Time to Get Technical.

Ahead of every United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) meeting nations are invited to submit discussion documents about what they feel are the main issues and how the negotiations are progressing. Unfortunately not all nations do this and some who do are not keen to have their submissions published outside of the negotiations. As a result I'm generally uncomfortable singling out individual nations for specific attention in such as high profile forum.

However I must say that I was really impressed by the submission by New Zealand at the recent March meeting in Bonn, Germany. This document tackled the conflict at the heart of the negotiations over whether the agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol (KP) should be legally binding or voluntary. Obviously the purpose of these submissions is to get people thinking and promote discussion in order to find a solution rather then offering solutions themselves. However New Zealand seemed to be proposing a sort of hybrid agreement which would see a standardised set of commitments for all nations - most likely based on the KP targets. However nations would be free to exceed that baseline if they are able to do so and fall short of that baseline if they are willing to pay the penalty. What form that punishment will take was left open but off-setting missed targets through carbon credits has been suggested.

This flexibility is important because if nations know that they are able to fail without consequence they can be encouraged to set more ambitious targets and a lack of ambition is a big problem. The use of a baseline is important though because in order to set that baseline nations need to agree on a standardised method of what needs to be measured and how it can be measured. After all while methane and carbon dioxide are the most important ones the term "Greenhouse Gas" (GHG) is an extremely broad one. For example even the fine particulate pollution (smog) that is big news in the UK today and has been affecting northern Europe for the best part of a month now absorbs/reflects heat and light affecting the local temperature. This sort of particulate cloud effect was actually at the core of the debate over the surface temperature anomaly in the first part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)'s fifth Assessment Report (AE5) although the reason why it was disregarded is because while scientifically interesting the effects are pretty minimal.

The New Zealand submission went on to suggest that nations immediately prepare prototype versions of the Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs) or Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Commitments (NAMCs) that show their methodology but don't include any actual firm data. This is a very good idea that I cannot recommend enough because it will allow everyone to set out the methodologies they intended to use and the differences and similarites will help produce a standardised methodology that will form the basis for the negotiating text.

On what seems like a very related note just as I went to bed last night a large (8.2 magnitude) earthquake struck off the coast of Chile. Fortunately only five people have been reported killed but this 'quake triggered Tsunami warnings up to Chile's neighbour Peru. The 2014 COP20/CMP10 Summit will be held in Lima, Peru and I think the essential outcome for that needs to be the agreement of a negotiating text that can be worked on in the run-up to the COP21/CMP11 Summit at the end of 2015 which is the deadline for the replacement to the KP. Basically we are now getting dangerously close to Peru.

While I'm here I should comment on the latest developments in the search for missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 which seems intent on latching onto the UNFCCC process like a barnacle. Although I think the search is now taking place in the correct - if still very large - area Malaysia's delay in telling people where the crash site was means that it is very likely that the batteries on the aircraft's flight data recorders will run out before they are found. To me this seems purely intentional. With the flight data recorders no longer emitting a signal the search effort then becomes centred on using Sonar to map the ocean floor looking for the thing shaped like a plane.

The problem is that the ocean floor is far from flat and instead littered with hills, mountains, valleys and trenches much like the earth above sea level. As a result Sonar maps of the ocean floor very often end up looking like line graphs. That means they can be used as coded references to anything that is measured by line graphs but in terms of the UNFCCC process I think temperature and economic development are the main targets. Also covering the majority of the earth's surface oceans are hugely important in terms of climate change because they absorb huge amounts of both heat and ghg's while ocean ecosystems such as coral reefs - which Australia is famous for - are particularly sensitive to climate change meaning they often provide the first indicators of change.

The UK seems to be leading the effort to turn the search for MH370 into an ocean mapping exercise by sending the submarine HMS Tireless to join the search. As such I stand by my impromptu rendition of the Beatles song/protest chant "Yellow Submarine."

14:10 on 2/4/14 (UK date).