Nature - Oxford Science Conference Looking To 4C Increase & Beyond - "No Easy Way Out"

[hatrack]

Concerned by escalating greenhouse gas emissions, scientists are now looking in earnest at the possibility of global temperatures rising by 4 °C or more. Gathering this month at the University of Oxford, they sketched out a world affected by severe climate change, which they now see as increasingly probable.

The conference, which took place 28–30 September, marks a shift in experts' hopes of keeping average global temperatures to 2 °C above pre-industrial levels — widely considered the threshold for 'dangerous climate change'. "Emissions have not gone down globally, as people had hoped they would do," says Kevin Anderson, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, UK, who spoke at the conference. "The rate of increase has actually gone up."

Recent greenhouse gas emissions match the trajectory for most extreme scenario used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). But this scenario, A1FI, has received little study compared with its more moderate counterparts, says Richard Betts of the UK Met Office's Hadley Centre in Exeter, who presented new research in Oxford. "Now we know that emissions are at the upper end of what the IPCC projected a decade ago, it justifies taking the higher-emissions scenario more seriously," he notes. Diana Liverman, director of the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford, says that until now, "it was almost like the 2 °C target was driving the science".

EDIT

Tailoring all adaptation to deal with the impacts of 4 °C warming would be expensive. For sea level rise alone, protecting global coastlines could cost at least US$25 billion per year, and up to $215 billion if current best guesses are surpassed, according to new figures presented at the Oxford conference. UN experts have previously estimated costs of $49–171 billion a year for all adaptation3. Policymakers are left between a rock and a hard place, concludes Anderson. "Mitigating for 2 °C is much more challenging than was previously thought, but adapting to 4 °C is also extremely challenging," he says. "There is no easy way out."

EDIT/END

http://www.nature.com/climate/2009/0911/full/climate.2009.106.html

[Nihil]

1. So much for the "wild guesses" and the "scare factor" ...

> Recent greenhouse gas emissions match the trajectory for most extreme scenario
> used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). But this scenario,
> A1FI, has received little study compared with its more moderate counterparts,
> says Richard Betts of the UK Met Office's Hadley Centre in Exeter, who presented
> new research in Oxford. "Now we know that emissions are at the upper end of what
> the IPCC projected a decade ago, it justifies taking the higher-emissions
> scenario more seriously," he notes.

*This* is the paragraph that should be blasted at every one of the wankers who
are still claiming that the scientific evidence is being exaggerated.

:grr:

> "Emissions have not gone down globally, as people had hoped they would do"

Well fancy that: Wishing & hoping without acting achieves fuck-all.

:eyes:

(Now *that's* a slogan I could happily tattoo on every politician's forehead.)