..CO2 emissions highest ever in 2010: IEA

Carbon dioxide emitted by energy use hit a record high last year, dimming prospects for limiting global warming to two degrees Celsius, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said Monday.

Breaching the 2.0 C (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) threshold sharply increases risk of severe climate impacts, including flooding, storms, rising sea levels and species extinction, scientists have warned.

"Energy-related carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions in 2010 were the highest in history," the Paris-based IEA said in a statement posted on its website.

After a dip in 2009 caused by the global financial crisis, emissions climbed to a record 30.6 gigatonnes (Gt), a five-percent jump from the previous record year in 2008, the agency said.

Moreover, 80 percent of projected greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 from energy sources are "locked in" as they will come from power plants already operating or under construction.

"This significant increase in CO2 emissions and the locking in of future emissions due to infrastructure investments represent a serious setback to our hopes of limiting the global rise in temperature to no more than 2.0 C (3.6 F)," said IEA chief economist Fatih Birol.

UN climate change talks have agreed that average global temperatures should not increase by more than 2.0 C (3.6 F).

To achieve this goal, long-term concentration of greenhouse gases must peak at about 450 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent, barely five percent more than in 2000, scientists say.

This target will slip beyond reach if global energy-related emissions in the year 2020 exceeds 32 Gt, the IEA has calculated.

The rise in emissions over the next decade must be less than the jump between 2009 and 2010, the agency cautioned.

"Our latest estimates are another wake-up call," said Birol.

"The world has edged incredibly close to the level of emission that should not be reached until 2020 if the 2.0 C (3.6 F) target is to be attained."

The UN's top climate official said the figures underscored the urgency for political action.

"The IEA estimates ... are a stark warming to governments to provide strong new progress this year towards global solutions to climate change," said Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

UN climate talks, resuming in Bonn next Monday, remain deadlocked on how to achieve the 2.0 C (3.6 F) target.

Even the Kyoto Protocol, whose first round of emissions-cutting pledges for rich nations expires at the end of 2012, may be in jeopardy as key nations say they do not favour renewal.

"The figures mean that the world is very far from achieving the goal of preventing a temperature rise of more that two degrees Celsius," EU climate commissioner Connie Hedegaard said in a statement, calling on other nations to set binding targets and emissions trading schemes as has the European Union.

Emerging countries say emission limits will stunt their development and argue that only rich economies can afford green technology which can boost living standards and cut emissions.

The IEA estimated 40 percent of global emissions in 2010 came from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) club of advanced countries.

But these only accounted for a quarter of the annual emissions growth. The rest came came from rapidly developing countries, led by China and India.

On a per-capita basis, OECD countries emit on average 10 tonnes, compared with 5.8 tonnes for China, a voracious burner of coal, and 1.5 tonnes in India.

Still arguing over Climate Change

Why is it so hard for people to accept that we humans are to be blamed for the mess we've caused? Isn't it typical of us human to not accept blame or push it to someone else?

So there's a new article that came out today stating that human impact on the climate change is more clearer. The Met, Britain's national weather service, says a new review of 110 research papers written and researched during the last 3 years shows "evidence has strengthened for human influence on climate" according to a BBC news report.

What makes the new review by the Met more credible, according to its authors, is the broad view it takes of the world's weather and it's eco-systems. A separate research has shown that Methane is possibly a bigger threat to the Earth's delicate environment than previously thought. Methane, which is a potent global warming gas, is bubbling out of the Arctic ice faster than expected, thanks to a warming climate. This was reported in Friday's edition of the journal Science. "The amount of methane coming out of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf is comparable to the amount coming out of the entire world's oceans" said Natalie Shakhova, of the University of Alaska Fairbanks International Arctic Research Center and co-author.

Concerns about global warming have centered on rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but scientists note that methane can be 30 times more effective at trapping heat than carbon dioxide. But this DOES NOT mean that we can use this to our advantage and continue our increase in carbon dioxide ok people! Maybe the skeptics should sit in a room full of smog and see whether they can last in there and come out feeling good..

Tip of the day: Instead of using a treadmill, go out and jog in the park. Rather than breathing in used and recycled air in the gym, enjoy the air, which is cleaned up naturally by the plants, in the park :) You'll save as well :)

Albania to Zimbabwe: the climate change risk list

Africa and much of south Asia face extreme risk from climate change but top carbon polluters will be relatively shielded from its ravages, according a ranking of 166 nations obtained by AFP Wednesday.

Somalia, Haiti and Afghanistan top the Climate Change Vulnerability Index, calculated from dozens of variables measuring the capacity of a country to cope with the consequences of global warming. "We wanted to look at what is going to impact human populations," explained Fiona Place, senior environmental risk analyst at Maplecroft, a Britain-based firm that provides global risk intelligence for businesses.

