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."

Comments

Complete article

[phantomfive]

Here is a link to the complete, actual commentary from which all the other stories derive.

Re:Complete article

[phantomfive]

Wow, I strongly suggest that anyone read that commentary, if they are interested in the political side behind global warming.

For example, when discussing this graph, the article mentions:

in Yokohama in March 2014 [24], authors and delegates spent a considerable amount of time negotiating the temperature axis.....as a response to the insistence on the part of some parties, including St. Lucia, Saudi Arabia, and Bolivia, a second thermometer was added to the right. For many delegates, it was fundamental to not omit in this crucial figure the 0.61C change that had been accumulating..... fierce debates erupted over the visual highlighting of certain temperature targets in the graphic......St. Lucia, supported by Dominica, Jamaica, Tuvalu, Cuba, Mali, France, and then also Germany, requested a third dotted line at 1.5C......others considered it policy-prescriptive and hence inappropriate for the IPCC whose mandate it is to be no more than policy-relevant. A compromise to add dotted lines at all 0.5C increments, offered by the IPCC authors as well as Belgium, Austria, the U.S., and others, was rejected. In the end, the graphic was approved, without any horizontal lines, as most ‘scientifically neutral.’

Re:Complete article

[riverat1]

This year we have seen record low temperatures across the north american continent that have pushed our country to the limits.

While the eastern third of the country has been cold the western third of the country has seen record high temperatures. In fact the eastern third of North America is about the only place on the Earth that's had below average temperatures this winter.

Re:Complete article

[MightyMartian]

Because the changes in this case are not natural at all?

Saying "climate always changes" is like saying "water always flows", and then promptly putting a firehose in your living room and then turning it on. I realize you think this is a great rhetorical trick, but that's all it is.

Re:Complete article

[MightyMartian]

No kidding. Here on Vancouver Island, other than perhaps a four or five day stretch back in December with sub-zero degrees celsius temperatures, and the odd day here and there of frosty mornings, we literally did not have a winter.

There seems to be this popular attack of AGW that involves "Look outside, if it isn't a desert, all those scientists are evil liars!"

Social scientists

[phantomfive]

This beautiful quote from the paper gives the point of view of feminist social scientists (the term "feminist social scientists" comes from the paper):

Less well known perhaps is a critique from feminist social scientists who interrogate what may be deemed ‘acceptable’ and what may be ‘dangerous’, and for whom, and who contest the global community as a homogeneous entity. Joni Seager, for instance, demonstrates how notions of acceptability always mirror ‘a prism of privilege, power, and geography’ [14]. She argues that those for whom a 2C target [are] politicians and economists from the global North deeply entrenched in a masculinized rationality that nature can be controlled and that in the imminent climate race with inevitable winners and losers they will be among the former. Seager rejects the notion of a 2C target as a real geophysical threshold that neatly distinguishes between little and much danger

That is worth a read for educational purposes alone.

Re:Let's see

[Crashmarik]

California is regularly in drought. It's a 500 year cycle for them.
But good of you to bring it up, If the environmentalists hadn't been blocking water management and in general been in the business of creating problems http://naturalresources.house.....

Tired of Consensus = Fact

[BoRegardless]

These stories are tiring as there is no chance for "settled science fact" in climate change.

All of these estimates are based on elaborate math models and yet the Earth's long term climate ON ITS OWN, has swung widely over recorded history.

And from the geologic history, we know we will again go into another ice age based on the history of the change in the Earth-Sun orbit & precession changes on a regular 110,000 year cycle. And without human intervention, the ice age ends.

Re:Let's see

[Crashmarik]

I live in Florida, and that has nothing to do with rising sea levels but rising population levels.
Hint: More paving = More drainage in a rainy climate.

Re:Just looked her up

[Trepidity]

The area of geography she studies is how communities/economies are impacted by and adapt to changes in prevailing climates, which seems pretty relevant, depending on what question you're asking. She would be a poor authority on questions like modeling the impact of CO2 on weather, but more within her area if asking questions like, "how easy/difficult would it be for Indonesians to adapt to a 2" ocean-level rise?".

In terms of the IPCC reports, the research/authorship is divided into three working groups: #1 studies the underlying science; #2 studies impacts & adaptation; #3 studies possible mitigation strategies. She's part of #2.