No Sign Bangkok Talks Anywhere Near Targets Needed To Hold Under 2C Global Average Increase

[hatrack]

BANGKOK (AlertNet) – As climate negotiators talk this week in Bangkok, there are no signs the gap between the amount of emissions countries have pledged to cut and what is needed to avoid temperatures rising to dangerous levels has been bridged, climate experts said. Scientists say the world needs to keep global temperature increases to below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels to avoid dangerous climate change, including impacts like more extreme weather and rising sea level.

To achieve this, current global emissions of greenhouse gases, blamed for global warming, need to drop to 40 to 44 billion tonnes, according to the Climate Action Tracker, an assessment tool set up by three European organisations to track emission commitments and actions of countries.

But emissions reductions proposals by governments so far have been inadequate, data show. In the worst case scenario, the world would fall short of the goal by 10 to 14 billion tonnes of CO2 by 2020,” said Niklas Hohne, a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) reports and director at Ecofys, a Dutch organisation behind the climate tracker.

Under a somewhat more optimistic scenario – taking into account more stringent accounting rules and assumptions – the gap would still be 8 to 12 billion tons. That is “a significant gap from what’s necessary,” he said. Hohne said neither developed nor developing countries have increased the ambition of their targets despite a request for that in the Cancun Agreements negotiated last December.

EDIT

http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/bangkok-talks-make-little-progress-on-closing-emissions-gap/

[GliderGuider]

1. Why do I even bother reading these articles any more?

I guess it's like driving past an accident scene where the tarps are already spread out. I know everybody is dead and there's nothing I can do, but I just have to look anyway...