NASA and Google team up to track GHG emissions by satellite; Is ocean acidification the ‘evil twin’ of human-caused climate change; Flat-earther Inhofe gets blown off by Denmark delegates

NASA, Google offer more precise emissions tracking

The question is a potential deal-killer: If nations ever agree to slash greenhouse gas emissions, how will the world know if they live up to their pledges?

The answer is in space, experts say “” both outer space and cyberspace.

NASA, the wonder agency of the 1960s, and Google, the go-to company of the early 21st century, are trying to give the world the ability to monitor both the carbon dioxide pollution and the levels of forest destruction that contribute to global warming.

For NASA, this is both an opportunity and an embarrassment. NASA had a science satellite, Orbiting Carbon Observatory, that as a side benefit would be able to see where carbon dioxide was being spewed. But a February launch of the $280 million satellite failed, sending the satellite into the cold Antarctic waters.

Acid oceans: the ‘evil twin’ of climate change

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Dec. 19-I am encouraged by five things from the Accord agreed to here in Copenhagen: The China breakthrough, President Obama’s leadership, new initiatives to protect tropical forests and provide humanitarian aid, and a way forward to a better, more complete deal in 2010. The discouraging part is that the Accord is incomplete and did not convert this rare gathering of world leaders into an ambitious plan for action. Here’s more on why the dramatic rescue of the Copenhagen Accord over the last day was important:

That’s Jeremy Symons, Senior VP for Conservation and Education at the National Wildlife Federation, America’s largest conservation organization, writing at Politico’s Arena.  Here’s the rest of his analysis:

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Our guest blogger is Andrew Light, a specialist in international climate policy and a Senior Fellow with Center for American Progress.

Shortly before leaving Copenhagen yesterday, President Obama announced that he had succeeded in finalizing the text of an interim political agreement, the Copenhagen Accord, with the cooperation of a surprising array of parties from the developing world, including leaders from Brazil, South Africa, India, and China. This is a first step toward finishing a new internationally ratifiable agreement on climate change.

United Nations Executive Secretary Ban Ki-moon and other parties have committed themselves to taking the next step and turning this document into a binding legal agreement by the next UN climate summit in Mexico City in 2010.

The Danish government outlined the proposal for a two-step process last month; today’s developments mark significant success toward achieving this goal, though further work needs to be done. Accepting this two-step process effectively allowed the United States to put interim targets on the table for emissions reductions for the first time, put money on the table for quick start financing for two years, and more importantly reassert America’s leadership on this issue. As the conference closed today, many parties pledged their commitment to the Copenhagen Accord and promised further emissions reductions. More will follow next year. This proposal will be taken up for full endorsement when initial negotiations start for the Mexico City meeting in 2010. I commend the US negotiators and Secretary Clinton for a job well done under extremely difficult circumstances.

Despite the work that now needs to be done, this interim agreement takes a bold move towards fundamentally changing how the world looks at ending carbon pollution. The United States’ union with the four aforementioned countries is premised on a new guiding assumption for climate negotiations: that the world is divided between the major emitters of carbon pollution and everyone else; not simply developed and developing countries. Though there will be differences among the expectations of emissions reductions among this group, all will be expected to carry their fair share of this challenge in the Copenhagen Accord — putting to rest fears in the United States that decreasing carbon pollution would be at the expense of economic competitiveness.

President Obama was clear that the science of global warming will guide the ambitions of the Copenhagen Accord as it moves toward its next step. This is good news. For the first time, an international agreement on climate change includes provisions to consider holding temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius, lower than the present standard of 2 degrees Celsius.

Now the US Congress must meet this challenge and finish the job it began last summer of achieving energy independence, creating millions of clean energy jobs, and carving out the basis for international leadership on climate change.

A move away from developed vs. developing countries to major emitters and everyone else. But there is still a lot of work to be done and a question remains whether this is the right forum for a climate agreement.

Our guest blogger is Andrew Light, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, on the ground in Copenhagen

Shortly before leaving Copenhagen yesterday, President Obama announced that the terms of an interim, “political” agreement, the Copenhagen Accord, had been reached with the leaders of Brazil, South Africa, India, and China which very well may lay the groundwork for a new international agreement on climate change. Commentators are already lining up to decry this step as a toothless outcome proving the US’s impotence in this forum. The Administration is defending it as a “meaningful” step forward. The truth right now is that this agreement is not only meaningful but potentially groundbreaking. Still, the jury will be out until the next UN climate summit in Mexico City in 2010.

As I’ve written about extensively, the proposal that got Obama to come to Copenhagen at the right time was the Danish “two step” proposal put forward by Prime Minister Lars Rasmussen at the APEC summit last month in Singapore and embraced by Obama in Beijing the week following. The original idea was that at Copenhagen we would finalize an interim political agreement to be followed by the commitment to completion of a final binding agreement in 2010. Acceptance of this proposal was critically important for allowing the administration to finally put targets on the table for emissions reductions for the first time, put money on the table for fast start financing, and effectively reassert our full participation in this process.

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