Miliband: 2020 is year of no return for emissions
Minister's stark warning in run-up to crucial climate change summit
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Independent Minds
The world's emissions of the greenhouse gases causing global warming should peak in 2020 and then start to decline, the British Government is proposing in the run-up to the global climate conference taking place at Copenhagen in December.
Emissions from developed nations such as Britain and the US should reach their highest point even earlier, by 2015, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, Ed Miliband, suggested to other countries in a meeting in Mexico this week, in the first move to make the crucial issue of a "carbon peak" an official target of the Copenhagen agreement.
Emissions of gases such as carbon dioxide have been rising at a far faster rate than was predicted even a decade ago, and research published by the UK Met Office last year showed that the point at which they begin to decline as a whole is absolutely vital in bringing rising temperatures under control.
A few years' delay in the peak can mean the world is committed to a significantly higher rise than would otherwise be the case, and computer simulations by the Met Office Hadley Centre indicate that for every ten years the peak is postponed, another half degree of temperature increase becomes unavoidable.
Hitherto, the issue of the "global peak" has largely remained a theoretical one, but this week Mr Miliband and British officials put it on the table at a meeting in Mexico of the Major Economies Forum on Climate and Energy (MEF), a new, pre-Copenhagen high-level discussion group which has been convened by the US President Barack Obama.
The MEF meetings will culminate in a world leaders' summit on climate change which will take place alongside the G8 meeting in Italy in July, and which will be a critical moment in the push towards a Copenhagen climate deal.
Yesterday Mr Miliband said the issue of a global peak in emissions had so far been "significantly under-emphasised". If it could be agreed, it would "irreversibly break the trend towards rising emissions," he said, adding: "It would show that something had changed. We are arguing very strongly for a 2020 global peak."
Dr Vicky Pope, the Hadley Centre's head of climate change advice, said yesterday: "Even if emissions peak in the next ten years and then decline rapidly, temperatures are still likely to rise to around two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century. Every 10-year delay in starting reductions will result in a further 0.5 degree increase in the most likely temperature rise, so the need for action is urgent."
The Hadley Centre's simulations last year indicated a most likely two degree rise with a 2015 peak (and world carbon emissions subsequently declining at three per cent a year to 2050), a 2.5 degree rise with a 2025 peak and a similar decline, and a three degree rise with a 2030 peak. In each case the temperature rise is a best guess - a 50-50 chance - and there are possibilities that it could be lower, or indeed, significantly higher.
All countries, including the UK, must be more ambitious in commitments to cut greenhouse gases, Mr Miliband said, ahead of the launch today of the Government's own manifesto on what needs to be achieved in Copenhagen.
Greater public pressure would play a part in ensuring the politics of negotiating a new deal catches up with the science of what needs to be done, he said. From today the Government is distributing pamphlets setting out the importance of Copenhagen, which will be sent to public bodies such as schools and hospitals, and launching a website www.ActOnCopenhagen.gov.uk.
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http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/070
It should also be noted the IPCC climate model was drastically wrong. Even it's best case scenario (no increase in CO2 after 2000) predicted a rise in temperature of a similar magnitude to the fall that actually occured. This clearly demonstrates that computer climate models have no value. They never can, because there are many components that influence climate that are not understood and can not be quantified, and so are omitted from the model. Such a model can only fail, just as a house with weak foundations will fall down.
Ah, the old "global warming stopped in 1998" myth.
This myth is rebutted at
"'Global warming stopped in 1998' - Only if you flagrantly cherry pick
"Objection: Global temperatures have been trending down since 1998. Global warming is over.
"Answer: At the time, 1998 was a record high year in both the CRU and the NASA GISS analyses. In fact, it blew away the previous record by .2 degrees C. (That previous record went all the way back to 1997, by the way!)
"According to NASA, it was elevated far above the trend line because 1998 was the year of the strongest El Nino of the century. Choosing that year as a starting point is a classic cherry pick and demonstrates why it is necessary to remove chaotic year-to year-variability (aka: weather) by smoothing out the data."
http://www.tech-know.eu/uploads/Appeal_
The red line is obviously added by sceptics, so feel free to add your own trend line. The main point of using this graph is that it clearly shows the 2008 temperature at the same level as 1980. The sceptical argument here, as expounded by Prof. Bob Carter, is that the warming of the late 20th. century is not abnormal, but consistent with the trend since the end of the little ice age. Also there is no correlation between temperature and CO2 levels, either in the short term, or going back 100,000 years. In fact the record seems to show that temperature drives CO2, not the other way round. If that is so, then human activity is not driving climate, and we can do nothing to change a natural trend. Furthermore the horrors forecast by Al Gore et al, are not happening. For instance hurricane activity is actually declining, and there has been no sea level rise for 3 years. I seem to be writing a book, so I will leave it there.
The "third world" development organisations are also clear that climate change represents the greatest threat to human life. That is why organisations like Christian Aid, World Development Movement, Oxfam and Cafod are campaigning on the issue, for example via Stop Climate Chaos.
See what they all have to say at http://www.stopclimatechaos.org
If anyone wants to see the likely effects of business as usual on humans, animals and plants then watch the short animation at http://wakeupfreakout.org/film/tipp
If anyone wants to do just one small one thing on climate change ask your MEP to watch the video at http://www.thebigask.eu/the-big-ask-fil
If we address the issues of pollution, be they terrestrial, aquatic or atmospheric, then we might find climate change and a host of other, pollution-related problems get dealt with in the process. We're faced with a number of tough choices which, because they're either politically unpopular or are seen as expensive options, get shelved over and over again. If Government doesn't step forward soon and take a lead on this we may run out of time and options.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2
Since eighty per cent of the world's energy currently comes from oil, gas and coal, I would think that is a very big ask indeed, and almost certainly it's not going to happen.
The latest wheeze: dumping shed loads of lime into the oceans is, like carbon capture, another techno fantasy, of the drowning-man-clutches-at-straw variety.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2