Bishop Hill Damian and the two-degree target
Jun 4, 2013 Climate: WG2 Lord Lipsey, chairman of the Parliamentary Group on Statistics, has fired a shot across the bows of Damian Carrington, accusing him of making wild claims about the climate without citing any sources:
In what sense is 400 parts a million a milestone and what does the word add, save opinion, to the intro? By whom are these conditions 'expected to return in time' and who says the consequences will be 'devastating'? By whom is catastrophic warming 'thought to be unstoppable' at 2 degrees (and does this mean that at 1.99 degrees it is stoppable)? …it may well be that everything in this piece is true. But it is not enough for the reporter to assert that on his own authority without citing sources.
Carrington's response is essentially to argue that "everyone says so",
the entire world's governments, via the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, agree that 2C is the safe limit."
Carrington's problem is that the UNFCCC document linked only asserts that temperature rises above 2°C would be dangerous. There is no citation. Fortunately a more complete record of the target is to be found in this recent paper from the Potsdam Institute, which notes that the 2°C target can be viewed in many ways, few of which are truly satisfactory. The authors conclude that the target actually has more to do with politics than science.
It seems that for decades European politicians—and more recently many of their partners from all over the world—have tried to orient their decisions on a guideline they perceived as expressing a scientific view, while scientists—who did introduce the 2° target into the climate debate—treat that guideline as a political issue.
I think Lord Lipsey had it right.
Reader Comments (56)
entropic independent reader always disappears when the hard questions get asked. Here is some Danube flooding history for those interested:
As you can see from the dates its going to be hard to beat 3 consecutive years of flooding on the Danube or 4 floods in 5 years which all happened BC (before CO2).
http://www.icpdr.org/main/icpdr/ministerial-conference-13-dec-2004 (scroll down to 'Flood Action Programme')
"This week the Danube reached its highest level in 500 years, as a result of extreme rainfall."
EntropicMan,
Even the BBC today managed to comment that rivers flooding might, maybe, just possibly, be due to human activities like restricting river channels, building on flood-plains etc, rather than global warming.
I wanted to congratulate them for being open minded, but, alas, comments were not enabled.
Entropic Man's little contributions remind me of the one bright but odd and misguided lad that most high school classrooms have, who pops up regularly with a gem that seems to come from the parallel universe that those such as EM dwell upon.
Entropic so who gave planning permission to build on the flood plain of the Danube.
Jun 4, 2013 at 9:21 PM | jamspid
One of the late Jagellonian or early Hapsburg kings, possibly Louis.
Turning Tide
Ask CNN, its their story.
Hans Joachim Schellnhuber from the Potsdam Inst. claims to be the inventor of the 2C target and explains that it is purely a politically motivate figure
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/climate-catastrophe-a-superstorm-for-global-warming-research-a-686697-8.html
"This week the Danube reached its highest level in 500 years, as a result of extreme rainfall."
So that means that 500 years ago it flooded worse. If it was worse 500 years ago, this current event must be within natural variation. Therefore, it ain't "climate change" wot dunnit.
Classic logical fallacy!