. I am respectfully requesting for a space of open discussion.
But those documents are just information for inference, to draw money or obtain pledges. Please correct me if I’m wrong: once pledges are done, trade from north to south will have benchmark, thus, the opportunity side of finding energy-material balance technology may not be pursued since the implied tails are trade not knowledge and technology exchange for the energy-material balance of the industries producing CO2 and CH4. The privilege on knowledge and technology may favor the north and the south will just be consumer or mere recipient of development and not the author- we will not improve by that. However if Philippine delegates are capacitated, they must turn to the direct system of reducing CO2 & CH4. Phenomena are available in nature, can be tamed, and not just the plantae category of measures.
Yes it’s good we can capitalize our biological resources for say 10 to 20 years contracts on clean development mechanism (or others), and use the same for our dollar needs, but that is not supposedly the case. How can a time old established balancer (plantae), existing long before any farm-forest-industrial burning, balances the excess CO2 now and in the future? I mean there is no logic at all. To fix CO2 by photosynthesis alone would mean a number of plants more than the earth area can accommodate. Well, oceans can be fertilized with iron and ammonium for the growth of phytoplankton. But nature harvesting of it may affect marine species. What I mean is that all information necessarily be tested.
Excess CO2 and CH4 versus Stable CO2 and CH4
1. The Excess CO2 and CH4
Excess CO2 & CH4 are produced from fossil processing and burning (petroleum and coal). Households, machines, and industries burn petroleum in varying degrees from simple house illuminant to vehicles to the biggest coal and petroleum fired power plant- the emitted green house materials are CO2 and CH4.
1.1 A good point of containing directly CO2 and CH4 in industries.
At mass reaction ratio, they can be fixed directly into carbon base energy-substances at an in-vessel exothermic reaction (energy–substance usable for man, say ethanol, methanol, and acetic acid the raw material of polyethylentetraethyl- PET use in bottled water). The heat generated can be recovered for carbon free electricity (materials/chemical thermo data to be specific).
The CO2 can even be turned into carbonates and be part of the ecosystem of the oceans, seas or be use for industrial purposes. We can see the seas and ocean, they are vast depository of alkali and alkaline earth ions constantly recharge by materials from mountains via rivers, and distributed to the world via ocean current and bioforms.
If we observed closely the nature and take its process as technology we can fix CO2 from the atmosphere directly to the ions of the seas and oceans to form carbonates (the sand of seas and corals are carbonates) and allow the long process of fossilization and long period of immobilization. The carbonate fixation is highly exothermic and the heat can be recovered for electricity. The process can be done in-vessel to ensure the recovery of heat, and not just in the seas to be dissipated. Take an experiment in your own kitchen and find first hand information if there are salts or carbonates settling at the water-heat expose surface of your kettle. Or say, store for a time a river water or a saltwater, and try to observe for precipitates. Another example is olivine rock (jade). Olivine is basically (magnesium-x-iron silicate hydroxide), if powdered it reacts with the CO2 in the atmosphere and produce magnesium carbonate with the generation of heat (for electricity) and silica (sand) as by-product. If the process is in-vessel heat is efficiently recovered for electricity
2. The Stable CO2 & CH4
The Stable CO2 & CH4 are produced from the burnings and decay of materials in forest, farms (plant and animal), bio decays in wetland, rivers, seas and ocean. CO2 and CH4 from burning/decaying bioforms emitted to the atmosphere can be fixed back by the nature system- photosynthesis. The farmers establish food and tree/fruit farms, harvest the valuable portion and burn the remains, then plant again and repeat the cycle. It’s the practice of CO2 balance in the tropic farms.
2.2 A good direction of sequestering the CO2 and CH4 in the Tropics
A good point of presentation from the tropics could be the extraction of atmospheric CO2 and methane and convert them to usable materials. Extraction of farm generated CO2 and CH4 in the tropical areas can be a focus technology discussion. Forest and rice paddies are the prime producer of stable CO2 and CH4. Instead of burning (as practiced) stakeholders may discuss the conversion of forest and farm waste into methanol, ethanol, acetic and PET via material distillation (in-vessel). Also the ash remains can be utilized as brine solution reacting CO2 to the metal ions.
The idea from nature is: Plants can only fix-balance the CO2 of burned plants and bioforms not the CO2 from burned fossil. CO2 from industries are burned coal and petroleum- simply an excess material in the atmosphere (the acceptable baseline is at zero farm-industry age). Therefore to fix-balance the atmosphere of CO2, there is a need to remove the industrial CO2 via industrial technology. That technology can be observed in nature.
Danger of Second Hand Information
All the information you gather is not yours. You can only use them to infer. But when you stand for your own you must have a first hand information- test the information. Note simulation may be defying. You can make your own investigation and experiment but please don’t directly believe in simulated data. Try to verify information always with referral to functional attributes of the nature earth. Cyber Science has archives of defined and known phenomena. Try to observe the same.
Currently I am resolved to my hand grasp knowledge and disagree to the presentation of Copenhagen. However for the sake of World Relations I bow to it.
I hope more things can urgently be explored to rationally contain CO2 economically and safely and draw respective social responsibility.
Remember reduction is not categorically defined as to how much in the coming Copenhagen event.
It would be good if somebody present a statement like this sample phrases: Our Wind Technology in of Ilocos can be used in UK, and the system/technology cuts 3million tons of CO2 annually. This technology employs these much of people with these following (xy) categories of expertise and works.
Thank you very much for the open discussion, your space, time and information.
Wish everybody good health and productive always.
PEDRO P. PAQUEO JR.
