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TechnoratiClimate Pledges Bound to Breach Key Warming Target: Scientists
BONN, Germany - Pledges currently on the table at the UN climate talks will doom Earth to a warming of more than two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), a figure that has been widely endorsed as a safe limit, scientists said on Thursday.
![[Greenpeace activists burn a symbol of carbon dioxide in November 2008. Pledges currently on the table at the UN climate talks will doom Earth to a warming of more than two degrees Celsius. (AFP/DDP/File/Theo Heimann)]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/co2_globalwarming.jpg "co2_globalwarming.jpg")
Warming "is virtually certain to exceed 2 C" (3.6 F) compared to pre-industrial times, said their assessment of national positions.
The study was published online by the British science journal Nature as a new 12-day round of negotiations was in its penultimate day.
There is no scientific consensus on what constitutes a safe level of warming.
However, the 2 C (3.6 F) goal has been described by the UN's Nobel-winning panel of climate experts as the only practical option for inflicting the least damage to Earth's climate system.
The figure lies at the heart of efforts to craft a new pact in Copenhagen in December for tackling climate change in decades to come.
It has been enshrined as an objective by more than 100 countries, including the 27 nations of the European Union (EU).
The new analysis looks at chances of hitting the 2 C (3.6 F) target, based on the calculation that developed countries would cut their emissions of heat-trapping gases by 25-40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, and to 50-80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.
Developing countries, for their part, would have to reduce their emissions by between 15 and 30 percent by 2020 compared with a "business-as-usual" trend.
"Business as usual" means a rise in emissions by 2020 that would occur through expected economic growth, but without any measures to mitigate the gas.
On both counts, though, the news is dire.
Promises or discernible actions sketched so far at the talks show the world is on track for smashing the 2 C (3.6 F) ceiling, the study said.
Rich countries' positions amount to cuts "in the range of eight to 14 percent" by 2020 over 1990, rising to 57-63 percent by 2050 over 1990 "if current positions were faithfully implemented," it said.
Developing countries would be on track for a reduction of four percent by 2020 compared with business as usual.
As a result, global industrial emissions would be roughly double 1990 levels by 2050.
This pathway "has virtually no chance of limiting warming to 2 C" (3.6 F), said the study, authored by a team from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impacts Research in Germany.
In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted warming of 1.1-6.4 C (1.98-11.52 F) by 2100 compared to 1980-99 levels.
Heatwaves, rainstorms, tropical cyclones and surges in sea level were among the events expected to become more frequent, more widespread or more intense, depending on the temperature rise.
That report sketched three scenarios for policymakers, although none was a recommendation.
The most ambitious would limit carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations in the atmosphere to 450 parts per million (ppm), equivalent to a roughly 2 C (3.6 F) warming.
Before the Industrial Revolution, CO2 concentrations were 280 ppm; in 2007, they were nearly 385 ppm.
To reach 450 ppm would require emissions cuts of 25-40 percent by industrialised countries by 2020 over 1990 and by 80-95 percent by 2050. There would have to be a "substantial" deviation from business-as-usual by developing countries, the IPCC said, without giving a figure.
Reducing emissions has become a fiercely-contested issue because of the cost of easing use of oil, gas and coal, the cheap and abundant "fossil" fuels that meet most of the world's energy needs.
Pressure is rising for an early fix because temperatures have already risen by around 0.8 C (1.4 F), causing worrying glacier melt, snow loss and retreating permafrost.
On top of that, 0.6 C (1.1 F) has to be factored in from past emissions that have yet to have an effect because of the inertia of the climate system. This leaves very little room for further emissions.
16 Comments so far
Show AllMantangicita
Beautiful... you did a good job. This is exactly what we should be doing. To be in touch with the earth, enough to feel her cycles, as a woman can feel her own. Like knowing the feel of damp air and soft breeze, the leaves turning their undersides to the wind and you know the rain will hit any moment...the smell of snow coming, the feel of different types of soil.
Night time celebrations outside are a magical experiance.
The taste of your own tomato grown from your own garden.
Hundreds of fire flies flickering like fire works
There are those who rarely touch the earth, who live in apartments, walk on cement side walks, traveil to work in cars or subways, then spend their day in a high rise office building. They plan their lives around a three week vacation to actually get their yearly taste of the outdoors. They do not know what they are missing.
what kind of intervention will it take to reach a species as suicidally addicted (with that ever-present gargantuan elephant in the room, DENIAL, making it possible for enabling behaviors in every quadrant of our culture to keep feeding the addiction) as our globalized, 'free market' has made us? the delusion that this will work itself out with time, friedmanesque $$$ magic and benevolent experts working behind the scenes, or worse, that climate change is a hoax, keeps the status quo limping along lemming-like toward the abyss. but then it's hard to see a tipping point of consciousness being reached.... banking collapses can be shored up by fabrication of money out of thin air for only so long... the revolution will not be televised, that's for sure. that's because if it's a real change it'll need to be a massive scaled leap of moral fiber and willingness to surrender the materialist dreams we've been hypnotized to think we want... paltry dreams at best compared to a world in which we can live in alignment with nature's rhythms and let kindness, humility and consideration for the next 7 generations rule our daily actions.
first, matangicita, let me say I really liked your response to my query about what your own religious views would be if we weren't brainwashed into the conventional ones...
second, I don't believe any change will occur without an appealing alternative, which is why, even though I know it sounds wacky, I keep returning to sex, marijuana, music and gardening...I wholeheartedly believe that most of our psychological and behavioral troubles, as related to our interactions with the living planet and each other, stem from our utter denial (psychologically and physically) of what I argue are natural sexual impulses...without diverging into deviant behavior, I believe the human animal is designed to engage sexually much more often, and with a much wider variety of partners, than we allow ourselves...I know many will argue this is a recipe for disaster, but I would counter: what the hell do you call what's going on now? In other words, how could it be any worse?
