Success of climate talks vital for 2°C target
From the Potsdam Institute – Achieving a global climate agreement soon could be crucial for the objective to keep global mean temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius. The challenges of meeting the long-term target will otherwise increase drastically both in terms of the required emissions reductions and economic impacts. This is shown by the first comprehensive multi-model-based assessment of so-called Durban Platform scenarios, conducted by a team of international scientists led by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and the Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM) in Italy. The Durban Platform is the current negotiation track at the Warsaw climate talks that aims to reach a global climate agreement by 2015 to come into effect in 2020.
“The negotiations in Warsaw represent an important step in the negotiation process towards a climate agreement by 2015,” lead author Elmar Kriegler from PIK says. “While there are legitimate doubts about whether the Durban Platform negotiations can deliver on their promise, our analysis shows the importance of meaningful reductions in global emissions by 2020 to keep the 2 degree target within reach.” The later emissions get cut, the greater the necessary reduction rates to avoid more than 2 degrees warming, and hence the greater the impact on energy prices and economic growth.
“Even a delay of just 10 years of a climate agreement coming into effect would raise the economic challenges substantially, if emissions reduction efforts remained at their currently moderate level,” Kriegler says. The results are part of the comprehensive LIMITS project (Low Climate lmpact Scenarios and the lmplications of Required Tight Emission Control Strategies) on the implementation of 2 degree strategies in the major economies and will be published in a special issue of the journal Climate Change Economics. The scientists investigated a set of different outcomes of the Durban Platform negotiations process and their implications for reaching the 2 degree target with seven integrated assessment and energy-economy models to ensure the robustness of results.
Carbon dioxide removal could be key technology
Nonetheless there might be some flexibility for policy makers in implementing a global climate agreement towards the 2 degree target, according to the study. Translating the 2 degree target into emissions reductions requires choosing a maximum likelihood of temporarily overshooting 2 degrees that would still be tolerated. The choice of this tolerance level was found to have a significant effect on longer term emissions reduction requirements and economic impacts. However, the near term requirement of strengthening global climate policy was unchanged, as global emissions declined after 2020 in any scenario of global climate action coming into effect by 2020. In addition, taking CO2 out of the atmosphere in the 2nd half of the century could be a key element of implementing the emission pathways in the Durban Platform scenarios, for instance through technologies using energy from biomass combined with Carbon Capture and Storage. Plants absorb CO2 to grow and could be processed in biogas plants, with emissions captured and being stored underground.
This could be an option to compensate higher short term emissions with deeper emissions cuts in the long run, but at the expense of a higher likelihood of temporarily overshooting 2 degrees. At the same time, it would raise a number of concerns, because the CCS technology is not yet available for large-scale use and scaling up bio-energy comes with considerable risks by increasing the competition for arable land. “It is very risky to rely too much on removing CO2 from the atmosphere in the second half of the century,“ says Kriegler. “While we may need carbon dioxide removal even if global climate action is implemented in 2020, we would need much more of it if action is delayed further. Despite all these complexities, the message is fairly simple,” adds Kriegler. “In the longer term, there are a number of options to get to 2 degrees. But those will only remain on the table, if global climate action is substantially strengthened over the coming decade, so that global emissions decline after 2020.”
“This shows that the Durban Platform negotiations can still deliver an outcome consistent with the 2 degree target, but only if they can successfully implement global climate action on a long term target by 2020,” adds co-author Massimo Tavoni of FEEM. “Further delays in reaching an agreement would require much higher emission decline rates and would lead to much larger economic costs”.
Article: E. Kriegler, M. Tavoni, T. Aboumahboub, G. Luderer, K. Calvin, G. De Maere, V. Krey, K. Riahi, H. Rosler, M. Schaeffer, D. van Vuuren: What does the 2°C target imply for a global climate agreement in 2020? The LIMITS study on Durban Platform scenarios. To be published in a special issue of Climate Change Economics in early 2014.
More information on the LIMITS project: http://www.feem-project.net/limits/index.html
More information to the special issue: http://www.feem-project.net/limits/03_outreach_01_02.html
so that global emissions decline after 2020.
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And the billions still living in third world poverty? Shall we pay their rulers 100 billion a year to keep them there? Isn’t this really what it is all about? Keeping the poor poor so that the rich can live without fear of a 2C rise in temps?
climategrog says:
November 16, 2013 at 5:05 am
See – owe to Rich says: where luckily we have the CET series.
Good point.
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=630
Now we see the reason for the urgency to act NOW !!
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Yes indeed:/sarc
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100022226/agw-i-refute-it-thus-central-england-temperatures-1659-to-2009/
fred berple: “Keeping the poor poor so that the rich can live without fear of a 2C rise in temps?”
Air conditioning is expensive, you know. Have some pity for the pampered.
So…. Who found the thermostat? And what do we have to pay for them to stop plying with it?
The Circus is in town… Bring out the clowns..
” … Keeping the poor poor so that the rich can live without fear of a 2C rise in temps?”
The rich don’t really fear a 2C degree rise in temperature. This entire episode has been to strengthen the power of the various governments around the world as well as the UN’s role as a ruling body. The entire enterprise is one of forcing socialism upon a world that has seen (recall the USSR or look at North Korea) that socialism does not work.
This has never really been about climate at all.
I doubt that they are really worried about negotiating CO2 limits – what they really want to negotiate is the amount of money the developed nations are going to cough over to the the ‘developing’ nations.
