The Guardian: UN's 2C target will fail to avoid a climate disaster, scientists warn

[GliderGuider]

UN's 2C target will fail to avoid a climate disaster, scientists warn

The limit of 2C of global warming agreed by the world's governments is a "dangerous target", "foolhardy" and will not avoid the most disastrous consequences of climate change, new research from a panel of eminent climate scientists warned on Tuesday.

In a new paper, the climate scientist Professor James Hansen and a team of international experts found the most dangerous effects of a warming climate – sea level rise, Arctic ice melt, extreme weather – would begin kicking in with a global temperature rise of 1C.

Allowing warming to reach 2C would be simply too late, Hansen said. "The case we make is that 2C itself is a very dangerous target to be aiming for," he told the Guardian. "Society should reassess what are dangers levels, given the impacts that we have already seen."

The research, published in the peer-reviewed journal PLoS One, represents Hansen's most public intervention so far into the world of climate policy, following his retirement earlier in 2013 from Nasa's Goddard Institute of Space Studies.

James Hansen, Pushker Kharecha, Makiko Sato, Valerie Masson-Delmotte, Frank Ackerman, David J. Beerling, Paul J. Hearty, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg,Shi-Ling Hsu, Camille Parmesan, Johan Rockstrom, Eelco J. Rohling, Jeffrey Sachs, Pete Smith, Konrad Steffen, Lise Van Susteren,Karina von Schuckmann and James C. Zachos (the co-authors) join Kevin Anderson of Tyndall in warning that we have set the target too high.

What have we done?

[CRH]

1. At last some publicity for this non scientific limit of what is safe, ...

a level determined not by scientists, but by politically appointed climate negotiators. It is at the center of the farce, that is the IPCC.

It is so important 2*C is recognized as unsafe and all past pathways and emission scenarios are far too optimistic. Not that this will bring about much change, because to address the problem would require near immediate cessation of carbon use for energy and industrial applications, and a massive move toward mitigation in agriculture, forestation, transportation, conservation, and a socioeconomic remodeling of our present and future lifestyles.

In doing all that, it would also require removing the blinders of the public of just who set these unsafe limits in the first place, and why. Culpability is the last thing politicians and their appointees will allow, and giving up the reins to power would mean their ultimate vulnerability and disgrace. That isn't going to happen, because tracing the strings beyond the politics to the puppet masters, would effectively create anarchy, with very bad consequences for the movers and shakers.

[stuntcat]

2. k&r

because the future's so bright!