Monitoring Pollution

Map of Countries' Emissions, Pledges

Megan Treacy

ap-map
The AP Climate Pool kept us well informed over the course of the COP15 negotiations. Part of that great coverage is contained in this interactive map of the participating nations' current emissions and the reductions they've pledged to make. You can find plenty of articles analyzing what was accomplished (or not accomplished) over the last two weeks, but this map quickly lays out the current emissions trends around the world.

Some of the interesting things revealed by this map are the huge percentage increase in emissions by China (136.2 percent) - close to triple that of number two Turkey (58.8 percent) - and the nice size reduction in emissions by Russia since 1990 (23.8 percent). The U.S. has actually seen a decline in emissions of 1.8 percent, but we're still the largest emitter per capita, so that's not saying much, which also makes our pledge of a 17 percent reduction less than adequate.

Image via AP

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NASA Unveils Amazing GHG Models

Megan Treacy

NASA's Aqua spacecraft has been taking daily CO2 measurements with its Atmospheric Infrared Sounder instrument (AIRS) for the past seven years and now all that information gathering has led to beautiful and frightening maps and models of the concentration and movement of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere.

Highlighting the importance of this new data set, NASA researcher Moustafa Chahine said:

"AIRS provides the highest accuracy and yield of any global carbon dioxide data set available to the research community, now and for the immediate future," said Chahine. "It will help researchers understand how this elusive, long-lived greenhouse gas is distributed and transported, and can be used to develop better models to identify 'sinks,' regions of the Earth system that store carbon dioxide. It's important to study carbon dioxide in all levels of the troposphere."

The data reveals major findings like a belt-like ring of CO2 in the southern hemisphere where it acts as a sink for CO2 from the northern hemisphere. Also, the data shows the strong correlation between a rise in CO2 and a rise in water vapor, leading to "exacerbated" warming.

You can check out all of the amazing models, including global CO2, water vapor and methane movements here.

via NASA

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Apple Raises Bar for Environmental Disclosure

Megan Treacy

apple-environment
Apple has bowed to pressure and has updated the environment section of its website to include its must inclusive GHG emissions information to date. The company tallies together the entire lifecycle emissions of its products to come up with their total: 10.2. million metric tons per year.

Apple breaks down the lifecycle emissions of its products into percentages for each phase: manufacturing 38 percent, transportation 5 percent, product use 53 percent, recycling 1 percent and facilities 3 percent.

Unlike many other leading tech companies, Apple includes product use in its total emissions. HP and Dell have published their annual emissions as 8.4 million tons and 471,000 tons respectively - numbers lower than Apple - but they don't include the full lifecycle of their products. This new level of disclosure by Apple could put pressure on other companies to reveal the same information.

The new environment section has pages with information on the Life Cycle Impact, Product Usage Impact and Environmental Reports on all of its currently-shipping products and even check the archives for information on older models. They also show how hourly product use emissions have improved over the years (a 2006 MacBook Pro is responsible for 21.44g of CO2 per hour of use while the 2008 MacBook Pro is only responsible for 12.57g).

Check out the new section here and let us know if you think Apple is helping to promote better transparency or if they could do even better.

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Wal-Mart Measuring Pollution and Water Use of EVERYTHING

Hank Green

There have been a lot of start-ups in the past decade who have hoped to measure the ecological footprint of the things we buy. They want to measure how much carbon-dioxide is produced, how many hazardous chemicals are created, how far products traveled, and how much water they use.

I've always been a big fan of these ideas, but they also always seemed rather uninspired and far too limited. It seemed to me that there was no way to get all of this information about all of these products. And if there was, there would be no way to keep it updated and no way to keep companies from hiding things or downright lying.

Or, at least, that's what I thought. There is one organization that can control manufacturers more than any government could ever hope to. One organization that every seller in the world will say "Yes sir, we'll get that for you right away sir." And that organization is Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart is now on a mission to determine the social and environmental impact of everything they sell (which is a lot of things.) They've hired an army of people to help them do it, including several environmental groups. And, thus, they will create that universal footprint rating that well-meaning enviros have been trying (and failing) to create for decades. Or, at least, I hope they will.

Wal-Mart says they want to have the rating system finish and fully adopted in five years, by which point they also want other retailers to be using it.

A spokesperson at the Environmental Defense Fund said, "No one else could pull this off." I agree, and there you have it. A bunch of hippy enviros loving on Wal-Mart because they're the only ones with the power to do what needs to be done. What is the world coming to?

Read More at the New York Times

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Carbon Counter in New York Starts Ticking

Megan Treacy

carbon-counter
The Deutsche Bank building in New York City now glows with the real-time number of long-lived greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Using numbers calculated by MIT scientists, the total reflects the estimated tonnage of greenhouse gases expressed as their equivalent amounts of carbon dioxide.

Currently, the number stands at over 3.64 trillion metric tons, but it will be recalculated every month based on measurements gathered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA's Advanced Global Atmospheric Gases Experiment. The number factors in all 24 gases named in the Kyoto and Montreal Protocols.

The counter was installed to increase awareness of the climate change crisis, but of course, that would all be for nothing if powering it was just adding to the problem. The counter is lit up by 40,960 LEDs so that it's ultra-efficient and is carbon neutral through the use of carbon credits. It would make a bigger impact if it ran off a renewable source of energy, but at least they've addressed the issue. Deutsche Bank itself has set a goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2013 and is reducing its global carbon emissions by 20 percent a year until then.

via Red Green and Blue

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Map of Countries' Emissions, Pledges

NASA Unveils Amazing GHG Models

Apple Raises Bar for Environmental Disclosure

Wal-Mart Measuring Pollution and Water Use of EVERYTHING

Carbon Counter in New York Starts Ticking

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