"The trajectory on emissions right now is way above 2 degrees"

[pscot]

We're kidding ourselves

BONN/WASHINGTON, June 1 (Reuters) - The U.N.'s Paris climate conference, designed to reach a plan for curbing global warming, may instead become the graveyard for its defining goal: to stop temperatures rising more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

Achieving the 2C (3.6 Fahrenheit) target has been the driving force for climate negotiators and scientists, who say it is the limit beyond which the world will suffer ever worsening floods, droughts, storms and rising seas.

But six months before world leaders convene in Paris, prospects are fading for a deal that would keep average temperatures below the ceiling. Greenhouse gas emissions have reached record highs in recent years.

And proposed cuts in carbon emissions from 2020 and promises to deepen them in subsequent reviews - offered by governments wary of the economic cost of shifting from fossil fuels - are unlikely to be enough for the 2C goal.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/01/insight-un-climate-deal_n_7481870.html?utm_hp_ref=green&ir=Green

[yeoman6987]

1. When I moved from Pennsylvania to Maryland,

I was shocked that Maryland does not test emissions on cars yearly like Pennsylvania especially since Maryland is a more progressive state. I think Maryland is the problem with the United States not doing all it can for emissions. The state is great overall, but terrible on emissions control.

[pampango]

2. 110% of the warming since 1950 be due to human activity. natural drivers would have caused cooling.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/05/28/3662017/jeb-scientists-warming-humans-caused/

But wait. How could 110 percent of the warming since 1950 be due to human activity? As Schmidt explained way back in 2009, “Over the last 40 or so years, natural drivers would have caused cooling.”

These cooling natural drivers include:

In recent decades, volcanoes have released particles that partially block the sun and cool the planet slightly.
Only recently have we come off “the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century,” which also cooled the planet slightly.
The underlying long-term trend — driven largely by orbital changes — had been cooling (see Human-caused Arctic warming overtakes 2,000 years of natural cooling, “seminal” study finds).

In short, “human factors are most likely responsible for all the warming we’ve seen and then some (110%),” as environmental scientist Dana Nuccitelli put it in the UK Guardian