Nothing quite like optimsm and hopium even if there is no evidence to support it!
In 1989 the UN warned that 1C could not be exceeded and we had 10 years to fix things.
Now, 30 years later we are quite possibly at 1.8C higher than pre-industrial average termperatures (less than that if you believe the false figures) and we still have three years to get cliamte change under control.
I wonder how they prepose to do that with a melting Arctic and dozens of self-reinforcing feedbacks.
These
experts say we have three years to get climate change under control.
And they’re the optimists.
Chris
Mooney
26
November, 2014
A
group of prominent scientists, policymakers, and corporate leaders
released a statement Wednesday warning that if the world doesn’t
set greenhouse gas emissions on a downward path by 2020, it could
become impossible to contain climate change within safe limits.
The
group, led by Christiana Figueres, who oversaw the United Nations
negotiations that produced the Paris climate agreement, base their
case on simple math. The world, they calculate, probably has a
maximum of 600 billion remaining tons of carbon dioxide that can be
emitted if we want a good chance of holding the rise in planetary
temperatures within the Paris limit of 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius (2.7
to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).
With
41 billion tons emitted every year from energy consumption and other
sources, such as deforestation, there are only about 15 years before
that budget is exhausted.
Emissions
can’t suddenly go to zero after 15 years — the world economy
would grind to a halt if they did. Therefore, they must be put on a
downward path almost immediately.
“When
it comes to climate, timing is everything,” write Figueres and her
co-authors, including scientists Hans Joachim Schellnhuber and Stefan
Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, in a
commentary in the journal Nature. The commentary has six authors and
was endorsed by dozens of co-signers from the climate science and
policy world as well as from industry.
The
paper by Figueres, who now leads an initiative called Mission 2020,
was directly aimed at influencing the upcoming G-20 meetings in
Germany. It also notes President Trump’s decision to withdraw the
United States from the Paris accord.
“The
whole purpose of this comment … is to wake up the intentionality
and the ingenuity that we must bring to this effort, because of the
urgency,” Figueres said during a call with reporters.
Fortunately,
global emissions have been flattening lately. Not going down — but
not rising, either. The past three years have instead shown a
leveling-off thanks to a decline of coal burning by the United States
and China.
Yet
to achieve their objectives, extremely rapid carbon cuts would be
required on a tremendous scale.
By
2020, among other objectives, all of the world’s coal plants would
have to be on the path to retirement (and no new ones can be built),
and electric vehicles would have to explode in popularity, moving
from 1 percent of global sales to 15 percent in just three years, an
extraordinarily rapid rate of growth.
Deforestation
would have to decline sharply and then end entirely. By 2030, global
forests would actually have to start pulling carbon dioxide out of
the air. That is an enormous lift, given the entrenched nature of
deforestation and the economic pressures in the developing world to
convert forested land to agriculture and ranching.
But
if emissions are not on a significant downward path by 2020, the
logic is inevitable — it gets increasingly difficult to control
global warming. The reason is simple. The later emissions reach their
peak, the more rapidly they would have to decline following that
peak. At some point it becomes impossible to cut emissions as fast as
would be necessary to avoid busting the limited carbon “budget.”
These
kinds of considerations are why a number of researchers have
expressed skepticism about global temperatures increasing less than
two degrees Celsius. Keeping the temperature change below 1.5 Celsius
is even harder and, increasingly, being considered unachievable by
scientists. (It has already increased about one degree Celsius.)
“I
have said for quite a while now that I don’t think 2C is possible,”
said Glen Peters, an expert on carbon budgets and climate change at
the Center for International Climate Research in Oslo, in response to
the new missive by Figueres and her colleagues. “I would like to be
wrong, and I am happy to aim for 2C or lower. But, I can’t look
people in the eye and give them false hope.”
Peters
did acknowledge that there was a purpose to maintaining optimism,
though he said that “personally, I don’t see that as my role.”
Such
is where we are. There’s a narrowing window of time to fix the
climate problem before crossing new thresholds — but since we’re
still not actually at them yet, there’s still room for both
optimists and pessimists.
U.N.
PREDICTS DISASTER IF GLOBAL WARMING NOT CHECKED
Jun.