I also believe in the enriching power of alternate states of mind, to a point, of course...I would caution all against meth, for example, or the unknown mushroom...marijuana, on the other hand, I cannot recommend strongly enough as an actual answer to the 'troubled' human psyche...the occasional mushroom trip, with a known substance, can be incredible...a new purpose must be found, call it religion, or philosophy, or what have you, that orients human life around an awe of the natural world, and a appreciation of being allowed to take part in it...
Adulthood is also a pet peeve of mine, in that, in America, at least, we simply don't acknowledge it, which means no American is ever expected to act as one...I believe this is intentional, and should be remedied...I would welcome publicly into adulthood any boy or girl who passes the biological gateway into reproductive status...they would be granted both the rights and responsibilities of an adult, and expected to behave accordingly, with clear guidelines as to what the behavior would and would not entail...hint: it certainly would not entail spending future earnings today on worthless industrially-manufactured and electrified crap at 25% interest...
If we made the camping vacation, the outdoor party, the sun- or star-lit celebration, if you will, the normal way we live, bolstered by growing food and grazing what already presents, and did away with the school/job/money/industry/electricity thing, I would hope we would become much happier rather quickly, and wonder why we ever did the other...the lack of industrial noise, alone, would be a thing to behold...
Anyway, it's hard to spell out an entire existence in a few paragraphs...my point is that providing plenty of natural, and non-industrial, pleasure in return for what is sure to be viewed as, and, in many cases, actually be, enormous sacrifice, might be the only way to bring the thing about...
Be compassionate, be sexy, grow food, grow pot...sing and dance...
It's true what you say,Jim Shea./
Rich countries and rich people probably do not think of change the in terms of it affecting their survival. As a matter of fact, I think that many rich people ( not all) do not even give climate change much thought at all. They are too busy going off to the mall or getting their hair and nails done to be bothered with such boring details of how the average person or the poor in third world countries would fair from climate change. Climate change? Explain that to me again...
Best bet is to lower all thermostats as low as they can go on all air conditioners, refrigerators, and freezers then open all the doors of the buildings that confine them and that way there should not be a 2C degree increase in temperature.
You are joking? It is kinda' funny but I just wanted to make sure.
Yeah, I am, you know, just some 'dark sarcasm' about something that will happen no matter what humans do, such as stop emitting green house gases so, just like our economy, 'it will start getting better sometime early next year', generic rhetoric, blah,blah,blah.
Besides, the whole idea of cooling is to pump heat from one area to another would not make a cooler world, that will happen as a normal part of the ice age cycles.
Jim Shea
Based solely on my own assessment of world and national politics and the power of money and greed, I see no hope that humans will stop global warming before it slowly becomes catastrophic and billions (yes, billions) die.
Rich and advanced countries know they can survive and they simply don't care enough about the third world or the poor in their own countries to do what has to be done.
Oh Boy! DC and the rest of Jesus Land will be under water -
- - and they have cut down all the Gopherwood trees.
Our MSM TV station, ABC, had a program on June 9th entitled Earth 2100. Its premise was that if we do not drastically reduce greenhouse emissions NOW, we will see the end of civilization as we know it within the lifetime of a child born today. Perhaps there is hope, if even a MSM outlet such as ABC, has gotten the message. Or perhaps I'm grasping at straws.....
It was probably a directive from above to act as a tie-in to some Disney movie.
Watch the cheap dvd, the 11th Hour, and, realize it's gotten worse since then.
And, oh yeah, PaulK, "the entire Exxon/Mobil-funded wingnut machine" using their $$$$$$ to buy disinformation!
Within reason, I lean toward the high side of global warming disaster scenarios. Way too many scientists are bounding their predictions only on the low side. For example, a study of ancient coral reef growth in Mexico found that warming caused the ocean to rise a minimum of 10 feet within a maximum of 50 years. We have no known maximum sea level rise. Nor are we particularly sure it didn't happen in 30 years.
No one will shoot down a too-conservative scientist, except me. The entire Exxon/Mobil-funded wingnut machine will shoot down a too-liberal scientist.
I tend to take all scientific estimates of this type and cut them in half...if they estimate crisis in 50 years, I'll guess 25...this is because I believe very strongly in reinforcing feedback mechanisms, and because I'm all too familiar with the forgotten or overlooked fact that proves critical...
You have a prudent method, given the failures over the past thirty years of climate modelers to produce a valid "worst case" scenario.
And don't underestimate any effects by the vicious counter-attacks by conservatives.