11 February 2010

New Information About Global Warming

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I've been reading New Scientist this week (6/2/2010) and there were 2 interesting articles on climate change this week:

1. Water vapour fingered in climate change:  this reported that a rise in water vapour in the atmosphere fuelled 30% of global warming in the 1990s, while a 10% fall in 2001 has slowed down global warming in last decade by 25%;
2. Imports mean UK emissions are up not down: this is a report commisioned by defra that they are now sitting on that shows that while national carbon dioxide emissions are down by 148 megatonnes between 1992 and 2004, this was outweighed by a 217 megatonne rise in embedded carbon dioxide emissions from imported products over the same period. 

A fuller report is found at Environmental Science and Technology but in essence all this says is that the fall in greenhouse gas emissions in the UK is mainly due to the fact that we have exported our greenhouse gasses to India and China, together with all our manufacturing capability and much of our social and health and safety issues.

What do you reckon - is the UK Government seeking to hide an embarassment that actually undermines its supposed adherence to the Kyoto process?