Warsaw's Continuing Blather-Fest Putting Us All On Track For Potential 4C Warming - Guardian

[hatrack]

EDIT

The 19th United Nations Conference of Parties (COP19) meeting has just two days left to run in Poland. Some scientists yesterday delivered a sobering assessment of what was meant to be slow but definite progress. Rather than limiting global warming to 2C - which in itself is not likely to be a painless destination - an assessment released yesterday by scientists found that current policies and pledges would deliver to the world global warming of 3.7C, but with increasing use of coal things could get worse. Bill Hare, director of not-for-profit analysts Climate Analytics, said that with no new pledges coming from countries and with Japan and Australia reigning back their ambition, countries were "unilaterally degrading their pledges without review." He said:

These negative developments point to a concern that we could be heading into a downward spiral in policies - a downward spiral that is moving us towards a coal-dependent economy and a re-carbonisation of the world energy system that would push us to a warming of five degrees. That's a level of warming not seen on this planet for probably 55 million years and that could happen within this century.
The assessment was put together by Climate Action Tracker - a joint project of policy and energy consultants Ecofys, Climate Analytics and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

Hare said the fact host country Poland had organised a coal summit to coincide with the COP 19 talks had sent an "extremely negative message about where we are headed" especially given the "enormous potential" for renewable energy and increased energy efficiency to deliver cuts in emissions. The Climate Action Tracker study noted that the International Energy Agency, which provides advice to major governments around the world, had reported that Australia's production of coal would rise by almost 50% between 2011 and 2035, with most of that coal being exported.

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Poland has made its own ambitions for the future clear. Yesterday the country's prime minister Donald Tusk dismissed Marcin Korolec, the environment minister, in preference for a politician who would be better able to deliver a "radical acceleration of shale gas operations" in the country. And then of course, there was the decision to host the coal conference in a country reliant on coal for its power.

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http://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2013/nov/21/warsaw-climate-change-conference-global-warming

[Berlum]

1. "...a downward spiral..."

There you have it.

[CRH]

2. And the 3.7*C figure is using models, ...

using Charney climate sensitivity calculations. So another conference, more obstruction, and backing off of past pledges. Hard to see a light at the end of this tunnel vision.

3.7*C using more realistic sensitivity calculations puts us well beyond 6*C in the same time frame.

For more on Charney sensitivity calculations try page 9 here ... http://www.apollo-gaia.org/Climate%20Sensitivity.pdf