Ditch the 2 °C warming goal
Average global temperature is not a good indicator of planetary health. Track a range of vital signs instead, urge David G. Victor and Charles F. Kennel.
For nearly a decade, international diplomacy has focused on stopping global warming at 2 °C above pre-industrial levels. This goal — bold and easy to grasp — has been accepted uncritically and has proved influential.
The emissions-mitigation report of the Fifth Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is framed to address this aim, as is nearly every policy plan to reduce carbon emissions — from California’s to that of the European Union (EU). This month, diplomatic talks will resume to prepare an agreement ahead of a major climate summit in Paris in 2015; again, a 2 °C warming limit is the focus.
Bold simplicity must now face reality. Politically and scientifically, the 2 °C goal is wrong-headed. Politically, it has allowed some governments to pretend that they are taking serious action to mitigate global warming, when in reality they have achieved almost nothing. Scientifically, there are better ways to measure the stress that humans are placing on the climate system than the growth of average global surface temperature — which has stalled since 1998 and is poorly coupled to entities that governments and companies can control directly.
Failure to set scientifically meaningful goals makes it hard for scientists and politicians to explain how big investments in climate protection will deliver tangible results. Some of the backlash from ‘denialists’ is partly rooted in policy-makers’ obsession with global temperatures that do not actually move in lockstep with the real dangers of climate change. New goals are needed. It is time to track an array of planetary vital signs — such as changes in the ocean heat content — that are better rooted in the scientific understanding of climate drivers and risks. Targets must also be set in terms of the many individual gases emitted by human activities and policies to mitigate those emissions.
OWN GOAL
Actionable goals have proved difficult to articulate from the beginning of climate-policy efforts. The 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) expressed the aim as preventing “dangerous anthropogenic interference in the climate system”. Efforts to clarify the meaning of ‘dangerous’ here have proved fruitless because science offers many different answers depending on which part of the climate system is under scrutiny, and each country has a different perspective.
The 2009 and 2010 UNFCCC Conference of the Parties meetings, in Copenhagen and Cancun respectively, reframed the policy goal in more concrete terms: average global temperature. There was little scientific basis for the 2 °C figure that was adopted, but it offered a simple focal point and was familiar from earlier discussions, including those by the IPCC, EU and Group of 8 (G8) industrial countries. At the time, the 2 °C goal sounded bold and perhaps feasible.
…
Because it sounds firm and concerns future warming, the 2 °C target has allowed politicians to pretend that they are organizing for action when, in fact, most have done little. Pretending that they are chasing this
unattainable goal has also allowed governments to ignore the need for massive adaptation to climate change.
Second, the 2 °C goal is impractical. It is related only probabilistically to emissions and policies, so it does not tell particular governments and people what to do. In other areas of international politics, goals
have had a big effect when they have been translated into concrete, achievable actions.
Full article here (PDF) sent with press release: 2degreesC_Comment_Victor
UPDATE: Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. writes in comments:
Finally some sense is making it into these journals on the 2C threshold issue. I discussed this on my weblog several years ago also in my post
where I concluded with
“The use of the global annual-averaged surface temperature trends [should be] relegated to where it deserves to be – an historical relic.”
Quoting from above: “Some of the backlash from ‘denialists’ is partly rooted in policy-makers’ obsession with global temperatures that do not actually move in lockstep with the real dangers of climate change. New goals are needed. It is time to track an array of planetary vital signs — such as changes in the ocean heat content — that are better rooted in the scientific understanding of climate drivers and risks.” ???
As a former long standing local politician used to reading into the thinking behind what people say, does this not mean that given the increasing disconnect between CO2 emissions and the 17+ year global temperature hiatus, failed warmist policy-makers must now look away from “global temperatures” and devise some other CO2 related research initiatives to alarm us?
have to marvel at the (liberals, left winger, big government types — take your pick) they never give up. If 2C does not work, then come up with something else that will takes decades to figure out it does not work. In the mean time you can get several useful idiots — the non-denialists — to hum the new mantra.
I think there is only one measure of how well the planet is doing and that is Agriculture.
In the supposed hottest year ever , bumper crops worldwide.
And do farmers believe in AGW- NO!
FrankKarr on October 1,
2014 at 6:12 pm
RGB can I suggest you
take courses in geology.
The thousands of meters
of limestone that are
terrestrial and marine are
formed from calcium
carbonate. Rocks in the
marine environment
buffers CO2 into calcium
carbonate. In a nutshell
it’s the reverse of what
your alarmist blogs are
telling you e.g. how do
you imagine the ‘White
Cliffs of Dover’ in the UK
were deposited in the
past on an ancient sea
floor? Cheers.
____
telling the obviously: one has just to see it!
THANKS, FRANK!
