Ministerial Declaration on Forests Fails to Deliver on Paris Agreement Ambition

pressA press conference was held on 12 December 2018, just one hour before the release of a Declaration written by the Polish Ministry on Forests for the Climate.  The conference was led by ”Fern,” an EU organization that advocates for forests and the people whose livelihoods depend on them, supported by the Climate Land Ambition and Rights Alliance (CLARA), a collaboration of non-governmental organizations that echoes Fern’s mission with principles of social justice and agroecology.  Forestry campaigners and experts brought in by Fern shared their reactions to what they believed to be a genuine sneak peek at the declaration that was to be released later that same evening.

The Katowice Press Conference Room was graced with opinions from Christoph T., forest campaigner for Greenpeace Poland; a climate coordinator at the Global Forest Coalition and REDD+ expert from New Delhi; Virginia Young from the Australian Rainforest Conservation Society; and Otto Bruun, Policy Officer for the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation.  All of the speakers anticipated a lack of ambition in the Presidency’s declaration, something we cannot afford in our current climate.  These speakers emphasized the need to conserve forests for the sake of biodiversity, soil health, and protection from the effects of extreme natural disasters.  Forest carbon stocks were identified by Young as a complex, integrated system that encompass more than just carbon, and cannot afford to be cut down and burned in our current climate crisis (particularly primary forests).

The foreshadowed lack of ambition was realized in the release of the document.  The Polish Ministry cited Article 5 of the Paris Agreement, whose plain language can be categorized as soft law at best: Parties “should take action to conserve and enhance, as appropriate, sinks and reservoirs of greenhouse gases as referred to in Article 4, paragraph 1(d), of the Convention, including forests,” and “are encouraged to take action to implement…policy incentives for activities relating to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation…”

Thus, the PA does not bind Parties to any definitive action towards conserving carbon sinks in the form of forest resources.  The Polish Ministry did not add much to this lack of ambition in their declaration by “encouraging” the scientific community toWooden signpost with two opposite arrows over clear blue sky Old Business Way and New Business Way Business change conceptual image achieve a balance between anthropocentric emissions by sources and removals by sinks in the second half of this century, second only to a pledge that will “ensure an accelerated global contribution to forests and forest products.”  This not-so-subtle dedication to industry is certain to undermine forest preservation efforts many global organizations like Fern are urging governments to uphold.

If the IPCC made anything clear in its recent report, we need a rapid and just decarbonization by 2030 if we want to maintain the ambition of the PA.  This will not come to fruition if we do not work with gusto to protect what Al Gore described today as the cheapest and most efficient form of carbon sequestration already on the market – forests.

Continuing business as usual precludes banking on there being plenty more where that came from.


The Rebound of Age-old Agricultural Ecology

A side event at the Pacific and Koronivia Pavilion sponsored by France at Tuesday’s installment of COP24 focused on the development of agroecology and scaling-up its performance and potential.  The meat of the session focused on research and development around shifting agricultural norms toward using more local inputs, supporting holistic ecosystem approaches such as integrated pest management, and pursuing a landscape approach that builds habitat for animals while also supporting agriculture.  The session ultimately concluded that ecosystem services are sound, healthy investments for future generations that simultaneously address both mitigation and adaptation needs.

Screen Shot 2018-12-11 at 8.06.55 PMAs a part of its wider agroecology project, France distributed its plan for development from 2015-2020 of its agroforestry systems.  The publication pairs trees and agricultural production in the same fields, bringing back age-old farming practices that combined mixed crops and livestock that gave us hedgerows and their associated economic and ecological roles.  Some of these roles include shelter for animals, erosion prevention, water regulation, and carbon sequestration.

France’s plan breaks down into 5 main “Axes” and 23 Actions.  Axis 5 deals with “International Advocacy and Spread of Agroforestry,” because France believes that agroecology is a strong solution for farming in France and around the world to meet significant challenges like food security and biodiversity enhancement using pragmatic methods.  Sharing knowledge and receiving feedback on experiences in other countries will enhance the French vision, and help with future preparations by developing partnerships that will lead to higher performance.

