Climate change scientists warn of 4C global temperature rise

[n2doc]

Damian Carrington
The Guardian, Monday 29 November 2010

A hellish vision of a world warmed by 4C within a lifetime has been set out by an international team of scientists, who say the agonisingly slow progress of the global climate change talks that restart in Mexico today makes the so-called safe limit of 2C impossible to keep. A 4C rise in the planet's temperature would see severe droughts across the world and millions of migrants seeking refuge as their food supplies collapse.

"There is now little to no chance of maintaining the rise in global surface temperature at below 2C, despite repeated high-level statements to the contrary," said Kevin Anderson, from the University of Manchester, who with colleague Alice Bows contributed research to a special collection of Royal Society journal papers published tomorrow. "Moreover, the impacts associated with 2C have been revised upwards so that 2C now represents the threshold extremely dangerous climate change."

The new analysis by Anderson and Bows takes account of the non-binding pledges made by countries in the Copenhagen Accord, the compromise document that emerged from the last major UN climate summit, and the slight dip in greenhouse gas emissions caused by the economic recession. The scientists' modelling is based on actual tonnes of emissions, not percentage reductions, and separates the predicted emissions of rich and fast-industrialising nations such as China. "2010 represents a political tipping point," said Anderson, but added in the report: "This paper is not intended as a message of futility, but rather a bare and perhaps brutal assessment of where our 'rose-tinted' and well-intentioned approach to climate change has brought us. Real hope and opportunity, if it is to arise at all, will do so from a raw and dispassionate assessment of the scale of the challenge faced by the global community."

A rise of 4C could be seen as soon as 2060 in a worst case scenario, according to research in the same journal, led by the Met Office's Richard Betts and first revealed in the Guardian last year. Betts accepts the scenario is extreme but argues it is also plausible given the rapidly rising trend in emissions.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/nov/29/climate-change-scientists-4c-temperature

[man4allcats]

1. The good news is

that once humans kill themselves off taking their reckless behaviors with them, whatever life forms are left might then yet have a chance to make it. The planet will manage just fine without us, I'm sure. Probably better in fact.

[IDHow]

2. Well, how can they say it's not a message of futility? It is the death sentence

and the end of the world basically. 4C will with 100% confidence cause unimaginable amounts of permafrost to melt in Siberia and the planet will be cooked. We're finished. It's the end guys and gals.

[Vincardog]

3. The end for HUMAN habitation/dominance the World will continue

[Vincardog]

4. The end for HUMAN habitation/dominance the World will continue

[Speck Tater]

5. But why worry? Scientists are working on a way to reverse aging!

And in another 20 years we'll all have flying cars.
And in ten more years we'll have computers that are as smart as humans.
And then we'll colonize Mars.

Eventually all these Pollyanna pie-in-the-sky idiots will have to wake up and realize that the human race is literally doomed to extinction. Probably before the next 100 years goes by. It's game over, boys and girls. Get used to it. There's not a damn thing we can do now to save our species. So squabbling over which corrupt politician gets to rake in lobbyist money and fight for the rights of the corporations is utterly pointless. What we really need to be doing is putting our affairs in order and checking the last few things off our bucket lists.

[Duppers]

6. K & R

Greatest issue of our time and people are ignoring it or denying it, even here on DU.

:banghead:

[IDHow]

7. Yes, it's a sad indictment

I was never a person that believed in "doomsday" but even I have to admit it now. This document is not a way to get politicians moving as some sort of scare-tactic. It's the f****** reality now, the shit is hitting the fan and we are really doomed.