From the University of Exeter , more Durban PR rampup:
Limited options for meeting 2°C warming target, warn climate change experts
We will only achieve the target of limiting global warming to safe levels if carbon dioxide emissions begin to fall within the next two decades and eventually decrease to zero. That is the stark message from research by an international team of scientists, led by the University of Exeter, published today (20 November) in the journal Nature Climate Change.
The research focuses on the scale of carbon emission reduction needed to keep future global warming at no more than two degrees Celsius over average temperatures prior to the Industrial Revolution. This target is now almost universally accepted as a safe limit.
The team examined the extent to which carbon emissions should be reduced, how steep this reduction needs to be and how soon we should begin. They used mathematical modelling techniques to construct a number of possible future scenarios, based on different assumptions on emissions reduction. They accounted for a likely range of climate sensitivities: the amount of warming for a given increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide.
The research shows how quickly emissions need to drop in the next few decades. It also highlights how remaining emissions could cause the two-degrees target to be exceeded in the long term, over the next few hundred years.
The researchers found that zero or negative emissions are compatible with this target if we reduce our global carbon emissions by at least three per cent per year within the next two decades.
In a worst-case scenario of high climate sensitivity, we need to work towards negative emissions if we are to have a chance to keeping temperatures within the two-degrees target. This would mean using carbon-capture-and-storage technology combined with aggressive mitigation rates starting in the coming decade. The best-case scenario of low climate sensitivity allows longer delays and more conservative mitigation rates, but still requires emissions to be eventually cut by at least 90%.
The results clearly show that if we delay reducing global emissions by just ten or twenty years we will then need to make much steeper reductions in order to meet a two-degrees warming target.
Lead author Professor Pierre Friedlingstein of the University of Exeter said: “When I analysed these results, I was surprised to see so few options available to us. We know we need to tackle global warming, but our research really emphasises the urgency of the situation. The only way for us to achieve a safe future climate will be to reduce emissions by at least three per cent, starting as soon as possible. The longer we leave it, the harder it will be.”
Countries currently have different targets for carbon emission reductions. For example, the US proposes a 17 per cent reduction by 2020, the EU has set a target of a 20 to 30 per cent reduction by 2020 and Australia has an objective of a five to 25 per cent reduction by 2020, depending on other countries commitment.
“The good news is that it’s not too late,” said co-author Professor Susan Solomon of the University of Colorado. “The interesting news is that we really need to think in the very long-term as well as the near-term. Even a small amount of remaining emissions would eventually mean exceeding the target so we need to ensure that technologies are available to make our world carbon-free in the long run.”
The research was carried out by the University of Exeter (UK), University of Colorado (USA), University of Bern (Switzerland), ETH (Switzerland), CEA-CNRS (France) and CSIRO (Australia).
Interestingly, WUWT has become, I think, the leading source to read about what’s going on in the AGW world. That’s a very good thing. Better to see the studies and disagree, than not to know what’s out there.
Would someone kindly explain to me, a dumb ol’ engineer what “negative emissions” means?????
I have this impossible picture of a high stack sucking in just CO2 and blowing it out the boiler….
and then it gets obscene….
hummmmm.
Mike
The next few hundred years!!!! Good heavens I can’t even get people to think about saving Social Security for the next 20 years. Why are these people who tend to be of the political stripes that they don’t mind spending the next generation’s money on all sort of government programs all of a sudden so worried about a few hundred years from now? Do they not think there will be any technological advances between now and then? Do they think that people then will be so stupid they won’t use new technology to solve what if any problems have been caused by burning fossil fuels two hundred years ago? I guess if they get their way now, there won’t be and technological advances, then they can say “see we told you so.”
I admit, I am a science lightweight compared to most here but, as the path to becoming carbon neutral seems to revolve around conversion to electric cars, for the most part, and leaving aside that burning coal is still the most efficient and widely used fuel to produce electricity, what happens to all that ozone produced by electric motors (and windmills, for that matter)?
What will be the effect of so much more ozone in the atmosphere?
When tundra and taiga warm, they give up their embedded greenhouse gases. As they warm more, they contribute more. At 2C, the gases from natural sources will equal those from human sources. There’s hardly anyone who sees 2C of warming as “safe”. I have no idea how that idea gained any traction at all. 2C isn’t a natural plateau. It’s a number dreamed up like an advertising slogan. Since human contributions are actually accelerating, BAU scenarios which were once seen as dire are perversely “optimistic”. We’ll blow past 2C of warming like a sprinter going through a finish line tape.
