I caught a little on climate change performance on the scroll on the bottom of the screen on one of the news channels Monday evening. I searched without success yesterday to see if I could find more about it, but today I hit the jackpot. A German policy group called Germanwatch prepares an annual Climate Change Performance Index. As you might expect, the USA doesn't look very good, coming in 53rd out of 56 countries.

I received a press release from the Center for Economic and Policy Research letting me know about a new study they've released titled "Are Shorter Work Hours Good for the Environment? A Comparison of U.S. and European Energy Consumption."

The study breaks down GDP versus hours worked developed nations, with a specific focus on the differences between the U.S. and EU-15 (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom). There is pressure in Europe to adopt more of an American-style business model, but that would result in a 25% increase in energy used, making it much more difficult for those nations which have ratified the Kyoto Protocol to meet their goals.

On the flip side, if the U.S. followed the EU-15 in terms of work hours, employed workers would have seven additional weeks off per year (some of this in longer weekends) and the United States would consume 20% less energy.

I wonder if this study takes into account the energy intensive things we Americans tend to do on our time off, however.

China's increasingly voracious appetite for energy will likely cause it to overtake the United States as the world's leading carbon dioxide emitter this year. China's emissions have been rising by almost 10 percent per year at least for the past couple of years. Of course, China's population is much larger than the population of the United States, so we Americans remain comfortably in the lead in per capita emissions. As recently as 2003, China's per capita emissions were below the global average.

The European Union's carbon trading scheme hasn't netted very good results so far - greenhouse gas emissions were up by up to 30 million tonnes last year.

Why the failure? Critics and officials alike say too many permits were sold, allowing emitters to buy them cheaply and keep on producing greenhouse gases.

Carbon trading remains one of the most practical solutions for reducing GHG emissions, but this news is proof that planners need to take a lot of care in determining the number of permits available, as the market will then drive the cost of acquiring carbon permits.

In news that came as absolutely no surprise to me, shifting the start of Daylight Savings Time forward to March 11th this year appears to have had little impact on power usage.

What a shock! People used lights in the morning while they were getting ready for work and school rather than in the evening when they were home from work and school! Lighting isn't even a major part in residential electric use, with appliances consuming more of the juice. I'm not really among those who had hassles with software patches to make some electronic devices recognize the changed time, but I can imagine the corporations who had to develop those new codes are probably unhappy with the news that their work didn't even result in any energy savings.

Carbon credits, or offsets, which are marketed as a means for an individual, organization or corporation to become "carbon neutral." But do they work? An investigation by the Financial Times has found few environmental benefits from carbon credit projects that have collected millions of dollars.

The FT has found multiple examples of corporations selling carbon offsets for projects which are either inherently profitable or inexpensive to complete. A carbon credit purchased from a company which has already benefitted from a project hardly seems legitimate.

Any type of business where you the consumer pay money for an intangible benefit, the potential exists for abuse. This is not to say that all companies providing carbon credits are operating scams, but how exactly is a consumer supposed to sort out the options and determine where their money will be put to good use? People who have faith in the system as it stands will lose that faith as stories of fraud surface. People who believe AGW is a scam will point to examples of fraud as evidence that they are right, though the carbon offsetting companies rarely if ever have any connection with climate scientists.

What's this? Rupert Murdoch is taking News Corp. carbon neutral by 2010. News Corporation has joined The °Climate Group, an independent, nonprofit organization "dedicated to advancing business and government leadership on climate change."

Murdoch is planning on bringing News Corp.'s carbon footprint from 641,150 tons per year to zero through a number of initiatives, including providing incentives to employees to purchase or lease hybrid vehicles and purchasing renewable energy.

The Boston Herald reports:

It also plans to use its media properties - which include Fox, the Post, social networking giant MySpace and The Times of London - to push going green among viewers.

What say you, Fox News viewers?

U.S. carbon dioxide emissions dropped by 1.3% - 78 million metric tons - last year, despite a 3.3% growth in the economy.

The Bush administration hailed the news as proof that its policies of regulations, public-private partnerships, incentives and economic investment are paying off. Weather conditions, especially the mild winter weather which helped reduce heating use, gasoline conservation driven by high prices and increased reliance on natural gas all also played a role in the reduced emissions. Natural gas produces much lower carbon dioxide emissions than coal in electricity generation, but increased use is driving prices ever higher.

Those critical of the administration say the one-year decline proves nothing, and that current U.S. policy will not result in the kinds of emissions reductions scientists have said are necessary to avoid "catastrophic damage."

The hybrid Honda Accord, available only in the U.S., hasn't sold well and is being phased out by the auto giant. Honda will continue to make the hybrid version of the Civic, which has had more sales success. Toyota remains the leader in hybrid sales, with the Prius leading the market.

The Accord hybrid focused more on producing power than fuel economy, which I believe is the reason for its lack of success. Taking a look at the numbers for 2007 Accords, the basic 4-door, 4-cylinder model, with 166 horsepower and an automatic transmission (comparing apples to apples, as the hybrid comes only in automatic) gets 24 mpg in the city, 34 mpg on the highway. An Accord with a V6 gas engine producing 244 horsepower with an automatic transmission gets 20 mpg in the city, 29 mpg on the highway. And the V6 hybrid, producing a whopping 253 horsepower gets 28 mpg in the city and 35 mpg on the highway. MSRP without extra options: $20,020.00 for the most basic 4-popper, $25,795.00 for the most basic V6, and $31,685.00 for the hybrid without navigation.

Now, there's a lot of features available on the hybrid that aren't on those more basic cars, but I think that too is part of the problem here. Who is buying hybrids? People who care about the environment and/or people who are willing to pay more for a vehicle upfront which will save money on gas with improved efficiency. I don't think most people looking at hybrids are in the market for a performance sedan with a lot of extras. The Toyota Prius, with an MSRP of $22,795.00 and mileage of 60 mpg in the city and 51 mpg on the highway is far more appealing to the average person shopping for a hybrid, as is the Honda Civic hybrid.

A new atmospheric modeling technique developed by Atmospheric and Environmental Research Inc. (AER) might be able to improve the accuracy of the global climate models, which continue to forecast a steady warming of the earth. AER's new radiation model has helped solve a long-standing problem of over predicting clouds over the oceans. So far, according to AER, the model has improved operational weather forecasts and as Dr. Ross Hoffman states, "more accurate simulation of cloudiness means more accurate forecasts of climate change due to carbon dioxide increases."

Here is the interesting press release from AER.

In an interesting post from August 25th, Steve McIntyre, of Climateaudit.org, who discovered the errors in the U.S. temperature data from NASA, displays the new NASA version of U.S. temperatures since 1920 with a trend increase of only 0.21 degrees celsius. In an earlier link, he tries to draw a balance between what he calls the exaggerated claims by the right-wing blogosphere and Hansen's (NASA's) claim of immateriality in regards to the 1934 vs. 1998 story which I alluded to in an earlier post.

He also links to a New York Times piece by Andrew Revkin on the story that keeps going and going and going.