Legislating temperature limits to 2°C will surely be more effective than legislating alcohol. Right?
Developing Nations Rebuff G-8 on Curbing Pollutants
L’AQUILA, Italy — The world’s major industrial nations and newly emerging powers failed to agree Wednesday on specific cuts in heat-trapping gases by 2050, undercutting an effort to build a global consensus to fight climate change, according to people following the talks.
As President Obama arrived for three days of meetings, negotiators for the world’s 17 leading polluters dropped a proposal to cut global greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by mid-century, and emissions from the most advanced economies by 80 percent. But both the G-8 and the developing countries agreed to set a goal of stopping world temperatures from rising by more than 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels.
The discussion of climate change was among the top priorities of world leaders as they gathered here for the annual summit meeting of the Group of 8 powers. Mr. Obama invited counterparts from China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Mexico and others to join the G-8 here on Thursday for a parallel “Major Economies Forum” representing the producers of 80 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases. But since President Hu Jintao of China abruptly left Italy to deal with unrest at home, the chances of making further progress seemed to evaporate.
The G-8 leaders were also grappling with the sagging global economy, development in Africa, turmoil in Iran, nuclear nonproliferation and other challenging issues. On Friday, Mr. Obama planned to unveil a $15 billion food security initiative by the G-8 to provide emergency and development aid to poor nations.
The failure to establish specific targets on climate change underscored the difficulty in bridging longstanding divisions between the most developed countries like the United States and developing nations like China and India. In the end, people close to the talks said, the emerging powers refused to agree to the specific emissions limits because they wanted industrial countries to commit to midterm goals in 2020, and to follow through on promises of financial and technological help.
“They’re saying, ‘We just don’t trust you guys,’ ” said Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group based in the United States. “It’s the same gridlock we had last year when Bush was president.”
Read the entire article at the New York Times here
This is interesting. They are concentrating on the goal (whether or not 2 degrees C is a goal people would or should agree on), instead of a particular means of getting to the goal.
This might be progress, actually, in two ways.
First, it allows for the possibility that the models are way overprojecting, and we might not get to 2 degrees C. So if the feedbacks are strongly negative, economies won’t be wrecked.
Secondly, should temps skyrocket in ways that VP Gore expects, it allows implicitly for geoengineering options. Not that these are known to be failsafe, but it pulls them into the discussion.
@ur momisugly Mark Young
It’s actually brilliant. To my ear, it sure sounds like they’re backing off CO2…They can now pretend to do something and when temperatures fail to rise 2′, then they can crow about how successful they were. It’s brilliant.
I think this hits the nail on the head. It’s a very nice face-saving maneuver.
“Flanagan (00:10:39) :
Update: the leaders finally agreed on the 50% reduction… From CNN
“The leaders said they would “join a global response to achieve a 50 percent reduction in global emissions by 2050, and to a goal of an aggregate 80 percent or more reduction by developed countries by that date.”
That would be 80% for the US, then. Good luck”
That’s just the leaders of the G8. “Join the global response” means: If China joins. That will not happen. But of course Obama would easily get a reduction of 80% in the US, just as easily as he created 4 million new jobs by now.
I read this as a serious defeat for the AGW movement.
In their statement, the G8 has rejected the argument of ‘precautionary measures’ and stated a substantive objective measure of change–2 deg C–as the metric for intervention. By this thinking, no temp anomaly, no action on CO2.
Matti Virtanen (23:26:26)
Canute, unlike Obama, would have understood the joke.
Alexej is right. Obama will claim millions of jobs were created, even as the unemployment rate skyrockets under his Administration. By the same token, he can not, and he will not ever admit defeat in the global warming arena no matter how spectacularly he fails. Words will be spun into heroic deeds, victory will be declared, and the emperor will go shopping for new clothes with the immense new taxes imposed.
To accomplish a reduction of CO2 of 80% in 40 years, western nations would need a reduction of 18% every 5 years. So the logical thing to do would be promising to do the first step: 18% by 2014.