Even if the world agrees at make-or-break climate talks in December to slash CO2 emissions, many of those impacts -- rising sea levels, increased disease, flooding and drought -- are already inevitable, UN scientists say.

Of the 28 nations deemed at "extreme risk", 22 are in Africa. Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are similarly threatened, with Pakistan right on the edge and India not far behind.

At the other end of the spectrum, Norway, Finland, Japan, Canada and New Zealand are best insulated, due to a combination of wealth, good governance, well-managed ecosystems and high resource security. The United States and Australia -- the largest per capita emitters of CO2 among developed nations -- are comfortably within the top 15 countries least at risk, according to the index.

With the exception of Chile and Israel, the rest of the 41 nations in the "low risk" category of the ranking are European or from the Arab Peninsula.

Japan's enviable position is due to its highly-developed infrastructure, its stable political and economic system, and its overall food and water security, explained Place. Although it imports much of its energy needs, it does so from many sources, spreading the risk. "Japan is also relatively rich in biodiversity, including well-managed forests. Human induced soil erosion is not a critical issue," she said.

"That's in contrast to, say, Ethiopia" -- or dozens of other poor nations -- "where there's a high population density and soil erosion is a real issue, impacting the ability to grow crops," she said.

One weak point in Japan, however, is the high concentration of populations along the coast exposed to rising sea levels. "Japan does need to take very seriously the issue of climate change vulnerability," Place said.

Another country threatened by ocean levels, which many scientists say will go up by at least a metre by century end, is Bangladesh, most of whose 150 million people live in low-lying delta areas.

Among the so-called BRIC economies -- Brazil, Russia, India and China -- only India is in the "high risk" group, due to high population density, security risks and especially its resource security. India's food vulnerability was highlighted last month by a study in the British journal Nature which said that the country's underground water supply was being depleted at an alarming rate. China and Brazil face "medium" risk, while Russia is in the "low" category.

Many small island states literally at risk of being washed off the map by rising seas, such as Tuvalu and the Maldives, were not included in the ranking.

The climate change index is based on 33 distinct criteria grouped into six sub-indices: economy, government institutions, poverty and development, ecosystems, resource security, and population density in relation to infrastructure. The two items weighted most heavily are potential impact of rising sea levels, and mismanagement of land resources, both forests or agriculture.

Algae-coated buildings touted as climate fix

The future of green technology is algae-cultivating buildings, artificial trees, and lots of white roofs, according to the U.K.'s Institution of Mechanical Engineers. The group on Thursday released a report that recommends governments fund research on geoengineering, or large-scale fixes for climate change. The report, a year in the making, is targeted at policymakers and is meant to inspire engineers to develop ways to cut greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.

As concern grows over climate change, a number of geoengineering ideas have been proposed, including placing mirrors in space to reflect sunlight or shooting sulfur particles into the stratosphere, which would also have a cooling effect. However, in its analysis, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers found that most promising geoengineering techniques can be done on Earth. It argues that a handful of technologies be deployed at large scale, along with other strategies, to mitigate the effects of climate change.

At the top of the list are artificial trees, which are mechanical devices that can absorb carbon dioxide from the air faster than trees and then sequester that gas underground. The institution's report refers to the research done by Columbia University Professor Klaus Lackner, who is researching the concept and materials to absorb large amounts of CO2. Also required are underground storage formations, such as depleted oil wells. At a cost of $20,000 per tree, the institution concludes that it's the most practical approach.

Cultivating algae to make liquid fuel is one of the most active areas of research in biofuels. The institution recommends that algae be incorporated into buildings so algae can be grown at a large scale. Algae would grow from pumped-in carbon dioxide and sunlight and be harvested for use either as a liquid fuel to run in a combined heat-and-power unit or turned into biochar, or charcoal used as a soil conditioner that also sequesters carbon from the air.

Finally, the institution says that buildings should be retrofitted with reflective roofs to deflect the sun's rays. In the past months, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu has publicly touted this relatively low-tech approach, which was studied in-depth at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory last year. Although proposing billions of white roofs doesn't appear to be controversial, many other geoengineering ideas are. For example, scientists have warned about the environmental impact--or effectiveness--of "seeding" the ocean with iron to spur growth of plankton to sequester carbon.

In anticipation of a report on geoengineering from the U.K.'s Royal Society next week, watchdog ETC Group warned against unintended consequences from large-scale projects. "Even the most careful computer models won't be able to predict what will happen if an experiment is scaled-up and moved out of doors," the group said in a statement Friday.