In accordance with Decision 4/CP.23, the Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture (KJWA) was initiated this year. After initial meetings, Parties agreed on a “Road Map” for how the KJWA will play out in future joint sessions.  Screen Shot 2018-11-28 at 6.31.12 PMSBI and SBSTA 49 accepted comments leading up to COP24 on Topic 2(a), “modalities for implementation of the outcomes of the five in-session workshops on issues related to agriculture and other future topics that may arise from this work.”  At the end of the first week of COP24, the subsidiary bodies adopted a draft text, and submissions are being accepted on topics 2(b) and 2(c) of the KJWA “Road Map” that will help move agriculture forward on the SBI/SBSTA 50 agenda next year.

Topic 2(b), “Methods and approaches for assessing adaptation, adaptation co-benefits and resilience,” and to a greater degree Topic 2(c), “Improved soil carbon, soil health and soil fertility under grassland and cropland as well as integrated systems,” offer France the opportunity to significantly contribute to the KJWA.  Although official evaluation of their agroforestry plan will not be conducted until 2020, ongoing monitoring combined with international dialogue has the potential to help transfer ideas and build land use capacities, both within the Convention and in our fields.


The Log-istics of Carbon Dioxide Removal

Trees are the coolest source of CO2 Removal on the planet.

http://www.climatechangenews.com/2012/10/26/conservation-or-carbon-sinks-can-the-un-see-the-forest-for-the-trees/

Trees and vegetation are known to help cool ambient air temperatures through evapotranspiration.  If left undisturbed, forests can also be a vital source of carbon storage.  Estimates from the Global Forest Resources Assessment (FRA 2015) show that the world’s forests and other wooded lands store more than 485 gigatonnes (Gt) of carbon: 260 Gt in the biomass, 37 Gt in dead wood and litter, and 189 Gt in the soil.

In the most recent IPCC Special Report Summary for Policymakers (SPM), the world’s leading climate scientists assess the pathways the global community can pursue over the next few decades to prevent overshoot ofScreen Shot 2018-10-08 at 3.58.11 PM warming beyond 1.5°C.  The fact that all pathways to limit global warming to 1.5°C require mitigation via some form of Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) is not to be overlooked. But these removal amounts vary across pathways, as do the relative contributions of Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) and removals in the Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use (AFOLU) sector.  BECCS sequestration is projected to range from 0-1, 0-8, and 0-16 GtCO2/yr, in 2030, 2050, and 2100 respectively; the AFOLU-related measures are projected to remove 0-5, 1-11, and 1-5 GtCO2/yr in these years.  These contributions appear meager, and they are… but every little bit counts in this climate.

A reasonable argument can be made for increased investment in and use of CCS to achieve emissions reductions.  The SPM makes it clear that forests alone won’t be able to make a significant numerical difference in reduction of CO2 from the atmosphere.  And as the New York Times aptly points out, “the world is currently much better at cutting down forests than planting new ones.”

On the surface, CCS seems like a logical outgrowth from the nature of GHG emissions production.  The IPCC’s Special Report on Climate Capture and Storage (SRCCS) describes CCS as a mitigation activity that Screen Shot 2018-11-15 at 11.37.30 PMseparates CO2 from large industrial and energy-related point sources, which has the potential to capture 85-95% of the CO2 processed in a capture plant.  Direct Air Capture (DAC) technologies like ClimeWorks remove CO2 from the air. Proponents argue that DAC is a much less land-intensive process than afforestation: Removal of 8 Gt/CO2 would require 6.4 million km² of forested land and 730 km³ of water, while DAC would directly require only 15,800 km² and no water.

However, as our blog has cautioned readers in the past, CCS requires significant financial investments from industry and government and are only regionally accessible.  Only places that have sufficient infrastructure and political support can pursue this path of technological sequestration, leaving underdeveloped countries at a major disadvantage.  A recent report published in Nature Research further emphasizes that BECCS will have significant negative implications for the Earth’s planetary boundaries, or thresholds that humanity should avoid crossing with respect to Earth and her sensitive biophysical subsystems and processes.  Transgressing these boundaries will increase the risk of irreversible climate change, such as the loss of major ice sheets, accelerated sea level rise, and abrupt shifts in forest and agricultural systems.  Above all else, CCS ultimately supports the continual burning of fossil fuels. CCS technology may capture carbon, but it also has the potential to push us over the edge.