Greg Holmes says:
November 21, 2011 at 4:39 am
I reckon that I am at least 70% carbon, when do I get taxed directly for being me?l
————————————————————————————————————————————You are more like 90% H2O but don’t worry about it; water doesn’t cure dehydration.
I see no evidence that they took into account that plants and oceans are absorbing half of our emissions currently.
Plants and oceans are absorbing about 4 billion tons of Carbon (or about 2.0 ppm of CO2) per year which should rise as the level of CO2 in the atmosphere rises. So at the very most, to stabilize the level of CO2 in the atmosphere, we only have to cut our emissions by about 40% (not 100%).
The supplemental does not show they took this into account and I’d be interested if someone found a link to the full paper.
“Even a small amount of remaining emissions would eventually mean exceeding the target so we need to ensure that technologies are available to make our world carbon-free in the long run.”
A carbon free world is a world without life. All life on planet earth is based on carbon. Most of the carbon is bound up in rocks formed in the ocean basins of hundreds of millions of years, leaving very little available for life forms. On occasion this carbon is recycled through plate tectonics and returned to the atmosphere to support life.
Our current climate is cold and dry as compared to most of the past 600 million years. Without GHG the entire surface of the planet would be a permanently frozen block of ice. Is this the future that Susan Solomon wants?
Hardly the wisdom of Solomon.
“Gary Mount says:
November 21, 2011 at 5:07 am
Could someone please inform Susan Solomon that even if we reduced our emissions to zero, that would only decrease global emissions by 3%, as the natural world will still be emitting CO2.”
According to the Japanese satellite that measures CO2, most of the CO2 being released comes from the tropical regions. The industrialized West is a net carbon sink, when you consider both natural and human emissions combined.
The ideal that CO2 is rising due to industrialization is only an assumption. The Japanese satellite has put a lie to that assumption. It is the 3rd world that is creating the CO2 and it is the 3rd world that owes damages to the industrialized nations. Good luck collecting.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/10/31/japanese-satellites-say-3rd-world-owes-co2-reparations-to-the-west/.
>>The team examined the extent to which carbon emissions should be reduced, how steep this reduction needs to be and how soon we should begin. They used mathematical modelling techniques to construct a number of possible future scenarios, based on DIFFERENT ASSUMPTIONS (emphasis mine) on emissions reduction. They accounted for a likely range of climate sensitivities: the amount of warming for a given increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide.<<
This is precisely what passes for "research" these days, i.e. a bunch of assumptions they quantified and plugged into nothing more than overblown spreadsheets. This is not research; this is soothsaying, which is then reported in the popular media as fact and having the weight of scientific authority. How we ever allowed ourselves to get into this state of affairs and permit this nonsense to go on is beyond me.
Speaking as someone who has formerly taught introductory graduate research courses, it makes me want to scream. People are paying good money to allow these charlatans to carry on with this charade. It's a shameful disgrace.
Amazing is the following:
Mr. Friedlingstein and Mrs. Solomon can predict the future (+2 C warming) for a time AFTER we have all died, but they cannot predict the flat temperature plateau since 2001, in the time we are living. now ….too much “noise” as it is scientifically called, and “not enough earplugs available”……
……. lets all accept global warming and resurrect in 2100 to see whether AGW is true…., then we know for sure……
…..I already saw a tumbstone sayng: I didnt believe in AGW and want my money back…
JS
“Gofigure says:
November 21, 2011 at 5:07 am
How do these university folks reconcile their “scientific study” with the fact that CO2 has been 10 to 20 times higher than now and that lifeforms similar to us seemed to have had no problem ?”
Shhhh. There would be ZERO dollars given for climate research if that every gets out. The fact that the world has been 7C warmer for almost all the past 600 million years than it is now, with much higher CO2 levels, and life (including coral reefs) did just fine is not the message you will hear from climate science.
Remember, climate science only studies the harmful effects that industrial societies have on climate. Everything else is natural which makes it good so there is no need to study it.
Industry = bad = harms climate
nature = good = helps climate.
Storms, floods, hurricanes these are not natural events. They happen because humans have messed up the planet through pollution. Mostly by driving around in cars instead of taking the bus. Storms are natures way of punishing humans for being bad. Gore and Hansen tell us this so we know it is right.