A fine example of institutional hijacking:
This is shown by the first comprehensive multi-model-based assessment of so-called Durban Platform scenarios, conducted by a team of international scientists led by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and the Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM) in Italy.
Enrico Mattei is one of my personal heroes; he WAS Hydrocarbon Man! Google him.
The inspired Dave Stephens say on November 16, 2013 at 1:31 am
A system of plants…
Absorbing C02 non-stop…
Spread across the USA…
Every American homeowner could participate…
And save the earth.
LAWNS.
Brilliant. The green cult has been a suburban ritual for 60 years! I need do no more than tend my green suburban lawn and do I get a government energy saving program pay check? And I save the Earth too! Double-plus-good.
The Royal Ontario Museum nails it on November 16, 2013 at 1:39 pm
The possibility of future world food shortages if the climate cools is a far, far more likely disaster in waiting than any slight warming of the globe.
No further comment is necessary.
I was listening to the CBC science program today (mea culpa, I do once a week listen to the CBC). I was listening to an ornithologist who was very obviously interested in ornithology. She was studying migration habits of some birds from Iceland, I think. The details aren’t important to this story.
Her whole presentation was couched in terms of the affect of the (non-existent) global warming (which was taken for granted in this program segment) on the migratory habits and breeding success of these birds.
It is obvious that if you want a grant for some obscure, but to you important, research, you slide the global warming angle into your research grant application.
Sorry, not allowed to cut the lawn unless you sequester the cuttings deep underground 🙂
I really hope someone is taping these conversations:
“The monsoons are getting too monsoony. We need to dial back the rainyness back to pre-1970 levels when CO2 emissions were less humany.”
“No, we should be worrying about the dry deserts becoming more deserty. We need to bring back the rainyness to pre-1970 levels!”
“More rainyness!”
“Less monsoonyness!”
“Rainyness!”
“Monsoonyness!”
How can these climate change charlatans talk about controls over human activity CO2 emissions when nobody actually knows how much CO2 is being emitted from all the various sources?
GHG emissions cannot be effectively controlled when there is no accurate identification of their sources. It does not make sense to blame the rise in atmospheric CO2 solely on human activity if there is no reconciliation of emissions with real atmospheric measurements.
The reality is that no such reconciliation can be done at present.
It’s all been guess work so far, using statistics and arithmetic calculations using the Greenhouse Gas Indicator. Nothing has been measured by actual instrumentation except for the Mauno Loa CO2 measurements. It is still not possible to reconcile the atmospheric CO2 concentration with human activity CO2 emissions. And until this can be done it is insane blaming one source as the cause of the rising atmospheric CO2 concentration.
Carbon-equivalent emissions are currently assessed by ‘bottom-up’ methods, which are made up from a variety of local statistics such as fuel consumption or numbers of cows. When these measured ‘bottom-up’ emissions are rolled up to a global scale, the amounts can disagree by factors of two or more when compared with direct atmospheric measurements.
BEFORE THE S(H)TICK
The 2C target was picked according to Rahmstorf out of thin air by him
When they knew that the Medieval Warm was 2C warmer than now.
Der Spiegel has an article on that.
If it was safe for the Medieval Warm, it would be safe for us, the thinking went.
Then came Mike Mann and his stick, trying to erase the climate history with nonsensical models.
So people started to forget what 2C stood for.
In fact the ice record shows the Minoan High, 3500 years ago, a time of great prosperity, as 3.5C warmer than now…
http://tinyurl.com/y8nqy55
‘the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and the Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM) in Italy. ‘
simply question if ‘the cause ‘ was to disappear tomorrow, for what ever reason would that be good news , as the planet is no longer going to burn , or bad news , as the reason for their existence goes, for this places ?
Its not just Turkeys that would not vote for a Christmas style event .
If the rich are so concerned about a 2 degree rise in temperarure, why do they expend so much time, money and co2 in travelling to tropical climes for their holidays?
LOL!! The 2 Degree Solution…. What a joke.
Humans have burned through about 1/2 of fossil fuel reserves and global temps are about 0.2C (RSS/UAH) above Holocene Avg of 14C…. Oh, the humanity…..
Lindzen/Choi’s climate sensitivity of .6C now seems the most supportable projection based on all empirical evidence to date. Even if L/C were off by 100%, that would only be 1.2C, which is still well below the CAGW zealot’s target of 2C.
Why is this silly disconfirmed hypothesis still taken seriously and why do stupid govts continue to rob taxpayers of their hard-earned money to waste $trillions on this ridiculous disconfirmed hypothesis.
CAGW’s clay feet are starting to crumble. Australia is setting a good example for others to follow.
17 years and 3 weeks of no warming trend and counting….. What will be the magic number before freedom and reason are restored? 18 yrs? 19 years? Certainly 20 years should do the trick, should it not???
Adrian O says:
November 16, 2013 at 11:16 pm
“In fact the ice record shows the Minoan High, 3500 years ago, a time of great prosperity, as 3.5C warmer than now…
http://tinyurl.com/y8nqy55 ”
What the ice core proxy shows at 1300-1200 BC is exactly the opposite of what happened in the temperate zone:
https://www.google.co.uk/?gws_rd=cr#q=climate+1200+BC
These politicians and their actions are sickening. They might as well be working on how to rid the world of witches, warlocks and werewolves.
No one has any legitimate business discussing the future climate whilst they have the World turned upside down. Arctic warming happens under more negative Arctic and North Atlantic Oscillation conditions, that can only be global cooling, as the Antarctic sea ice extent shows since 2008:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.antarctic.png