Money tree

Mitigation has historically been the focus of the FCCC and other collaborative climate change efforts.  Global climate change policy experts are familiar with the binding language associated with activities related to mitigation in the multilateral environmental agreements: Article 4(1)(b) of the Convention calls for commitments to formulate, implement, publish and update national programs containing measures to mitigate climate change; and Article 3 of the Kyoto Protocol (KP) calls for Annex I Parties to account for their emissions reductions in order to promote accountability and activity guided by mindful emissions production.  In the waning hours of the KP, the Paris Agreement has become the new collective rallying document, whose ambitious emissions reduction target has inspired the likes of the IPCC to offer us pathways to get there.

If we are not currently on track towards limiting GHG emissions well-below 2°C in the grand scheme of the FCCC, why not insure some success, however small, buy securing CO2 in forests, not CCS?  Forests are a well-established CDR technology that do not have the associated risks with CCS.  While the most recent UN Forum on Forests report kindly reminds us that forests are also crucial for food, water, wood, health, energy, and biodiversity, the SPM upholds that mitigation contributions from carbon sequestration technology are numerically minuscule in the face of the large-scale change necessary to avoid CO2 overload.  A much more engaged energy overhaul is needed.

The ideal SPM pathScreen Shot 2018-11-15 at 11.10.17 PMway states that afforestation can be the only CDR option when social, business, and technological innovations result in lower energy demand and a decarbonized energy system.  A more middle-of-the-road scenario achieves necessary emissions reductions mainly by changing the way in which energy and products are produced, and to a lesser degree by reductions in demand.  This speaks to the need for a broad focus on sustainable development rather than continuing business as usual.  Regardless of the pathway, forests need to be preserved, whether it be for carbon sequestration, their cooling effects, or merely beauty.

Sometimes there is no turning back.


Draining the Swamp

Peatlands contain peat soil, which is wet, thick, and made of partially-decomposed plant materials. The International Peatland Society (IPS) cover approximately 3% of the Earth’s surface. Tropical peatlands in Asia, the Caribbean, Central and South America, and Southern Africa contain 10-12%of the total peatland resource. Peatlands are also extremely valuable ecosystems because they foster biodiversity, are a habitat for multiple species, provide quality drinking water, support local economies, and minimize flood risk.

Figure-1-Global-peatland-distribution-Riccardo-Pravettoni-UNEPGRID-Arendal.As the plants in the peatlands remain saturated with water and fail to decompose, carbon gets trapped within the plants. Due to this process, the soil acts as a carbon storage. When peatlands are drained, the plants complete the decomposition process and release copious amounts of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. Approximately 15% of peatlands have been drained, which contributes nearly 16 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per day. The remaining 85% of peatland contains approximately 550 gigatons of carbon. In 2016, the draining and burning of peatland accounted for 5% of anthropogenic carbon emissions.

peat_presentation300pxUsing international climate policies, it is important to conserve and rehabilitate peatlands globally. International cooperation towards more sustainable use of peatlands began at the 2011 Durban Forum which recognized “wetland drainage and restoration,” as a focus area. The Durban Forum later identified peatlands as “hotspots” of greenhouse gas emissions in 2013. Moving up to this past year, at COP 22, a new global initiative was launched in Marrakech to reduce GHGs by protecting peatlands. The Global Peatlands Initiative, led by the UN Environmental Program, aims to increase conservation, restoration, and sustainable management. The initiative aids national governments in meeting Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change  (UNFCCC). From this structure, countries are more incentivized and have the ability to address peatland conservation and restoration in their mitigation, adaptation, and sustainable development goals.

In addition, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has presented strategic action plans to ensure peatlands are used effectively and efficiently. The FAO facilitates action by guiding nations through their “strategic actions.” The FAO actions include assessment, monitoring, protecting, and resorting of peatlands. It also has broader goals of ensuring sustainable care of the peatlands such as engaging with local communities, generating effective economic governance, stimulating market-based mechanisms to support the peatlands, and information exchange on peatland care. The IUCN has also bolstered the FAO’s actions and further recommends peatlands be considered in forestry agreements relatingto climate change and a moratorium on peat exploitation.

downloadThe United Kingdom have both taken active steps towards conservation and rehabilitation of peatlands within their territory. Peatlands cover 12% of the UK’s total territory, but 80% are in poor condition due to drainage or extraction. In response to this issue, the Wildlife Trusts have taken on the mission of restoring the peatlands on a regional basis called the “Million Hectare Challenge.” As a part of this, more than ten regions in the UK have adopted individual long-term rehabilitation programs. Regional programs such as the UK’s Million Hectare Challenge and FAO’s international initiatives provide foundations for other counties.

