{"id":7653,"date":"2015-04-28T05:55:41","date_gmt":"2015-04-28T10:55:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=7653"},"modified":"2015-04-28T05:55:41","modified_gmt":"2015-04-28T10:55:41","slug":"its-time-to-do-the-math-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=7653","title":{"rendered":"It’s time to ‘Do the math’ again"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s time to ‘Do the math’ again<\/a><\/h3>\n

Have we gone mad? A\u00a0new report<\/b><\/a>released today explains why contemporary climate change policy-making should be characterised as increasingly delusional.<\/p>\n

As the deadline approaches for submissions to the Australian government’s climate targets process, there is a flurry of submissions and reports from\u00a0advocacy groups and theClimate Change Authority<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Most of these reports are based\u00a0on the twin propositions that two degrees Celsius (2\u00b0C)\u00a0of global warming is an appropriate policy target, and that\u00a0there is a significant\u00a0carbon budget and an amount of\u00a0“burnable carbon” for this target, and hence a scientifically-based escalating ladder of emission-reduction targets stretching to mid-century and beyond.<\/p>\n

A survey of the relevant scientific literature by David Spratt,\u00a0“Recount: It’s time to ‘Do the math’ again”<\/b><\/a>, published today by Breakthrough concludes that the evidence does not support either of these\u00a0propositions.
\n<\/a>The catastrophic and irreversible consequences of 2\u00b0C of warming demand a strong risk-management approach, with a low rate of failure. We should not take risks with the climate that we would not take with civil infrastructure.<\/p>\n

There is no carbon budget available if 2\u00b0C is considered a cap or upper boundary as per the Copenhagen Accord, rather than a hit-or-miss target which can be significantly exceeded; or if a low risk of exceeding 2\u00b0C is required; or if positive feedbacks such as permafrost and other carbon store losses are taken into account.<\/p>\n

Effective policy making can only be based on recognising that climate change is already dangerous, and we have no carbon\u00a0budget left to divide up. Big tipping-point events irreversible on human time scales such as in West Antarctica and large-scale positive feedbacks are already\u00a0occurring at less than 1\u00b0C of warming. It is clear that 2\u00b0C of climate warming is not a safe cap.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s time to ‘Do the math’ again Have we gone mad? A\u00a0new reportreleased today explains why contemporary climate change policy-making should be characterised as increasingly delusional. As the deadline approaches for submissions to the Australian government’s climate targets process, there is a flurry of submissions and reports from\u00a0advocacy groups and theClimate Change Authority. Most of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[113,141,5011,5009,369,5008,5007,5010],"class_list":["post-7653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-carbon-emissions","tag-climate-change","tag-climate-change-authority","tag-copenhagen-accord","tag-global-warming","tag-math","tag-mathematics","tag-tipping-point"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7653"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7654,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7653\/revisions\/7654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}