Potholer on the 1.5C carbon budget paper controversy
Posted on 26 September 2017 by Guest Author
Potholer: I had to make this video in a matter of days because of all the nonsense flying round the internet. Very fast for me!
Enter a term in the search box to find its definition.
Use the controls in the far right panel to increase or decrease the number of terms automatically displayed (or to completely turn that feature off).
With the warming since preindustrial quickly approaching 1.2C, it will be almost impossible to limit the warming to 1.5 C!
I agree the denialists have got things wrong here in several respects. No surprise there.
But on another matter and I might be wrong on this but looking at discussion of the Miller study on realclimate.org I get the impression it is simply an over optimistic study on how much we can burn. Not wrong just too optimistic. They base it on hadcrut temperature data which shows the least warming and this is criticised for leaving out arctic temperatures, so I'm not sure why they select that study, and their accounting for carbon budgets seems over optimistic and a bit impenetrable.
There is also an element of nit picking maths. Arguing about exact quantities is a waste of energy. It's obvious more cuts are needed than currently being implemented, and a slightly bigger budget doesn't change this.
HK @1, I think you are taking the worst case basing temperatures against 1880 base line? I think the Miller study is based on taking 20th century as a baseline so temperatures are about 1 degree C above that.
However its hard work either way, but we should still try to do our best to reduce emissions. At this stage any reasonable reduction could help to at least reduce risks, and stop getting up into territory where things get really unstable.
Nigelj @3:
No, the Millar study uses mid-19th century as baseline, not 20th.
Dana's latest post contains most of the points I planned to use in my response to you, for instance that the HadCRUT4 data shows less warming because of its incomplete coverage in the Arctic.
So, I agree with Dana that 1.5oC might be impossible, but 2oC is of course still better than 3oC and much, much better than 4oC!