Peatland restoration remains an ongoing issue, but it is has become a recognized method for nations to satisfy their sustainable goals and meet their obligations under the UNFCCC. Overall, peatlands represent an opportunity for significant reduction of greenhouse cases if managed correctly. Luckily, as the standards and methods are being developed, it is likely restoration will become increasingly efficient and effective.


Blue Carbon: A Solution

Coastal ecosystems such as tidal salt marshes, seagrass meadows, and mangrove forests, are “blue carbon ecosystems” because they act as carbon sinks. Blue ecosystems have the ability to sequester copious amountsmangrove-forest-1 of carbon. However, if they are destroyed, they increase GHG emissions. Scientists estimate approximately 1.02 billion tons of carbon dioxide is emitted per year by degraded coastal ecosystems. In addition, these ecosystems support coastal water quality, fisheries, provide recreational activities, support the tourism economy, and protect against extreme weather events.

Under the Paris Agreement countries must submit Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) and National Determined Contributions (NDCs). In these, parties include information on the scope and impact of their mitigation and adaptation programs. Blue carbon 5054ee8189f79.imageecosystems are included in 28 countries’ NDCs for mitigation and in 59 countries’ adaptation strategies. While these numbers are growing, there is enormous potential benefit to incorporating blue ecosystems into NDCs. The blue carbon ecosystems are a significant part of countries’ NDCs as they act as a carbon sink, contribute to coastline protection, and food security. If coastal wetlands loss was halted by 50%, the equivalent would offset the emissions of Spain.

There are two main ways to address effective management of blue ecosystems to achieve this goal. The first is avoiding coastal wetland conversion by creating protected areas. Countries can also restore coastal wetlands. In order to facilitate these activities, multiple blue carbon institutions have been founded. The Blue Carbon Initiative works to restore and pr107397_webomote sustainable use of coastal and marine blue ecosystems by partnering governments, research institutions, NGOs, and local communities. The International Partnership for Blue Carbon works at building awareness, exchanging knowledge, and accelerating practical action. In addition the Nature Conservancy’s Blue Carbon program is also invested in this issue. The Nature Conservancy has been building a scientific foundation for conservation, identifying demonstration sites where wetlands can be conserved, and leveraging policy and financial mechanisms to ensure action.

Overall, blue carbon presents an area of great potential impacts upon GHG emissions. While the UNFCCC does not yet recognize “blue carbon,” it has been increasingly used in countries’ mitigation and adaptation strategies. With increased action being taken by international organizations, it is likely that blue carbon will play a significant role in lowering carbon emissions in the future. 


Decarbonization or Climate Neutrality? Which is the Better Path to 2°C? Is There Even a Difference?

https://www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/energy/events/ucl-energy-seminar-ddppIn order to keep global temperatures under 2°C, the threshold generally accepted as the best way to avoid the most catastrophic impacts of climate change, there must be a limit on cumulative CO2 emissions. For those of you not tracking mitigation negotiations closely at COP21, there is some hot debating surrounding long-term signals maintaining this threshold. Delegates are looking at two potential options, decarbonization and climate neutrality. But what’s the difference?

While the two options may seem rather similar, they carry with them significantly different implications. Climate neutrality would require that countries achieve annual zero net anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) by a specified date. What this means is that for every ton of anthropogenic GHG emitted, an equivalent amount must be removed from the atmosphere. This sounds great in theory. However some parties are concerned, and for good reason, that climate neutrality equates to more of a political move around than effective action.

