快猫短视频

FIRES are raging through tinderbox forests in America鈥檚 western states,
spilling greenhouse gases into the air. The US wants to use such forests as
valuable carbon sinks鈥攎opping up carbon dioxide and allowing cars and
factories to continue their profligate use of fossil fuels.

快猫短视频s say the charred US woodlands help to illustrate why the Kyoto
Protocol, the cornerstone of worldwide efforts to curb global warming, is
fatally flawed. While governments prepare to finalise the treaty in the Hague in
November, a report published this week by an independent international think
tank warns that the deal will be impossible to police. The report says the
much-hyped agreement, designed to save the planet from humans, is a 鈥渃heat鈥檚
肠丑补谤迟别谤鈥�.

The protocol was conceived at the Earth Summit in Rio in 1997 as a strategy
for curbing pollution by greenhouse gases from 鈥渟mokestack鈥� industries and
vehicle exhausts. And it sets industrialised countries targets to cut CO₂
pollution by 2010. But, to make the targets easier to meet, governments
get a second option鈥攖o plant forests and change land use to soak up more
CO₂ from the air. Though the rule book for these 鈥渃arbon sink鈥� projects
has yet to be written, many countries are already seeing it as the route to
cheap compliance.

The US government announced in early August that it wants to soak up 300
million tonnes of carbon a year by 2010 in sink projects in forests and on
farmland. This is equivalent to 15 per cent of its current CO₂
emissions and twice its Kyoto target. Hence it would allow smokestack emissions
to carry on upwards.

The trouble is that it could be 50 years before anyone knows for sure if the
sinks have done their job, says Sten Nilsson of the International Institute for
Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Laxenburg, Austria. 鈥淭he scientific
uncertainties in measuring carbon movements into and out of ecosystems are just
too great,鈥� he says. 鈥淏y opening up the whole of the biosphere to actions under
the Kyoto Protocol, governments have made it completely unverifiable.鈥� On 24
August Nilsson鈥檚 team published on its website the first detailed analysis of
these uncertainties and their impact on policing the protocol
(www.iiasa.ac.at).

Last year 快猫短视频 reported separate research showing that
forests could interact very differently with CO₂in the atmosphere in
future decades
(23 October, p 20). We reported studies showing that while many
forests appear to be strong sinks for carbon now, by the middle of the century
many could be leaking large amounts of carbon, cranking up the greenhouse
effect.

But Nilsson鈥檚 study shows that there are huge gaps in our knowledge of how
forests will influence atmospheric carbon levels in the short-term鈥攚ithin
the next 10 years. Worse, it demonstrates that these uncertainties will make it
impossible to verify whether the forest sinks the US wants to plant will be to
soak up all the carbon necessary to meet its Kyoto targets over the next 5 to 10
years. It also shows that countries will be able systematically to get round
their obligations under the protocol by adopting these unverifiable ways of
鈥渕eeting鈥� it. Thus it will be a 鈥渃heat鈥檚 charter鈥� and completely ineffective.
Never before have the fatal flaws of this vital agreement been spelled out so
clearly.

The IIASA won immediate support from a leading US analyst of the protocol,
David Victor of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. He told New
快猫短视频: 鈥淭heir analysis is fundamentally correct. It is essentially
impossible to verify compliance if the targets include forests.鈥� These
criticisms go to the heart of political efforts this November to bring the
protocol into force. Some nations, most notably the US, insist they will only
ratify the agreement if forest planting is included as a way of helping nations
meet their targets. Under a 鈥渟trict reading鈥� of the Kyoto Protocol, says Victor,
鈥渁ll the biospheric carbon that is affected by land use changes and forestry in
industrialised countries is covered by the agreement鈥�. The reward for countries
squirreling away carbon in their biospheres will be permission to emit more
CO₂ by burning coal and oil. They will be similarly penalised for
reducing their stored carbon.

And here lies the scientific problem. Both forests and soils contain vast
quantities of carbon. Much of it moves between the air and the ground naturally
with the seasons or as a result of forest fires or small changes in land use.
Leave some of these movements out of the calculations, or even make small
mistakes in calculating the 鈥渇luxes鈥�, and the national carbon accounting under
the protocol will fall apart.

At the heart of the IIASA鈥檚 analysis is a detailed study of Russia鈥檚
biosphere,which contains a fifth of the world鈥檚 forests. Annual carbon fluxes
between the biosphere and the atmosphere over Russia are roughly ten times as
large as human emissions, says the IIASA鈥檚 in-house Russian forestry scientist
Anatoly Shvidenko. Under the Kyoto Protocol, Russia is likely to be able to
claim credit for improving its biosphere鈥檚 ability to soak up carbon. But the
uncertainties involved in calculating such credits are huge and 鈥渃ertainly
greatly exceed likely changes in industrial emissions,鈥� says Shvidenko. That, he
says, is a recipe for confusion and cheating.

快猫短视频s on the UN鈥檚 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a
report in June on using forests and farm soil management as a way of meeting
Kyoto targets. But they didn鈥檛 suggest a way of either measuring the
uncertainties in the equation or their impact on policing the protocol. Critics
of the IPCC report, headed by the World Rainforest Movement, a Uruguay-based
international pressure group, say the report is compromised because several of
its authors work for firms offering scientific services to companies setting up
carbon sink projects.

The charge is damaging because, says Michael Obersteiner at the IIASA, both
governments and companies operating sink forests will use the gaping holes in
the protocol to get round their obligations. 鈥淚f they plant sink forests and
make inflated claims for them, they know it will be impossible to either prove
or disprove those claims. It really is a cheat鈥檚 charter,鈥� says Obersteiner.

Some climate negotiators want to restrict the Kyoto Protocol to certain parts
of the biosphere鈥攕uch as forests managed as carbon sinks. But Nilsson says
this could be worse than useless. 鈥淲hat happens when a fire, such as those now
raging in the US, starts in a sink forest and then spreads to a forest not
registered under the treaty. Millions of tonnes of carbon could pour into the
atmosphere without anyone carrying the can.鈥�

Growing fears that the biosphere provisions of the protocol are unworkable
encouraged European Union environment ministers to conclude in June that forests
might have to be excluded from the emissions targets. But they will face a tough
task persuading other industrialised nations, such as the US and Australia, who
are keen to develop sink projects.

The US presidential election is on 7 November; the pivotal climate conference
takes place between 13 and 24 November in the Hague. But whether Al Gore or
George W. Bush is elected to the White House, the US is bound to insist on using
sink forests in return for its continued support for the Kyoto Protocol. Some
analysts say backers of the protocol fear raising the issue of verification in
case American right-wingers use it as a weapon against the protocol itself.

But the message from the IIASA seems clear. Science is not yet up to policing
a system of greenhouse gas targets that includes the biosphere. Until it is, the
only viable Kyoto Protocol is one that relies solely on slashing the world鈥檚 use
of fossil fuels.