If we continue to be bad, nature will punish us by warming the planet so that it will feel like we are living in Hawaii.
…we need to work towards negative emissions if we are to have a chance to keeping temperatures within the two-degrees
Negative emissions? Kind of like TV–just when you think it’s as low as it can get, they fool you. How low do they want CO2 levels to get? Perhaps the new slogan will be, “Stop photosynthesis now!”
pesadia says:
November 21, 2011 at 4:24 am
When, exactly is “as soon as possible”
About 2025 when the Gen IV Nuclear plants start coming online.
A bit off topic here, but I hope Dave Springer is around?
Henry@Dave Springer
You remember that thing we discussed some time ago?
You said that the oceans only gives up 20% of its solar heating which would explain matters with the CO2.
I did some checking and testing on this. It did not work out as you predicted.
I think you are wrong.
In the case of the leaf chart here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/24/the-earths-biosphere-is-booming-data-suggests-that-co2-is-the-cause-part-2/
I am finding an extraordinary correlation between warming in the red areas and actual cooling in the blue areas. In other words, if you pick a blue area, you will find mean temperatures declining,
if you pick a red area you will mean temperatures rising.
So, seeing that the overall chart shows more red (the earth is blooming) it explains the extra warming noted of the past decades. It is more vegetation that traps more heat.
I’m going to breathe slower to do my part.
I wonder if there a direct relationship between the age of the warmers and their position on how much time is needed to either be too late to do anything or confirm AGW to be false?
Obviously many warmers have a convenient position that no answers can be available until enough time has passed that they are completely removed from any consequences for being horribly wrong and perpetrating a costly scam.
Of course the younger alarmists, fresh from academia processing, are in the worst position.
They’ll not only be facing some harsh consequences long before they can escape but their mentors will have abandoned them via the retirement villages, senior care facility or graveyard.
Leaping forward with another 17 years of “weather” failing to co-operate what then for the young? Considering how many AGW icons, along with their projections, will be gone, their once young protoges could be some mighty angry middle aged folks.
Poor stuff – she will never get it. With a bit positive thinking “an innocent mind” playing with the switches of computer models that have proven to not be close to reality and drawing inmature conclusions. One can only admire the willingness of the US-taxpayer to waste money for nonsense. With the tiny fraction of human emissions of CO2 nothing happens with the temps even if the change is drastic (up or down) – and they will never get this. The 95% natural share in CO2 will – same for water vapor – not follow Durban or whatever else place the AGW-circus is meeting next time. Bad nature simply doesn’t care.
Best from Chile
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/massive_oyster_die-offs_show_ocean_acidification_has_arrived/2466/
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polistra says:
November 21, 2011 at 4:35 am
“The research was carried out at … University … University … University …”
All you need to know. No valid research occurs at universities now. If any valid research is going on, it’s outside of Big Academia.
________________
I never considered that but you are quite correct. Any Prof at school who has not worked in the real world (Industry) wasn’t worth the powder to blow him up. Also the new grads with their holier than thou attitude needed a bit of humility (humiliation) from reality before they became worth anything.
I learned a heck of a lot more at seminars taught by real scientists working in industry than I did from the academics at Uni.
I can only think of ‘Brain Damage’ by Pink Floyd
http://www.pink-floyd-lyrics.com/html/brain-damage-dark-lyrics.html
RockyRoad says:
November 21, 2011 at 5:01 am
The easiest option (and most logical, too), is to just turn off the computers they’re running these crazy models on. No garbage in; no garbage out. Academia is then cleansed from a festering blight they’re attempting to foist on humanity….
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Let’s go one step further and close down the Universities. Let’s go back to an apprentice system. It is pretty darn obvious the education system at least in the USA is one big fail anyway. Heck they came up with ADHD and now put 20% of the grade school kids on drugs. So remove the desks and have the inmates run on tread mills like hamsters to generate electricity instead of drugging them. A win-win situation.
Pointless exercise to combat a fictional problem.
I can’t believe what is going on! I should beware of my daily habit like turning the lights off when I am going to leave etc. Let us cooperate with each other to rescue this poor planet!
The formula: We need to limit GW to 2 degrees. Running another model, we are surprised by how few options we have. We need to take draconian action. We need to do it now.
That is research? There is zero originality in that regurgitation.