Here’s why. Climate neutrality allows for those emitted GHG emissions to be compensated with removals via carbon offsets such as sequestration, carbon capture and storage. To actually keep global temperatures under 2°C with carbon offsets, large-scale uptake of negative emission technology will have to be implemented. According to Kevin Anderson of the University of Manchester, there are problems with relying on negative emission technologies to achieve an under 2°C global temperature target. Anderson noted that these technologies have never worked at scale, have huge technical and economic unknowns, and have major efficiency penalties. These technologies are often not worth the hype.
http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2013-01-25/using-a-traffic-app-cuts-commutes-manages-angerIn essence, climate neutrality means that CO2 may still be produced, but not all parties think this is a bad thing. It may leave room for developing countries to continue emitting GHG and thus enable them to continue essential sustainable development projects. However, a concern is that developed countries may purchase carbon offsets for their emissions from developing countries with natural carbon sinks. This allows for developed countries to continue with a “business as usual” approach to emission mitigation efforts rather than encouraging them to radically change their consumption patterns.It allows for the possibility that wealthy developed countries may pay for their emissions by buying carbon offsets from developing countries with lower emissions and natural carbon sinks.

Alternatively, decarbonization tends to be understood as a process that results in a decarbonized global economy with no anthropomorphic CO2 emissions. Amongst the scientific community, it is widely accepted that to successfully achieve climate stabilization, full decarbonization of our energy systems is likely our only option. While this idea seems rather straight forward, there is confusion about how decarbonization may be interpreted and implemented. While full decarbonization tends to mean zero unabated CO2 emissions, it is possible that decarbonization within the Paris Agreement would allow for emissions to be balanced with adequate reductions and carbon sinks. There are also concerns that a decarbonization option would not account for non-CO2 GHG emissions.

http://www.climatechangenews.com/2012/10/26/conservation-or-carbon-sinks-can-the-un-see-the-forest-for-the-trees/What is clear is that whichever option ends up in the Paris Agreement, further clarification and definition of terms should be made first. For either option to be effectively implemented, they should be accompanied by specific timeframes, definitions, rates, and standardized accounting measures.

 


Carbon Capture and Sequestration – A Cautionary Tale

www.energydigital.com“That is not what the IPCC says.”

 

At an event promoting carbon capture and sequestration technology (CCS), an audience member who co-authored a section of the IPCC Synthesis challenged the assertion that carbon capture and sequestration is a necessary technology to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In doing so, he highlighted the tension between competing emissions reduction strategies.

 

While COP negotiators work on the final details of the Paris Agreement, industry and government are readying their proposed solutions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. When you have a problem like global warming, there is no shortage of proposed solutions. Unfortunately, the solutions that get promoted don’t always make the best environmental sense.

 

A poster child for misplaced attention is carbon capture and sequestration. The case of CCS demonstrates the powerful influences of technology, economics, and politics in determining how the world will combat climate change. Governments and companies have invested billions of dollars into developing CCS technology and piloting CCS projects. For all of their economic investment, CCS technology has yet to demonstrate that it can provide significant GHG emissions reductions. CCS pilot projects have been operating since 1996 and during that time period, they have sequestered millions of tons of CO2. It sounds impressive until compared against annual global anthropogenic CO2 emissions which exceed 9,000 million metric tons.

 

In 2005, the IPCC published a report on CCS technology stating that it was a key potential technology for reducing emissions. The IPCC stated that there is no single solution to reducing emissions and that a suite of mitigation efforts is required. The IPCC put CCS on a list of energy options that included energy efficiency improvements, switching to lower carbon fuels, renewable energy sources, enhancement of biological sinks, and reduction of non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions. Each one of these options is distinctly different from CCS. In the last decade, each one of them has scaled up to produce significant emissions reductions.

 

Governments and industry have pushed CCS as the technology of the future for the last 20 years. CCS technology doesn’t have another 20 years to prove that it is a viable commercial-scale technology. If the economics worked, the technology would have already been rolled out across the globe.  The only industries building CCS plants are doing so with the financial support of their governments. The largest CCS plant in the world was built with more than $1.2 B in government support. Without the support it would not have been built.

 

When the negotiators wrap up their duties next week, the work will start on achieving the agreed-upon emissions reductions. Industry and government will have their proposals. As the IPCC author demonstrated, not all proposals are equal or necessary.


