| Q: What is a “Carbon Offset”? A: Carbon offsetting is the act of reducing ("offsetting") greenhouse gas emissions. A well-known example is the planting of trees to compensate for the greenhouse gas emissions from personal air travel. Q: What are the other environmental effects of carbon offsetting? A: Practices that aim to reduce carbon losses generally enhance the quality of soil, water, air and wildlife habitat. Tree planting that restores fuller forest cover may not only offset carbon but could improve habitat suitability for wildlife. Preserving threatened tropical forests may avoid losses in both carbon and biodiversity, absent any leakage effects. And reducing soil erosion through tree planting or soil conservation measures can sequester carbon and improve water quality by reducing nutrient runoff. In certain cases, there may be tradeoffs between carbon objectives and environmental quality. Replacing diverse ecosystems with single-species timber plantations may generate greater carbon accumulation, but could result in less biodiversity, at least at the scale of the plantation. Q. What percentage of the CO2 in the atmosphere has been produced by human beings through the burning of fossil fuels? A. Based on a study by Houghton and Hackler, who estimated land use changes from 1850 – 2000, about 14% of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can be attributed to fossil-fuel combustion by human beings. Q. Is there any ONE person who discovered global warming? If not, what year was global warming discovered?. A. The first person to have predicted that emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels would cause a global warming is considered to be S. Arrhenius, who published in 1896 the paper "On the influence of carbonic acid in the air upon the temperature of the ground." That atmospheric carbon dioxide was actually increasing was confirmed beginning in the 1930s, and convincingly so beginning in the late 1950s when highly accurate measurement techniques were developed (the most famous demonstration of this is in C.D. Keeling's record at Mauna Loa, Hawaii). By the 1990s, it was widely accepted (but not unanimously so) that the Earth's surface air temperature had warmed over the past century. An ongoing debate is whether such a warming can, in fact, be attributed to increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Q: How many Kyoto treaties are there? And why is it called a Protocol? A: There is only really one treaty, but representatives of the world met six more times to discuss and negotiate terms of the Kyoto Protocol between 1997 and 2006. The word protocol means the first draft of a treaty. Technically, the Kyoto Protocol is now called the Kyoto Treaty. For an excellent graphic representing the timeline for the Kyoto Protocol, visit: http://maps.grida.no/go/download/mode/plain/f/kyoto_protocol_timeline_and_history. png Q: What was the objective of the Kyoto Protocol? A: In 1997, the Kyoto Treaty asked all signatories to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 5.2 percent in 10 years. The objective was short-sighted. Q: What did that objective lack? A: That objective only dealt with reducing current and future emission levels. It offered no solutions for the gases that are already in the atmosphere and will continue to be a problem for the next century or so. Q: Is any organization dealing with the issue of those gases? A: Yes and no. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has stated that it will take a 60 percent reduction to make any progress. Many believe that this is both logistically and politically too difficult to implement. The panel’s report can be seen at: http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/005.htm Q: Doesn’t the practice of trading emissions credits defeat the overall purpose of setting reduction goals? A: It seems to reward those who emit the most pollutants and then make deals for credits that relieve them of any penalty. Unfortunately some of the smaller, less developed countries are not really part of the pollution problem and need all the economic help they can get. Q: Greenhouse gases seem to be an important part of the Kyoto Protocol. What are they and where do they come from? A: The term covers a number of familiar chemical compounds, including steam and water vapor. Other greenhouse gases are methane, carbon dioxide, and nitrous oxide. CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) also belong on this list, but since they are generated only by industrial processes, they have a unique status as the only greenhouse gas that is entirely man-made. Q: What are CFCs? And where do they come from? A: The full name—chlorofluorocarbons—identifies the ingredients of CFCs as chlorine, fluorine, and carbon compounds. For many years, CFCs have been found in aerosols and air conditioners. Recent legislation has made them less common, but the CFCs released over the years will continue to be a long-term factor in the greenhouse effect. |
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