date: Tue, 5 Aug 1997 15:22:27 BST from: Susan Subak subject: Protocol Projections to: m.hulme@uea.ac.uk Hi Mike, The one-pager was sent to Bonn on Saturday, and an email version went out over Clim-L and to WWF's paper, also some media mailings. What do you think of this letter to the New Scientist? This is based on a tip from Mick about how to get Fred Pearce to write a story. August 4, 1997 Fred Pearce New Scientist Stamford Street London SE1 9LS Dear Fred Pearce, Enclosed is a briefing sheet we recently prepared for the FCCC talks for the two sessions leading up to COP3 in Kyoto. Please feel free to incorporate these results into a piece, or we could write it up as a NS article ourselves, if you suggest. In isolation, these proposed cuts would not lead to a significant reduction in global warming, says Subak. Industrialized countries would need to sign onto more stringent cuts after the 2000-2020 period under negotiation, and an agreement would need to be made with developing countries to slow the growth in their emissions. These protocols are an important first step, Subak said. While the EU protocol involves less stringent cuts of carbon dioxide and in a longer time frame than the AOSIS protocol, says Subak. It should achieve an equivalent reduction in temperature because the target also encompasses the other greenhouse gases. The proposed greenhouse gas emissions protocols are not significantly different in their implications for future temperature, says Subak. Countries should support protocols instead on the basis of cost, burden-sharing and verification. In the nearer term, trends related to the emission of sulfur from coal will have a more important impact on climate change than will the control of greenhouse gases, Hulme said. Because the atmospheric residence time of sulfur dioxide and other aerosols is short-lived compared with greenhouse gases, says Hulme, the relative cooling effects of aerosols will diminish over time, because the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will eventually far outweigh future aerosol emissions, Hulme said. Both of these sulfur scenarios assume a rather high reliance on coal in the future, says Hulme. For a given scenario of carbon dioxide emissions, if a higher share of oil, gas and renewables were assumed instead, sulfur emissions and hence cooling would be lower and the projections would show a greater temperature increase than shown here, said Hulme. I hope that this briefing is of interest. Sincerely yours, Susan Subak