Reading Between the Lines on the US-China Climate Agreement

Obama and Xi JinpingAs noted on this blog yesterday, at the close of the recent Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in Beijing, President Obama and President Xi Jinping issued a joint US-China “announcement” on climate change.  The United States announced that it intends to achieve economy-wide emissions reductions of 26%-28% below 2005 levels by 2025, while China for the first time announced its intention to commit to peaking its CO2 emissions by 2030 and to increase its share of renewable energy consumption to “around 20%” by 2030.  This agreement between the two countries has been described variously as a landmark agreement, a gamechanger, and historic.  But is the agreement really all it is cracked up to be?

First of all, some commentators have opined that the agreement’s targets are simply not ambitious enough. For instance, climate scientist Kevin Tyndall recently expressed to chinadialogue that if we wanted even a reasonable chance of achieving the goal laid out in Copenhagen of limiting global temperature increases to 2C, China’s GHG emissions would have to peak at least as early as the mid-2020’s. Second, even if the United States and China are able to meet the targets set out in the agreement, enormous challenges would remain.  By 2030, the GHG emissions of the two countries would account for over half of the carbon budget that would give us a 50-50 chance of staying within the 2C goal.  This would leave little room for rising economies such as India and Brazil to continue to grow. Third, some have noted that this agreement does not amount to much because it largely reflects what the US and China are already doing anyway.  A Bloomberg New Energy Finance analyst told the Daily Beast that “the commitment on the U.S. side is a summation of a variety of commitments that have already been made.”  Morever, three years ago the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory had already predicted that due to a variety of factors, China’s GHG emissions would peak by 2030.  And finally, the agreement is lacking in detail, but what detail it does contain has been a cause for alarm for some environmentalists. While renewable energy is mentioned only once in the agreement, the promotion of carbon capture and sequestration and advanced coal technologies is featured prominently, mentioned no less than six times.  The agreement also promotes the increased use of shale gas without mentioning control of methane, which, according to the director of Food and Water Watch, simply amounts to “more promotion of fracking under the guise of climate action.”

Nevertheless, despite the agreement’s limitations, it still provides much cause for optimism.  Indeed, it represents the first time the world’s two largest GHG emitters have publicly expressed a willingness to cooperate on climate change. As Secretary of State John Kerry noted, the United States and China must cooperate on joint efforts to reduce GHG emissions – otherwise, there is simply no hope of solving this problem.  Besides this symbolic importance of the agreement, it also includes some practical bilateral measures that are encouraging, such as expanding the US-China Joint Clean Energy Research Center, enhancing cooperation on phasing out HFCs, jointly launching a new initiative on Climate-Smart/Low-Carbon Cities, and promoting trade in green goods.

Perhaps most importantly, the willingness of the two largest economies and two China-deal-638x532largest GHG emitters on the planet to come together to announce action on climate sets a good example for both developed and developing countries.  According to Zou Ji, deputy director of China’s National Center for Climate Change Strategy, this agreement will set the tone for the 2015 Paris climate negotiations and as such, could have “wide-reaching impacts on the global low-carbon transition.”  By one estimation (see graph), if developing countries were to follow China’s lead and developed countries were to follow the United States’ lead, we could slash global carbon emissions from the “business as usual scenario” by an enormous 2500 billion tons by the end of the century. The fact that these two countries have stated publicly their intention to act on climate change essentially leaves no excuse for others to not take action.  Now let us hope that they are serious.


Are deserts carbon sinks?

Can arid regions – specifically deserts – act as carbon sinks?  This study, led by Professor David Evans of Washington State University and published in the current edition of Nature Climate Change, offers this conclusion:  “Results provide direct evidence that CO2 fertilization substantially increases ecosystem C storage and that arid ecosystems are significant, previously unrecognized, sinks for atmospheric CO2 that must be accounted for in efforts to constrain terrestrial and global C cycles.”desert

Good news in terms of potential progress on reducing CO2 in the atmosphere and global warming.  But Christopher Field, who directs the department of global ecology at the Carnegie Institution for Science at Stanford University, runs a project where similar experiments are conducted on grasslands, and is the lead author of the new IPCC report, puts it into perspective:   “It is worth noting that, although the sink in this experiment is significant, it is … about a hundredfold less than typical sinks in young forested ecosystems not exposed to elevated carbon dioxide, so the bottom line is that deserts will not save us from climate change.”