The danger is that some of the current leaders might still be in power in 2014. And would be judged by their acievement.
Oh no, I don’t think so. Oh no, they won’t, you know.
Smokey, he already guaranteed his heroic success by defining us into a near guaranteed “solution” that he can take credit for.
The real powers that be aren’t politically stupid. They will defy reality for a while, sure, but long before they’re embarrassed by it, they’ll spin themselves out of harm’s way.
This is good news, but it also let’s the evil doers get a pass.
That’s “lets” not “let’s”.
Note to self: drink second cup of Italian roast BEFORE posting on WUWT.
Yes!! We need to be ready for times when fossil fuels are too limited to supply us.
But the cure is NOT CAP and trade or a total focus on reducing CO2. The cure is money going into science. Support those who investigate all new types of energy supply ideas.
Imagine that alle these HUGE mountains of money spent on legislation, and CO2 cutback where in stead used on creating new energy knowledge. This would not heart anybody, only prepare us for the future. So why not this obvious approach?
It would give a much better odds for CO2-reducing, if that was the actual purpose.
Is it in fact revealing for the whole CO2-movement that they dont just suggest money for new energy-science?
Why dont they just do that?
Why is it more appealing to them to limit people than to simply fix the problem with new techniques?
Am i missing somthing?
Frank Lansner (06:41:19) ,
These are “zero sum” people. They think of everything as limited and finite. For them to win, you must lose. They don’t think in terms of growth or making you and I better off. It’s really a psychological malady, IMO.
I think this is a very positive sign …. and a very necessary first step for getting out of the hole. It is an indication that they are no longer sure about CO2 and global warming …… but but of course they cannot just come out and say that.
So they a make a meaningless statement which requires no action and over time will be forgotten. They are smarter than you think ….. the day is soon coming where using the words ‘climate change’ will be a serious poiltical liability … and they know it.
@Just Passing (01:59:13) :
I’m interested in the climate debate. Can someone please put in laymen terms an answer to my probably stupid 2°C question please.
At any one typical day throughout a year the temperatures at two points on the earth can be so vastly different. Say one is -50°C in Antarctica and the other is say 40°c in Africa.
What impact would a fluctuation of 2°C have globally?
(if by my understanding there are already extremes of temp across the globe on any typical day.)”
You catch on quick. A global average temperature is meaningless. To paraphrase an old saying, “All climate is local.”
Thank goodness some just say no. We let environmental hysteria prevail over policy, engineering and good sense in stopping nuclear development that would have reduced GHG below the targets now being discussed (and maybe we’d all have a frosty July) (see most recent post). And now we are allowing history to repeat by acquiescing to an anti-scientific campaign to kill the economies of the west. The refusal of the emerging economies to go along with this nonsense is an inspiration and possibly a changing of the guard if developed nations abdicate the essential role for the world of creation of capital to resolve all the world’s problems. If we are poorer, so then will such troubled places as Africa be a lot poorer. When the surplus is destroyed, so is global development, advancement and improved quality of life. Thank you India, China, Brazil….
Just to put a little math understanding behind some of these numbers for anyone who is interested.
Here is the greenhouse warming formula that the greens are using to convert a CO2 target into a +2.0C temperature target (there are various other forms for this formula but here is one of them).
+2.0C = 3/Ln(2)*ln(450/280)
Effectively, if CO2 doubling results in +3.0C global warming, then temps will increase by +2.0C when we reach 450 ppm. [This is also the long-term equilibrium temperature response – the theory now is that there is a 30 year lag time before the +2.0C is reached after CO2 reaches 450 ppm]. But once you reach the 450 ppm, you are already committed to +2.0C warming eventually.
Right now, CO2 levels are at about 387 ppm and are increasing at 2 ppm per year. The 2 ppm increase each year is slowly rising so that in a few decades at current trends we will we be at 2.5 ppm per year and then 3.0 ppm and so on.
