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Monday, March 27th, 2017

Scientists made a detailed “roadmap” for meeting the Paris climate goals. It’s eye-opening.

Author:     Brad Plumer
Source:     Vox
Publication Date:     Mar 24, 2017, 7:02am EDT
Link: Scientists made a detailed “roadmap” for meeting the Paris climate goals. It’s eye-opening.
Stephan:   The United States has become the only developed nation in the world with a serving government actively trying to thwart climate change remediation, and retain carbon energy. It's pathetic really, but true. I continue to be astonished how many people, even people who read SR, still buy into the utterly repudiated arguments of the climate change deniers. As a result, if this administration survives, which I am not sure is going to he the case, at the end of four years quite predictably America will be a sharply diminished country, ill prepared for the future. Science has given us a fact based roadmap as to what should be done, and here it is.

Credit: Shutterstock

Back in 2015, the world’s governments met in Paris and agreed to keep global warming below 2°C, to avoid the worst risks of a hotter planet. See here for background on why, but that’s the goal. For context, the planet’s warmed ~1°C since the 19th century.

One problem with framing the goal this way, though, is that it’s maddeningly abstract. What does staying below 2°C entail? Papers on this topic usually drone on about a “carbon budget” — the total amount of CO2 humans can emit this century before we likely bust past 2°C — and then debate how to divvy up that budget among nations. There’s math involved. It’s eye-glazing, and hard to translate into actual policy. It’s also a long-term goal, easy for policymakers to shrug off.

So, not surprisingly, countries have thus far responded by putting forward a welter of vague pledges on curbing emissions that are hard to compare and definitely don’t add up to staying below 2°C. Everyone agrees more […]

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3 Comments

  1. skhovland on Monday, March 27, 2017 at 6:40 am

    During the Medieval Warm Period temperatures were 1-2 degrees warmer than they are now.

  2. Mark R on Monday, March 27, 2017 at 4:03 pm

    I think it is healthy to be skeptical..which means open to evidence. Living in denial is not healthy in any situation of course. That said, I take issue with the term settled science because science essentially is a dynamic endeavor which produces a snapshot of our current understanding at any given time based on confidence levels. Scientific method is used to explain objective reality using observed or predicted phenomena. Our model of objective reality changes as we are able to tweak that model closer to match objective reality. So, science really works on an assumption of an objective realty but is often an imperfect picture itself. I believe there is much more to be learned about climate and how internal forces, natural cycles, human caused pollution, as well as solar and galactic influences shape our climate patterns and dynamics. Also, we cannot always predict the changes in technology in the future that may affect our planet..nor the natural forces driving our climate. We still do not fully understand the response mechanisms which modulate and dampen CO2 levels when they spike. I think we can do a lot to improve our planet simply by altering how we live to drastically reduce pollution of all kinds and respectfully harness already abundant natural forces to provide energy and products we depend on.