Here are two different views. First, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber from PIK in Germany finds much to be excited about,
as reported in Nature, he is
. . . actually quite enthusiastic about the G8’s two degrees target, which he believes will breathe new life into international climate politics.
“Now we can calculate precisely how much greenhouse gas we can still afford to emit if we don’t want to exceed a given probability of getting into dangerous territory,” he says.
An envoy to the Indian Prime minister
sees somewhat less precision in the agreement:
While the 2 degree is a compromise, PM's special envoy Shyam Saran told journalists in Italy, "We do not regard this as an arithmetical target; we regard this as a political decision because there is a great deal of uncertainty with respect to what would be the actual rise in temperature, what would be the consequences of that rise of temperature."
What does the agreement mean? Well, what do you want it to mean?
4 comments:
It doesn't mean anything. It's political speech that sounds nice but means absolutely nothing. They could have just as easily said that they were committed to making sure the sun came up tomorrow.
It's an understatement to say that a calculation "precisely" equating GHG and temperature is an overstatement - even with famed German precision as a given.
Chip Knappenberger comes close with a mathematical relationship, but one based upon an assumption of a linear (rather than logarithmic) relationship between CO2 emissions only and temperature. Is that assumption now settled?
Between the two politicians, envoy Saran has a better grasp of the math and of whether the politics of 2 degrees "add up".
The famous sea level smoother, Dr. Stefan Rahmstorf, is also very happy about the 2 degrees.
In his blog, KlimaLounge, he says:
"We believe this to be a major breakthrough, because now there is clarit and agreement about what the goal of international climate policy is. What the global emissions compatible with this goal are is a question that science can answer- as we have discussed here. How this pie, of still possible emissions, can b split between the countries, has to be negotiated - that's what Copenhagen in december is all about."
Maybe he will use his magic triangular filter to tell us the CO2 emission to degrees C relationship, without using padding, of course.
This G8 target was deceptive political cynicism at its very worst.
Peer reviewed science PROVES that if the entire world does absolutely NOTHING to reduce CO2 emissions, the G8 target will be met with 1.6C to spare!
So, we will get economy crushing, freedom destroying Socialism and the course of climate change will not have been altered one WHIT; but, the politicians will get to claim their utterly counterproductive lunacy saved us all from a climate catastrophe.
How stupid do they think we are?
Click here for my full set of observations -- complete with directly cited peer reviewed science to prove my assertion.
Post a Comment