The IPCC’s AIB scenario has CO2 levels reaching 450 ppm in 2032. My forecast based on the actual trendlines to date is 2036 but that is not much different. Here is a chart of this out to 2100.
http://img39.imageshack.us/img39/6408/co22100t.png
Right now, we are emitting about 31 billion tons of CO2 per year and natural processes are sinking/sequestering about 13 to 14 billion tons of that. So, let’s say, we can cut our emissions by about half – then natural processes could stabilize the CO2 levels assuming the oceans and plants continue absorbing CO2 at the same rates.
So if we cut our emissions by 50% by 2040 or 2050, (assuming we start cutting emissions now), we could probably stabilize CO2 in the atmosphere at 450 ppm by 2040 or 2050.
And that is what this target is all about. Start reducing CO2 emissions now. Stabilize at 450 ppm in 2050 and stay within the committed +2.0C warming level eventually (assuming that the theory is right in the first place about 3.0C warming per doubling of CO2/GHGs).
Poor old Canute gets a lot of bad press…
“P. Hager (18:41:07) :
Wasn’t there a king in Greek mythology who ordered the tides to stop? Or something like that?
G. R. Mead (18:43:28) :
So, they dug up Canute and dosed them all with his cloned stem cells.
Makes perfect sense now.
Wonderful what we can do nowadays…”
Truth is Canute knew he couldn’t do it but was surrounded by flatterers who told him he could. He sat in the water commanding the waves to stop to call their bluff. I wonder…
“Trevor (18:57:29) :
Canute Lives!
Robert Wood (19:00:41) :
I am Canute. I will force back the tides.”
…etc.
I am wondering if there will be a market for temperature offsets? My area is about 20F below average, that should be worth something on the global climate market.
We give the G8 leaders too much credit in assuming they know CO2 and temperature are not well linked. This is just a face saving cop-out because they couldn’t agree to demolish their economies with an emission reduction.
Not that the U.S. won’t do that anyway.
(if needed, the world can devalue the degree and claim success no matter what Mother Nature does.)
Ah ha!
h/t to
“Matti Virtanen (23:26:26) :
Please don’t make fun of king Canute. As I understand the legend, he did not intend to stop the tide. The point of the exercise was to show his courtiers that there are things not even a king can do. Since the G8 does not seem to be that clever, the analogy does not work.”
I still wonder though if there are some in the G8 for whom the penny has dropped.
Surely if the temperature drops while CO2 is rising we should get rebates???
Jesse,
Actually from what I’ve seen lately in the news, I think China is coming in line with the bandwagon. They are definitely pushing for GHG reduction from my perspective.
Also, you can read realclimate.org from China but WUWT is blocked. Not sure why. China seems to be pushing for clean renewable energy.
Well, Well. For the first time the G8 leaders decided that world tempertures should not rise above 2C. King Canute….You just got fired!
We are doomed by the cleverness of wise fools.
Phil’s Dad and Matti Virtanen,
I grew up believing that story of Canute, too, but Wiki tells me that was a later interpretation. Earlier accounts apparently credited the event with the conversion of Canute to fervent christianity.
So, either a sensible king mocking his sycophantic followers or a vainglorious egotist embracing piety after a humiliation.
John is almost right
“John Levett (03:22:56) :
…We think that (politicians) they will alter course once the junk ACC ’science’ has been fully discredited… The truth will not emerge because they and their ilk are constantly reinventing ‘the truth’ aided and abetted by a compliant media.”
Politicians live or die (politically at least) by the vote. They will alter course when the public realise and accept that “the junk ACC ’science’ has been fully discredited”. This will take time. First the (largely liberal elitist) media have to realise that the truth will not go away. When reality makes their editorial line look ridiculous they will start printing a different story for voter consumption (to stay in business). Then the (largely liberal elitist) education establishment will be forced to stop teaching the next generation the discredited junk science. I estimate a 30 year lag.
“Imran (06:56:15) :
They are smarter than you think ….. the day is soon coming where using the words ‘climate change’ will be a serious political liability … and they know it”
Define soon?