& the 2 C degree limit to temp rise was just an arbitrary marker to mobilize naïve crowds for fearful action. It was not derived from first principles of processes scientific . . . . like pretty much everything at the foundation of the pre-science mythology of the climate change cause to save the earth from fossil fuel created CO2.
& with the 2 C degree arbitrary marker shown as meaningless, the climate change caused shifts to something else to buy time with. The oceans are a weak alternative for their focus. But . . . .
& . . . but, I speculate that the climate change cause’s leadership could really surprise skeptics within the coming decade by moving to support a significantly negative CO2 climate sensitivity. It may sound absurd, it does sound inanely absurd, but then they get to say that CO2 is still the dangerous control knob as a climate driver but this time the high danger from it is cooler climate; which still gives them a rationale to put evil fossil fuels under the control of severely collectivist central governments.
John
All this assumes people “control” the weather. Back to the ignorance & superstition of the dark ages.
It’s too late. The diplomats have left the barn.
My reading of the Nature article goes as follows:
1 – CO2 emissions are predicted to cause an enhanced greenhouse effect (“primary effect”).
2 – The primary effect is predicted to cause numerous “secondary effects”.
3 – As there is no evidence of the primary effect, agree secondary effects and go look for them.
10 – Observation of secondary effects may justify calls for government action to address the primary effect.
The logic is broken. Taking out warming leaves no physical link from CO2 emissions to the consequential “secondary effects” this article proposes to look for.
It is a solution in search of a problem.
(Note, the incorrect numbering in the above list is intentional)
YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH
You ever seen the movie A Few Good Men with Jack Nicholson as Col. Jessup, the arrogant, ignorant son of a bitch who utters the line above?
I was reminded of that line when I read a piece in the guardian about the Nature article by Victor/Kennel which questions the usefulness of the 2C target/obligation.
The article, pulling its punches somewhat, describes Hans Joachim Schellinhuber, Angela Merkel’s climate advisor, as someone ‘credited’ with inventing the notion of a 2C limit in the 1990s. (Sorry for no link but if you google guardian nature 2C you’ll find it easily)
The article has some choice qoutes from Schellinhuber. I like this one in particular:
“I am communicating to heads of state and you have to keep it neat and simple. It was difficult enough to commuicate a 2C target … but it seems to have sunk in. How should I communicate to policy makers who have an attention span of 10 minutes a set of volatility signals … this is politically so naive,” he says.
Why do people who spent a small number of years of their lives acquiring a science degree think that as a result of this that they are so much smarter than every else? That the world is composed of geniuses with science degrees and imbeciles without science degrees?
Schellinhuber says he is communicating with heads of state. This is at least partially true. He does have at least one head of state on his CV, namely Angela Merkel. He then goes on to say that he is dealing with ‘policy makers’ (read Angela Merkel) who have ‘attention spans of 10 minutes’.
Goodness me. The man is either a fool or is so assured of his positon that he fears no consequnces of stating publicly, albeit somewhat obliquely, that his boss, the German chancellor, has an attention span of 10 minutes.
The man wants to keep the science ‘neat and simple’ when any fool knows that the science is complex and difficult. It’s Schellinhuber that can’t handle the truth. If he could he’d be overcome with modesty, rather than the ludicrous arrogance he so clearly suffers from.
You guys understand that when I go to China the people there live under a perpetual smog layer that prevents them from seeing the sky 99% of the time. They live with pollution counts of 400 many days or higher that are literally 40-100 times what we see anywhere in the US. If the officials are willing to put their people through that for growth do you think for one second they would ever consider spending ONE PENNY on reducing carbon emissions to cut global temperatures by 0.1C? or even 1.0C? This debate has zero impact there and other third world countries. At most they are giving lip service to this but most of the time they are not even bothering to show up to give lip service.
The CO2 level will be what it is and it’s apparent that the effect of CO2 is way less than almost anybody thought 30 years ago even myself. It’s quite clear that some at NATURE realize the temp change from a 2x CO2 is likely to be closer to 1C not 2C. Meaning we will NEVER reach 2C. Obviously then they have to change goals if they plan to keep disrupting western society with their hatred of human beings so they can somehow keep their agenda in the limelight which is all this is about is stroking the egos of some people who are paranoid that we are evil and always must be villainized as corrupting the environment to keep their relevance.
While the purely physical effect in a controlled lab setting from doubling CO2 from 280 to 560 ppm is around 1.2 degrees C, in the complex, virtually incalculable atmosphere it might well be less. In any case, the next doubling would produce even less of a heating effect, since the response even in the lab is logarithmic.
This uncertainty is quite apart from other unresolved issues such as CO2 sinks, still unknown to a large extent.
A goal? Fine. Compared to what?
The goal, if we need one, should be to stay near the average temperature since the last ice age – in the last 12,000 years. We are still below the average temperature of the last 12,000 years. We have only recovered a bit from the little ice age.