Climate Change: Last Chance Saloon

If you've been listening to the climate scientists over recent years, they've been giving a consistent message: We need to keep global warming to a maximum of 2^o C (The lower, the better) if we are to avoid the worst effects of climate change; and, to do that, carbon emissions have to peak by 2020 at the latest and fall rapidly thereafter.

Typically, the world's politicians have agreed to keep the temperature rise to 2^o, but aren't due to bring in measures to 'ensure' this until 2020. Assuming that these measures are anywhere near good enough, it seems highly unlikely that CO2 will peak that same year, or even close.

So that's it then, the planet is screwed?

Maybe not, say a team of UK scientists led by Alexander Otto of the University of Oxford (Nature Geoscience [Otto et al, 2013]). They've been looking at data from recent decades and come to the conclusion that we will hit that 2^o mark perhaps 5 or ten years later than was expected.

No, climate change hasn't gone away, it's just happening on a slightly longer timescale.

This could be good news for all of us as it means we have a chance to keep things under 2^o after all. That's providing the world agreement to be made by 2015 and implemented in 2020 is strong enough.

5 or 10 years could give us the time to get ourselves organised. Add that to the time we could buy ourselves by tackling soot (See my earlier post), and we have hope again.