Metrics
Carbon Counter

A Deutsche Bank AG initiative to promote the importance of climate change and carbon emissions

Burgess COMMENTARY
What is this number in words ... 3,724,786,772,372? Is it 3.7 million, million or 3.7 trillion or 3,700 billion. This is the number when I uploaded this widget and started running it on a page of the TrueValueMetrics website on March 2, 2013.

And this is tons. How much is this ... really?

The size is mind-boggling.

But frankly ... is this really metrics of any value?
Peter Burgess

The Carbon Counter

The Carbon Counter

We are seeking to raise public awareness of climate change. As investors, we know the importance of measurement so that we can track progress. Our approach is to start by understanding the quantity, or concentrations, of long-lived greenhouse gases which are building up in the world's atmosphere and are leading to global warming.

We have turned to key scientific sources to calculate the current atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and to monitor how quickly these concentrations are increasing. Our starting point has been the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report, released in 2007, which details the important long-lived greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming and are driven by human activity resulting in emissions. Using the work from the IPCC, we collaborated with scientists at the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to update the findings and track these gases in the most timely and up-to-date manner possible. This is a process that relies on regular measurements taken at dozens of sites across the world.

In order to show the underlying growth of greenhouse gas concentrations, the effect of natural cyclical phenomena such as the seasons and the El Niño-Southern Oscillation are removed. Aerosols, some caused by pollution, do have a net cooling effect at present, but they are difficult to measure so are not included. Changes in other factors that affect long term accumulation, including economic activity, are reflected in the regular site measurements through an adjustment process that takes place every month when this actual data become available. The lag between the actual and the trend estimate is about three months, with final validation several months later.

Greenhouse gas concentrations are frequently expressed as an equivalent amount of Carbon Dioxide (CO2). This CO2-equivalent concentration in parts per million (ppm) can then be expressed in terms of metric ton of CO2, a standard of measurement, which as a stock of gases in the atmosphere is readily understood.

According to the IPCC AR4 Synthesis Report, atmospheric CO2 concentrations were 379ppm in 2005. The estimate of total CO2-eq concentration in 2005 for all long-lived GHGs is about 455ppm (see Carbon through History).

On June 18th as the counter started, long-lived GHGs in the atmosphere were estimated to be 3.64 trillion metric tons, growing at 2 billion metric tons per month, or 467 ppm, of which CO2 was 385 ppm.

The full implications for global warming coming from greenhouse gases are outlined both in the IPCC Synthesis Report (below) and a more recent paper from MIT (also below) looking at the probabilities of warming. To quote MIT's News Office this is 'the most comprehensive modeling yet carried out on the likelihood of how much hotter the Earth's climate will get in this century shows that without rapid and massive action, the problem will be about twice as severe as previously estimated six years ago - and could be even worse than that.' By 2100, surface temperatures could be 5.1 degrees Celsius higher.

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