Heat Over a Leaked U.N. Warming Analysis

[Turborama]

Source: NYT

COPENHAGEN — Late today, environmentalists monitoring the climate talks alerted reporters to the existence of a six-page document, dated December 15th, that is a compilation by the United Nations office managing the talks of all the major countries’ plans for curbing their emissions, along with a calculation of where that would take the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases and eventual temperature of the planet. United Nations officials confirmed the document’s authenticity but declined to discuss it.

The analysis concluded that without much stronger action to cut emissions both before and after 2020, “global emissions will remain on an unsustainable pathway that could lead to concentrations equal or above 550 p.p.m. with the related temperature” rising 3 degrees Celsius, or 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit. That is far above the thresholds for dangerous warming being debated at the meeting and accepted in recent statements by the major economies of the world.

The conclusion that current plans for greenhouse gases would lead to substantial warming is not new and largely based on recent http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?DocumentID=606&ArticleID=6405&l=en&t=long">analysis by the United Nations Environment Program and Sir Nicholas Stern, a British economist, and in step with http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/13/tally-of-co2-pledges-falls-short-of-safe-zone/">findings of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and elsewhere.

But environmental campaigners said they were outraged that the document so clearly showed that countries involved in the negotiations are aware of the gap.

Read more: http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/17/heat-over-a-leaked-un-warming-analysis/

---

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/science/17dotearth_3degrees.pdf"> The Leaked Document

Here’s more from Sir Nicholas Stern on the four main challenges facing negotiators in the final hours: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6utuqVd-zc

[Ghost Dog]

1. Good info, thanks.

(see also : http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4189083 )

Edit: To listen to Stern is interesting. I will replay and replay... (Check out all the middle-class Westerners in the background of the video, there ;) ).