I’d agree with the comment though that we shouldn’t use those possibilities as an excuse for not reducing emissions.

From memory the IPCC 4 suggested that emissions world-wide should peak by 2015. Nothing anyone with any responsibility for policy at a nation state level is talking about anything that will come within cooee of that as far as I can see.

During the next 10 years I’m tipping that the world will wake in fright and realise the full seriousness of this thing. Or else the anti-alarmist will be proved right and we can do it all in a canter at our leisure. Obviously all positions in between are open too, but my money is on the first-mentioned.

How is the ‘GHG removal’ technology going? Can I suggest some serious R&D money be put into that one.

Then when he was working on instrumentation for NASA he told them that it was a silly idea to try to apprehend bugs directly on Mars. They demanded that he come up with a better idea and he came up with looking at the atmosphere:

reasoning that many life forms on Mars would be obliged to make use of it (and, thus, alter it). However, the atmosphere was found to be in a stable condition close to its chemical equilibrium, with very little oxygen, methane, or hydrogen, but with an overwhelming abundance of carbon dioxide.

In other words with life we’d expect a chemically dynamic and unstable atmosphere. This set him on the track of the Gaia hypothesis, which he later developed into a theory.

He’s a smart bloke and I’d never write his judgement off. I suspect we are going to have to take CO2 out of the atmosphere at some stage and you’ll be pleased to know that at LP we’ve been thinking of ways to do it.

I think we need to be aiming at zero net from this sector in the next few decades.

Talk is cheap coming from that quarter.

Howard has lowered the bar, saying that the focus will be on deforestation and forest management, plus energy intensity, by which he no doubt means savings in energy consumption as well as greater efficiency in energy production

The aspirational goals seem to have evaporated. When you think about it, there is no reason why China, the US, Russia, Japan and Canada would reveal their positions until the real deal at Bali in December.

But the most interesting comment has come from Malaysia:

But fellow APEC member Malaysia said Australia and the United States lacked credentials to lead discussions on the subject.

“It is unfortunate that people who are talking about climate change like America are not even members of the Kyoto Protocol,” Malaysia’s outspoken Trade Minister Rafidah Aziz said.

“If you want to talk about climate change, please join in with the rest of the global community to make commitments about managing climate change,” she told reporters.

“So there’s no point talking outside of the (Kyoto Protocol) forum,” said Ms Rafidah, who is due to attend APEC ministerial talks on September 6 ahead of the summit.

Amen to that!

According to her proposal, developing countries such as India and China should be allowed to increase their per-capita emissions of greenhouse gases, but only until they reach the same level as the (theoretically) constantly sinking emissions of industrialized countries. “This point can not be exceeded,” she stressed.

What could be fairer than that? But apparently the Chinese weren’t impressed.

BTW Bush says he’s coming.

As well they might, Kyoto placed no restriction on “developing nations” including China. Im sure you would see the same argument used this time as well. Mankind will just have to adapt as it has done in the past. The poorest will suffer, the same as always, and spending a poultice of money on conferences and so forth will do nothing.

On climate, China has made it clear that they will support the Kyoto Protocol approach. This is to be expected, because they like to be seen as good citizens in world forums.

China, it seems, is going to bring a new proposal to APEC about sustainable forest management. This could be all to the good, depending on the details of their proposal, because China would be a large user of imported forest products.

But in what the Fin terms a “setback for summit climate agenda”, the Indonesians have invited the finance ministers of the 20 largest economies (the G20) to the Bali meeting. This is a really sensible idea, because in spite of the importance of the Bali meeting countries will be represented by their environment ministers, who simply don’t rank in their home governments and are often gazumped by their money men when they get home.