29, 1989
UNITED
NATIONS (AP) _ A senior U.N. environmental official says entire
nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels
if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.
Coastal
flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of ''eco-
refugees,' ' threatening political chaos, said Noel Brown, director
of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program, or UNEP.
He
said governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the
greenhouse effect before it goes beyond human control.
As
the warming melts polar icecaps, ocean levels will rise by up to
three feet, enough to cover the Maldives and other flat island
nations, Brown told The Associated Press in an interview on
Wednesday.
Coastal
regions will be inundated; one-sixth of Bangladesh could be flooded,
displacing a fourth of its 90 million people. A fifth of Egypt's
arable land in the Nile Delta would be flooded, cutting off its food
supply, according to a joint UNEP and U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency study.
''Ecological
refugees will become a major concern, and what's worse is you may
find that people can move to drier ground, but the soils and the
natural resources may not support life. Africa doesn't have to worry
about land, but would you want to live in the Sahara?'' he said.
UNEP
estimates it would cost the United States at least $100 billion to
protect its east coast alone.
Shifting
climate patterns would bring back 1930s Dust Bowl conditions to
Canadian and U.S. wheatlands, while the Soviet Union could reap
bumper crops if it adapts its agriculture in time, according to a
study by UNEP and the International Institute for Applied Systems
Analysis.
Excess
carbon dioxide is pouring into the atmosphere because of humanity's
use of fossil fuels and burning of rain forests, the study says. The
atmosphere is retaining more heat than it radiates, much like a
greenhouse.
The
most conservative scientific estimate that the Earth's temperature
will rise 1 to 7 degrees in the next 30 years, said Brown.
The
difference may seem slight, he said, but the planet is only 9 degrees
warmer now than during the 8,000-year Ice Age that ended 10,000 years
ago.
Brown
said if the warming trend continues, ''the question is will we be
able to reverse the process in time? We say that within the next 10
years, given the present loads that the atmosphere has to bear, we
have an opportunity to start the stabilizing process.''
He
said even the most conservative scientists ''already tell us there's
nothing we can do now to stop a ... change'' of about 3 degrees.
''Anything
beyond that, and we have to start thinking about the significant rise
of the sea levels ... we can expect more ferocious storms,
hurricanes, wind shear, dust erosion.''
He
said there is time to act, but there is no time to waste.
UNEP
is working toward forming a scientific plan of action by the end of
1990, and the adoption of a global climate treaty by 1992. In May,
delegates from 103 nations met in Nairobi, Kenya - where UNEP is
based - and decided to open negotiations on the treaty next year.
Nations
will be asked to reduce the use of fossil fuels, cut the emission of
carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases such as methane and
fluorocarbons, and preserve the rain forests.
''We
have no clear idea about the ecological minimum of green space that
the planet needs to function effectively. What we do know is that we
are destroying the tropical rain forest at the rate of 50 acres a
minute, about one football field per second,'' said Brown.
Each
acre of rain forest can store 100 tons of carbon dioxide and
reprocess it into oxygen.
Brown
suggested that compensating Brazil, Indonesia and Kenya for
preserving rain forests may be necessary.
The
European Community istalking about a half-cent levy on each kilowatt-
hour of fossil fuels to raise $55 million a year to protect the rain
forests, and other direct subsidies may be possible, he said.
The
treaty could also call for improved energy efficiency, increasing
conservation, and for developed nations to transfer technology to
Third World nations to help them save energy and cut greenhouse gas
emissions, said Brown.
Some very well-known people can get very angry if you try to burst their hopium bubble, especially if you back it up with evidence.
Just yesterday Mr. Hockey Stick, Michael Mann, posted an attack on Guy McPherson with this article from our very own James Renwick.
Is
climate change going to wipe out humanity over the next 10 years?
Prof Jim Renwick doesn’t think so…
I addressed this at the time
Posts
After
a big earthquake, it could take up to 100 days to reconnect water
supplies to central and eastern parts of Wellington - unless new
sources can be found. Photo: CORBIS
Photo: Supplied:
Wellington Water
Civil
Defence Minister Nathan Guy and Local Government Minister Anne Tolley
said it made sense for central government to contribute to the
project. Photo: RNZ / Michael Cropp
