Todays The Independent has <a href="http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=603975">this</a> story about a new report into climate change, that basically says we have 10 years to do something or it will be too late.

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<a href="http://www.boincforum.info/boinc/">boinc forum</a> and <a href="http://www.uk4cp.co.uk/">United Kindom</a> team, my climate change <a href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/mike_atkinson/">blog</a>.

Why do I get this feeling that sceptics will say there is nothing magical about a 2 degree temperature increase nor about 400 ppm level of CO2?

Is this merely political - draw a line in the sand to focus politicians attention?

The chances of not going over 400 ppm within 20 years seems negligable to me. Then again wherever the line was drawn, politicians will likely go beyond it figuring the risk to the economy is more important to their chance of re-election than the risk of serious climate disruption.

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Indeed, I think it is very unlikely the peak CO2 could be kept as low as 400 ppm, to do that emissions would have to fall to 20% of current levels within 15 years. Only nuclear war or most of the worlds population dying in a pandemic would do that, a cure worse than the disease. I doubt that even a global depression of the scale of the 1930's would reduce fuel consumption to 20%.

It must be political, but the line is so close that we will teeter over it in any case. A deadline is not a deadline if you can exceed it and not end up dead, politicians will see that 2.1 degrees will not cause many more people to die (and certainly not them, politically or physically) and so won't regard this as a line in the sand.

If 2 degrees is the global average, then as the land warms more than the sea and northern lattitudes more than the equator its probably more like 3 degrees in Britain and 10 degrees in the arctic.

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<a href="http://www.boincforum.info/boinc/">boinc forum</a> and <a href="http://www.uk4cp.co.uk/">United Kindom</a> team, my climate change <a href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/mike_atkinson/">blog</a>.

&gt;10 degrees in the arctic

That sounds a little excessive to me. I thought the warming in the arctic was supposed to be about double.

&gt;the land warms more than the sea

Yes I agree it does at the start of a temperature change. Once the temperature change is underway do the changes become similar? I guess that depends in part on whether the temperature change is still accelerating?

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The press release is <a href="http://www.ippr.org.uk/press/index.php?release=352">here</a>.

And the slshdot discussion is <a href="http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=137096&amp;threshold=4&amp;mode=thread&amp;commentsort=0&amp;op=Change">here</a>

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<a href="http://www.boincforum.info/boinc/">boinc forum</a> and <a href="http://www.uk4cp.co.uk/">United Kindom</a> team, my climate change <a href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/mike_atkinson/">blog</a>.

And another report in <a href="http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=91752005">The Scotsman </a>

The <a href="http://tropicaltreefarms.com/"> 1st ad</a> at the bottom has some nice pictures, and the <a href="http://www.climatechangeeducation.org/"> last ad </a> may be worth looking at.

I couldn't get the Newsweek link to load, so I don't know about it.

Les

The report is <a href="http://www.americanprogress.org/atf/cf/{E9245FE4-9A2B-43C7-A521-5D6FF2E06E03}/CLIMATECHALLENGE.PDF">here</a>

Having looked at it I'm not impressed, the cpdn regulars could have done a better job. Its justification for 400 ppm of CO2 is weak, as is that for 2 degrees C, basically "we've looked at the literature and these figures seem right". It also looks to 2012 as a date that the US and Australia may start to reduce their CO2 output, this is only a few years before the 400 ppm limit is exceeded!

Their biofuel proposal looks weak as well, basically subsidise it.

Thre is no mention of nuclear power, perhaps because nuclear power stations take so long from conception to initial power consumption, but any report that claims to be comprehensive should include the major form of carbon neutral electricity generation.

A major thing in the report is a dash to Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) coal power plants, but that does not come across in the recomendations. IGCC plants suposedly can capture CO2 for sequestration, a quick google didn't produce any references to this actually being done in a full scale power plant.

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____________________________<br>
<a href="http://www.boincforum.info/boinc/">boinc forum</a> and <a href="http://www.uk4cp.co.uk/">United Kindom</a> team, my climate change <a href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/mike_atkinson/">blog</a>.