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Experts: Aim of 2 Degrees Climate Goal Insufficient
An anonymous reader points out that a long held goal of keeping the Earth's average temperature from rising above 2 degrees Celsius might not be good enough. "A long-held benchmark for limiting global warming is 'utterly inadequate,' a leading U.N. climate scientist declared. Keeping the Earth's average temperature from rising past 2 degrees Celsius – a cap established by studies in the early 1970s – is far too loose a goal, Petra Tschakert, a professor at Penn State University and a lead author of an assessment report for the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, said in a commentary published in the journal Climate Change Responses. Already, with an average increase of just 0.8 degrees Celsius, she wrote, 'negative impacts' are 'widespread across the globe.' Tschakert called for lowering the warming target to 1.5 degrees Celsius."
Considering that Milankovitch cycles show the earth's recent temperature swings are significantly more than 1.5 degrees WITHOUT impact from man, this seems a bit nutty. Global climate change has been happening for a long time before man started burning fossil fuels. Sure it sucks for some, but then again, it will be sweet for some people who get benefits from such a change. Life goes on, just like it has in the past ice ages, despite 1000 metre thick glaciers covering much of Europe and N. America.
Earth is not a static closed system folks... It changes shitloads more all by itself then any amount attributed to by even the most generous of climate analysts. Get used to it. Buy a vineyard in England.
Either 2 degrees or 1.5 it doesn't really matter as we're going to go sailing by both of them and keep on going by a wide margin. We've started to late and done too little to even meet the 2 degree goal. And the commitments that are being proposed for the upcoming summit in France later this year don't look like they are going to be enough.
Wasn't it supposed to raising 2 degrees/decade yy now ?
Aren't the poles supposed to be ice free by now ?
Isn't Florida supposed to be underwater ?
Isn't the entire east coast supposed to be rubble from super hurricanes ?
Dustbowls that would make the 1930s look like nothing ?
Really enough of the chicken little.
Instead of listening to hyperbole why don't you peruse the actual scientific literature on those subjects? You won't find any of that in the time frames you contemplate.
Some environmentalists will blame anything they can on AGW. That doesn't mean that the science itself is wrong, and that it isn't a pressing problem. It just means that there are partisan hacks (people just like you) on the opposite side of the issue to you. They are stupid. So what.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
It is curious that those that tend to see climate change as a urgent problem, tend to advocate cultural solutions, whereas those that see climate change as a less urgent problem tend to advocate technological solutions. The irony being that technological solutions are generally reasonably quick to invent and implement, whereas cultural solutions often take a human generation or more to take hold. For the all talk of a climate change apocalypse, technology got us into this mess and technology will get us out of it. Also don't underestimate the inventiveness of capitalism, its not very good at solving problems that will affect the next generation, but is highly focused at solving problems that affect us right now and have a direct monetary cost associated with them.
The IPCC has stated that sea level rise this century will likely be in the neighborhood of 2.6 feet or less but that extreme conditions could cause as much as a 6.5 foot rise in sea levels over the next hundred years. Maybe you are referring to Al Gore's propaganda where he stated a bunch of US cities could soon be underwater in the near future. You must remember Al Gore is a politician and as such, if his lips move, he's lying.
Really ? That's what I must remember ?
It couldn't be James Hansen predicting the West Side Highway would be under water by 2005 ?
http://www.salon.com/2001/10/2...
The West Side Highway [which runs along the Hudson River] will be under water. And there will be tape across the windows across the street because of high winds. And the same birds won’t be there. The trees in the median strip will change.” Then he said, “There will be more police cars.” Why? “Well, you know what happens to crime when the heat goes up.”
Conservatives need to come to the table with solutions
You need problems first in order to have solutions. For example, this article is about how 1.5 C rise in temperature is supposed to be bad with all sorts of "negative impacts", but there's no actual evidence for the claim. Providing solutions to non-problems doesn't help anyone.
Nor do we have a sane plan for keeping temperature rise below 1.5 C. Note that you won't get the US, China, Russia, or OPEC on board.